American Presidents Year by Year

Julie Nelson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780765680464
• eBook ISBN: 9781317477105
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This fascinating multi-volume set illuminates the panorama of American history through the personal and professional stories of the nation's presidents. Arranged chronologically, and covering George Washington to George W. Bush, it juxtaposes the lives of each year's current, former, and future living presidents against each other and the historical backdrop of their times. Each chapter opens with a summary of the year and describes the major issues and events the incumbent president faced. Separate sections within each chapter - "Former Presidents" and "Future Presidents" - detail important developments in the lives of past and future presidents month by month during that same year, highlighting political, social, and personal decisions that helped shape the course of American history.

American Presidents: Year by Year 1732 – 1860

1732

GEORGE WASHINGTON was born on February 22 at Bridges Creek (later Wakefield) in Westmoreland County, colonial Virginia, on the Potomac River and about 8 miles from the Rappahannock River. The site was sometimes called Pope’s Creek. His father was Augustine Washington, age 38; his mother was Mary Ball Washington, age 24.

Augustine, who had been born in Westmoreland County also, was a county justice, landowner, and planter with estates on both the Potomac and the Rappahannock. Washington’s mother was born in Lancaster County just 40 miles down the peninsula toward Chesapeake Bay. She was Augustine’s second wife.

George’s father had married Jane Butler in 1715, and they produced a family of four: sons Butler, Lawrence, and Augustine; and a daughter, Jane. Jane Butler Washington died in 1728, and Augustine remarried in 1730. George, Mary Ball Washington’s first child, was baptized in the Episcopal Church on April 5.

Washington was of English ancestry and had relatives living in Great Britain at the time of his birth. Bridges Creek was rural and in the thinly populated Atlantic Coast lowlands. The frontier that was to be constantly pushed westward through the years of American growth was still close to the Atlantic Seaboard.

Sixty years after Washington’s birth, an Englishman asked him for background information on his ancestors. Washington answered rather casually that he knew almost nothing and, furthermore, had no interest in genealogy.

Notwithstanding his views on roots, the Washington ancestral home was in Sulgrave, Northamptonshire, some 55 miles northwest of London. Lawrence Washington, born about 1500, became mayor of Northampton. The Washingtons were considered “gentlemen” and received estate lands from Henry VIII, king of England. Family fortunes suffered after the Puritan Revolution, and the Puritans labeled the clergyman father of Washington’s great-grandfather a drunk.

Washington’s great-grandfather, John Washington, came to Virginia in 1657 as the mate on a ship. Upon leaving for the return trip to England, the ship hit a shoreline obstruction and sank, and John decided to remain in the New World.

In Virginia, John married Anne Pope, whose father owned considerable land. John’s first son was Lawrence, George’s grandfather. Anne died in 1668, and John was to marry two more times. He inherited the land at Little Hunting Creek, now Mount Vernon.

John’s son Lawrence was educated in England and returned to Virginia to marry Mildred Warner, whose father was speaker of the House of Burgesses in Williamsburg. Lawrence became a justice of the peace, a burgess himself, and a sheriff. He died at the age of 38.

Mildred Warner Washington sent her children John, Augustine, and Mildred to England to be educated. Augustine, George’s father, attended the Appleby School in Westmoreland for 4 years. He also briefly tried the sailor’s life. After his mother, Mildred, died, Augustine returned to Virginia and purchased the property at Little Hunting Creek from his sister Mildred.

Augustine’s first wife, Jane, died while Augustine was on a business trip to England. Two years after her death, Augustine married Mary Ball, the daughter of Joseph Ball and Mary Johnson. When her father died, Mary inherited an estate near the Rappahannock River.

Thus, at the time of George’s birth at Bridges Creek, Mary was already looking after Augustine’s three motherless children. The population of the colonies was then about 629,400.

1733

GEORGE WASHINGTON celebrated his first birthday.

June 20: George’s sister, Elizabeth, was born at the Washington plantation at Bridges Creek, Virginia.

1734

GEORGE WASHINGTON turned 2 in February.

November 16: A brother, Samuel, was born at the Virginia plantation home. Washington’s father was now supporting six children.

