Washington was born on April 7, 1820, at "Berry Hill" afterward[1]"Cedar Lawn" plantation near Charles Town, Virginia (now West Virginia) and was the fifth child and third son of John Thornton Augustine Washington and his wife[2] Elizabeth Conrad Bedinger.
He studied law[5] but went west to California in the 1849 Gold Rush as the president[6] of the Charlestown Company.
[9] On October 7, 1863, the Democratic Press was established in San Francisco, and by June 12, 1865, it became the Evening Examiner, with William S. Moss as publisher and B. F. Washington as editor.
For several years William S. Moss, Phil Roach and George Pen Johnston were its owners.
Until it was bought by Senator Hearst in the 1880s, the paper had been a "highly chaste and non-sensation journal".