As I wrote what just now I have set down, a remark of Mr. John Adams came into my mind. He said it was difficult for a man to write about himself without feeling that he was all the time in the presence of an audience. This may be true of Mr. Adams, but I am not aware that it is true of me. The statement I shall now record of myself and for myself might be made very full as to events by the use of the details of my diaries, but this I desire to avoid. My intention is to deal chiefly with my own youthful life and the influences which affected it for good or for ill. II Being without children to transmit my name, I have taken no great interest in learning much about my ancestors. I have, indeed, been too much concerned with larger matters. It is, however, far from my design to believe that heraldry, coat-armour, etc., might not be rendered conducive to public and private uses with us, or that they can have any tendency unfriendly to the purest spirit of republicanism; nor does it seem to me that pride in being come of gentry and of dutiful and upright men is without its value, if we draw from an honourable past nourishment to sustain us in continuing to be what our forefathers were. This also should make men who have children the more careful as to their own manner of life, and as for myself, although denied this great blessing, I may perhaps wisely have been destined to feel that all my countrymen were to me something more than my fellow-citizens. I have heard my half-brother Lawrence say that he had learned from his elders that my English ancestors were violent Loyalists, especially one Sir Henry Washington, when the great struggle arose between the Parliament and the King in the time of the Commonwealth. I recall that, when a young man, I was riding with my friend George Mason, and when this matter arose, and he asked me whether if I had lived in those days I should have been for the crown or the commons, I replied that if I had lived in that time I could have answered him, but that I was not enough informed concerning that period to be able to state on which side I should have been. Certainly I should have found it hard to make war on the King. I profess myself to be ignorant as to much that concerns my ancestry. When too young to have the smallest interest in the matter, I heard my two half-brothers and William Fairfax conversing on the subject of the origin of my family. The brothers were not very clear as to our descent, but were of opinion that we came of the Washingtons of Sulgrave, originally of Lancashire. In 1791 the Garter king-at-arms, Sir Isaac Heard, wrote to me, sending a pedigree of my family; but I had to confess it was a subject to which I had given very little attention; in fact, except as to our later history, I could only say that we came from Lancashire, Yorkshire, or some still more northerly county.