Entrepreneurship

EMEL AKAN is a senior reporter for The Epoch Times in Washington, D.C. Previously she worked in the financial sector as an investment banker at JPMorgan. Emel Akan

America’s ‘First Entrepreneur’

How a Founding Father’s business pursuits changed the nation

This year, feb. 22 marks the 290th anniversary of President George Washington’s birth. The Founding Father of the nation is often remembered as a great military leader and statesman, but little is known about his business ventures and innovations.

Washington was not only the first president of the United States, but he was also the country’s “first entrepreneur,” according to historians who have extensively studied his business dealings.

Private enterprises he founded had an effect on the future of American agriculture, transportation, and manufacturing, says John Berlau, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the author of the book “George Washington, Entrepreneur: How our Founding Father’s Private Business Pursuits Changed America and the World.”

Berlau’s portrait of Washington, drawn in large part from his journals and letters, shines a light on the Founding Father’s endeavors as an innovator and entrepreneur.

The book presents “another side of Washington’s greatness and how our country is rooted in entrepreneurship,” Berlau told Insight.

Washington devoted his life to the improvement of his farm at Mount Vernon and American agriculture. His passion for his farm never ceased on the battlefield or during his presidency, Berlau wrote in his book.

Washington, on his Virginia estate, grew countless varieties of trees and built a greenhouse, which became a showcase for exotic fruits, herbs, and plants from around the world.

“Unlike his Virginia neighbors who remained wedded to tobacco, Washington planted seven types of wheat,” according to the book. “Transforming Mount Vernon from a tobacco plantation into a diversified farm with wheat as its main crop was a great entrepreneurial feat.”

Washington built a small industrial complex at his estate, which included a fishery, a dairy, a textile and weaving workshop, and a blacksmith shop.

Washington also went into the flour-making business, which was a big success. In 1772, he registered the “G. Washington” brand for his flour, pioneering in the distribution of branded food products. Even before the Revolutionary War, his flour was shipped throughout America and exported to England and its colonies in the West Indies.

The Founding Father also receives credit for introducing mules to American agriculture and promoting them as an efficient alternative to horses for plowing.

“We owe a lot to George Washington, and I think he’s someone that should be studied a little bit further than the surface,” says Tom Washington, a businessman and a certified public accountant from Texas. He’s a collateral descendant of George Washington through the Founding Father’s brother, John Augustine, seven generations down.

“I appreciate George Washington as an entrepreneur in that time of history when it was so hard to be an entrepreneur because there were predatory governments like Britain always trying to keep an entrepreneur down and under control,” Washington told Insight during a family reunion at Mount Vernon in October 2021.

“But George found a way, and he fought for the country as a general, but he also fought for his own self-interest and the wealth of the people that depended on him by being successful at Mount Vernon.”

Mount Vernon always remained the base of Washington’s agricultural and industrial endeavors. He built a small industrial complex at his estate, which included a fishery, a dairy, a textile and weaving workshop, and a blacksmith shop.

The estate also was home to a distillery that became one of the largest American whiskey distilleries in the country at that time. It was also one of the most profitable enterprises at Mount Vernon.

Lindsay Chervinsky, historian and author of “The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution” defines Washington as a very pro-business president.

Washington believed that America’s future lay in expansion to the west, she said. He saw commerce as something that would naturally lead to peace and unity. Hence, he promoted river trade from the east to the west via the Potomac River.

Washington was also an early investor in the Potomac Company, an enterprise dedicated to improving navigation on the river.

Washington and his wife, Martha, poured their passions into Mount Vernon and its enterprises, Berlau says in his book.

The growing threat from oppressive British taxes and red tape motivated Washington “to lead the fight both for his own liberties and those of his countrymen.”