USA > Virginia > Old churches, ministers and families of Virginia, Vol. I > Part 11
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* Colonel Carrington, the husband of her from whose papers I make these extracts, entered early into the army of the Revolution, and afterwards served his country in the American Congress. He was a great favourite of Washington, and endeared himself to Generals Green, Marion, and Sumpter, while rendering im- portant services in the Southern campaign, as their letters amply show.
It will not be inopportune here to introduce a passage from one of Mrs. Car- rington's letters to her sister, Mrs. Fisher, written from Mount Vernon, where she and Colonel Carrington were on a visit, not long before General Washington's death. I have always determined to give, in some part of these sketches, a view of the chamber of a Virginia lady, to show that, though abounding with servants, she is not idle; nay, that the very number of her servants creates employment. After speaking of the hearty welcome given them by the general and his lady, and the extension of the retiring-hour of the former from nine to twelve on one night, when he and Colonel Carrington were lost in former days and scenes and in the company of Pulaski and Kosciusko, she comes to Mrs. Washington, who spoke of her days of public life, and levees, and company, as "her lost days." " Let us repair to the old lady's room, which is precisely in the style of our good old aunt's,-that is to say, nicely fixed for all sorts of work. On one side sits the chambermaid, with her knitting; on the other, a little coloured pet, learning to sew. An old, decent woman is there, with her table and shears, cutting out the negroes' winter-clothes, while the good old lady directs them all, incessantly knitting herself. She points out to me several pair of nice coloured stockings and gloves she had just finished, and presents me with a pair half done, which she begs I will finish and wear for her sake." "It is wonderful, after a life spent as these good people have necessarily spent theirs, to see them, in retirement, assume those domestic habits that prevail in our country." If the wife of General Washington, having her own and his wealth at command, should thus choose to live, how much more the wives and mothers of Virginia with moderate fortunes and numerous children ! How often have I seen, added to the above-mentioned scenes of the chamber, the instruction of several sons and daughters going on, the churn, the reel, and other domestic operations, all in progress at the same time,
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Mary married John Marshall ;* Anne, George Fisher; and Lucy, Danie! Call.
From the papers of Mrs. Carrington I take the following con- cerning the religious character of her mother :-.-
"Often, when a child, have I listened to my mother's account of her early devotion to her Maker: heard her describe how, at the age of thirteen, deprived of earthly parents, she, with pious resignation, turned her heart to God, and, in the midst of a large family, sought a retired spot in the garret, where she erected a little altar at which to worship. There, with her collection of sacred books, she gave her earliest and latest hours to God. Her character, in the opinion of her giddy companions, was stamped with enthusiasm. But who would not wish to be such an enthusiast? In after-years she made it her meat and drink to do the will of God, and never, in one instance, do I recollect her to have shrunk from it. Her whole life was a continued series of practical Christian
and the mistress, too, lying on a sick-bed. There are still such to be found, though I fear the march of refinement is carrying many beyond such good old ways.
* The papers from which I quote state that the first meeting of Captain Marshall and his future wife was at York, where the Amblers at that time lived ; that the father of Captain Marshall-Colonel Thomas Marshall, from Fauquier- was the commanding officer at York, and that his son, who was in the army, came to visit him and the family there, during some months when his services were not required in the army; that an attachment was formed, at first sight, between him and the youngest daughter of Colonel Ambler, she being only four- teen years of age; that Mr. Marshall endeared himself to them all, notwith- standing his slouched hat and negligent and awkward dress, by his amiable man- ners, fine talents, and especially his love for poetry, which he read to them with deep pathos ; that, during his absence from the army of a few months, he studied law in Williamsburg, obtained a license, and returned to the army as captain ; that immediately after the war he and Miss Ambler were married, at the Cottage, in Hanover, a seat of one of the Amblers; that after having paid the minister his fee his fortune was only one guinea in pocket. In proof of the ardour of his cha- racter and the tenderness of his attachment to his intended wife, Mrs. Carrington remarks that he had often said to her " that he looked with astonishment on the present race of lovers," so totally unlike what he had been himself. The proof of this was seen in his persevering devotion to Mrs. Marshall during life.
