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Between the wars

Main article: George Washington between the wars

A mezzotint of Martha Dandridge Custis, based on a 1757 portrait by John Wollaston.

On January 6 1759, Washington married Martha Dandridge Custis, a widow who was living at White House Plantation on the south shore of the Pamunkey River in New Kent County, Virginia. The newlywed couple moved to Mount Vernon, where he took up the life of a genteel planter and political figure. They had a good marriage, and together, they raised her two children, John Parke Custis and Martha Parke Custis, affectionately called "Jackie" and "Patsy". Later the Washingtons raised two of Mrs. Washington's grandchildren, Eleanor Parke Custis and George Washington Parke Custis after their father died in 1781. George and Martha never had any children together—his earlier bout with smallpox followed, possibly, by tuberculosis may have made him sterile.

Washington's marriage to a wealthy widow greatly increased his property holdings and social standing. He acquired one-third of the 18,000-acre (73 km²) Custis estate upon his marriage, and managed the remainder on behalf of Martha's children. He frequently purchased additional acreage in his own name, and was granted land in what is now West Virginia as a bounty for his service in the French and Indian War. By 1775, Washington had doubled the size of Mount Vernon to 6,500 acres (26 km²), with over 100 slaves. Despite his starting capital and his new wife's extensive estate, his plantations and business plan weren't always profitable, and he eventually found himself indebted to creditors. As a respected military hero and large landowner, he also held local office and was elected to the Virginia provincial legislature, the House of Burgesses, beginning in 1758.

Washington first took a leading role in the growing colonial resistance in 1769, when he introduced a proposal drafted by his friend George Mason which called for Virginia to boycott imported English goods until the Townshend Acts were repealed. Parliament repealed the Acts in 1770. Washington also took an active interest in helping his fellow citizens even ones he did not know personally. On September 21, 1771 Washington wrote a letter to Neil Jameson on behalf of Jonathan Plowman Jr., a merchant from Baltimore whose ship had been seized for exporting non-permitted items by the Boston Frigate, and requested his help toward recovery of Plowman's ship. Washington regarded the passage of the Intolerable Acts in 1774 as "an Invasion of our Rights and Privileges". In July 1774, he chaired the meeting at which the Fairfax Resolves were adopted, which called for, among other things, the convening of a Continental Congress. In August, he attended the First Virginia Convention, where he was selected as a delegate to the First Continental Congress.