1735

GEORGE WASHINGTON was 3 years old when his father moved the family from Bridges Creek to Mount Vernon, then Little Hunting Creek, a Virginia plantation on the Potomac about 70 miles northwest of George’s birthplace.

January 17: The family was reduced to five children when George’s half-sister Jane died.

JOHN A DAMS was born on October 30 in Braintree (now a part of Quincy) about 10 miles south and around the bay from the small town of Boston in the colony of Massachusetts. His father was John Adams, age 44, and his mother was Susanna Boylston Adams, age 36. John was their first child. Both parents, older than usual for a first birth, were of English extraction. Adams’s parents were married in 1734. His mother had a temper and hated when her husband brought home stray, needy children to take care of.

The senior Adams was a small landowner, farmer, maker of leather goods, selectman, deacon, and tax collector. Adams’s great-great grandfather, Henry Adams, came to Braintree from Somersetshire, England, in 1640 with his wife, Edith Squire Adams, and nine children. Henry Adams was a farmer and maker of malt.

Adams was the great-great grandson of John and Priscilla Alden through his paternal grandmother, Hannah Bass (1667– 1705). Adams’s great-uncle was Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, who introduced inoculation to the colonies and vaccinated 240 people during a smallpox outbreak in Boston in 1721. Adams was a second cousin to Samuel Adams.

Braintree at this time was basically rural but much closer to a growing commercial settlement than was Washington’s home.

1736

GEORGE WASHINGTON was 4 years old and lived on the Potomac in colonial Virginia.

January 13: George’s brother John Augustine was born.

JOHN ADAMS was a baby in Braintree in colonial Massachusetts.

1737

GEORGE WASHINGTON, age 5, lived in Virginia on a hill above the Potomac with a fine view of the river.

JOHN ADAMS became 2 years old in October and continued living in Braintree.

1738

GEORGE WASHINGTON turned 6 in February. A fire at the Washington plantation home on the Potomac sent the family south 40 miles to a new home at Brunswick Parish, Ferry Farm, in King George County not far from Fredericksburg, Virginia.

May 2: George’s brother Charles was born.

JOHN ADAMS turned 3 on October 30 in Braintree.

October 16: John’s brother, Peter Boylston, was born.

1739

GEORGE WASHINGTON, now 7, was probably receiving his first schooling from his parents at the Washington home at Brunswick Parish, Virginia.

June 21: With the birth of Mildred, the bulging Washington family numbered eight children.

JOHN ADAMS was 4 years old and living on a small farm in Braintree. With a religious revival sweeping New England from European influences, his parents doubtless planned to guide him eventually into the ministry.

1740

GEORGE WASHINGTON, at age 8, shared the excitement around Brunswick Parish when his half-brother, Captain Lawrence Washington, left home to join the Virginia troops and British regulars with Admiral Edward Vernon in his South American campaign against the Spanish at Cartagena (now Colombia) on the Caribbean near Panama.

October 23: The family baby, Mildred, died.

JOHN ADAMS was age 5 and living in Braintree.

1741

GEORGE WASHINGTON, age 9, lived in rural Virginia.

JOHN ADAMS, age 6, started his formal education at Mrs. Belcher’s school on Penn Hill near Braintree, Massachusetts.

May 29: John’s second brother, Elihu, was born.

A portrait of George Washington’s mother, Mary Ball Washington. (Library of Congress)

1742

GEORGE WASHINGTON received schooling at home as he turned 10. Life at his Virginia home during the year was highlighted by the return of Major Lawrence Washington with stories of the fighting and defeat in South America. Admiral Edward Vernon and his fleet successfully won the battle of Portobello in 1739 but was defeated at Cartagena in 1740. The campaign against the Spanish was part of the War of Austrian Succession (1740–1748).

JOHN A DAMS turned 7 in October, and he learned reading and arithmetic from Mrs. Belcher in Braintree.

1743

GEORGE WASHINGTON was 11 years old when his father, Augustine, died at age 49 on April 12 at the new family home in Brunswick Parish, Virginia. Thus George became a ward of half-brother Lawrence but inherited a share of the large Washington estate along with Lawrence and John Augustine. Lawrence had married Anne Fairfax, the daughter of Colonel William F. Fairfax.

