_Marshall_ = John Marshall: _The Life of George Washington_. 5 vols.
Philadelphia. 1807.

_Sparks_ = Jared Sparks: _The Life of George Washington_. Boston.

_Wister_ = Owen Wister: _The Seven Ages of Washington_. New York:
Macmillan Company. 1909.




GEORGE WASHINGTON




CHAPTER I

ORIGINS AND YOUTH


Zealous biographers of George Washington have traced for him a most
respectable, not to say distinguished, ancestry. They go back to
the time of Queen Elizabeth, and find Washingtons then who were
"gentlemen." A family of the name existed in Northumberland
and Durham, but modern investigation points to Sulgrave, in
Northamptonshire, as the English home of his stock. Here was born,
probably during the reign of Charles I, his great-grandfather, John
Washington, who was a sea-going man, and settled in Virginia in 1657.
His eldest son, Lawrence, had three children--John, Augustine, and