That Judge Marshall should be a reader and lover of poetry may be some- what unexpected to many who have been accustomed to regard him only as the able lawyer, the grave and dignified chief-justice, or the laborious historian ; yet it was nevertheless so, to a justifiable extent. His education was, from the first, classical, under the Rev. Mr. Thompson, and was so continued, at William and Mary College, when the first scholars presided over it. I remember once to have heard him quote, with a playful aptitude, concerning some leading persons who had changed their political relations, these words of old Homer,-
" Ye gods, what havoc does ambition make
'Mong all your works !"
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duty, and her example can never be effaced from the hearts of those who knew her."
Mrs. Carrington also speaks, in like manner, of her father, Mr. Jaqueline Ambler :---
" His saintlike image is too deeply impressed to need any picture of mine to recall him to our remembrance. I find a complete portrait of him drawn by the inimitable Cowper :-
" " He is the happy man whose life e'en now Shows somewhat of that happier life to come.'"
Speaking of the piety of both of her parents, she says,-
"We boast not that we deduce our birth From loins enthroned, or rulers of the earth ; But higher far our high pretensions rise, - Children of parents pass'd into the skies."
Her aged aunt Jaqueline had assured her that piety distinguished her father from early youth. She herself had experienced the fruits of it in his assiduous care of herself and sisters. Her mo- ther being in very bad health, her father, though much engaged in the duties of his office, (collector of the King's customs at York,) devoted all his spare hours to the education of herself and her sister, (afterward Mrs. Marshall,) then only five or six years of age. The copies for writing were always written by himself, in a fair hand, containing some moral or religious sentiment, but defective in grammar, that they might correct them ; and so of other branches. The advantages they possessed were superior to any enjoyed in those days, when there were no boarding-schools and all that was taught "was reading and writing, at twenty shillings a year and a load of wood." Mrs. Carrington informs us that "the govern- ment exercised by her father was by some thought to be too severe, for the rod, at that time, was an instrument never to be dispensed with, and our dear father used it most conscientiously. I have since discovered that his superior knowledge of human nature led him to pursue the right course, (as to discipline,) and in my own subsequent experience, in the education of children, I have found that the present prevailing opinion, that youth may be reared and matured by indulgence, is erroneous. I will venture to say that, with a very few exceptions, it will be always proper to observe a well-regulated discipline. We often hear the observation that a rigid parent never has an obedient child. Our experience certainly contradicts it. Where the parent is found to unite the virtuous
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Christian with the conscientious disciplinarian, he will never cease to be loved and respected. Such a father was ours, and the love and respect we bore him has seldom been equalled." His example, also, added weight to his precept and government. "Never did man live in the more constant practice of religious duties. Early and late we knew him to be in the performance of them. It was his daily habit to spend his first and latest hours in prayer and meditation. Every Sunday that his church was open, he was the first to enter it, and often would he be almost a solitary male at the table of the Lord." This, she adds, was during the war, when the men were engaged in it, and when infidelity was spreading through the land. The last end of this good man was, as might be expected, one of peace. On his death-bed, when speaking of one of his neighbours, who had gone to some distant place in search of a home, he said, with his eyes uplifted to heaven, "I am going to a nearer, happier home " To a female friend, who was at his bedside when he died, he exclaimed,-
"See the New Jerusalem ! See it open'd to my eyes !"
From such ancestors, as might well be expected according to the covenant of grace, many pious children have descended, who have faithfully adhered to the Church of their fathers.
P.S .- Since preparing the above, I have received a fuller ac- count of the descendants of the first of the Jaquelines. He came to this country from Kent, in England, in the year 1697, and, mar- rying Miss Carey, of Warwick, settled at Jamestown. His daugh- ter Mary married one of those Smiths in Middlesex of whom we shall make mention in our article on that parish, and two of which family were ministers of the Church in Gloucester and Matthews. Colonel Edward and General John Smith, of Frederick, and many others, were the children of Mary Jaqueline and John Smith. We have seen, in the account taken from the papers of Mrs. Carrington, the sketch of one branch of the Amblers, that descended from Ja- queline Ambler, who married Miss Burwell. We have only to refer to that descended from Edward Ambler, who inherited Jamestown, or a large portion of it. Mr. Edward Ambler married Miss Mary Carey, daughter of Wilson Carey, the lady of whom Washington Irving, in his life of Washington, speaks, as the one to whom Gene- ral Washington was somewhat attached. One of his sons was Mr. John Ambler, first of Jamestown, then of Hanover, and afterward of
.
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Richmond. His first wife was a Miss Armistead, by whom he had Edward, who settled in Rappahannock, and Mary, who married Mr. Smith. His second wife was the sister of Judge Marshall, by whom he had one child, Major Thomas Ambler, of Fauquier. His third wife was the widow of Mr. Hatley Norton, of England, and daughter of Philip Bush, of Winchester, by whom he had many sons and daughters, who are married and settled in various parts of the State,-warm friends or members of the Church. Two of the descendants of this branch of the family are worthy ministers of the Church,-the Revs. Charles and Thomas Ambler.
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. 9
ARTICLE VII.
Being an appendix to the articles on James City parish, and con- taining a further account of the Jaquelines, Amblers, and James- town .- No. 5.
SINCE the foregoing notice of these families was written I have had access to some most reliable documents, from which have been obtained the following additional information :-
Within the last thirty years visits have been made to England by a number of their descendants, and an intercourse, personal and epistolary, been established between those in England and those in America. I am the more pleased at being allowed access to these documents, because I am enabled thereby to gratify a favourite wish and design of these articles in the establishment of a connection between the old families and the old Church of England and America.
The tradition prevalent in Virginia as to the descent of the Ambler family is entirely confirmed by a letter of the Rev. George Ambler, of Wakefield, in Yorkshire, to one of his relatives in Virginia. Wakefield and Leeds are near to each other in Yorkshire, as they are in Westmoreland, Virginia,-the latter deriving their names from the former through the instrumentality of the Washington and Fairfax families, whose residence was in that part of England. The Amblers were also from the same place, and Leeds Manor, in Fauquier, may have received its name through them. The following is an extract from a letter of the Rev. Mr. Ambler, of England, to Mr. Philip St. George Ambler, of Virginia :-
"I am seventy-four years of age,-a graduate of the University of Cam- bridge,-a clergyman,-living in my native town (Wakefield, in York- shire) upon my private means; am descended from John Ambler, of the city of York, who was sheriff of the county in 1721. My great-grand- father, the aforesaid John Ambler, had a son, Richard, who followed the fortunes of a relative in Virginia. That son had nine children, of which I happen to possess a list."
This number exactly agrees with that of the children of Richard Ambler, of York, who married Miss Jaqueline, of Jamestown. A
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sister of this Richard Ambler (Mary Ambler) married the Rev. George Shaw, a minister of the Established Church, and was grandmother of Charles Shaw Lefevre, late Speaker of the House of Commons. For many years this Richard Ambler was collector of the port at Yorktown, an office both honourable and lucra- tive, and which he discharged with great integrity. Of his nine children by Elizabeth Jaqueline, all died at an early age, except Edward, John, and Jaqueline, as we have said in our last article.
I find some interesting notices in the document before me con- cerning these three,-which I shall introduce, but not without a previous notice, from the same source, of the family of their mother, Elizabeth Jaqueline :-
" Her father, Edward Jaqueline, of Jamestown, was the son of John Jaqueline and Elizabeth Craddock, of the county of Kent, in England. He was descended from the same stock which gave rise to the noble family of La Roche Jaqueline in France. They were Protestants, and fled from La Vendée, in France, to England, during the reign of that bloodthirsty tyrant, Charles IX. of France, and a short time previous to the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. They were eminently wealthy, and were fortunate enough to convert a large portion of their wealth into gold and silver, which they transported in safety to England."
