George Washington Author:Horace Elisha Scudder Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE BOYHOOD OF WASHINGTON. The old lady thus described was the widow of George Washington, and so little had life in Virginia then changed fro... more »m what it had been in 1732, that the description might easily stand for a portrait of George Washington's mother. Of his father he remembered little, for though his mother lived long after he had grown up and was famous, his father died when the boy was eleven years old. It was near the shore of the Potomac River, between Pope's Creek and Bridge's Creek, that Augustine Washington lived when his son George was born. The land had been in the family ever since Augustine's grandfather, John Washington, had bought it, when he came over from England in 1657. John Washington was a soldier and a public-spirited man, and so the parish in which he lived — for Virginia was divided into parishes as some other colonies into townships — was named Washington. It is a quiet neighborhood; not a sign remains of the old house, and the only mark of the place is a stone slab, broken and overgrown with weeds and brambles, which lies on a bed ofbricks taken from the remnants of the old chimney of the house. It bears the inscription : — The nth of February, 1732 (old style) George Wafhington was born The English had lately agreed to use the calendar of Pope Gregory, which added eleven days to the reckoning, but people still used the old style as well as the new. By the new style, the birthday was February 22, and that is the day which is now observed. The family into which the child was born consisted of the father and mother, Augustine and Mary Washington, and two boys, TLiawrence and Augustine. These were sons of Augustine Washington by a former wife who had died four years before. George Washington was the eldest of the children...« less