Being without children to transmit my name, I have taken no great
interest in learning much about my ancestors. I have, indeed, been too
much concerned with larger matters. It is, however, far from my design
to believe that heraldry, coat-armour, etc., might not be rendered
conducive to public and private uses with us, or that they can have any
tendency unfriendly to the purest spirit of republicanism; nor does
it seem to me that pride in being come of gentry and of dutiful and
upright men is without its value, if we draw from an honourable past
nourishment to sustain us in continuing to be what our forefathers
were. This also should make men who have children the more careful as
to their own manner of life, and as for myself, although denied this
great blessing, I may perhaps wisely have been destined to feel that
all my countrymen were to me something more than my fellow-citizens.
I have heard my half-brother Lawrence say that he had learned from his
elders that my English ancestors were violent Loyalists, especially
one Sir Henry Washington, when the great struggle arose between the
Parliament and the King in the time of the Commonwealth.
I recall that, when a young man, I was riding with my friend George
Mason, and when this matter arose, and he asked me whether if I had
lived in those days I should have been for the crown or the commons,
I replied that if I had lived in that time I could have answered him,
but that I was not enough informed concerning that period to be able to
state on which side I should have been. Certainly I should have found
it hard to make war on the King.
I profess myself to be ignorant as to much that concerns my ancestry.
When too young to have the smallest interest in the matter, I heard
my two half-brothers and William Fairfax conversing on the subject
of the origin of my family. The brothers were not very clear as to
our descent, but were of opinion that we came of the Washingtons of
Sulgrave, originally of Lancashire. In 1791 the Garter king-at-arms,
Sir Isaac Heard, wrote to me, sending a pedigree of my family; but
I had to confess it was a subject to which I had given very little
attention; in fact, except as to our later history, I could only say
that we came from Lancashire, Yorkshire, or some still more northerly
county.
Most of the early colonists of all classes were too busy in fighting
Indians and raising the means of living to concern themselves with the
relatives left in England. This indifference was not uncommon among
us, and was in those early days to be expected. It explains why we and
other descendants of settlers knew, and indeed cared, too little about
our ancestors.
I do not know what exactly was the station of the father of the
brothers who first came over――John, my ancestor, and Lawrence, his
brother. It is of more moment to me to know that my forefathers in this
country have been gentlemen, and have in many positions of trust, both
in civil employ and in the military line, served the colonies and,
later, their country with faithfulness and honour.
As concerns the question of ancestry and a man’s judging of himself by
that alone, I am much of Colonel Tilghman’s opinion, who once said to
me, speaking of Mr. B――――, that when a man had to look back upon his
ancestors to make himself sure he was a gentleman, he was but a poor
sort of man, which I conceive to be true.
My great-grandfather, John Washington, the first emigrant of our name,
was the son of Lawrence and Amphilis, his wife. He went first to the
Barbados, but, not being pleased, came later to Virginia; that is, in
1657.
It is certain that my great-grandfather in some respects possessed
qualities which resembled those which I myself possess. He was a man
of great personal strength, inclined to war, very resolute, and of
a masterful and very violent temper. He was accused in 1675 of too
severe treatment of the Indians in the frontier wars against the
Susquehannocks, for which he was reprimanded by Sir William Berkeley,
but, it is said, unjustly. He was a man had in esteem and most
respectable, and held a seat in the Assembly in 1670. He was also of
a nature greatly moved by injustice, for on his voyage to Virginia a
poor woman on board the ship was hanged for a witch, and he made great
efforts, on being come ashore, to have the master and crew punished. I
find in myself the same anger at injustice.
It is proper to add that there was current in the colony a story
that, on account of his rigour with the Indians, he was called by
them Conocatorius, which, Englished, means a Destroyer of Villages.
The Half-King, an Indian chief so called, hearing my name when first
we met, addressed me by this title. There must have been among these
tribes a remembrance or tradition as to the name, for certainly I
never deserved it, and that after so long a time it should have been
remembered appears to me strange.
