the “Susquehannocks,” at the “Piscataway” fort, on account of some murdering begun by another tribe.  As a feat of arms, the expedition was not a very brilliant affair.  The Virginians and Marylanders killed half a dozen Indian chiefs during a parley, and then invested the fort.  After repulsing several sorties, they stupidly allowed the Indians to escape in the night and carry murder and pillage through the outlying settlements, lighting up first the flames of savage war and then the fiercer fire of domestic insurrection.  In the next year we hear again of John Washington in the House of Burgesses, when Sir William Berkeley assailed his troops for the murder of the Indians during the parley.  Popular feeling, however, was clearly with the colonel, for nothing was done and the matter dropped.  At that point, too, in 1676, John Washington disappears from sight, and we know only that as his will was proved in 1677, he must have died soon after the scene with Berkeley.  He was buried in the family vault at Bridges Creek, and left a good estate to be divided among his children.  The colonel was evidently both a prudent and popular man, and quite disposed to bustle about in the world in which he found himself.  He acquired lands, came to the front at once as a leader although a new-comer in the country, was evidently a fighting man as is shown by his selection to command the Virginian forces, and was honored by his neighbors, who gave his name to the parish in which he dwelt.  Then he died and his son Lawrence reigned in his stead, and became by his wife, Mildred Warner, the father of John, Augustine, and Mildred Washington.

This second son, Augustine, farmer and planter like his forefathers, married first Jane Butler, by whom he had three sons and a daughter, and second, Mary Ball, by whom he had four sons and two daughters.  The eldest child of these second nuptials was named George, and was born on February 11 (O.S.), 1732, at Bridges Creek.  The house in which this event occurred was a plain, wooden farmhouse of the primitive Virginian pattern, with four rooms on the ground floor, an attic story with a long, sloping roof, and a massive brick chimney.  Three years after George Washington’s birth it is said to have been burned, and the family for this or some other reason removed to another estate in what is now Stafford County.  The second house was like the first, and stood on rising ground looking across a meadow to the Rappahannock, and beyond the river to the village of Fredericksburg, which was nearly opposite.  Here, in 1743, Augustine Washington died somewhat suddenly, at the age of forty-nine, from an attack of gout brought on by exposure in the rain, and was buried with his fathers in the old vault at Bridges Creek.  Here, too, the boyhood of Washington was passed, and therefore it becomes necessary to look about us and see what we can learn of this important period of his life.