Every action done in company ought to be with some sign of respect to those who are present.

  From 1776 by David McCulough. Page 45.

Born in Tidewater Virginia on February 11, 1732 (by the Old Style calendar), George Washington was the great-grandson of John Washington, who had emigrated from Northampton, England, in 1657. His father, Augustine Washington, was a tobacco planter also known for his “noble appearance and manly proportions.” His mother, Mary Bell, was widowed when Washington was eleven. Because of the family’s reduced circumstances, he had had little education—only seven or eight years of schooling by private tutor, no training in Latin or Greek or law, as had so many prominent Virginia patriots—and, as those close to him knew, he was self-conscious about this.

By steady application he had learned to write in a clear, strong hand and to express himself on paper with force and clarity. He learned to dance—Virginians loved to dance and he was no exception—and he learned to comport himself in the elaborately polite society of the day with perfect manners and polish. (Of the 110Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation that he had laboriously copied down as a boy, Rule Number One read: “Every action done in company ought to be with some sign of respect to those who are present.”) He enjoyed parties and particularly the company of attractive women. As would be said of British officers, he “liked his glass, his lass, his game of cards,” though gambling never became the obsession it was for so many of his counterparts on the British side.

The great teacher for Washington was experience. At age sixteen, he had set out to make his way in the world, as a surveyor’s apprentice on an expedition into the wilderness of western Virginia, over the Blue Ridge Mountains, and as years passed he spent more time in the backcountry beyond the Blue Ridge than all but a few from the Tidewater. In addition, surveying proved highly remunerative.