Note 51 — JOURNAL.

The young lady indicated was Miss Mary Cary, the daughter of Colonel Wilson Cary, of Ceeleys Hampton, Elisabeth City county, Va. For 34 years Mr. Cary was collector of customs for the lower James river district, and a man of large wealth and aristocratic notions. He had four daughters: Sarah, who married George W. Fairfax, of "Belvoir"; Mary, who married in 1754, Edward Ambler of Jamestown; Anna, who married Robert Carter Nicholas; and Elizabeth, who married Rev. Bryan, 8th Lord Fairfax. Col. Cary had also one son Wilson Miles Cary, who was a member of the Convention of Virginia in 1776. Some writers have confounded him with his father. Bishop Meade in his Old Churches and Families of Virginia, accepts traditions which other writers claim are authenticated by documents, preserved by the Ambler family, and accordingly his account credits the story that Washington, in his youth, was an ardent admirer of Miss Mary Cary, and solicited leave of Col. Cary to address his daughter, but was refused. (See Meade, vol. i, 108.) This draft of the letter addressed to "Dear Friend Robin," was probably made in the spring of 1748, when Washington was in his seventeenth year. In it, he playfully avows an admiration for the "lowland beauty" and, at the same time, admits the agreeableness of the "young lady in the house" with him at "Belvoir." Mr. Edward Ambler, educated at Cambridge, England, was collector for York river and a burgess for Jamestown. He died in 1768 in his thirty-fifth year and was buried at Jamestown; his widow survived him until 1781. Mrs. Ambler with her children and her sister, Mrs. Fairfax, were occasionally guests at Mount Vernon, as Washington's diaries show. I am inclined to believe that while it is true that Washington entertained a high regard for the Cary family and particularly the ladies, there is nothing but the lightest gossip to create an inference that there ever was even an incipient affair of the heart between either of the Misses Cary and Washington.