My great-grandfather’s brother Lawrence was engaged for a time in the
mercantile way, and at one time signed himself as of Luton, County
Bradford, merchant. He made some voyages to Virginia and home again
before he settled in the colony, and may have acquired land in England,
for, as I shall state later, he devised real estate in the home country.
As I speak of the home country, I am reminded that even after the War
of Independency the habit of speaking of England as home prevailed
with many, so strong was the attachment to the mother country; and,
indeed, nothing but the folly of Great Britain could have broken the
bonds which united us.
My great-grandfather, John Washington, brought with him a wife from
England. Her maiden name I do not know. She and her two children
died within a few years of his landing. The brothers mention in
their wills property in England, but where or exactly what it was
they do not say. It would seem, therefore, that it was not poverty
which drove my ancestor to emigrate. That this property was not mere
money, the proceeds of tobacco, appears to be shown by the will of
my great-grandfather’s brother Lawrence, who devised to Mary, his
daughter, his whole estate in England, real as well as personal.
My great-grandfather married secondly the widow of Walter Broadhurst,
daughter of Nathaniel Pope of Appomattocks, gentleman. My grandfather
Lawrence was the first born of this marriage. My great-grandfather died
in 1677. He was of that importance as to have named for him the parish
in which he resided. The brothers were not the only ones of the name
who came to Virginia. There was also a cousin, Martha Washington. She
emigrated to Virginia and married Nicholas Hayward of Westmoreland. How
it was that, being a spinster, she came over alone, I am not informed.
She left her property to her cousins John and Lawrence, and a gold
twenty-shilling piece to each, and to their sons each a feather bed and
furniture, and to their heirs forever――which does appear to me long for
a bed to last.
There were also others, but if related I have not felt concerned to
inquire. They spelled the name Vysington in certain deeds, which I have
heard was the ancient manner of spelling it. Of them I know nothing
further. My great-grandfather left a legacy to the rector of the lower
church of Washington parish, and ordered that a funeral sermon be
preached, which appears to me, as Lord Fairfax said, to be a certain
way to secure being well spoken of, at least once, after death. He also
provided in his will for a tablet of the Ten Commandments, and also the
king’s arms, to be set up in the church of his parish.
He may have been led to come to Virginia by the fact that it had become
for men loyal to the crown and to the Church of England a refuge such
as the Puritans sought in Massachusetts. We have ever since been
connected with that Church, nor have I found reason to depart from it.
At times I have been a vestryman, but this was in those days also a
civil office, having judicial duties, such as charge of the schools and
of the poor of the parish.
My connection with the Church of my fathers has varied in interest from
time to time, for, although I have at times partaken of the sacrament
and even fasted, I have not always felt so inclined, although I have
with reasonable punctuality attended upon the services. I have had all
my life a disinclination to converse on this subject, and confess, as
Dr. Franklin once remarked to me, that “silence is sometimes wisdom as
concerns a man’s creed.”
In considering so much of my family history as is known to me, I
perceive that men married at an early age and remained no long time
widowers. Also I observe that many children died young, as was like
enough to happen on plantations remote from physicians, and indeed
these were few in number and not as good as in the northern colonies.
I know less of my grandfather Lawrence than of his father. He did not
increase the importance of the family, neither was he inclined to
public business. He was, as I have understood, a quiet, thrifty man,
and no seeker of adventure by land or water. He married Mildred Warner,
by whom he had children, and died leaving a competent estate, but none
to be compared with the great lands accumulated by the Byrds or Carters.
I conceive him to have been a person of moderate opinions concerning
the Church of England, and as one who may have considered the
dissenting sects as ill used. This I gather from a book given to me
three years ago by a gentleman of Philadelphia, of the Society of
Friends, who would have had me to believe that my grandfather was of
that sect. This book is the life of one John Fothergill, a Quaker
preacher, who says that in 1720 he “held a meeting at Mattocks, at
Justice Washington’s, a friendly man, where the Love of God opened my
heart toward the people, much to my comfort and their satisfaction.” I
do not suppose it to have meant more than that, as the church could not
be used by a dissenter, Justice Washington willingly gave the good man
the use of his own house.