You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington

by Alexis Coe

At the age of eleven, he inherited ten slaves from his father, and over the next fifty-six years, he would sometimes rely on them to supply replacement teeth. He paid his slaves for their teeth, but not at fair market value. From his ledger, recorded in his own hand, we see that he offered six pounds and two shillings for at least nine teeth—two-thirds less than Greenwood offered in newspaper advertisements.5

In a young, monarchy-weary America, Washington’s lack of heirs gave him a distinct political advantage; it comforted people to know that he had no bloodline to preserve, no power-hungry scion to worry about.

Washington was defining the role of president as he occupied it, and from the very beginning, it seems, he was sure about one thing: He wasn’t going to owe anyone any favors.

Siri what is a precedent

Washington’s will had been circulated in pamphlet form. Some of his slaves had decided to immediately emancipate themselves and fled Mount Vernon, while the rest watched her closely, knowing that her death meant their freedom. “She did not feel as tho her Life was safe in their Hands,” Abigail Adams explained to her sister,

Oh no, what’s it like to feel scared?????