Francis Marion Lemmon: "When my father [a son of one of Washington's officers] was about twelve years of age he was employed by George Washington to carry messages from his military camp to that of his father and other military posts, and for about four years lived as one of the family of Washington. It was my father's privilege during his service with Washington to meet and become acquainted with a number of the most popular and influential men of that time--such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Paine, General Lafayette and General Francis Marion.... My father told me, when I was a boy, of the visits these men paid to Uncle George and Aunt Martha Washington, as he always called them, and he told me that Aunt Martha always called Paine 'Brother Tom' and always looked forward when a visit of Brother Tom was expected." Alluding to Paine's conduct and public services during the Revolution, Dr. Conway says: "They are best measured in the value set on them by the great leaders most cognizant of them,--by Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Robert Morris, Chancellor Livingston, R. H. Lee, Colonel Laurens, General Greene, Dickinson. Had there been anything dishonorable or mercenary in Paine's career, these are the men who would have known it; but their letters are searched in vain for even the faintest hint of anything disparaging to his patriotic self-devotion during those eight weary years." Henry Adams: "Thomas Paine, down to the time of his departure for Europe, in 1787, was a fashionable member of society [in New York], admired and courted as the greatest literary genius of his day." The oldest and one of the most powerful political organizations in this country, outside of the regular political parties, is the Tammany Society of New York. Whatever shortcomings may be justly charged to this society in later times it was in its earlier days, when devoted mainly to social and benevolent purposes, one of the most honorable and respectable of societies. Paine was the hero of this society. Dr. Conway says: "At the great celebration (October 12, 1792) of the Third Centenary of the discovery of America, by the sons of St. Tammany, New York, the first man toasted after Columbus was Paine, and next to Paine 'The Rights of Man,' They were also extolled in an ode composed for the occasion, and sung." Paine was at this time a resident of France. "Visited France in the summer of 1787, where he made the acquaintance of Buffon, Malesherbes, La Rochefoucauld, and other eminent men."--_Chambers' Encyclopedia_. "Dr. Robinet, the French historian, says on this visit (1787) Paine, who had long known the 'soul of the people,' came into' relation with eminent men of all groups, philosophical and political--Condorcet, Achille Duchatelet, Cardinal De Brienne, and, he believes also Danton, who like the English republican [Paine] was a Freemason."--_Dr. Conway_.