THE STORY OF CHAPTER I WASHINGTON'S FIGHTING ANCESTORS JOHN BALL, 1381 AND 1781 GEORGE WASHINGTON had plenty of fighting blood in his veins. His mother, Mary Ball Washington, was descended from John Ball, who, over one hundred years before Columbus discovered America, went about England on horseback, preaching that all men are free and equal. It was he who originated this quaint couplet, which he often took for his text: "When Adam delved and Eve span, The poor people were delighted to hear that they were just as good as their "betters," and crowded around the "crazy preacher of Kent,” as John Ball was called. But they broke out in a small rebellion led by Wat, the Tyler, or roofer, against their young king, Richard the Second, and his nobles. In those days a man was called crazy if he talked about liberty and equality, and John Ball paid for his rashness with his life. If the mad preacher, on the scaffold in 1381, could have looked forward four hundred years, he would have beheld a sight to gladden his liberty-loving eyes. For, on the then unknown Western Continent, in 1781, at Yorktown, he would have seen George Washington, his grandson of about the twentieth generation, finishing the fight which he, John Ball, had so bravely begun. For the brave priest was beheaded because he claimed to believe in the sublime doctrine stated in the Declaration of Independence: "That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." John Ball was Washington's greatest fighting ancestor on his mother's side. George was said to resemble his mother in face and temperament, and in solid, homely common-sense. Very little is really known about Mary Ball Washington; nearly everything that is told of her is inferred from the fact that she was the mother of her illustrious son. No doubt she was a beautiful girl, "the belle of Northern Neck" (that part of Virginia, lying between the Potomac and the Rappahannock Rivers), when she was married to Captain Augustine Washington, then a widower with two sons living. She was known in after life as a woman of strong will and temper, of strict integrity, of sterling character, and of few words. WILLIAM DE WESSYNGTON TO COLONEL JOHN WASHINGTON On his father's side the family name is recognized four centuries farther back than the time of reckless John Ball. In the English records a reference is made to a grant of land from Edgar, the Saxon king, to Athelunold Wassengatone, in 963 A. D. Over a hundred years after this, William the Conqueror, rewarding his valiant knights for helping him vanquish the Saxons, gave an estate in England to W iam de Hertburn, whose descendant of the sa name was, in 1183, in possession of the man and village of Wessyngton, in the County Durham. As was the custom, the family took the na of its estate or village, and William de He burn was known as William de Wessyngto The "de" was soon dropped and Wessyngt was pronounced and spelled, down through t centuries, Wessington, Weshington, Wassin ton, until it became Washington. The names these knightly descendants of the Norman co querors, in their various forms, are found the lists of English chivalry all through th Middle Ages, and many of them engaged i heroic enterprises to be eclipsed only by on great American name which should evermor be "first in war." Lawrence Washington, founder of the branc of the family that came to America, was fo years mayor of Northampton, and purchased, i 1538, the manor of Sulgrave, Northamptonshire England, from Henry the Eighth, out of a lo of confiscated church property. This estat came to be known as "Washington Manor." The Washingtons were closely identified with the fortunes of ill-fated King Charles the First. Sir Henry Washington distinguished himself by bringing about the capture of Bristol, in 1643, and was in command of Worcester, three years later, heroically holding that city after his ammunition was exhausted. The reverses that attended the fall of the king and the rise of Cromwell had so impoverished the Washington family that they lost the manor at Sulgrave, and John and Lawrence, two "younger sons," left their humbler home at Little Brington to seek their fortunes in a new country. After stopping a while at the island of Barbados, they came to Virginia in 1657, seven years later than William Ball, of Kent, England, Mary Ball's ancestor, arrived in the same colony. John Washington, a powerful young man of twenty-three, took up immense tracts of land on the Potomac, around Pope's and Bridges' Creeks and settled there as a tobacco planter. He was elected to the House of Burgesses and appointed a colonel of militia. In a war with the Indians, in 1675, Colonel John Washington terrified the savages so that they named him |