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: