Читать книгу The Youth of Washington: Told in the Form of an Autobiography - S. Weir Mitchell - Страница 10

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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.