After arriving in the New York area, Washington founded a company producing kerosene gas mantles. At this time, they lived in New Brighton on Staten Island, but his company, George Washington Lighting Company, was based in nearby Jersey City. This business was abandoned with the maturation of incandescent light bulb technology. Washington also had a camera company for a time. By the time of the 1900 US Census, Washington, recorded in the census as an inventor, was 29 years old and living in a rented house in Brooklyn with his 23-year-old wife, their three young children, his younger sister (age 25), three servants, and a child of two of the servants.