As I speak of the home country, I am reminded that even after the War of Independency the habit of speaking of England as home prevailed with many, so strong was the attachment to the mother country; and, indeed, nothing but the folly of Great Britain could have broken the bonds which united us. My great-grandfather, John Washington, brought with him a wife from England. Her maiden name I do not know. She and her two children died within a few years of his landing. The brothers mention in their wills property in England, but where or exactly what it was they do not say. It would seem, therefore, that it was not poverty which drove my ancestor to emigrate. That this property was not mere money, the proceeds of tobacco, appears to be shown by the will of my great-grandfather’s brother Lawrence, who devised to Mary, his daughter, his whole estate in England, real as well as personal. My great-grandfather married secondly the widow of Walter Broadhurst, daughter of Nathaniel Pope of Appomattocks, gentleman. My grandfather Lawrence was the first born of this marriage. My great-grandfather died in 1677. He was of that importance as to have named for him the parish in which he resided. The brothers were not the only ones of the name who came to Virginia. There was also a cousin, Martha Washington. She emigrated to Virginia and married Nicholas Hayward of Westmoreland. How it was that, being a spinster, she came over alone, I am not informed. She left her property to her cousins John and Lawrence, and a gold twenty-shilling piece to each, and to their sons each a feather bed and furniture, and to their heirs forever――which does appear to me long for a bed to last. There were also others, but if related I have not felt concerned to inquire. They spelled the name Vysington in certain deeds, which I have heard was the ancient manner of spelling it. Of them I know nothing further. My great-grandfather left a legacy to the rector of the lower church of Washington parish, and ordered that a funeral sermon be preached, which appears to me, as Lord Fairfax said, to be a certain way to secure being well spoken of, at least once, after death. He also provided in his will for a tablet of the Ten Commandments, and also the king’s arms, to be set up in the church of his parish. He may have been led to come to Virginia by the fact that it had become for men loyal to the crown and to the Church of England a refuge such as the Puritans sought in Massachusetts. We have ever since been connected with that Church, nor have I found reason to depart from it. At times I have been a vestryman, but this was in those days also a civil office, having judicial duties, such as charge of the schools and of the poor of the parish.