Tradition tells us that in the latter part of the seventeenth century, George Eskridge, who was a young law student, while walking along the shore on the north coast of Wales, studying a law-book, was suddenly seized by the Press Gang, carried aboard ship and brought to the colony of Virginia. As the custom was, he was sold to a planter for a term of eight years. During that time, he was not allowed to communicate with his friends at home. He was treated very harshly, and made to lodge in the kitchen, where he slept, because of the cold, upon the hearth. On the day that his term of service expired he rose early, and with his mattock dislodged the stones of the hearth. Upon his master's remonstrance, he said, "The bed of a departing guest must always be made over for his successor;" and throwing down his mattock he strode out of the house, taking with him the law-book which had been his constant companion during his years of slavery. He returned to England, completed his law studies, was admitted to the bar, and, returning to Virginia, was granted many thousand acres of land, held several colonial positions, and became eminent among the distinguished citizens of the "Northern Neck,"--the long, narrow strip of land included between the Potomac and the Rappahannock rivers. His daughter, Sarah, married Willoughby Newton, and lived near Bonum Creek in Westmoreland. The family intermarried, also, with the Lee, Washington, and other distinguished families in the Northern Neck. CHAPTER X YOUNG MEN AND MAIDENS OF THE OLD DOMINION The social setting for Mary Ball--now a young lady--is easily defined. It matters little whether she did or did not visit her brother in England. She certainly belonged to the society of Westmoreland, "the finest," says Bishop Meade, "for culture and sound patriotism in the Colony." Around her lived the families of Mason, Taliaferro, Mountjoy, Travers, Moncure, Mercer, Tayloe, Ludwell, Fitzhugh, Lee, Newton, Washington, and others well known as society leaders in 1730. If she was, as her descendants claim for her, "The Toast of the Gallants of Her Day," these were the "Gallants,"--many of them the fathers of men who afterward shone like stars in the galaxy of revolutionary heroes.