In 1732, 125 years had passed since the founding at Jamestown of the first successful English colony in America. The county of Westmoreland had been established for 79 years, and three-quarters of a century had gone by since Augustine’s grandfather, John Washington, had settled in Virginia. Williamsburg had been the capital of the colony for 33 years, and William and Mary College was in its 40th year. Some of Augustine’s older friends remembered Bacon’s Rebellion, which had flared up and had been extinguished by Governor Berkeley 56 years earlier. Augustine himself certainly remembered news of the fight between Blackbeard’s pirates and Virginia sailors, for only 14 years had gone by since the ruthless pirate leader had been killed off Ocracoke Island on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Augustine also remembered accounts of the expedition Governor Spotswood had led to the distant Blue Ridge Mountains in 1716, for this adventuresome exploit was still discussed by the tidewater planters who coveted the little-known lands beyond the distant mountains. [Illustration: _Washington family coat of arms._] [Illustration: _Ball family coat of arms._] There were only two towns in Virginia of any considerable size—Williamsburg and Norfolk—by 1732. The population of the colony was estimated at 114,000, of which 76,000 were whites and 38,000 Negroes. George Gooch was Lieutenant Governor of the Royal Province and George II was in the 6th year of his reign. In 1732 William Byrd of “Westover” and Peter Jones were surveying the North Carolina-Virginia boundary line, and another year was to go by before Petersburg and Richmond would be laid out as townsites. There was not a single newspaper in Virginia in 1732; Augustine may have read _The Maryland Gazette_ (published in Annapolis by W. Parks at 15 shillings a year) or one printed in London. Tobacco was the important money crop, and almost every ship that sailed from a plantation wharf carried hogsheads of the “delightful weed” in its hold. Many other commodities, too, were shipped to the mother country as well as to New England, the middle colonies, Barbados, Madeira, Bermuda, and Jamaica. Exports from one Virginia shipping district—Porth South Potomac—in 1732 included (besides tobacco) staves, timber, corn, wheat, peas, beans, masts, pig iron, feathers, pork, cotton, earthenware “parcels,” woodenware “parcels,” bacon, hides, deerskins, beaver skins, oak and walnut logs, cider and cider casks, beef, wine pipes, snakeroot, tallow, pewter and brass “parcels,” and copper ore casks. Items imported included rum, salt, Irish linen, fish, chocolate, molasses, sugar, earthernware, “woodware,” millstones, Madeira wine, cheese, rice, ironware, and “parcels from Great Britain.” The latter “parcels” included furniture fabrics, rugs, pottery and porcelain, silver, pewter, copper and brassware, and other household furnishings and accessories needed by the colonists.