page_title: Lawrence Berry Washington
section_title: Early life and family
hierarchical_section_title: Lawrence Berry Washington / Early life and family
caption_attribution_description: English: Cedar Lawn, near Charles Town, West Virginia, USA Français&#160;: Cedar Lawn, près de Charles Town, Virginie occidentale, Etats-Unis
context_page_description: Lawrence Berry Washington was an American lawyer, military officer, author, Forty-niner, Border Ruffian, and a member of the Washington family. Washington was born on his family's Cedar Lawn plantation near Charles Town, Virginia and was the eldest of 13 children. He practiced law, then served as a second lieutenant in the Virginia Volunteers during the Mexican–American War. During his service in the war, Washington reportedly wore the sword of his great-granduncle George Washington.
  Following the Mexican–American War, Washington traveled to California in 1849 as a Forty-niner in the California Gold Rush and authored the novel, A Tale to be Told Some Fifty Years Hence. Washington then relocated east to Missouri in the 1850s, where he remained for a few years and fought as a Border Ruffian during the Bleeding Kansas confrontations over slavery along the border between Kansas Territory and Missouri. While under the command of Captain Henry Clay Pate, Washington was present at the June 1856 Free-Stater attack known as Battle of Black Jack, where he sustained minor injuries. Washington died by drowning after falling overboard from a steamboat on the Missouri River in September 1856.
context_section_description: Lawrence Berry Washington was born on November 26, 1811, at "Cedar Lawn" plantation near Charles Town in Jefferson County, Virginia (present-day West Virginia) and was the eldest son of John Thornton Augustine Washington and his wife Elizabeth Conrad Bedinger Washington.
  Through his father, Washington was a grandson of Thornton Augustine Washington, a great-grandson of Samuel Washington, and a great-grandnephew of first President of the United States George Washington. Through his mother, he was a great-grandson of Robert Rutherford, a United States House Representative from Virginia, and a nephew of Henry Bedinger III, also a member of the U.S. House of Representatives who later served as Chargé d'Affaires and Minister to Denmark for President Franklin Pierce. Washington was raised in a large family at Cedar Lawn, where he had four brothers and eight sisters:
  Daniel Bedinger Washington (born 1814)
  Virginia Thornton Washington (1816–1838)
  Sally Eleanor Washington (1818–1858)
  Benjamin Franklin Washington (1820–1872)
  Georgiana Augusta Washington Smith (born 1822)
  Mary Elizabeth Washington Asbury (born 1824)
  John Thornton Augustine Washington (1826–1894)
  Mildred Berry Washington (September 3–12, 1827)
  Mildred Berry Washington Bedinger (1829–1871)
  George Washington (born 1830)
  Susan Ellsworth Washington Bedinger (born 1833)
  Henrietta Gray Washington (1835–1838)
  Because of his large number of siblings, Washington's inheritance from his father in 1841 was not sizable, and he and his brothers pursued a number of business opportunities to build their personal wealth. Washington studied jurisprudence, and was operating a law practice in Charles Town by November 1844. He advertised himself in the Spirit of Jefferson newspaper as an agent for landowners in the Virginia Military District in Ohio and offered his services for the legal defense and tax payments for those lands. By August 1845, he and his brother Benjamin Franklin Washington were engaged in a real estate venture, selling lots of 640 acres (2.6 km²) along the Kanawha River in Mason County.
caption: Washington's birthplace, "Cedar Lawn" near Charles Town in Jefferson County, West Virginia. "Cedar Lawn" was built by Washington's father, John Thornton Augustine Washington, in 1825.
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