know Lafayette was a married man, well advanced in years; but, of course, I did not know that. He really told several persons, Mrs. H. among them, that my mother was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, either in France or America. "When he left Richmond many ladies kissed him, and he requested a kiss from my mother."
Benjamin Dabney married first Miss Patsy Armstead. She lived only a few years, leaving three children, George, Benjamin, and Ann. A year or two later he married his second wife, Miss Sarah Smith, the daughter of the Rev. Thomas Smith. My father was one of the children of this marriage. The sons, George and Benjamin, grew up to be of so great physical strength as to become famous at their college of William and Mary. In physical development they resembled their grandfather's half-brother, James Dabney, who bears the surname of "the Powerful" on the family-tree. George went into the navy, and was engaged in the battle of Tripoli, and was so fortunate as to save Decatur's life in that fight. He grew tired of the navy and left it for a planter's life. Benjamin also became a planter, and married his cousin, Ann West Dabney, the daughter of his uncle George. The Smiths from whom my father was descended on the maternal side were known in Virginia as the Shooter's Hill Smiths,—Shooter's Hill, in Middlesex County, Virginia, being the home which they founded in this country. His mother was Sarah Smith, the daughter of the Rev. Thomas Smith, of Westmoreland County, a clergyman of the Established Church, and Mary Smith of Shooter's Hill. The earliest record in the old Shooter's Hill Bible is of the marriage of John Smith of Perton and Mary Warner of Warner Hall, Gloucester County, in the year 1680. One of Mary Warner's sisters, Mildred, married the son of George Washington's uncle, Lawrence Washington. A descendant of John Smith of Perton, General John Bull Davidson Smith of Hackwood, was a thorough Democrat, sharing with other Americans of that day in a revulsion and animosity against everything English.
