A lot of people want to be famous, but I think Washington stands out because either he already had fame or he eventually ended up winning it anyway. Washington is the descendent of a family that was heavily invested in the Rum Trade and Slave Trade, which ended up making the family very wealthy. His father Augustine owned a tobacco plantation along with slaves. By the time Washington was in his twenties he was a land surveyor and had already inherited a bit from the death of his father and his brothers. His marriage to Martha Custis made him even wealthier, and gave him the rights to the Custis Estate, which was then valued at $100,000. This made Washington one of the richest men in the world, especially after he paid off all his British creditors. Marriages often worked this way back then, one party with wealth tries to marry another party with land. It is true that Washington was passed up by the British for a military commission, and this haunted Washington throughout his life.