This long-neglected document written by George Washington reveals the legal power of genealogy.

The advertising scam of ancestors. Or PBS's "seeking roots" makes it easy for us to imagine genetics as an amateur historian, or an amateur historian's arena. Websites and programs like this show that in our highly individualistic world, ancestors are just a pastime. But in fact, ancestors still have serious consequences (literally). The issue of inheritance and inheritance is the core of many national functions, from birth rights, citizenship rights, Native American descent to probate. This is the reality now, and so is the year when the United States was founded.

For people of his time, it was like George Washington, but for people without his wealth and reputation, blood is the foundation. By the time he was 18 years old, George Washington was already a declining genealogist-he had to be. In Virginia, Washington, family is a key factor in determining social and economic status and freedom.

How does Washington understand his family, which can tell us the world he lives in and what important role he plays? Thanks to a document neglected by biographers and historians for a long time, we now know how he fully grasped the basic truth that genealogy is power. In the late 1940s of 17 and the early 1950s of 17, decades before the American revolution, Washington wrote in different chapters.

The two sides of this document, which is kept in the Library of Congress, help us to understand how Washington views the importance of his family relations, including as a way of inheriting his inheritance, and how these relations are crucial to the lives of enslaved people.

The most profound feature of this document is that his family's wealth is obviously related to the slavery of other families. George Washington is quite famous as a slave owner. Historian Erica Dunbar's Never Caught: Washingtonians' Unremitting Pursuit of Escaped Slaves and a judge described in detail how Washington actively managed the human beings he regarded as property. Mary Thompson, a historian of Mount Vernon, recently analyzed Washington's attitude towards slavery and his behavior towards enslaved people, which is the closest observation to the lives and experiences of these men, women and children so far. In this document, the relationship between elite succession and slavery was established by the most important American founder himself.

George Washington, probably in his teens, as a surveyor, first drew a family tree on this piece of paper with a pen. This is not an elegant work, but a practical work. Washington drafted this genealogy for the same reason as many other people in the British colonies. Family is not only a matter of emotional connection, but also a matter of business. People with Washington identity keep records as souvenirs, but also as indicators of legal affairs, such as the inheritance of property such as land or manpower. Some frequently consulted legal works, such as the works of lawyers, judges and other officials, have copied examples of genealogy to illustrate the importance of understanding and recording this information.

Washington's early handwriting, sharp and circular, is not as beautiful as his later handwriting. Although genealogy contains impressive details, its thick lines link intergenerational relations and sibling relations. Washington may know some details of his family history, but not all. If he is like many others, he will consult family historical memories and records, such as church accounts. For the Washington family, this situation is rare today.

He started with his great-grandparents john pope Washington and Ann Pope Washington and his great-great-grandfather Lawrence Washington. This is/kloc-a generation of British immigrants to Virginia in the middle of the 0/7th century. For each generation, young Washington noticed all the children, but only traced back to the next generation of his own immediate ancestors, for example, Mary Lawrence's age, family and descendants were unmarked.

Washington repeated the practice of many men and women in Britain and America by recording his family history and tracing a male lineage (his father, his father's father, his father's father). If he follows his mother's family, or his grandmother's family, his genealogy rendering will include a different set of connections. But the structure of inheritance law makes property flow between people. Protestant culture and the British monarchy also emphasize the importance of male descent. Although the reality of fertility and population is like this, even in the life of Washington's paternal ancestors, the British throne is often inherited by women.

The other side of the document is equally important. It reveals the first point. Washington named it "list of capable people", which was probably written in the early 1950s of 17, including a supervisor william ritchie and 10 enslaved men and women: Ago, Moore, Frank, Ben, Nan, Oni, Jack, Gabriel, William and Judas. Virginia

People like Washington pay taxes for free whites, adult servants and enslaved people. All counties collect these taxes, but for centuries, few counties have been able to keep taxable lists. There are dozens of libraries in Virginia, including one in Buckinghamshire. The number is 1764. There are hundreds of taxpayers' names on the list, and the categories they are taxed, including "tax number", "land area" and "trolley". Usually includes the tax number.

Washington made his list before the tax procedure in this county, and explained that the enslaved men and women were part of the legacy of his half-brother Lawrence, who died recently. According to the records of the Library of Congress, Lawrence paid taxes for two whites and 27 enslaved individuals in 1749. Four years later, after Lawrence's death, George Washington created a list of 36 enslaved men, women and children for his half-brother. Among these names, six also appeared on Washington's titration list, which was found on the back of his family tree.

A detailed description of the lives of Argo, Ben, Frank, Gabriel, Jack, Judas, Moore, Nan, Oni and William is obviously harder to find than people like George Washington. The system of recording their enslavement is not to obtain or save more personal or private information about them. Their family, knowledge and religious experience, as well as many other aspects of human life, exist in oral history, some archaeology and material culture in other forms, and exist in the corner of these documents, and their families are sometimes noticed.

Lawrence, for example, said that one Moore is "Frank's daughter", which is probably on the same man's list as "Frank", but because the second Moore is on the list, maybe Frank and Moore also have a daughter. "Will's" is probably William's, and his spouse's name is also Barbara. From these and other clips, the lives of people enslaved by the Washington family have entered a slightly better focus.

Mount Vernon, George Washington's Virginia Manor. (Martin Falbisoner via Wikimons under CC-by-SA3.0) Mount Vernon is George Washington's pride and happiness, or as he said (Manuel Miranda called it "his own vine and fig tree" in music. John Washington, the first name in George Washington's genealogy, 1674, was the first to own the land of Mount Vernon. Lawrence Washington, George Washington's grandfather, inherited a small hunting river plantation from him. But later it was inherited by George's aunt Mildred Washington Gregory and her husband. They sold it to her brother and George's father, Augustine Washington, who left it to his eldest son, Lawrence George Washington, who pointed out why it was a powerful source of information about his own world and ourselves.

A series of sources help to put this extraordinary document, especially the diary of George Washington in the Library of Congress, into context and determine its date, but the slavery database of Mount Vernon, the online database of founders, the paper database edited by six founders and the paper work being done by George Washington's documentary editing project are George Washington's family.