Thomas Jefferson's ancestors came from the foot of Mount Snowdon, Wales, to the colony of Virginia. He boasted of his Welsh blood. He stands in the front as a defender of civil and religious liberty, and had engraved upon his seal, "_Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God_." As the author of the Declaration, of the abolition of the connection between Church and State, the laws of primogeniture, the restrictions upon the Federal Constitution respecting the States, so as forever to prevent a centralized and an aristocratic government, he must be recognized as one of the most valuable men this country has ever had. By a strange coincidence--shall it be called that?--at the age of eighty-four, he breathed his last on the same day that John Adams did, July 4, 1826. They were life-long personal friends, with a brief interruption, but political opponents. On a plain marble slab at Monticello is the following inscription: HERE LIES THOMAS JEFFERSON: _Author of the Declaration of Independence; of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom; and Father of the University of Virginia._ Benjamin Harrison, chairman of the Committee that reported the Declaration, was descended from the Welsh. He was related to General Thomas Harrison, one of the regicides, the Commonwealth men of Cromwell, and who was executed at Newgate. When he was approaching the scaffold, one of the king's scoffers stood by and tauntingly asked, "Where is your good old cause now?" The brave Harrison, with a cheerful smile, replied, clapping his hand on his breast, "_Here it is, and I am going to seal it with my blood_." Some of that grand stuff was afterwards found in his descendants. Benjamin Harrison filled various positions, and was Governor of the State from 1782 to 1784. He died on his farm in 1790. His son, William Henry Harrison, served in the War of 1812, and was elected President of the United States in 1840, but died on the 4th of April, 1841, precisely one month after his inauguration. Richard Henry Lee was from a Welsh family, as, in fact, were all the Lees of that period. He was born in 1732, educated in England, and after his return to America in 1757 was elected a member of the House of Burgesses.