Was George Washington sterile?

Today marks the 1731 birth of Martha Dandridge Custis Washington, our first "First Lady", although the term was not in use at the time.  She married for the first time at age 19 to Daniel Parke Custis who was almost 20 years her senior.  During their seven year marriage which ended with his death, Martha gave birth to four children, two survived to adulthood.

Custis' death left Martha a very wealthy widow.  On her own she managed five plantations that were left to her, with 300 slaves and the equivalent of $4,000,000 in today's money.  And she apparently negotiated with her British factors in an able manner.

Unlike the matronly, frumpish image we have of Lady Washington today, contemporary accounts demonstrate the 28 year old whom Washington (and others) courted to be attractive and lively. 

Since early colonial days, in New England love was considered to be a necessary prerequisite for marriage.  Not so in Virginia where people were encouraged to find a mate they could eventually love.  With her choice of eligible bachelors, choosing the younger (by a year) Washington was somebody Martha wanted to marry.

The attraction was mutual and immediate.  After only the second meeting (it could hardly be called a date) they had agreed on marriage.  Martha was charming, attractive and wealthy.  George had his own appeal, standing 6'2" to Martha's 4'11", well proportioned and with a formidable military reputation.

"He was clearly sexually excited by her," said Patricia Brady, a historian who wrote the first revisionist biography of Martha a few years ago. "When Martha decided to marry George, she didn't marry him just to be a kind stepfather to her two children. He was a hunk, and I think she decided to make herself happy. People are just starting to see her as a real person."

Martha was clearly fertile and George was attracted to her.  Why did they not have children of their own?  Given her previous fecundity it could well be concluded that the difficulty was not hers, but her husbands. However, Washington, the magnificent athlete, who possessed in abundance every other physical prowess, could not altogether admit to himself that he was sterile. He believed, even when approaching old age, that if Martha died and he became remarried to a "girl," he might father an heir. 

In 1751, when Washington was 19 years old, he and his brother Lawrence sailed to Barbados in the hopes that the warm island air would cure his sickly sibling of tuberculosis.  While there George contracted smallpox which left his face marked for the rest of his life.  One of the possible side-effects of the disease is infertility.  

So Washington remained father only to his country.