Person:John Baynton (1)

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I am now however to speak of my mothers [paternal] Grandfather and have heard that he was for some years a very prosperous merchant but in an evil hour he was induced to purchase goods and send them to the Indian tribes, then quite near the Atlantic coast. True he acted as a Government Agent, and had their bonds for the payments of the expenses he incurred, but the breaking out of the Revolutionary war threw the country into such confusion that it was impossible to settle anything and Mr. Baynton looking at his wife and 13 children suffered his "sorrows of the world" to over-come him and he died at the age of 48.He was a man of a mild and pacific disposition unequal to struggle with adverse circumstances. By struggling he might have overcome them, for I have been told by lawyers of my day that a considerable part of the State of Virginia was bound for the debt and that the cause was lost in Congress by only one dissenting vote. The tract of land now covered with towns and villages making the sum to be returned too great. Reminiscences of Mary Hazlehurst Ashhurst (1806-1890)