After a lifetime of service to the newly formed United States of America , George Washington more than earned his moniker, the Father of Our Country. But Washington could also be considered the father or our currency. After all, it was under Washington that the U.S. Mint was created. And it is said the first President donated his own silver to produce some of the nation’s first coins.

Washington was born to a Virginia farming family in 1732. His older half-brother Lawrence helped raise him after 11-year-old George’s father died. Though the future President never obtained more than an elementary-level education, he was gifted in math and got employment as a surveyor at age 16. Lawrence died a few years later, leaving Washington the Mount Vernon estate that he would call home for the rest of his life.

Washington also took over Lawrence ’s position leading a local militia. Sent by the British to fight the early skirmishes of the French and Indian War, Washington fought bravely but was defeated. The British blamed him for their setbacks, angering Washington and the loyal soldiers who viewed him as a hero. He eventually left military service and returned to farming. In 1759 he married Martha Custis, a wealthy widow and mother of two who owned a vast tobacco plantation.

Washington supervised the plantation and became a community leader, serving as a justice of the peace and legislator. Representing Virginia at the Continental Congresses of 1774 and 1775, he grew increasingly vocal against British taxation and trade policies.

After a colonial militia clashed with British forces near Lexington and Concord , Massachusetts , the Continental Congress appointed Washington commander of all colonial forces. With characteristic modesty, he declared, "I do not think myself equal to the command I am honored with."

Washington routed the British from Boston , but six long years of fighting followed in which his troops faced almost insurmountable hardships. He managed to hold the colonial army together, sometimes paying the freezing and starving soldiers out of his own pocket, until France entered the war on the American side. This finally gave Washington the edge he needed, and in October of 1781, he defeated General Cornwallis at Yorktown , Virginia , with the help of the French navy. By the following spring, the Revolutionary War was over.

Some of Washington ’s officers tried to make him king of the newly independent country, but the General wisely refused. Instead, he supervised the Constitutional Convention that drafted the legal framework for a democratic United States of America . The final Constitution specified that an elected president lead the country, and a reluctant Washington won the job unanimously from the first Electoral College. He served for two terms, acting with the utmost care to set precedents that would hold the office in good stead for years to come.

When he left the presidency, Washington retired to Mount Vernon . He died there less than three years later in 1799. The nation mourned its first president for months, eulogizing him in Congress as “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

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