"Whilst I was in Paris," (says one of the travellers from America, ) "in 1826, the Duke de Sylverack, who was the intimate friend of Madame De la Roche Jaqueline, (the celebrated authoress of the 'Wars of La Vendée,') informed me that the above account-which is the tradition among the descendants of the family in America-corresponds exactly with what the family in France believe to have been the fate of those Jaquelines who fled to England in the reign of Charles IX. I found the family to be still numerous in France. It has produced many distin- guished individuals ; but none more so than the celebrated Vendéan chief, Henri De la Roche Jaqueline, who, during the Revolution of 1790, was called to command the troops of La Vendée after his father had been killed, and when he was only nineteen years of age. Thinking that he was inadequate to the task, on account of his extreme youth and total want of experience in military affairs, he sought seriously to decline the dangerous honour; but the troops, who had been devotedly attached to the father and family, would not allow him to do so, and absolutely forced him to place himself at their head in spite of himself. As soon as he found that resistance was useless, he assumed the bearing of a hero and gave orders for a general review of his army: to which, (being formed in a hollow square,) in an animated and enthusiastic manner, he delivered this ever-memorable speech :-
" ' My friends, if my father was here you would have confidence in him ; but as for me, I am nothing more than a child. But, as to my courage, I shall now show myself worthy to command you.'
" This young man started forth a military Roscius, and maintained to the end of his career the high ground he first seized. After displaying
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all the skill of a veteran commander, and all the courage of a most daunt- less hero, he nobly died upon the field of battle, at the early age of twenty- one, thus closing his short but brilliant career."
The document thus concludes on the subject of the Jaque- lines :-
" By a mourning-ring now in possession of Mary Marshall, the wife of the Chief-Justice of the United States, it appears that Edward Jaqueline died in the year 1730. He died, as he had lived, one of the most wealthy men in the Colony."
We now proceed to speak of the three grandsons of Edward Jaqueline. The sons of Richard Ambler and Elizabeth Jaqueline were John, Edward, and Jaqueline. John was born in Yorktown. At the age of ten he was sent, with his elder brother, Edward, to Leeds Academy, near Wakefield, in Yorkshire, England, for his education. He afterward graduated with great credit at Cam- bridge, and then repaired to London, to begin the study of law. There he became a very learned and accomplished barrister-at-law. After travelling over Europe, he returned to Virginia and took possession of Jamestown, which estate had been given him by his grandfather Jaqueline. He represented the borough of James- town for many years, and was considered one of the most accom- plished scholars in the Colony. He was perfect master of seven languages. Many of his books in those different languages have come down to his relatives. His health sunk under his literary habits, and he died of consumption, at the age of thirty-one, in the island of Barbadoes. His body was brought to Jamestown, and deposited in the old graveyard around the church. The following inscription, taken in 1820 from a tombstone of which no vestige now remains, shows in what esteem he was held by his brother Ed- ward, who died on the day it was placed over his remains :-
"John Ambler, Esquire, Barrister-at-Law, Representative in the As- sembly for Jamestown, and Collector of the District of York River, in this Province.
"He was born the 31st of December, 1735, and died at Barbadoes, 27th of May, 1766. In the relative and social duties-as a son, and a brother, and a friend-few equalled him, and none excelled him. He was early distinguished by his love of letters, which he improved at Cam- bridge and the Temple, and well knew how to adorn a manly sense with all the elegance of language. To an extensive knowledge of men and things he joined the noblest sentiments of liberty, and in his own example held up to the world the most striking picture of the amiableness of reli- gion."
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To this brief testimony to the worth of one whose days were soon numbered, we add a more enlarged one to the virtues of his brother, Mr. Jaqueline Ambler :-
"Jaqueline Ambler, the seventh child of Richard and Elizabeth Am- bler, was born in the town of Little York, on the 9th of August, 1742. At an early age he married Rebecca, daughter of Lewis Burwell, of White Marsh, in Gloucester county, Virginia. He was Councillor of State during the Revolutionary War, at the time that Thomas Jefferson was Governor of Virginia. He was afterward appointed Treasurer of State, which office he held until his death. He stood as high, as a man of honour, as any who had ever lived, either in ancient or modern times. He was indeed so remarkable for his scrupulous integrity that he was called, throughout the land, 'The Aristides of Virginia.' Whilst Treasurer, one of his clerks robbed the Treasury of £5000. The officers whose duty it was to examine the Treasurer's books for that year failed to detect the defalcation, and reported to the Legislature that the Treasurer's books balanced as they should do. Mr. Ambler was the first to find out the vil- lany and immediately reported it to the Legislature, who caused a re-exa- mination of the books to take place, re-elected him to the office, and passed an act in which they declared that their confidence in his character, so far from being impaired by the event, had been greatly increased : whereupon he immediately paid the £5000 into the treasury, out of his own funds, and determined to continue in office. He was as charitable as his means would allow him to be; no meritorious person in distress ever applied to him in vain. There was living in Richmond a poor Scotch elergyman, named John Buchanon, whom he invited to make his house his home until he should be able to support himself. The invita- tion was accepted.
