The very speech of the people has a slightly archaic flavor, and family names are redolent of old English ancestry. Here still are the Kendalls, who like to boast that one of their ancestors was the earliest mail contractor in Virginia. The elder Kendall, a man of substance and fair education, found satisfactory reasons for selling all that he had and coming to Jamestown with Captain John Smith. In coming away he left behind a son just grown to manhood and some debts owing to the estate. The son was instructed to collect what he could of the proceeds, invest it in blankets and trinkets such as the Indians liked, and to follow the father to Jamestown. The young man obeyed the paternal instructions, but in sailing up the Potomac with his freight of gewgaws he mistook the Potomac for the James. After vainly looking for Jamestown, he concluded that the settlement had been destroyed by the Indians, and, having reached the present site of Alexandria, he made a settlement and called it Bell Haven. Some months later an Indian who visited Bell Haven made the settlers to understand that there were white men on a river further south. Young Kendall knew then that Jamestown was still in being. So he wrote a letter to his father and entrusted it to the Indian to be delivered at Jamestown, paying him for the service one gay woolen blanket. Father and son thus came into communication, but the son remained at Bell Haven, and from him are descended the Kendalls of the Northern Neck. The whole region teems with traditions of Washington. Down in Northumberland County, the lovely little harbor of Lodge is named from the fact that here stood the Masonic lodge that Washington used to attend. The British destroyed the house during the Revolutionary War, but the cornerstone was found and opened not many years ago, and some of its treasures of old English money were placed in the cornerstone of the Masonic lodge at Kinsale, another charming little Virginia harbor. It is at Lodge that the maker of canceling dies for the Post Office Department, exiled from Washington because of the climate, has for nearly twenty years carried on his business with the aid of country youths trained for the purpose.