Written by John Lounsbury
This is the month of the birthday of George Washington, the military leader of the American Revolution and the First President of the United States of America. It is an appropriate time for a brief biography of “The Father of Our Country”. Washington is pictured below from a painting depicting him at age 26 on a 1758 military campaign which successfully captured Fort Duquesne from the French. The captured fort now the location of the center of the city of Pittsburgh.
Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.
From Lord Nelson’s Art:
In 1758 Colonel George Washington led the Virginia troops to Fort Raystown in Central Pennsylvania. Under the direction of Brigadier General Forbes, British and Provincial troops had been ordered to cut a road 200 miles west and capture the strategic forks of the Ohio River from the French. Learning from the ill-fated Braddock’s Expedition, Forbes had forts constructed at regular intervaals from Carlisle to Loyalhanna. By November the British had successfully captured Fort Duquesne , rebuilding it and renaming it Fort Pitt.
Having moved a couple of years ago to the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, I now find myself treading where Washington may have set foot himself. Areas surrounding my new home were originally surveyed by Washington and he owned some tracts of land here for periods of time. A local B&B associated restaurant in a pre-revolutionary colonial house where I have dined several times is said to have hosted Washington in the years (1748-58) when he was frequently in the area now Frederick County surrounding what is now the city of Winchester as well as the neighboring counties of Virginia. He is said to have stayed in the house during the time he surveyed the surrounding land and at one time owned the next-door farm.
Source: YouTube.
.
