Page:The youth of Washington (1910).djvu/36



My father, Augustine, was born in 1694, on the plantation known as Wakefield, granted, in 1667, to his grandfather, and lying between Bridges' and Pope's creeks, in Westmoreland, on the north neck between the Potomac and the Rappahannock. My father, in his will, says: "Forasmuch as my several children in this my will mentioned, being by several Ventures, cannot inherit from one another," etc.

What he speaks of as his "Ventures" were his two marriages. A venture does appear to me to be an appropriate name for the uncertain state of matrimony. The first "venture" was Jane Butler, who lies buried at Wakefield. Of her four children two survived—that is, my half-brothers Lawrence and Augustine, whom we called Austin. I was the first child of my father's second "venture," and my mother was Mary Ball. I was born at Wakefield, on