John Washington was an English Virginia planter and politician.
Background
John Washington was born in 1633 in Purleigh, Essex, England, the son of Amphilis (Twigden) and Lawrence Washington. When John was eight his father enrolled him in Charterhouse School in London to begin preparing for an academic career. John Washington, his mother and siblings were given shelter by his relative Sir Edwin Sandys.
Career
He was the English ancestor and great-grandfather of George Washington, first president of the United States of America. Prior to Lawrence Washington"s marriage, he had been a don at the University of Oxford. In the wake of the English Civil War, however, the royalist Lawrence Washington was stripped of his clerical "don" post and became an Anglican rector who ministered to an impoverished parish in Essex.
John Washington found an apprenticeship with a London merchant through his Sandys relatives, which provided a valuable education in colonial trade.
In 1656 Washington invested in a merchant ship engaged in transporting tobacco to European markets and left his home in Tring for the Washington was the ship"s second officer In 1657, the ship foundered in the Potomac River.
Although the vessel was repaired, Washington elected to remain in the colony. While first in Virginia, Washington stayed at the house of Colonel
Nathaniel Pope, a planter.
During this stay, he fell in love with his host"s daughter Anne. He settled at a site on Bridges Creek. He depended on the labor of slaves and indentured servants to cultivate tobacco and kitchen crops.
He was selected for the Virginia House of Burgesses and became a politician in the colony.
During the events leading to Bacon"s Rebellion in 1676, Washington was appointed a colonel in the Virginia militia. He led a company to back a group of Marylanders during a planned parley with the opposition and American Indian leaders.
The militia killed six chiefs of various tribes, and their peoples retaliated for the massacre in later raids and attacks against the colonists. Governor William Berkeley strongly criticized Washington for the murders of the American Indian chiefs, but colonists supported Washington in the massacre.
Relations between the Indians and colonists deteriorated.