Page:The youth of Washington (1910).djvu/34

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enough to happen on plantations remote from physicians, and indeed these were few in number and not as good as in the northern colonies.

I know less of my grandfather Lawrence than of his father. He did not increase the importance of the family, neither was he inclined to public business. He was, as I have understood, a quiet, thrifty man, and no seeker of adventure by land or water. He married Mildred Warner, by whom he had children, and died leaving a competent estate, but none to be compared with the great lands accumulated by the Byrds or Carters.

I conceive him to have been a person of moderate opinions concerning the Church of England, and as one who may have considered the dissenting sects as ill used. This I gather from a book given to me three years ago by a gentleman of Philadelphia, of the Society of Friends, who would have had me to believe that my grandfather was of that sect. This book is the life of one John Fothergill, a Quaker preacher, who says that in 1720 he "held a meeting at Mattocks, at Justice Washington's, a friendly man, where the Love of God opened my