Lawrence’s inheritance was Little Hunting Creek; John Augustine received Wakefield, George’s birthplace; and George received Ferry Farm near Fredericksburg, where the family was living. He shared other lands with his brothers.

Mary Ball Washington was reluctant to part with Ferry Farm, however, and it was 30 years before Washington gained possession.

The home at Little Hunting Creek was known as Epsewasson before Lawrence named it Mount Vernon after Admiral Edward Vernon, who had played a major role in the Cartagena campaign.

George was particularly close to John Augustine, whom he called Jack.

JOHN A DAMS, age 8, changed schools from Mrs. Belcher’s school to the Latin School, located a mile from his home in Braintree, Massachusetts. John Hancock was a classmate.

THOMAS JEFFERSON was born on April 13 at Shadwell, colonial Virginia, in Goochland County (later Albemarle). His parents were Peter Jefferson, age 36, and Jane Randolph Jefferson, age 23. She was born in London. The family was of Welsh ancestry.

Peter, a man of some wealth, was a professor, surveyor, landowner, land developer, sheriff, magistrate, justice of the peace, and judge. He later was also a member of the House of Burgesses in Williamsburg.

Thomas Jefferson was the third child and first son; his older sisters were Jane, age 3, and Mary, age 2.

Shadwell was a plantation community a few miles east of Charlottesville, close to the Blue Ridge Mountains and more than 150 miles west of the Atlantic on the frontier

Peter Jefferson married Jane Randolph in 1739. He had clear title to about 6,000 acres in Albemarle County. Jane had come to the colonies as a child. Nothing is known of her influence on her son. The Jeffersons were descendants through Isham Randolph, the maternal grandfather of King David I of Scotland (1084–1153).

Jefferson later said his people came to the colonies from the Mount Snowden area of northern Wales.

1744

GEORGE WASHINGTON, in Virginia, was 12 years old when his mother decided not to send him to the Appleby School in England where half-brothers Lawrence and Augustine had gone earlier.

JOHN ADAMS, as he turned 9 in Massachusetts, did chores around the small farm and learned simple farming techniques from his father.

THOMAS JEFFERSON was a baby in Virginia.

November 4: Thomas’s sister, Elizabeth, was born.

1745

GEORGE WASHINGTON was 13 years old and lived in rural Virginia. He was interested in billiards and whist.

JOHN A DAMS, age 10, liked to stand on a hill near his Massachusetts home and watch ships move in and out of Boston Harbor to the north.

THOMAS JEFFERSON was 2 when his family moved from Shadwell to Tuckahoe on the James River and closer to Richmond. His father, Peter, became a leader of the county militia.

1746

GEORGE WASHINGTON, age 14 in February, studied mathematics, astronomy, and geography in Virginia. During this year, Lord Thomas Fairfax, a rich bachelor, arrived in Virginia from England. He was the father of Anne Fairfax Washington. The lord came to live with his cousin George Fairfax, Anne’s uncle.

Soon Lord Fairfax owned 5 million acres of property in northern Virginia and the Shenandoah.

JOHN A DAMS, only 11 years old in October, may have had his first political worry when he heard his parents and neighbors discuss the possibility of an attack on Boston by the French fleet during the conflict known in New England as King George’s War (War of Austrian Succession).

THOMAS JEFFERSON, 3 in April, lived in Virginia.

May 29: Thomas’s sister, Martha, was born.

1747

GEORGE WASHINGTON’S limited education never extended beyond this year, although he was only 15 years old. There had been family talk that George would become a sailor, but George, living near Fredericksburg, Virginia, purchased surveying equipment, and soon this was his major interest.

JOHN A DAMS was 12 and living in Braintree.

THOMAS JEFFERSON, age 4, lived in Tuckahoe, about 65 miles southwest of George Washington’s Virginia home.

1748

GEORGE WASHINGTON, age 16, had taken up permanent residence at the Mount Vernon plantation with his half-brother Lawrence and Lawrence’s wife, Anne. Washington spent his time mapping creeks and surveying fields.

March–April: Englishman Lord Thoma...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Volume I: 1732–1860
• Volume II: 1861–1932
• Volume III: 1933–2000
• Index