My father, Augustine, was born in 1694, on the plantation known as
Wakefield, granted, in 1667, to his grandfather, and lying between
Bridges’ and Pope’s creeks, in Westmoreland, on the north neck between
the Potomac and the Rappahannock. My father, in his will, says:
“Forasmuch as my several children in this my will mentioned, being by
several Ventures, cannot inherit from one another,” etc.
What he speaks of as his “Ventures” were his two marriages. A venture
does appear to me to be an appropriate name for the uncertain state
of matrimony. The first “venture” was Jane Butler, who lies buried at
Wakefield. Of her four children two survived――that is, my half-brothers
Lawrence and Augustine, whom we called Austin. I was the first child
of my father’s second “venture,” and my mother was Mary Ball. I was
born at Wakefield,[1] on February 11 [O. S.], 1732, about ten in
the morning. I was baptized in the Pope’s Creek church, and had two
godfathers and one godmother, Mildred Gregory. Mr. Beverly Whiting and
Mr. Christopher Brooks were my godfathers. I do not recall ever seeing
Mr. Whiting, although his son, of the same name, I met in after years.
Of Mr. Brooks I know nothing, nor do I know which one of the two gave
me the silver cups which it was then the custom for the godfather to
give to the godson. I still have them. I was told by a silversmith in
Philadelphia that the cups are of Irish make, and of about 1720. There
were six of these mugs, in order to be used for punch when the child
grew up.
[1] This estate was bought by my father from his brother John.
The Balls were respectable, and came out first as merchants. My
maternal grandmother we know to have been Mary Johnson, of English
birth, but of her family nothing more. At a later time the older
planter families, both with us and in the West Indies, paid more
attention to their ancestry, sometimes, it is to be feared, with
pretensions which had no just foundation.
Many assumed arms to which they were not entitled, or, like Mr. J――――n,
commissioned an agent in London to purchase some heraldic device,
having Mr. Sterne’s word for it that “a coat of arms may be purchased
as cheap as any other coat.”
I have had some reason to believe that our friends did not regard my
mother’s family, being in the mercantile line, as on the same social
level as our own. But, in fact, we ourselves were not until a later
day considered as of the highest class of Virginia gentry. Why this
was I do not fully know. It is certain, however, that nowhere were
aristocratic pretensions and the distinctions of social rank more
marked than in Virginia. For a long time families like the Lees, Byrds,
Carys, Masons, etc., regarded themselves as superior to other planter
families, of as good or better blood.
The lines of social rank among us I judge to have been made early
to depend on extent of landed property, so that the owners of these
vast estates were like great nabobs, and by having seats and control
in the governor’s council and the House of Burgesses obtained large
influence. They were at pains to defend their pretensions by a law of
primogeniture, which made entails so strict that they could not be
broken, as in England, by agreement of father and son, but required to
break them, in each case, an act of the Assembly. Families like our
own were regarded rather as minor gentry, and were, for a time, owing
in a measure to their having but moderate estates, looked down upon by
certain of the great proprietors of enormous plantations and numberless
slaves.
Whatever may have been the reason, or the reasons, I was more than once
made to feel the fact that I was not looked upon as an equal by certain
of these gentlemen, and this at an age when men are sensitive to such
considerations.
My father, Augustine, has been described as a good planter and a man of
energy. I apprehend that he was of a serious tendency, for Lawrence,
my brother, once gave me to understand that most of the few books at
Wakefield were religious; but whether this was so or not I do not know.
Like some of the rest of us, my father had a high and quick temper,
which, as he used to say, he had to keep muzzled. I remember being
terrified at seeing him in a storm of anger because the clergyman who
was to have baptized my sister Mildred was too much in liquor to
perform the ceremony.
About the year 1724 he became interested in the mining of iron ore with
the Principio Company, in which the venturers were chiefly English. A
furnace was opened on his estate in Stafford County. It was confiscated
in 1780 as rebel property. He had a contract for hauling the ore
from the mines, and later commanded a ship for the taking of iron to
England and the fetching back of convict labourers. On this account,
I apprehend, he was known as Captain Washington. He was, I have
understood, a man of enterprising nature and better informed than most
planters of his time.
He was educated at Appleby in England, near Whitehaven. I have often
regretted that I never had his opportunities, or those of my brothers,
in the way of education. The fact of my being a younger son and my
father’s death, and also my mother’s overfondness, may have stood in
the way, and on this and other occasions interfered with my own plans
or with those of others for me.
I did not take after my mother in appearance, and I had the large frame
and strength of my father. In other respects also I was somewhat like
him in my mind and character.
When in later years I returned to visit Wakefield I used to fancy I
remembered it. This I could not have done, as I was only three years
old when, because of the unhealthfulness of the place, my father moved
away. The house was burned down on Christmas eve, 1779. It was of
wood, with brick foundations, and had eight bedrooms. There was an
underground dairy, a great garden with fig-trees and other fruit, and
along the shores were wild flowering grapes and laurel and honeysuckle
and sweetbrier roses, very fragrant in the spring season. Here in the
middle of a great field lie my ancestors and some of the children of my
father’s first marriage.
In the year 1735 we moved, as I have said, fifty miles higher up the
Potomac to the estate then known as Epsewasson or Hunting Creek. This
was given, with other land, by the colony to my great-grandfather and
Colonel Spencer for importing an hundred labourers, and was bought by
my father in 1726 from my aunt Mildred Gregory, later my godmother.
It came afterwards to be called Mount Vernon. It was at that time in
Prince William County, which my father represented in the House of
Burgesses, as my brother did later. There we remained until 1739.
In this year our house took fire, as was supposed, by the act of one
of our slaves, but never surely ascertained. We were then obliged to
remove, and this time settled in Stafford, formerly St. George, on the
east bank of the Rappahannock, opposite to Fredericksburg.
This residence was a two-story house on a rise of ground, with a
fertile meadow sloping gently to the river. It was built of wood and
painted red. There, as people well-to-do, we lived until my father’s
death, when the division of his estate did somewhat lessen the easiness
of our lives; and of these latter years I can recall some more or less
distinct remembrances, for here my education began.