[4] His uncle George Washington years earlier had been born at Wakefield before his father moved his family to Ferry Farm in nearby Stafford County, Virginia.

He is sometimes confused with a cousin, Col. William Washington who was born in Stafford County and became a military hero in the Battle of Cowpens in South Carolina during the American Revolutionary War.

[6] Although then a child, William Washington inherited Wakefield plantation when his father died in 1762 (subject to his mother's right to live there until her death, which happened in 1774).

Washington moved his family about a mile inland from the Potomac River, to Blenheim another house on the inherited estate.

(The barn, also built with recycled Wakefield bricks and noted as historic in 1934 remains today).

[11] In 1802, William Washington offered the Wakefield property for sale, advertising it as about 6000 acres cultivated as four farms and "peculiarly adapted to the production of Indian corn, wheat and barley.

[16] His eldest surviving son, George Corbin Washington (1789-1854), continued living for the most part in the Dumbarton Heights neighborhood of the federal city.