Also, Washington’s father was a tobacco farmer and Washington has grown up on his father’s plantation. Washington later became a land surveyor which served him immensely in his career as a British spy and also in helping keep his troops in service during the way.
Washington was never a polished urban dweller with high education and title.
As you say he was only 23 at the time of his service in the year French and Indian war and he was looking to improve his lot in life via the military.
His selection by the British as an expeditionary and spy was factored on his skills as a land surveyor. He surveyed tracts of land in what was called the ‘wilderness’ at the time which was fixed around the Ohio territories. His commission as a British officer was primarily to act as land surveyor and also as a spy to report back on French troop strength and other items of interest to the British. So the spying and land surveying went hand in hand.
What many people don’t know is that Washington’s tract surveys of Midwest territories were used later as payment to officers and men of the Continental Army in lieu of currency as there was not money to pay the army.
The tracts of land given out by George Washington to persons of the Continental Army still exist in inheritance records on the eastern seaboard and are used by some genealogists to trace family migrations from east to west and with great success.
My distant relatives were surveyors too, one surveyed with him, co-owned property called the burning springs tract and had served in the French and Indian war under his command. As I recall reading about that bunch there was a widowed woman, a cousin I suppose, who owned a cave and mill and made gunpowder and supplied it to the continentals and militia, once riding all the way from what is now WV to coastal VA to smuggle it when no men could be spared for the journey.
I think that is a crock.
In 1755, Washington was the senior American aide to British General Edward Braddock.