I am pleased that Anne Pemberton has brought my George Washington book, "An
Imperfect God," to the attention of the list; not so pleased that it has
provoked some bilious remarks. But I guess that's what we traffic in these
days. 

This is what I wrote about the Washington family's economic status in Virginia: 

"George was a fourth-generation American whose family had built up a
middling plantation enterprise on the Northern Neck with modest
slaveholdings." (p. 26.) In the following pages I provide the background for
that assessment. Is there some major problem here? I was not aware of
Nicolas Martiau and I am pleased to learn about him from Connie
Lapallo--another example of the important contribution genealogy makes to
the study of history.

As for GW's social status--his coat of arms notwithstanding--I took my cue
(p. 9) from something Clifford Dowdey wrote in "The Virginia Dynasties," p.
343: "Not even retroactively, not even after George became the absolute
number one citizen of Virginia and the new nation, were the Washingtons ever
included in the aristocracy."  Dowdey was speaking, of course, about the
Virginia aristocracy. 

Henry Wiencek

Patrick Henry Fellow
C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College
Chestertown, MD

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