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PARENTAGE, BIRTH AND EDUCATION.

In the social disruptions of the French Revolution, many broken fortunes were replanted in America, and in the words of Chateaubriand, then himself a wanderer in our country, "the names of settlements in the United States became a touching record of the wrecks of European homes." What seemed then only an adverse stroke of fortune to those upon whom it fell, proved the establishment of many prosperous families-the seed scattered by the storm bearing a hundred fold on the rich soil of the New World.

During this time, a passenger ship bound to one of the French West Indian possessions, was taken by an English man-of-war on the eve of reaching her destination. The passengers, with the ship, were carried prisoners into one of the English islands, where they experienced the usual rigid treatment of prisoners of war in that day. Among them was a young French

man of the name of Fremont, from the neighborhood of Lyons, who was on his way to join an aunt in St. Domingo.

During his protracted captivity, M. Fremont eked out the scanty prison allowance by basket-making—a common resource among the prisoners-in which his superior taste soon enabled him to excel. Some skill in painting, too, procured him occasional employment in decorating ceilings with the frescoes which are common in the dwellings of the wealthier families of the tropics.

After some years' detention, he was finally liberated or escaped (the latter, it is believed), and in his endeavors to find his way homeward, finally arrived at Norfolk, Virginia. Being entirely without resource for the farther prosecution of his homeward voyage, he gave lessons in his native language to the citizens of Norfolk. He was a man of superior accomplishments and high breeding, spoke English fluently, and was a welcome guest in the best society of the city and State. He here became acquainted with, and afterwards married, the future mother of John Charles Fremont, Anne Beverley, one of the daughters of Col. Thomas Whiting, of Gloucester county, an orphan, and one of the most beautiful women of her day in the State of Virginia. This Colonel Whiting's father was the brother of Catharine Whiting, who was a grand aunt of George Washington.* In her commenced the connection by marriage of the Whitings of Virginia with the most illustrious family of this, or perhaps of any country; a connection subsequently drawn still closer by repeated matrimonial alliances.†

*Sparks's Washington, vol. i., 548 ; ib. vol. v., 268; ib. vol. vi., 296.

In a brief sketch of his family descent, which General Washington furnished at the request of Sir Isaac Heard, in 1792, he says:

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