Anne Washington

The Lineage of George Washington

Written and researched by Margaret Odrowaz-Sypniewska

Anne Pope was born in 1635 in Westmoreland County, Virginia [SIC: St. Mary's County, Maryland] They lived at Bridges Creek (Westmoreland, VA). John was a planter and a member of the House of Burgesses. She was married on December 1, 1658 in Virginia and died circa 1668 in Westmoreland, Virginia.

John Washington Meets Nathaniel Pope

As part of his contract, young Washington agreed to cross the Atlantic Ocean to procure a new cargo of tobacco in Virginia. The ship anchored in the Potomac River in February 1657. While John was ashore, the Sea Horse blew aground during a storm and began to sink. Washington managed to repair and refloat the ship, but most of the tobacco was water-logged and had to be jettisoned. His inheritance lost, John Washington decided then and there not to return to England. While ashore, he had met an elderly planter-exporter named Nathaniel Pope who latched on to the young Englishman as just the right bridegroom for his daughter. Here was the son of an Oxford don who knew the European tobacco markets! For father and prospective son-in-law, it was love at first sight. Pope, a rich tobacco planter and member of the Maryland Assembly with extensive landholdings, was the ideal model for a young merchant mariner on the make.

John Washington and Anne Pope

It is hard to tell whether Washington fell in love with Anne Pope or his prospects as heir-apparent, but he suddenly broke his contract with Captain Prescott, who refused to pay him and sailed away. Pope advanced Washington a hefty 80 [pounds sterling] in gold and dangled the bequest of 700 acres of riverfront land. Shortly afterward, John married Anne. Nathaniel Pope appointed Washington to administer his family's lands. In only a few years, John Washington assumed the same second-tier social status in Virginia that his family had long enjoyed in England, even if to settle in Virginia in the 1650s was like deciding today to emigrate to the Brazilian rain forest. After the manor houses of England, the Virginia Tidewater plantation houses were rude shacks in a wilderness.

John Washington's migration added two new elements to the Washington family character. From that time on, they relentlessly pursued money and land. By the age of thirty, John Washington succeeded as a merchant-planter. At a time when frontier land was still cheap and tobacco fetched a high price in England, George Washington's great-grandfather accumulated five thousand acres in ten years. He also received paid emoluments from the royal governor as county coroner, trustee of estates, guardian of children, justice of the county court, and most notably, lieutenant colonel in the Virginia militia, initiating another Washington family tradition.

In September 1659, John and Anne Washington's first son was born at about the same time he began to import indentured servants from England. He received "head rights" of fifty acres for each servant. He put the servants to work for five to seven years clearing, cultivating, and defending his land. In all, he "brought over" sixty-three white servants. His neighbors elected him to the Virginia House of Burgesses for the Northern Neck.

Anne Pope's Nine Children

As his wealth increased, so did his family. Anne Pope Washington gave birth to five children in nine years and died. Washington remarried quickly, choosing Anne Gerrard, a woman already already twice widowed. The second Mrs. Washington was a shrewd businesswoman who imported servants, something few women did. ...  (1)

• http://www.jackpopeweb.com/dnn/FamilyHistory/JohnWashingtonMeetsNat...
•  http://www.sulgravemanor.org.uk/pages/59/family_tree.asp
• Humphries, John (1934). Georgia Descendants of Nathaniel Pope of Virginia, John Humphries of South Carolina and Allen Gay of North Carolina. Atlanta GA. pp. 5–8.

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• Reference: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy: Apr 25 2018, 19:30:04 UTC