Armes was born in Fairfax, Virginia, on May 29, 1844, to Josiah Orcutt Armes and Caroline Olive Older.[3]
He fought in the American Civil War on the side of the Union Army. He participated in the Battle of the Saline River on August 2, 1867.[3] He married Lucy Hamilton Kerr (1851–1927), daughter of John Bozman Kerr, on October 14, 1874.[3] They had eight children, among them, the writer Ethel Armes. They eventually divorced.
In later life, he became a real estate broker who gave his name to Armesleigh Park, a residential development in the Washington, D.C., neighborhood of Tenleytown. He purchased the land that would become the development in 1890 and sold it in 1892.[4]
In 1890, Armes became affiliated with the Chevy Chase Land Company, Francis G. Newlands, and the so-called “California Syndicate” of bankers and politicians from San Francisco. A March 1, 1890, article in the Washington Evening Star, “The Big Real Estate Deal,” said, “The extended real estate purchases [958 acres of land] along the line of Connecticut Avenue extended, which have been made through real estate broker Maj. George A. Armes for the California Syndicate, represent an expenditure of over a million and a half dollars. This immense deal is now being consummated as rapidly as the titles can be searched and the deeds made out”.[4]
In 1900, Armes wrote a memoir, Ups & Downs of an Army Officer.[3] In 1902, he was shot by his former tenant.[2] He married Marie Atkinson on December 24, 1910, in Philadelphia.
Armes died on December 18, 1919, in Ventnor City, New Jersey.[1]
