father in 1841 was not sizable, and he and his brothers pursued a number of business opportunities to build their personal wealth. Washington studied jurisprudence, and was operating a law practice in Charles Town by November 1844. He advertised himself in the Spirit of Jefferson newspaper as an agent for landowners in the Virginia Military District in Ohio and offered his services for the legal defense and tax payments for those lands. By August 1845, he and his brother Benjamin Franklin Washington were engaged in a real estate venture, selling lots of along the Kanawha River in Mason County. Military career Washington subsequently served as a second lieutenant in the Virginia Volunteers during the Mexican–American War. At the onset of the war, Washington enrolled in the Jefferson County company (Company K), Second Battalion, of the Virginia Regiment in the United States Army on December 6, 1846. Two and a half weeks later he was selected by a committee of prominent citizens in Charles Town on December 24, 1846, to serve in the company as a second lieutenant. Washington and his company departed Charles Town on January 4, 1847, and they reached the Brazos River in Texas by March 12. According to the Richmond Enquirer, Washington wore the sword of his great-granduncle George Washington while serving in Mexico. Of the sword carried by Washington, the Richmond Enquirer stated, "this precious relic will in itself be potent enough to rally every member of the Virginia regiment to the noblest and most generous deeds." In July 1847, the Charlestown Free Press in Charles Town published a letter from Washington in which he praised then General Zachary Taylor as a potential Whig candidate for president. Washington remarked that Taylor was "a firm and true Whig" and that when he looked at Taylor, he remarked to himself "there is the President of the United States that is to be." While at Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia, after the company's return east, Washington drafted a letter dated May 7, 1848, to United States Secretary of War William L. Marcy offering to raise a company of troops to fight Mexican armed forces in Oregon or elsewhere on the condition that he be granted a captaincy. Later careers and pursuits Following his service in the Mexican–American War, Washington joined the Charles Town Mining Company and traveled to California in 1849 as a Forty-niner in the California Gold Rush