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JOHN ROBINSON.

The ancestor of the distinguished family Robinson in Virginia, was Christopher Robinson, of Cleasby, in Yorkshire, England, who settled about the year 1666, at “ Hewick," near Urbanna, in Middlesex County. He was the brother of the Right Reverend John Robinson (born 1650, died 1722), a distinguished prelate and statesman, who was Bishop of London as well as embassador for many years to Sweden, and who represented England as First Plenipotentiary at the Congress of Utrecht

in 1712.

Christopher Robinson was born in 1645; married, first, Agatha Bertram, secondly, Catharine, daughter of Theodore Hone, and widow of Robert Beverley, of Virginia. John Robinson, their second son, was born in 1683. As President of the Council, he was Acting Governor of Virginia from June 20th to his death in September, 1749. He married, first Catherine, daughter of Robert Beverley, and, secondly, Mrs. Mary Welsh, of Essex County, Va. His descendants through intermarriage have been connected with nearly all of the old Virginia families, and the name Robinson itself has had many worthy and valued representatives in the annals of the Colony and State.

THOMAS LEE.

Thomas Lee, the fourth son of Richard and Lettice (Corbin) Lee, and descended in the third generation from Richard Lee, who emigrated from Shropshire, England, and settled in Westmoreland county, Virginia, in 1641, was born about the year 1680. He married in 1721, Hannah, daughter of Philip Ludwell, and granddaughter of Lady Berkeley (widow of Sir William), who married, thirdly, in 1680, Philip Ludwell. Thomas Lee was long a member of the House of Burgesses and of the Council, and as President of that body after the death of John Robinson, became the Acting Governor of Virginia, and but for his death, which occurred in the early part of 1751, it was presumed, from the influence of his connections in England, that he would have received the appointment of Deputy or Lieutenant-Governor, for which, it is said, at commission had been executed. He had been also the recipient of royal bounty, it is said, upon the destruction of his residence by fire, being then aided from the privy purse of Queen Caroline towards the building of the famous "Stratford " mansion.

He was a member of the historical Ohio Company, and was a man of great enterprise and sagacity. Rarely has a sire been so distinguished in his offspring as was Thomas Lee, the father of six sons, severally eminent among the lustrous patriots of the Revolution. The names of Philip Ludwell and Thomas Ludwell Lee are indelibly engraven on the pages of the history of Virginia, whilst the fame of Richard Henry and of Francis Lightfoot Lee (signers of the instrument of American Free

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dom) and of William and Arthur Lee, is food for national pride. The grand hero, Robert Edward Lee, was a descendant in the third generation of Henry Lee, the brother of Governor Thomas Lee.

LEWIS BURWELL.

The Burwell family is "of very ancient date upon the borders of England and Scotland." It was settled at Berwick-upon-Tweed as early as the year 1250. The names Minion Burrell and William Burrell appear in the list of adventurers for Virginia. The ancestor of the family in the Colony was Major Lewis Burwell, who settled on Carter's Creek, in Gloucester County, in 1640. In 1646 he was a member of the deputation sent to invite Charles the Second to come to Virginia as its King. He married Lucy, daughter of the "valiant Captain Robert Higginson, one of the first commanders who subdued the country of Virginia from the power of the heathen." Of the issue of this marriage, Major Nathaniel Burwell, the fourth son, born about 1680, married Elizabeth, eldest daughter of " King" Robert Carter, who, after his death in 1721, married Dr. George Nicholas, and was the mother of Robert Carter Nicholas, long the Treasurer of Virginia. The eldest son of Major Nathaniel and Elizabeth (Carter) Burwell, Lewis Burwell, known by the name of his seat, as of "The Grove," Gloucester County, was born about the year 1710. He matriculated at Caius College, Cambridge, England, in 1731, and was a man of genius and learning. He married in October, 1736, Mary, daughter of Colonel Francis and Ann Willis. He was a Burgess from Gloucester County as early as 1736, a little later became a member of the Council, and as the President of that body, after the death of Thomas Lee, was, on February 12, 1751, acting Governor of Virginia. He was relieved by the arrival of Lieutenant-Governor Robert Dinwiddie, November 20, 1751, and died in 1752.

ROBERT DINWIDDIE.

The period of the accession of Robert Dinwiddie as the executive of the Colony of Virginia, was one of anxiety and momentous presage in its history, and the dignity of Lieutenant-Governor at this critical exigency was conferred on him in royal recognition of the singular ability, zeal and fidelity exhibited by him in previous positions of governmental trust. The Dinwiddie is an ancient Scotch family of historic mention. On the "Ragman's Roll," A. D. 1296, appears the name of Alleyn Dinwithie, the progenitor, it is said, of the Dinwiddies who were long seated as chief proprietors on lands called after them, in the parish of Applegarth, Annandale, Dumfries-shire. The immediate ancestors of Governor Dinwiddie were denizens of Glasgow, and had been, for some

generations probably, merchants in honorable esteem, as was his father, Robert Dinwiddie. His mother was of an old Glasgow family of the same calling. She was Sarah, the daughter of Matthew Cumming, who was Baillie of the city in 1691, 1696 and 1699. The son, Robert Dinwiddie, was born in 1693, at Germiston, his father's seat.

