Life History

Notes

• U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560-1900
  (No First Name) Lewis
  Spouse Name Mildred Warner Washington, Born abt 1696
  
  Family Data Collection - Individual Records
  Mildred Washington
  Birth Date 1696 Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania County, Virginia
  Parents Lawrence Washington, Mildred Warner
  Spouse Henry Willis
  Marriage Date 1716
  
  At that time, Fredericksburg was a town in Spotsylvania County.  It was not actually incorporated as a city until 1781.  It was made an independent city in 1879.
  
  Several historical sources report that Mildred Washington was the aunt of General George Washington.  There are instances in the Gregory lines of individuals named George Washington Gregory.  One in our primary ancestral Gregory lineage is reported to have married Susannah Few.
  
  The Fews are associated in several generations with the Gregorys from northern Virginia who moved down the Shenandoah Valley into eastern Tennessee, and across the mountains to what became northern Kentucky.  Fews also migrated along with the Gregorys into North Carolina, and some reconnected with the related Gregorys in Jefferson County, Tennessee and Bath County, Kentucky.
  
  This George Gregory, reported as George Washington Gregory, is reported to have married one Susannah Few.  Documentation is lacking, but the reported names and other details fit the contours of this family in that generation.
  
  The reported daughter of George and Susannah, named Susannah Lucretia Gregory, is reported to have married Joseph McAndrew in Fauquier County, Virginia, matching other family information on Gregorys in Fauquier County.
  
  There is, however, a connection with President George Washington.  George Washington, later Colonel and then General in the Revolutionary American forces, was a surveyor as a young man, and was engaged by Lord Fairfax to survey the Northern Neck lands, where the Gregorys were prominent early pioneers.  He was appointed by William and Mary University as the official surveyor for Culpeper County, neighboring both Frederick and Fauquier County.
  
  No record has been found to document Susannah Few's life or marriage to George Washington Gregory.  Various records for several individuals named George Washington Gregory, however, are found in various areas in later generations.  One location is Berkeley County West Virgina, originally formed out of old Frederick County, Virginia, where early records show three sons of Richard Gregory as prominent in early development of the county.  This is west of Culpeper County and Fauquier County, Virginia, where members of the same Gregory clan are found in the colonial and later periods.  A marriage record is found for George Washington Gregory in 1847 in Berkeley County, Virginia, reporting marriage to a Susan Carper.
  
  The Gregorys in the Northern Neck and derived counties likely knew George Washington personally.  They probably were aware that the Gregorys and Washingtons were kin (see below).  The newborn Gregory son of Benjamin Gregory born in 1760 then may have very well been named George Washington Gregory, as proposed.  It would be nice, however, to find some specific documentation of that.
  
  Additional circumstantial information is found in that this same Mildred Washington, reported to be George Washington's aunt, was also his godmother.  Mildred married Roger Gregory, son of Richard Gregory, in King William County, in northeast Virgina.  This county neighbors Prince William County, known to be the home of Benjamin Gregory in this Pennsylvania-Virginia lineage.  The Mount Vernon Estate was in Prince William County, though later creation of Fairfax County in 1742 placed it in the new county.
  
  The Washington Family was very prominent in Virginia colonial affairs and intermarried with Gregorys and other notable colonial families in the 1600s.  So there are good reasons why a Gregory might have Washington as a middle name aside from the later fame of General George Washington in the Revolutionary War.
  
  There is, additionally, an even stronger tie, which also explains the connection to the home estate of George Washington, general and then President of the United States.  The plantation of Mount Vernon was originally a Gregory property.  Mildred Washington and her husband Roger Gregory owned Mount Vernon plantation, which they deeded over to Mildred's brother Augustine Washington, George Washington's father.  This estate is famous as the home of President George Washington, Augustine's oldest son.  An old publication on the old families and homes of King William County, Virginia, provides important perspective on the relationship between all the old colonial aristocratic families there.
  
  "Mr. Lawrence Washington had a silver waiter with the Butler-Beckwith arms engraved thereon.  Beckwith Butler was guardian of the children of Margaret, the widow of William Robinson. Lawrence Butler, William Aylett, and John Washington were witnesses to the deed from Roger Gregory conveying the Mount Vernon estate to Augustine Washington in 1726.  Lawrence Washington left his Godson, Lawrence Butler, a tract of land adjoining Meredith Edwards  in 1697."
  --  Peyton Neale Clarke, Old King William homes and families; an account of some of the old homesteads and families of King William County, Virginia, from its earliest settlement (Louisville: John P Morton And Company, 1897), p 32, https://archive.org/stream/oldkingwilliamho00clar/oldkingwilliamho00clar_djvu.txt
  
  Mildred Warner Washington was not only the aunt, but also the godmother of George Washington who later became President.
  
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  "Roger Gregory.  Son of Richard Gregory (i).  Born about 1690; died prior to 1732.  Married Mildred, daughter of Lawrence Washington.  On the 17th of May, 1736, Roger Gregory and Mildred, his wife, deeded the Mt. Vernon estate to Augustine Washington.  They were then residents of Stratton Major Parish, King and Queen County.  The witnesses were William Aylett, John Washington, and Lawrence Butler.
  
