Rachel Hayes

My father, John Walker, after his freedom from apprenticeship, went up the country as an adventurer, settled on the south branch of the Potomac in Hampshire County, Virginia. Being a new country and game plenty, he became a hunter of the first order, famous in that profession, in which he practiced nearly to the end of his life. He was with General Washington in Braddock's Army in the year. Previous to that time he married my mother, Elizabeth Watson, of a good family from Ireland, by whom he had seven sons, daughter. I was the eldest, born nineteenth day of July 1753. The names of his sons after my own, were John, James, Thomas, Joseph, George and Jacob. I like to have forgotten William who was the eighth son, although the fourth in succession, and only now living