"The excellent parson Buchanon lived with him till he died, offi- ciated when he was consigned to the grave, and preached his funeral sermon, from which the following extract is made :-
"' And when can we more seasonably apply to these duties than when we are warned by the loss of our friends to remember our latter end and apply our hearts unto wisdom ? We have, my brethren, been lately pay- ing the last sad tribute to a departed brother. He whose loss we now lament has passed the fifty-fifth year of his age without a blemish to his reputation ; without an enemy; with numerous friends. Adored by his family, he has almost consoled them for his loss by the conviction that he has not gone too early for himself, and that he was mature in character.
" 'Notwithstanding the constant exposure of an official man to the dis- pleasure of others, by the impartiality of his conduct, even those who went away from him unindulged in their applications were satisfied by a confi- dence in the purity of his motives. His public career for nearly twenty years was a series of testimony to this truth. Drawn from the peaceful walks of private life into public action, without a solicitation or a wish previously expressed, he was chosen by the Legislature to three important offices during the Revolution and since the peace. His last, that of Trea- surer, presented for thirteen years to malice, envy, or enmity, had they existed against him, an annual opportunity of gratification. And yet was he annually re-elected, because he had unremittingly shown his fitness
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for the office. His fatal disorder put human nature to the rack; but he bore his agonies with every firmness of which human nature was capable, cherished, strengthened, and animated by the divine glow of Christianity, and foreseeing with a smile the prospect opening to his view. ' The poor scarcely knew the hand from whence they so often received relief; and those who were his dependants could not but own how much their condi- tion was softened by the kindness of their master.' "
"To this fair transcript of his character," says Dr. Bu- channon, the author of the sermon, "I might, from a fourteen years' knowledge of him, (ten whereof I spent in his family,) add many private traits which characterize him as the good man and sincere and pious Christian. I could set before you innume- rable instances of kind attention and anxious solicitude to alleviate the distresses, bear the infirmities, provide for the wants, nay, even anticipate the wishes, of her to whom he was united; of the con- stant care and unremitted assiduity of the fond but judicious pa- rent training up his own children, as also the fatherless and those who had none to guide and direct them in the paths of religion and virtue, not merely by daily precepts, but by what is infinitely more efficacious, by daily example; and thus conscientiously discharging that most important of all trusts, and securing their eternal as well as temporal interests. I might bear honourable testimony to his being as tender of the reputation of another ; repelling every report cir- culated by envy or malice against his neighbour's fame, and, like Christian charity, thinking no evil. I might adduce repeated proofs of his delicacy and purity of manners and conversation, and of his temperance and self-government. He may, however, have been thought by some too reserved and too much of a recluse ; and that he separated himself more than was necessary from scenes of cheerful and innocent sociability. But, it may be truly said, none had greater enjoyment in his family and the private circle of his friends whenever the state of his health would permit; and that he was sufficiently conversant in the world to present a fair model of integrity, and a constant attention to his duties as an officer, though not enough to be seduced or contaminated by its follies and vices. To sum up all, I might lead to his private retire- ment, and there present to you the devout Christian, prostrate in humble supplication before his almighty Creator, which they only who follow his example can justly estimate, and which they know proves their greatest consolation in the various trials and calamities of life. In fine, I might conduct you to the altar of God, where you would hear him making a public profession of his faith, and,
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