10/10/2026
How did George Washington come to live at Mount Vernon? And what role did the Fairfax family play in helping him establish his home there?
When Washington’s older half-brother Lawrence died in 1752, Mount Vernon passed to Lawrence’s young daughter, Sarah, subject to the life interest of his widow, Anne Fairfax Washington. Sarah died in 1754, and Anne, who had since remarried George Lee, leased Mount Vernon to George Washington in December of that year.
In 1758, Washington began the first major expansion of the mansion. But he was still serving as colonel of the Virginia Regiment during the French and Indian War.
That fall, Washington returned to western Pennsylvania as part of General John Forbes’s campaign to capture Fort Duquesne from the French. While Washington was away, his longtime friend and neighbor George William Fairfax helped supervise construction at Mount Vernon.
It was another example of the close relationship between Washington and the influential Fairfax family of Belvoir.
In December 1758, Washington resigned his military commission. Just one month later, on January 6, 1759, he married Martha Dandridge Custis, a wealthy widow with two young children, John Parke Custis and Martha Parke Custis.
That spring, Martha and her children moved to Mount Vernon, beginning a new chapter in Washington’s life as a husband, stepfather, planter, and member of Virginia’s colonial gentry.
Although Washington had begun leasing Mount Vernon in 1754, he did not become its outright owner until Anne Fairfax Washington Lee died in 1761.
From his early career as a surveyor to his military service and the development of Mount Vernon, the Fairfax family played an important role in George Washington’s rise in colonial Virginia.
Follow Alexandria History Tours for more in our series exploring George Washington and the Fairfax family!
