HALL OF FAME MEN. IO5 



Unlike those we have just been considering, Lee was descended 

 from a line of prominent ancestors. 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 



George Washington was born February 22, 1732. He was 

 the son of Augustine Washington, born in 1694; son of Laurence, 

 born 1661; son of Colonel John, born in 1627. Washington thus 

 comes in class C and his two immediate ancestors in class E. The 

 mother of Washington, Mary Ball, was born in 1706, and was 

 the daughter of Col. Joseph Ball, who was the son of Colonel 

 William Ball. The date of Joseph Ball's birth is not given, but 

 we find that he went to England to look after his father's estate 

 there thirty-six years before his daughter was born, so he could 

 not have been very young when that event transpired. It is a 

 question how young a person would be sent across the Atlantic 

 on such a mission in the seventeenth century, but if he were fifteen 

 at that time, Mary would come in sub-class A 2 , where she has 

 been placed on an estimate. Neither is the birth of Colonel William 

 Ball given, but we find that he was married in 1638, so there must 

 have been over ninety years between his birth and the birth of 

 his granddaughter. Joseph Ball is therefore placed in class B 

 as an estimate. There is a record of the Balls running back 

 eight generations which gives the dates when the different persons 

 lived, but does not give the dates of their births. Taking the 

 difference between the estimated date of birth of the first Ball 

 and the date of Mary's birth, and dividing by eight, we find that 

 the average period between births for this family is about forty 

 years. This is an unusual length of time for a series of genera- 

 tions, and tested by our standard would indicate that only one 

 person in more than 168,000 would be born that length of time 



