rs in destroying
the "Susquehannocks," at the "Piscataway" fort, on account of some
murdering begun by another tribe. As a feat of arms, the expedition
was not a very brilliant affair. The Virginians and Marylanders killed
half a dozen Indian chiefs during a parley, and then invested the
fort. After repulsing several sorties, they stupidly allowed the
Indians to escape in the night and carry murder and pillage through
the outlying settlements, lighting up first the flames of savage war
and then the fiercer fire of domestic insurrection. In the next year
we hear again of John Washington in the House of Burgesses, when Sir
William Berkeley assailed his troops for the murder of the Indians
during the parley. Popular feeling, however, was clearly with the
colonel, for nothing was done and the matter dropped. At that point,
too, in 1676, John Washington disappears from sight, and we know only
that as his will was proved in 1677, he must have died soon after the
scene with Berkeley. He was buried in the family vault at Bridges
Creek, and left a good estate to be divided among his children. The
colonel was evidently both a prudent and popular man, and quite
disposed to bustle about in the world in which he found himself. He
acquired lands, came to the front at once as a leader although a
new-comer in the country, was evidently a fighting man as is shown by
his selection to command the Virginian forces, and was honored by his
neighbors, who gave his name to the parish in which he dwelt. Then
he died and his son Lawrence reigned in his stead, and became by his
wife, Mildred Warner, the father of John, Augustine, and Mildred
Washington.

This second son, Augustine, farmer and planter like his forefathers,
married first Jane Butler, by whom he had three sons and a daughter,
and second, Mary Ball, by whom he had four sons and two daughters. The
eldest child of these second nuptials was named George, and was born
on February 11 (O.S.), 1732, at Bridges Creek. The house in which
this event occurred was a plain, wooden farmhouse of the primitive
Virginian pattern, with four rooms on the ground floor, an attic story
with a long, sloping roof, and a massive brick chimney. Three years
after George Washington's birth it is said to have been burned, and
the family for this or some other reason removed to another estate in
what is now Stafford County. The second house was like the first, and
stood on rising ground looking across a meadow t