While at Mount Vernon I delivered you the affidavit of T. Marshall stating that he never received the certificate which you were so obliging as to obtain for him & I now enclose you mine that I have lost it. I have no doubt that they will be sufficient to obtain the renewal of the certificate; but I believe that some bond must be executed before it can issue. I do not know how this is to be filled up & suppose it must contain a description of the certificate which I cannot make. Will you excuse me for giving you the trouble of sending me from Philadelphia a bond¹ to be executed?

On my return home I found a letter from Mr Ward of Salem enclosing the copy of a letter from Mr Wm Fairfax to Capt. Clarke of Salem dated Belvoir 22d Feb. 1749 which contains this sentence “Please to acquaint our Sister Hannah that Mrs Washington has lost all her children but Major Washington just returned from London whether he lately went to get his arrears of pay & be put on the establishment of half pay which he obtained & is in hopes of repairing his losses.”

Mr Wards letter is accompanied with a Salem paper in which this with another letter from Mr Fairfax is published, & it is hinted that the biographers of General Washington have been remiss in omitting so material a circumstance as his voyage to London at so early an age & being placed on the half pay list.

I cannot doubt that this letter refers to some other Major Washington, who had claims in consequence of his services in the war which was terminated in 1748 by the treaty of Aix la Chapelle. General Washington was certainly too young to have been a major in that war; & I have never heard a syllable either of his visit to London or of his being on the half pay establishment.

Was General Washington born of a second Marriage? And were the other children of that marriage all dead in 49? If this letter does not refer to him, to whom does it refer? Probably to some of the Fairfax family who had married a Washington. I should suspect Mrs Washington was the wife of the Generals eldest brother who divised Mount Vernon to him, but it is impossible that his son could have been the Major mentioned in this letter. What was the maiden name of the General's mother?

When you are in Philadelphia would it not be well to have some conversation with the Philadelphia editor of Langhornes Plutarch respecting his anecdote about Genl Washingtons selling his old charger which he has inserted as a note in the life of the elder Cato? I am my dear Sir yours affection