Excerpt from An Examination of the English Ancestry of George Washington: Setting Forth the Evidence to Connect Him With the Washingtons of Sulgrave and Brington

IN the July number of the N. E. Historical and Genealogical Reg ister I announced some discoveries about the Washington family which I then expected to publish among my Gleanings for that number. Very soon after that announcement I discovered some additional facts so interesting and important, and, apparently, so clearly pointing to the true line of ancestry of our first President that I thought it best, after consulting my friends in England and America, to withhold the matter thus promised until I could add to it these new facts and publish them together, in order that their due relations to each other might be the more apparent. I do not claim to have made an exhaustive study of the Washington Genealogy. That is not my pro vince, as the readers of my Gleanings must, by this time, be well aware. My function rather is similar to that of the prospector who finds the hidden lode of rich ore and makes it known to the miners who may wish to follow up and develop the vein more thoroughly. It is for me to search out and discover the clews and place them in the hands of the specialists who come after, that they may be guided in the right direction and so not waste their efforts in random labor on unfruitful ground. If, in addition, I do occasionally, as in the present case, furnish evidence illustrating a pedigree more at length, it is simply because in my extended wanderings over a wide field I have naturally gathered such facts as have come to my notice and. Saved them for the general good.

Before entering upon the story of these discoveries let me first state the problem which was to be solved, and refer to one or two attempts which have been made at its solution in the past. The American line of ancestry had been traced back clearly to a John Washington who, with his brother Lawrence, crossed the ocean to Virginia about 1657. The problem was to find their parentage and ancestry in England. It was known that both of them made wills which were proved in Virginia. These wills, or abstracts of them, will I doubt not accompany this paper.

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