  Issue: Frances, who married, September 3, 1736, Francis Thornton (see Thornton Excursus); Mildred, who married, October 28, 1740, John Thornton, and
  Elizabeth, who married four times:
  first, April 29, 1743, Henry Willis, son of Colonel Henry Willis (who had married her mother);
  second, Reuben Thornton;
  third, Doctor Thomas Walker, the Explorer, and
  fourth, Colonel Alcock, of the British Army.
  Mildred Gregory, the elder, was the godmother of General George Washington."
  --  Peyton Neale Clarke, Old King William homes and families; an account of some of the old homesteads and families of King William County, Virginia, from its earliest settlement (Louisville: John P Morton And Company, 1897), p 58, https://archive.org/stream/oldkingwilliamho00clar/oldkingwilliamho00c
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  We find that George W Gregory is a recurring name in this Gregory line.  In most cases, no indication has been found on what the W stood for.  Two actual cases of later George Washington Gregorys have been documented. Another George Washington Gregory was born 1851, the documented son of Few Hall Gregory, in our primary ancestral line of Gregorys here, born in Culpeper County, Virginia, in 1781.  Thus we have circumstantial evidence and historical context for the occurrence of Washington as a name among this Gregory lineage.
  
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  Augustine, second son of Lawrence Washington and Mildred Warner; married for his second wife, Mary Ball; their oldest son was George Washington (President of the United States); their only daughter, Betty Washington, was the second wife of Colonel Fielding Lewis, by whom she had a numerous progeny, notable in themselves and their descendants.
  
  Mildred, the only daughter of Lawrence Washington and Mildred Warner, married, first, Roger Gregory, by whom she had three daughters, Mildred, Frances, and Elizabeth, who married three brothers, Colonel John, Colonel Francis, and Reuben Thornton; she married, secondly, Colonel Henry Willis, the founder of Fredericksburg, by whom she had a son, Colonel Lewis Willis, and a daughter, Anne, who married Duff Green.
  
  John Lewis, the son of Colonel Fielding and Catherine (Washington) Lewis, was married five times.  First, to Lucy Thornton, youngest daughter of Colonel John Thornton and Mildred Gregory, by whom he had a daughter, Mildred (the sister of Lucy Thornton married Samuel Washington, brother of the President, General William Woodford of the Revolution, and John Taliaferro of Dissington).  Secondly, John Lewis married Elizabeth Thornton, daughter of Colonel Francis Thornton and Frances Gregory, by whom he had no child.
  
  One of the brothers of his second wife was the gallant Colonel John Thornton of the Revolution, who married Jane, daughter of Augustine Washington, elder half-brother of the President, and was the
  ancestor of the wife of Senator James B. Beck, and Mildred, one of the sisters of his second wife was the wife of Charles Washington, younger full-brother of the President.
  
  John Lewis' third wife was a daughter of Gabriel Jones, widely known in Virginia during his own generation, and remembered for years after all who knew him had passed away as "The Valley Lawyer."  The fourth wife of John Lewis was Mary Anne Fontaine, the widow Armistead, her father of that excellent Huguenot stock, her mother a Winston, of the same blood as Patrick Henry, the South Carolina Prestons, and Mrs. Madison.
  
  John Lewis' fifth wife was Mildred Carter, widow of Robert Mercer, a son of the Princeton hero.  She was a daughter of Landon Carter, her mother being a daughter of Colonel Lewis Willis.  It is a noteworthy circumstance that the two first wives of John Lewis were granddaughters of his great aunt, Mildred Washington, by her first husband, Roger Gregory, and his fifth and last wife, her great-granddaughter by her second husband, Colonel Henry Willis."
  -  From [Louisville, Kentucky] Courier-Journal Genealogies
  
  --  Peyton Neale Clarke, Old King William homes and families; an account of some of the old homesteads and families of King William County, Virginia, from its earliest settlement (Louisville: John P Morton And Company, 1897), p 75, https://archive.org/stream/oldkingwilliamho00clar/oldkingwilliamho00c
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  Mildred Warner Washington Willis
  Birth 1696 Fredericksburg, Fredericksburg City, Virginia, USA
  Death Sep 5, 1747 Virginia, USA
  
  Her Husbands (There were three)
  
  1) John Lewis of Gloucester County - married 1716. he died on April 7, 1718, leaving Mildred a childless widow of twenty.  Mildred's husband, John Lewis, was the son of Edward Lewis and his wife Susannah.
  
  2) Roger Gregory only a few months after John Lewis' death she remarried. Her second husband was of Stratton Major Parish, King and Queen County. His death was in 1730 or 1731,
  
  3) Henry Willis In November, 1733, her thrice-married cousin, Mildred Lewis Brown Howell Willis died, and the widower, Henry Willis, immediately asked our Mildred Gregory to become his third wife.  Henry Willis died in 1740, and Mildred did not marry again, but survived until 1747, when she died at the age of 50.
  
  Children: (There were 4)
  Roger Gregory - father of Frances, Mildred, Elizabeth
  Lewis Willis -- at the end of 1734 Mildred had her fourth and last child, who some think was named in memory of her first childless, husband.
  
  Parents:
  Lawrence Washington (1659 - 1697)
  Mildred Warner Washington (1671 - 1701)
  
  Spouses:
  Henry Willis (1696 - 1740)
  Roger Gregory (1690 - 1731)
  
  Children:
  Frances Gregory Thornton (1718 - 1790)
  Sarah Anne Willis Green (1734 - 1820)
  Lewis Willis (1734 - 1812)
  
  Siblings:
  John Washington (1692 - 1746)
  Augustine Washington (1694 - 1743)
  Mildred Washington (1696 - 1696) Half-sibling
  Lewis Willis (1734 - 1813) Half-sibling
  
  Burial Wllis Cemetery, Maryes Heights, Fredericksburg City, Virginia (possibly Buried here)
  
  Maintained by Find A Grave, Originally Created by P Fazzini Feb 04, 2011
  --  Find A Grave Memorial #65169251, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/65169251/mildred-warner-willis
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Sources

• 1. Find a Grave Memorial Registry
• 2. U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560-1900
• 3. Family Data Collection - Individual Records
• 4. The Vaulx Family of England, Virginia, and Maryland
• 5. Archive.org
• 6. Virginia Will Records