TODAY Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States of America. The official ceremony will take place on the West Front of the famous United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. Did you know the first ever holder of the powerful office –the revolutionary, military leader and ultimately ‘founding father’ George Washington, had ancestors from right here in Essex?

George Washington became the first president of the USA on April 30, 1789 on the balcony of Federal Hall in New York City. Washington was said to have been dressed in an American-made dark brown suit with white silk stockings and silver shoe buckles. He also wore a steel-hilted sword and dark red overcoat.

George’s great-great-grandfather, the Reverand Laurence Washington is buried at All Saints Church in Maldon. He was probably born at Sulgrave Manor in Northamptonshire in 1602, the son of another Laurence Washington. It was Revd. Laurence Washington’s own son John, born in Purleigh circa 1633/4, who emigrated to Virginia in 1653. There he in turn fathered a son also called Laurence Washington who was to be George Washington’s grandfather.

George Washington would be born on February 22, 1732, in Westmoreland County, Virginia. Little is known about his childhood so fables were later created by biographers to fill in the gaps. Among these are the stories that Washington threw a silver dollar across the Potomac and after chopping down his father’s prize cherry tree, he openly confessed to the crime.

What is known that from age seven to fifteen, George was home schooled and studied with the local church sexton and later a schoolmaster in practical math, geography, Latin and the English classics. By his early teens, he had mastered growing tobacco, stock raising and surveying Research by the Essex Records Office in Chelmsford show that ironically, in view of George’s role in the American War of Independence, Revd. Laurence Washington was a staunch royalist and a protégé of the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud.

Lawrence Barker, Archivist at the Essex Records Office explained: “Through Laud’s agency he acquired the wealthy living of Purleigh near Maldon in 1632, and it must have been because of his royalist leanings that Laurence was one of those ministers ejected from their livings during the Civil War in 1643, in this case on a trumped up charge of drunkenness. “So, he moved, possibly incognito, to the impoverished parish of Little Braxted. His family did not join him, however, but were sheltered by the family of Sir Edwin Sandys, who helped Laurence’s son John into the tobacco trade thus initiating his connection with Virginia. Sadly, Revd. Laurence died without an estate sufficient to need letters of administration and was buried at Maldon.”

Lawrence added how the entry in the register of burials at the parish church dated January 21, 1652 provides a good example of how one must be mindful of the old style calendar when researching one’s ancestors.

“Further down the register, one can see that the New Year starts on March 25, so, the date of burial is actually the 21st January 1653 as reckoned by the modern calendar.”

George Washington went on to serve two terms as president. Beloved by the people he was renowned for his integrity. Washington died at his home in Mount Vernon, Virginia on the evening of Saturday, December 14, 1799, aged 67. It’s thought he died from a severe throat infection. His last words were said to be: “‘tis well”

Almost four thousand miles away, right here in Essex the Washington connection is still celebrated. All Saint’s Church in Maldon boasts a beautiful Washington Window in its D’arcy Chapel. The magnificent stained glass window was given to the church by the citizens of Malden, Massachusetts, USA in memory of the life of the Revd. Laurence Washington.

The window was dedicated in 1928 in the presence of the Bishop of Chelmsford, the Bishop of New Jersey, the Lord Lieutenant of Essex and the American Ambassador.