George Washington’s wrestling reputation reaches back to the earliest generations that preserved memories of his life. The historical record presents him as an exceptionally strong and competitive athlete who wrestled during his years as a young surveyor on Virginia’s Frederick County frontier.

Washington entered the western Virginia country in 1748 at the age of sixteen. By the following year, he was working as a professional surveyor in Frederick and Hampshire Counties and the Shenandoah and Cacapon regions. Surveying required physical endurance and brought him into close contact with the families who provided lodging, food, assistance, and companionship.

The earliest securely recovered detailed account of Washington wrestling appeared in the 1808 edition of Mason Locke Weems’s biography. Weems described Washington spending time with the Crawford and Stephenson family after his surveying work and joining its young men in running, jumping, and wrestling. The account remembers Washington as a gifted athlete while noting that heavier opponents could test him in what Weems called the “close or Indian hug,” a period expression most consistent with close-contact or body-lock wrestling.

Independent accounts reinforce Washington’s reputation for strength and athletic ability. People who knew him remembered his skill in running and throwing. Artist Charles Willson Peale recalled a 1773 contest at Mount Vernon in which Washington casually joined younger men pitching an iron bar and decisively surpassed their best throws. Revolutionary-era records also show Washington participating in vigorous physical recreation with officers and soldiers.

Washington’s interest in wrestling continued into his years of military leadership. As Commander in Chief of the Continental Army, he encouraged games of exercise among the troops and allowed wrestling to remain part of camp recreation. A dated memoir, corroborated by independent military records, also places Washington watching a wrestling bout involving Virginia troops and soldiers from another state. Historical evidence portrays Washington not only as an accomplished wrestler, but also as an avid supporter and spectator of the sport.

By 1835, James Kirke Paulding included wrestling among the exercises for which Washington was remembered as a young man. George Washington Parke Custis later preserved a Mount Vernon family tradition in which Washington quickly threw an unnamed wrestler celebrated as the “strong man of Virginia.” Together, these early accounts show that Washington’s wrestling reputation was established within living and family memory before becoming part of his wider national image.

The surviving evidence supports George Washington as a powerful, competitive athlete who most likely wrestled within the Crawford and Stephenson social circle during his Frederick County surveying years, approximately 1749–1752. That credible early tradition gives the nation’s first president an enduring place in American wrestling history.

After his brilliant achievements in the Revolution, Washington devoted much study to civil rights and the various forms of civil government. Seven years after resigning his command, he was unanimously chosen the first President of the new republic.

Among the important events of Washington's term, 1789-1797, were the admission of the states of Vermont and Kentucky to the Union; establishment of the First Bank of the United States; and the adoption of the the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution.

Written at the time of his death in 1799, these words express the immortal place that George Washington holds in history and in the affections of the American people:

"First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."