Researching George Weedon

Weedon served as a lieutenant under George Washington in the French and Indian War, mainly assigned to garrison duty in western Virginia.

After the war, he moved to Fredericksburg and opened a tavern. It was within Weedon's tavern that Thomas Jefferson in January 1777 wrote the Statute of Religious Freedom; the very first document of its kind to acknowledge government recognition of religious tolerance.

In 1775, he was made a lieutenant colonel and second in command to Hugh Mercer. They were tasked with creating the 3rd Virginia Regiment, Virginia Line, Continental Army. He was promoted to colonel in 1776 and succeeded Mercer in command of his regiment. On Mercer's death at Princeton, Weedon was promoted to brigadier general in 1777 and again succeeded him. He fought in the Battles of Trenton, Brandywine, and Germantown.

At Valley Forge, Weedon commanded a brigade in Nathanael Greene's division. His brigade included Stewart's 13th Pennsylvania Regiment along with the 2nd, 6th, 10th, and 14th Virginia regiments.

In 1778, he resigned after a dispute with the Congress over seniority. He went home to Virginia to lead a brigade of the state's militia at the request of Governor Thomas Jefferson. He led his militia unit in the Yorktown campaign, where his brigade successfully repelled the feared and infamous unit of Colonel Banastre Tarleton, thus closing the one means of British escape at Gloucester Point.

Weedon was born in Richmond, London and was a member of the Regent Street Polytechnic Gymnastics Club. He married another British Olympic gymnast, Joan Airey, with whom he had three sons and one daughter. One grandchild, Lindsey Weedon, was a British representative modern pentathlete. Before and after retiring from active competition, he taught physical education at various schools including, from 1950 to 1971, the John Lyon School in Harrow on the Hill, Middlesex

In 2010 he was interviewed by the BBC about his experiences at the 1948 Games, in anticipation of the 2012 Summer Olympics to be held in London, and professed his belief that the city had not been properly prepared to host the earlier edition, due to its insufficient infrastructure. He was the subject of a 2011 short film, Walk Tall, by filmmaker Kate Sullivan. On 11 July 2012 he was a torch bearer during the 2012 Summer Olympics torch relay. Weedon died in February 2017 after a short illness.