George Washington's Barbados Connection.

• Author: Kiernan, James Patrick
• Position: Brief Article

ON NOVEMBER 2, 1751, two brothers arrived in Barbados after setting sail from their Virginia home. The elder, Lawrence, had fallen victim to tuberculosis, and doctors in Virginia had recommended a change of climate. Barbados had a long-standing medical tradition of treating lung infections. His nineteen-year-old half-brother and ward, George, accompanied him, keeping a diary in which he carefully recorded the pleasures and vicissitudes of his two-month stay.

Today, the commemoration of the two-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of the Washingtons' visit to Barbados highlights the many fluid connections linking the then British colonies of Virginia and Barbados. The Barbados National Trust, with the support and financial assistance of the U.S. National Trust for Historical Preservation, is restoring the house where the two Washington brothers stayed when they visited the island briefly in 1751.

The decision of the Washingtons to travel to Barbados was strengthened by family ties. Lawrence's wife, one of the prominent Fairfaxes of Virginia, was related to Gedney Clark, a well-established resident of Barbados. The brothers rented a house on the outskirts of Bridgetown on an escarpment overlooking Carlisle Bay. Dinner invitations interspersed with engagements at the theater, fireworks displays, and horseback rides in the country to visit various plantations kept George occupied. However, Lawrence did not respond to the treatment of local doctors. George himself contracted smallpox and was laid up for three weeks. While the smallpox scarred him, it also gave him immunity from this major scourge of the eighteenth century. In later years, when smallpox decimated the American forces fighting for independence, George, as...