Elizabeth Vassall was born on March 25, 1771. She was an only child, the daughter of Richard Vassall, of Jamaica. Owing to a similarity in the Christian names, the Vassall pedigree is somewhat difficult to trace with any certainty. It appears, however, that they were descended from one of two brothers, John and William, who went to America from England and are mentioned in the first Massachusetts Charter of 1629. The latter of these brothers went to Barbadoes in 1650, and purchased large estates there. Ticknor, in reply to Lady Holland, who had just told him that New England was originally populated with convicts, mentioned a house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, built by a member of her family, and a marble monument to one of them in King’s Chapel, Boston. Florentius Vassall, her grandfather, was born in 1710, and married Mary, daughter of Colonel John Foster, of Jamaica. By her he seems to have had two sons and two daughters, the second of whom, Richard, succeeded to the property upon his father’s death in 1779. Richard was born in 1731–2, and married Mary, daughter of Thomas Clark, of New York. They lived almost entirely in England, and after her husband’s death in 1795, Mrs. Vassall married Sir Gilbert Affleck, second Baronet, of Dalham Hall, Suffolk. She died in 1835, at the age of eighty-six. Florentius Vassall’s will contained a most stringent proviso that whoever succeeded to the estates should take the name of Vassall immediately after their Christian names. By its terms Elizabeth succeeded to the whole of the West Indian property, chiefly situated in Jamaica, at her father’s death. This amounted in 1800 to about 7000_l._ a year, but after the suppression of the slave trade it deteriorated greatly in value, and was of little account at the time of her death.