WASHINGTON, 1st, 1789-97

Very tall for his generation with reddish hair and gray-blue eyes, George Washington had shoulders too narrow for his height but hands and feet that were tremendous. His face was massive, scarred and pockmarked.

Gilbert Stuart painted Washington in 1796. Stuart said Washington's features were indicative of the strongest and most ungovernable passions, "the sockets of the eyes, for instance, were larger than what I ever met with before, and the upper part of the nose broader." In other words, he had a terrible temper but held it under wonderful control.

With something like a smile, Washington replied, "He's right." He said, "I am so hackneyed to the touches of the painter's pencil, that I am now altogether at their beck; and sit, 'like Patience on a monument,' whilst they are delineating the lines of my face. At first I was as impatient at the request, and as restive under the operation, as a colt is of the saddle. Now, no dray-horse moves more readily to his thill than I to the painter's chair."

We can safely assume Washington got some schooling between the ages of seven and eleven, and that he did not go on. His 900-volume library was filled with all the get-rich-quick handbooks of the day.

Although Washington was physically strong, he was not the indomitable human force that popular history paints. He was often sick, particularly with infections. Many of them were life threatening including diphtheria, malaria, smallpox, tuberculosis, and dysentery.

Martha never became pregnant during her forty-year marriage to "The Potomac Stallion." Given her previous fertility, it could well be concluded that the difficulty was in her husband. However, Washington, the magnificent athlete, who possessed in abundance every other physical prowess, could not altogether admit to himself that he was sterile.

The bleedings inflicted by Washington's doctors hastened his end. About 35 percent of the blood in his body was drained in twelve hours. His final words were, "Doctor, I die hard; but I am not afraid to go. I am just going." Doctors hoped Washington was in a suspended state from which he could be aroused: the body would be thawed gradually, first in cool water and then with warm blankets and rubbing of the skin, and finally, a transfusion of lamb's blood. After his death, Washington's frozen corpse measured 6 feet 3 1/2 inches.

d. December 14, 1799 (Mount Vernon, Virginia) at 67 from a rare tracheal infection.