Did George Washington have any children?
George Washington fathered no children of his own. (Probably). In 1759, he married Martha Dandridge Custis, a widow with two children Washington adopted Custis’s two children . There is a story that George Washington fathered his one and only child through a slave. The only evidence is the two hundred year old oral history of the family of descendents of West Ford, a slave belonging to Washington’s brother. The story appeared in print in the 1940’s but didn’t get much attention. Interest was revived in the 1990′ due to the Jefferson-Hemmings story. There is no hard evidence and most “main-stream” historians feel that “There is some … evidence suggesting that West Ford may have been the son of another member of the Washington family, http://hnn.us/articles/10827.
“Despite great successes in his military and civilian life and his central role in the creation of the world’s most enduring democratic nation, George Washington likely suffered from male infertility and harbored great personal sadness about his inability to father an heir.” Source and further information: http://www.asrm.org/…/georgewashington.
