Some time between 1723 and 1725 Augustine Washington hired David Jones, a local carpenter and undertaker, to build a house on his Popes Creek property for 5,000 pounds of tobacco with extra amounts in cash for incidentals. The late Charles A. Hoppin, authority on the Washington family, believed that George’s father had the brick for his new home made on the plantation grounds, the foundations built, and many timbers hewed for the building before Jones began construction of the house. Jones also contracted to build for Augustine “2 bedsteads,” “1 cradle,” “2 Mantoll [mantel]pieces,” and “a small Poplar Table.” David Jones died in 1725, before the Washington house was completed, and Augustine entered a claim against his estate asking the sum of 500 pounds of tobacco. It may be inferred that the home was completed in 1726 and was about 6 years old at the time of George’s birth. THE BIRTHPLACE. While little is known about the appearance of the home in which George was born, the foundations and cellar floors uncovered during archeological excavations revealed that it was built either partially or entirely of brick. Several foundations of outbuildings were unearthed, and all were constructed of brick. So, also, all walls, cellar stairways, wine vaults, and fireplaces that have been excavated were built of brick. The location of the new home was superb, being on a rise of ground 26 feet above Popes Creek and a little over 200 feet inland from its high western bank. To the east and northeast were pretty water views; to the north, beyond cleared fields, was Dancing Marsh, green with lush grass and swamp plants; and to the southeast, 100 yards or so away, was a little peninsula which jutted out into Popes Creek (now heavily wooded with a beautiful grove of eastern redcedar, _Juniperus virginiana_). To the west of the house were pastures and cleared fields, and beyond the clearings was the dense forest—a mixed stand of broadleaf trees and evergreens. A farm road ran in a northwesterly direction for a mile or so, passing by the family burying ground where rested Augustine’s father and grandfather and other early members of the family. A short distance beyond the burying ground the road came to an end at the sandy south shore of the Potomac River. The new home must have been rather commodious for a 1762 inventory of its furnishings lists 10 bedsteads, 13 tables, 57 chairs, 8 mirrors, 8 chests, accessories for 8 fireplaces, and scores of other furnishings and household items befitting a fairly large establishment. Certainly, the house in which George was born could not have been the humble 1-story clapboard structure portrayed in 19th-century imaginative sketches by artists who probably knew little about the social and economic status of George’s father.