Annie Gordon WashingtonOn May 25, 1855, Washington underwent a conversion experience at the African Baptist Church in Fredericksburg, and was baptized in the Rappahannock River on June 13, 1856, by the Reverend William F. Broaddus, of the Fredericksburg Baptist Church.
On January 3, 1862, Washington married Annie E. Gordon, a free black woman he had courted since the spring of 1853. They had six sons, one of whom died in infancy.
Civil War
On January 1, 1859, Catherine Taliaferro hired out John Washington to her neighbor William T. Hart. A year later, on January 1, 1860, Washington was sent to labor six days a week in the Alexander and Gibbs tobacco factory in Fredericksburg. On January 1, 1861, Washington went to work at a restaurant in Richmond owned by the Greek immigrant Speredone Zetelle. After about six months, Zetelle sold the establishment to a German immigrant, Casper Wendlinger. Washington described both masters as “low, mean and course” men who “treated their Servants cruelly.” During the Christmas holiday of 1861, with the Civil War now underway, Washington received a pass to travel from Richmond to Fredericksburg for a short visit. The advance of Union troops was on his mind. “It had now become a well known fact,” he later wrote, “that Slaves was daily Making their escape into the Union lines.”