George Lewis received an officer's commission in the Continental Army but resigned it in 1779 following criticism of his performance yet was still able to marry and establish a plantation on land he inherited on the Shenandoah River in western Virginia.

[2] Lewis volunteered for service in 1794 to help suppress the Whiskey Rebellion and served as aide-de-camp to General Daniel Morgan, achieving the rank of major.

On August 4, 1797, Washington wrote to Lawrence Lewis, inviting him to serve as his part-time personal secretary, unpaid except for room and board for him and a servant.

He showed his displeasure by not inviting Bushrod Washington to the post funeral dinner, so the estate's new master had a servant bring him refreshments in an outbuilding and ate alone.

In 1790 a tavern keeper in Falmouth, Virginia had obtained a patent on the land under the new escheat statute, and in 1795 sold part of it to Henry Suddoth, who was collecting rents from a tenant.

[3] Lewis and his wife lived at Woodlawn until about 1830, when they moved westward and settled at their new (now historic) Audley estate in what is now Clarke County, Virginia.

Lewis died in 1839 in Arlington, Virginia, and was buried in the vault at Mount Vernon, close to the sarcophagi of George and Martha Washington.