@gungasnake,
You just can't resist making this sh*t up, can you? Washington was articled as a surveyor when he was 15, that part is true. But there was no public education system in the colonies then, and no truancy laws. Nobody's children were getting any public education, and whatever education children did get they got at home, or if their parents were relatively affluent, in a local private school. Washington got a small fee from the Commonwealth of Virginia if he was sent to survey land on the orders of the Governor and Council, which required approval of the House of Burgesses. One of the ways that people in such positions were compensated was to be allowed to make
small claims of public lands which they surveyed. To say he was earning the equivalent of $100,000 is, not to put too fine a point on it, bullshit. Washington, largely at his elder, half-brother's expense, made survey's all over the western part of Virginia and of Pennsylvania, which entitled him to make a great many claims. As a result, he was a very wealthy man,
on paper, after the French and Indian War. However, he never pressed his claims in wilderness areas, especially after the revolution, when many of the "squatters" were veterans of the war. The claims he did press were for areas where settlement had already taken place. Washington had a constant struggle to make ends meet later in life, and as he never profited from commanding the armies during the revolution or when he was President, that was true until the day he died.
For anyone who would really like to know about Washington's life, i recommend the four volume biography by Thomas Flexner, or the seven volume biography by Douglas Southall Freeman. There is a good one volume abridged version of Flexner, entitled
Washington, the Indispensable Man.
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