He was disciplined in the counting house, and was probably for a time a merchant in Glasgow. He was appointed, December 1, 1727, a collector of the customs in the Island of Bermuda, which position he held under successive commissions, until April 11, 1738, when, in acknowledgment of his vigilance and zeal in the discharge of official duty, in the detecting and exposing a long practiced system of fraud in the collection of the customs of the West India Islands, he received the appointment of "Surveyor General of the customs of the Southern ports of the Continent of America."

He was named, as his predecessor had been, a member of the respective Councils of the American Colonies. This mandate was recognized by Governor Gooch, of Virginia (in which colony Dinwiddie appears to have fixed his chief residence), but was resisted by the Councillors, who, jealous of interference with their prerogatives, refused to allow him to sit with them, and transmitted a remonstrance to the King for his exclusion. The controversy was decided by the Board of Trade in May, 1742, advising that the royal purpose should be enforced, in opposition to claims dangerous because they were new. Dinwiddie was specially commissioned, August 17, 1743, with the designation of "Inspector General," to examine into the duties of the Collector of Customs of the Island of Barbadoes, and, in the discharge of this trust, exposed to the English Government an enormous defalcation in the revenues there. In 1749, he appears to have resided in London as a merchant, engaged in trade with the colonies. He was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia, July 20, 1751, and with his wife Rebecca (nee Affleck) and two daughters, Elizabeth and Rebecca, arrived in the Colony November 20th following. He was warmly welcomed with expressions of respect and regard, but in a little while gave offence by declaring the dissent of the King to certain acts which his more insinuating predecessor, Gooch, had approved. Governor Dinwiddie finding that the regulations governing the patenting of lands were but little regarded, and that a practice had long prevailed of securing the possession and use of lands by warrants of survey without the entering of patents, by which more than a million of acres of land were unpatented, and the royal revenue from the quitrents of two-shillings annual tax upon every fifty acres, seriously defrauded with the advice of the Council, in an endeavor to correct the abuse, and by the exaction of a fee of a pistole (about $3.60 in value) on every patent issued, incurred yet greater animosity. The House of Burgesses unavailingly remonstrated against this exercise of the royal prerogative, and, in 1754, sent Peyton Randolph (then Attorney-General

of the Colony and ultimately distinguished as the first President of the Continental Congress) to England, as its agent, with a salary of £2500, and bearing a petition to the King for relief from the fee. The decision of the Board of Trade was virtually in favor of Governor Dinwiddie, though their instructions were at first singularly indefinite. This difference, when harmony in Council and concert in action were so essential, was unfortunate. The aggrandizing policy in North America of the French-who asserted their claim to the whole Mississippi Valley, in virtue of primal rights of discovery and occupation under the explorations of Marquette, La Salle, and others-was a constant menace to English colonization. In every treaty between the two competing powers, the territorial limits of France had been left undecided. To that fatal treaty between Charles I. and Louis XIII., by which " was restored to France, absolutely and without demarcation of limits, all the places possessed by the English, in New France, Lacadie and Canada, particularly Port Royal, Quebec and Cape Breton," holds McPherson, may be ascribed the subsequent troubles with France. From 1690, the colonies from New Hampshire to Georgia were engaged in almost unremitting hostilities with the savages on their borders, instigated by the French in the North and the Spaniards in the South. The intent of the French to link their possessions in Louisiana and on the St. Lawrence by a chain of forts on the Ohio, was manifest. Governor Dinwiddie, viewing with alarm their encroachments, at the close of October, 1753, dispatched Major George Washington, then only twenty-one years of age, to M. Le Gardeur de St. Pierre, the Commandant of the fort on the Ohio, to demand by whose authority an armed force had crossed the lakes, and to urge a speedy and peaceable departure. The mission, accomplished under many hardships, was ineffectual, and Governor Dinwiddie immediately instituted the most energetic and widespread efforts for defense. His vigilance, zeal and activity were signal. Though suffering from the debilitating effects of a stroke of paralysis, his personal activity for the public good would have been creditable to one of physical capacity the most favored. He promptly reported the impending danger to the English government, and to the Executives of the several Colonies, urging immediate and effectual measures of resistance, and praying their assistance. He had but meager response in America, but in the course of the year 1754 was aided with a grant of £20,000, arms and ordnance stores from Great Britain. The money was ordered to be reimbursed from the export duty of two shillings per hogshead on tobacco. The English Ministry perceiving, from the unfortunate events of 1754, that expedients were fruitless, and that no effective conjoined action of the American Colonies could be hoped for, determined on an offensive policy by sea and land, and early in 1755, Admirals Boscawen and Mostyn were sent with a powerful fleet into the North American seas, to intercept the reinforcements of France; and General Braddock,

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