“I am amazed,” says he, “at the contents of the printed slip you send me.  That any man of ordinary intelligence, living within the bounds of civilization, could be ignorant of or doubt the fact that General Washington was born in America, I did not for a moment suppose.”  He goes on to say that if Washington’s biography, written by so many competent hands, and founded upon sources the most authentic, and particularly the Lives of Marshall, Sparks and Irving, were not sufficient to convince incredulity itself, he is at a loss to know what would.  Certainly, he would not attempt the task himself.  In addition to the well-known biographies, traditions and memoranda attest the fact beyond the possibility of enlightened doubt.  Other credible and corroborative records are not wanting.  “Had the question,” he concludes, “been asked of Dr. Livingstone by some savage in the depths of the African jungles, it would not have been surprising; but to come from a writer in London, it is inexpressibly marvelous, and looks like a relapse into barbarism.”

Among the memoranda alluded to is a fac-simile of the entry of the birth of Washington in the Bible of his mother, which is given in Howe’s Historical Collections of Virginia, as follows: 

“George Washington son to Augustine and Mary his Wife was Born 11’th Day of February 173-1/2 about 10 in the Morning and was Baptized the 3’th (sic) of April following M’r Beverley Whiting and Cap’n Christopher Brooks godfathers and M’rs Mildred Gregory God-mother."

There are no marks of punctuation, and Howe states that the original entry is supposed to have been made by Washington’s mother.  If so, the handwriting, not very unlike Washington’s own, is unusually masculine, compact, even and clear for a woman’s.  Howe’s book was published in 1836.  At that time the old family Bible, a much dilapidated quarto with the title-page missing, and covered with the striped Virginia cloth so common in old days, was in the possession of George W. Bassett, Esq., of Farmington, Hanover county, who married a grand-niece of Washington.  At that time, too, the birthplace, which had been destroyed previous to the Revolution, was much more plainly marked than it is now.  From its associations, and from its natural beauties as well, the place was doubly interesting.  Standing half a mile from the junction of Pope’s Creek with the Potomac River, it commanded a view of the Maryland shore and of the course of the Potomac for many miles.  The house was a low-pitched, single-storied frame dwelling, with four rooms on the first floor, and a huge chimney at each end on the outside—­the style of the better class of houses of those days.  A stone, placed there to mark its site by G.W.P.  Custis, bore the simple inscription: 

“HERE, ON THE 11TH OF FEBRUARY (O.S.), 1732, GEORGE WASHINGTON WAS BORN.”

Such was its appearance in 1834 or ’35, when Howe visited it.  Its present condition may be gathered from what the writer of the letter in response to the London querist has to say about the site itself, that being all that is left of a place so memorable and so deserving of perpetuation: