Photos of the family burial ground of Colonel George Gale of Whitehaven, Cumberland, England, and Maryland, USA, taken at Gale's plantation, Tusculum, on the banks of Monie Creek in Somerset County, MD where he was buried in 1712. His tomb, which is no longer standing, bore his coat of arms and was referenced in detail by Brice Neal Stump in an article in the Marylander & Herald, Princess Anne, Maryland dated 9/9/1976. Buried here is Jane Stewart Gale (1771 - 11/16/1797), wife of Robert Gale (?? - 1794) the grandson of Col. George Gale, who was also buried there, but no tombstone was visible.

Colonel George Gale was born in 1670 in Carlisle, England, and baptized 3/10/1672 at St. Bees Parish, St. Bees Priory. St Bees is a village and civil parish in the present day Copeland district of Cumbria, in the North of England, about five miles west by southwest of Whitehaven. He died 8/?/1712 on his Tusculum Plantation on Monie Creek (a stretch of land called Monie Hundred), in Wicomico County (then was Somerset County), Maryland. He was buried on his plantation, which was just west of the town of Princess Anne, Somerset Co, MD on the Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay, and was one of its founders. On his gravestone at Tusculum Plantation, was carved the arms granted to his father, John Gale, of Whitehaven, County Cumberland, in 1712, Argent, "on a fess between three saltires azure, an anchor between two lions' heads erased or". These arms are a variant of those of the Gales of Yorkshire, of which family the Gales of Whitehaven were a cadet branch.

In the book "Side-Lights on Maryland History" by Hester Dorsey Richardson, Vol. 2, page 102: "Among the men of social importance in Somerset County in the latter part of the seventeenth century was Colonel George Gale, of a fine old English family. His first wife was Mildred Warner Washington, widow of Lawrence Washington and grandmother of General and first president of the United States George Washington. George Washington's father, Augustine, in fond remembrance of his beloved step-father, named his son after Col. George Gale.
Sadly, Mildred died in England shortly after arriving there from typhoid. George Gale married, second, Elizabeth Denwood, daughter of Levin Denwood. His will, dated June 6, 1712, recorded in Annapolis Wills, W.B.5, Vol.. 438, leaves to loving wife Betty (Elizabeth Denwood) one-third of all personal estate, she and his brother Matthias, of Great Britain, to be executors. He directs that his children be brought up Protestants; children to have residue of estate when youngest is eighteen years old. The sons of Colonel George Gale became high civil and military officials, and their descendants are numbered among Maryland's best citizens."

From Mayme Severs Whittlesey's letters: You will be interested to know, if you have not already heard, that one of a family of Gales raised near New Castle, England, near the River Tyne. A neighboring family by the name of Washington was raised at Old hall. One of the Washington boys, Lawrence, married Mildred Warner. After having three children, Lawrence died. His widow married George Gale. They had one baby, a daughter but Mildred and the baby died. Our Great-great-great grandfather raised the Washington children. He came to America and remarried. We are descendants of this second marriage. One of these children was Augustine Washington, the father of our first president George Washington. I ofter wonder if he (George) was named after his step-grandfather George Gale.
If you will look at a map of England, you will find Whitehaven, England. Many of our Gales settled there.
It has been reported that the Gales were originally Irish dissenters. George's grandfather, John Gale the Elder (married Elizabeth Ghiver) was born in Ireland, then moved to England during the Irish Rebellion, but John's father and grandfather were born and raised in England. James Gale, the great grandfather of John the Elder, and, also the 3rd great grandfather of Col. George Gale was of English descent who had moved to Ireland for a while then moved back to England during the Irish Rebellion, fleeiing Tralee (the county town of County Kerry, in the southwest corner of Ireland), and after suffering in Newcastle had set up in Whitehaven about 1665 under the more sympathetic wing of John Lowther. In fact George's grandfather, John Gale the Elder (married Elizabeth Ghiver), appears to have lived on land originally occupied by the Wyberghs known as the Old Hall which probably became Christopher Lowther's first residence in Whitehaven. Col. George Gale was (likely the second) son of John Gale II (also referred to as John Gale Jr.), the head of a family of gentry who were at the time Whitehaven's leading tobacco importers. George married twice. He married on 5/16/1700 in Gloucester Co, Virginia to a widow, and American, named Mildred Warner Washington, while on a business trip to Virginia, buying tobacco to ship back to his home town of Whitehaven, a small port town on the coast of Cumbria, England. His first wife, Mildred, was born ?/?/1670 in Gloucester, VA, and died 3/25/1701 in Whitehaven, Cumberland England. She was buried at St. Nicholas Church, Whitehaven, Cumberland, England. She was George Washington's paternal grandmother. She was born at Warner Hall, the family home in Gloucester Co, VA. Her grandfather had been acting governor of Virginia. Her father, Colonel Augustine Warner, Jr. (b.6/3/1642 York Co, VA,d.6/19/1681) was one of the most important men in Virginia. He was a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses and had, also, served as its Speaker of the House. He then served on the Governor's Council from October 1677 until his death. Mildred's sister, Elizabeth Warner, married John Lewis, from whom both Fielding Lewis (who married George Washington's sister Betty), and Meriwether Lewis (the leader of the Lewis and Clark expedition) are descended. From Mildred's mother, Mildred Reade (b.10/2/1643 Gloucester Co, VA), both her and her grandson George Washington can trace their ancestors back to most of the kings of England. With her first husband, Lawrence Washington, she had three children: John, Augustine and Mildred. After the death of Lawrence in 1698, she remarried in 1700 to Col. George Gale, a very successful tobacco merchant of Whitehaven, England. After moving to Whitehaven, England, with her children and new husband, in December of 1700, just before Christmas, the boys were soon enrolled at the prestigious Appleby School. Mildred was about to settle into life as a merchant's wife, it seemed, but an unforseen tradgedy would strike. Possibly, within days of arriving in Whitehaven, Mildred, about 6 1/2 months pregnant, contracted a fatal sickness --a fever, which was probably Typhoid. Living conditions in Whitehaven were bad, with over-crowding as people moved to the busy trade town. In 1702, the population had reached 2,972 – overtaking the likes of Bedford, Northampton, Warwick and Southampton. With the overcrowding and bad hygiene came diseases, especially typhoid fever, which in turn claimed many lives. Mildred died within 3 months of arriving in Whitehaven, and just about 1 1/2 months after giving birth to baby Mildred.

By mid January of 1701 Mildred knew that the fever was serious and could possibly take her life so she made her will before her baby's baptism on 25th Jan 1701. Her Negro servant, Jane, was also baptized on the 7th Jan 1701. Mildred was buried on the 30th of January 1701, her maid, Jane, on the 20th of February, and little baby Mildred on the 26th of May. It seems strange that her baby was named Mildred as she already had a daughter by that name from her first marriage. Mildred's will put George in charge of the care of the Washington children. George obtained a place at Appleby Grammar School in County Westmorland, England for John and Augustine. Augustine was later to send his own sons from his first marriage to the same school so he must have approved of its educational abilities. After her death Mildred's will was contested by John Washington, Lawrence's cousin, and executor of her first husband's estate who failed but won on appeal (no doubt aided by the fact that his family were better connected than the 'foreigner'). The children were handed over to John in 1704 to provide for their care. It's interesting to think about what would have happened had not Mildred's will been contested and Augustine Washington, the father of President George Washington, had been brought up a Whitehaven merchant's son.

It's disputed whether or not Mildred and George ever lived at 151 Queen Street, Whitehaven, England, the famous house of George's brother William, which is still in existance today in all of its regalia. It's believed Mildred's family stayed in a house somewhere round the market place. The house at Queen Street belonged to her brother-in-law so she probably did not live there. The square on the front of 151 Queen Street is named Washington Square and its eye-catching mural is another evidence of Whitehaven's maritime past.

The Gales were originally of Welsh descent: The Norman Conquest of England was in 1066, and within 200 years later the merging of Norman and British cultures may have been pretty well completed in general common life, where as the Welsh did not merge as the English did, and had much reason to still hate the merged Norman/English kingdom of England when King Edward I "Longshanks", in 1282 put an end to the royal dynasty of Wales in the defeat of their beloved king Llywelyn II. Longshanks sent the head of Llywelyn II to London. In London, it was set up in the city pillory for a day, and crowned with ivy {i.e. to show he was a "king" of Outlaws} and in mockery of the ancient Welsh prophecy, which said that a Welshman would be crowned in London as king of the whole of Britain. Then the head was carried by a horseman on the point of his lance to the Tower of London and set up over the gate. It was still on the Tower of London 15 years later. Longshanks took much pleasure in appropriating the royal home and lands of the Gwynedd dynasty. Commenting on this a contemporary chronicler is said to have declared "and then all Wales was cast to the ground." Longshanks was the same king that had William Wallace drawn and quartered, and beheaded, in 1305. Events like these can create the harshest of animosities among peoples, so, for many years the Welsh probably didn't want to mingle with the rest of Britain, and when they did venture into the heart of Britain they were called Galles or Gales by the Anglo/Norman population, meaning "foreign Galles". There were also landed gentry in England named Gale before the Norman Conquest, and had, like most of the English gentry lands confiscated from them. Due to this the Gale name, in England, sort of dissapeared for a few hundred years, then started a comeback in England.

The present day Welsh call their country "Cymru", and the French call it Pays de Galles (Country of Wales).

Although Celtic-speaking peoples were living in Britain before the arrival of the invaders from Friesland and Jutland whose languages would eventually developed into English, it was the Celts and not the invaders who came to be called "strangers" in English. Our words for the descendants of one of the Celtish peoples, Welsh, and for their homeland, Wales, come from the Old English word wealh, meaning "foreigner, stranger, Celt." Its plural wealas is the direct ancestor of Wales, literally "foreigners." The Old English adjective derived from wealh, wælisc or welisc, is the source of our Welsh. The Germanic form for the root from which wealh descended was *walh-, "foreign." We also have attested once in Old English the compound walhhnutu in a document from around 1050; its next recording appears in 1358 as walnottes. This eventually became walnut in Modern English, which is thus literally the "foreign nut." The nut was "foreign" because it was native to Roman Gaul and Italy.

An introspection on how George Gale met Mildred Warner: Col. Gale knew the Warners years before Mildred married her first husband, Lawrence Washington. Before marrying Lawrence Washington, at the age of 18 or 19 years, Mildred Warner lived at the family home, Warner Hall, about 3 miles south by southeast of the present day Gloucester town in Gloucester County, Virginia, where she was born and raised. The estate at Warner Hall comprised a little over 33000 acres, and was a huge tobacco plantation. Her grandfather and father both had farmed tobacco and were major tobacco exporters. Farming tobacco was about the only way a farmer could become wealthy back then; it was a very lucrative business in the colonial period. They had probably sold tobacco to the Gale family of Whitehaven, England for over fifty years by the time Mildred was born. The Virginia colony had been shipping to England a very popular high quality strain of tobacco, that had origins in Bermuda, since the early 1600's, and very much in vogue in England in George and Mildred's day. Col. George Gale may have traveled to Virginia on occasion as a young lad with his father to learn how to inspect and buy quality tobacco, meeting the same age Mildred Warner, as the Gale's were many times guests at Warner Hall when they came to Virginia on their business ventures, buying huge quantities of tobacco from the Warners. Also, Mildred's father, Augustine Warner (b.1642 - d.1681) attended the very esteemed Merchant Taylor's School in London at the same time as did Col. George Gale's father, John Gale (b.1641 - d.1716). Col. Gale, himself, went to the school about 1686 at the same time when the same age George Warner (Mildred's oldest brother) attended there. Also, records show a family of Washingtons living in Whitehaven, England from 1692 to 1766, and particularly a Lawrence Washington that got married there in 1731; also, Mildred Warner had visited the town on occasion visiting her husband's, Lawrence Washington's relatives.

George Gale remarried to Elizabeth Denwood at Whitehaven, Cumbria, England on 3/26/1701. Elizabeth was born on 5/7/1674 at Great Monie Creek, Somerset Co, MD, and died on ?/?/1736 in Calvert Co, MD (burial site uknown). She was the daughter of Levin Denwood (b. Abt 1648 Accomack Co, VA, d.4/21/1726 Somerset County, MD) and Priscilla Waters (b. between 1645 and 1648 MD, d.?/?/1726 MD). George and Elizabeth later moved to America and founded a small settlement in Kent Co, MD, and called it Whitehaven (now in Wicomico County), and built their Tusculum Plantation on Monie Creek at Whitehaven, and raised five known children. The sons of Colonel George Gale became high civil and military officials, and their descendants are numbered among Maryland's best citizens.

George Gale and his younger brother Mathias were the family's sea-going members while they resided in England, and travelled between the US and England in the course of their tobacco importing business many times.

George had lived in Still Pond, Kent Co, MD in his latter years. Still Pond is about 80 miles north of his Tusculum Plantation on Monie Creek in Somerset Co, MD. It seems that George's children, and nephews and nieces had migrated to that part of northern Maryland. One of his grandsons, Rasin Gale (my 5th great grandfather), within 5 miles south of Still Pond, had a plantation called Warton Manner.

Children of Col. George Gale and Elizabeth Denwood: five known

1. Levin (or Levyn) Gale was born ?/?/1706 Tusculum Plantation on Monie Creek, Somerset Co, MD, died 1743 Somerset Co, MD. He married Leah Littleton.

2. George Gale was born ?/?/1708 Tusculum Plantation on Monie Creek, Somerset Co, MD, died 1772. He married Elizabeth Wilson.

3. John Gayle was born ?/?/1710 in Tusculum Plantation on Monie Creek, Somerset Co, MD. John added a "Y" in his name. He married Milcah Hill (b.Abt 1712, d.1765, daughter of Henry Hill and Mary Denwood), married Abt 1732.

Children of John Gale (Gayle) and Milcah Hill: six known
1. Ann Gale was born ?/?/?. She married Capt John Handy.
2. George Gale was born ?/?/1731, died ?/?/1765. He married Elizabeth Airey, daughter of Rev. Thomas Airey and Elizabeth Pitt.

Children of George Gale and Elizabeth Airey: four known
1. Dr. George Gale was born 5/9/1756 Somerset Co, MD
2. General John Gale was born 9/25/1753 Somerset Co, MD, died 1/25/1813 Somerset Co, MD. Please see his site: grave memorial #77700814.
3. Milcah Gale was born 6/20/1751 Somerset Co, MD
4. Mary Gale was born 4/14/1759 Somerset Co, MD

Children of John Gale (Gayle) and Milcah Hill: six known, cont'd

3. Mary Gale was born ?/?/1734, died ?/?/1790. She married on ?/?/1765 to Samuel Wilson.
4. Elizabeth "Betty" Gale was born ?/?/1737. She married _______ Hyland.
5. Henry Gale was born ?/?/1740, died 1803
6. Levin Gale was born 1743. He married Ann _______.

Children of Col. George Gale and Elizabeth Denwood: five known, cont'd

4. Captain Mathias Gale (also spelled Matthias) was born ?/?/1711 Tusculum Plantation on Monie Creek, Somerset Co, MD, died 11/30/1748. He married Margaret Gordon (b. Abt 1712 Somerset Co, MD)

5. Priscilla Gale

Children of Captain Mathias Gale and Margaret Gordon: three known

1. Matthew Gale was born Abt 1735 VA
2. Levin Gale was born ?/?/1737 Accomac, Accomack Co (formerly Accomac Shire), VA. He married widow Leah Custus Littleton
3. Leah Gale b. ABT 1756

Children Levin Gale and Leah Custus Littleton : three known, order not known

1. Levin Gale
2. Margaret Gale
3. George Gale was born 6/3/1756 Someset Co, MD., died 1/2/1815 "Brookland", Cecil Co, MD, buried at St. Mark's Episcopal Church Cemetery, Perryville, Cecil Co, Md.) This cemetery originally was George's estate's family cemetery. He married on 10?/1781 to Anna Maria Hollyday (b.12/9/1756) George was member of the Maryland state house of delegates in 1784. He was a Maryland State senator from 1784 to 1790. From 1785-86 he was a state court judge in Maryland. He was a member of the Maryland convention which ratified the Federal Constitution in 1788. He was a elected as a Pro-Administration candidate for the fifth congressional district of Maryland in the First Congress of the U.S. from March 4, 1789 to March 3, 1791. George Gale, also serversd as the collector of Internal Revenue for the state of Maryland. On March 4, 1791 George Washington appointed him supervisor of distilled liquors for the district of Maryland. In 1795, he was commissioned to purchase that part of Whetstone Point in Baltimore, on which Fort McHenry is built. In a letter to Robert Purviance, the Collector of the Port of Baltimore, Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury in President Washington's Cabinet, writes on March 2, 1795: "I have therefore to request that you will consider Mr. Gale as the person who is now authorized on the part of the United States to purchase the land in question." The fort was then in the course of construction. In 1799 and George Gale bought Perry Point (1800 acres) on October 11 1800 from Littleton Gale, and sold it on October 13, 1800 to John Stump. He was an Episcopalian. In World War II the United States liberty ship SS George Gale was named in his honor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:George_Gale.jpg

http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=G000012

Children of George Gale and Anna Maria Hollyday: seven known

1. Levin Gale was born 4/24/1784 Elkton, Cecil Co, MD. He studied law, and was admitted to the bar and practiced in Elkton. He was member of the Maryland State Senate in 1816, and was elected from the sixth district of Maryland as a Jacksonian candidate to the Twentieth Congress, and served from March 4, 1827, to March 3, 1829. He declined to be a candidate for renomination in 1828, and resumed the practice of law.
2. Henrietta Maria Gale. she married Henry Chamberlaine (b.10/?/1787)
3. Anna Maria Gale
4. George Gale
5. Leah Gale
6. Sally Hollyday GALE
7. Georgianna E. Gale was born 2/9/1803

Whitehaven-Virginia's Tobacco Trade In an early reference Sir John Lowther's agent describes "three Whitehaven ships loading" tobacco in Virginia in 1683. By 1697 reports spoke of 18 ships bound for Virginia. By 1725 the tally was 28. In 1742 customs officers at Whitehaven (A post later held by William Wordsworth's uncle Richard) spoke of "no less than 50 sail of ships employed to Virginia and Maryland for this year's importation of tobacco.'' The tough collier ships built to carry coal to Dublin were tough enough for the demanding trans-Atlantic voyages as the value of tobacco made the voyages worth the risks. The ships carried outward bound textiles and plantation shoes and leather goods. Also pots and pans and all the necessary goods to help supply the early US colonies. Average Atlantic crossing times were around 10 weeks. Vessels were typically 190 tonners. To help feed the crews the top decks often featured hens, pigs and geese. The tobacco bought out in the new colonies were shipped home in standard hogheads. In a bizarre aspect of Whitehaven's thriving tobacco trade were the Bransty "pipes" chimneys on the cliff tops from which seized contraband tobacco was burned. For more detail please see "Whitehaven and the Tobacco Trade' by N. Eaglesham.

In the great dining hall of Queen's College, Oxford, there hangs by the side of the great fireplace, a fine portrait in oils attributed to the distinguished portrait painter Sir Godfrey Kneller, It shows the fine figure of a man, handsome in his full bottomed wig, and distinguished looking in the elegant costume of the period. This man was an Egremothian (from Egremont, Cumbria, England) of some distinction (a minor English poet). His name was Thomas Tickell: Oxford Professor, Public Servant, Poet and Man of Letters, known generally as Tickell the Poet, to distinguish him from other Thomas Tickells in the family. His father, Rev. Richard Tickell, rector of Egremont 1673-1692, was the son of the steward of the Lowther estates, responsible for running the Whitehaven Collieries. His mother was Margaret Gale, daughter of the other Lowther estates steward, John Gale (1641-1716)(Col. George Gales' father), who was a successful and prosperous merchant and ship-owner trading between Whitehaven and America. Thomas Tickell, the poet, was only 6 years old when his father, the rector of Egremont died. The widowed mother and her children moved to Whitehaven to be among her Gale relations. At this time one of her brothers, George Gale (1680-1712), was actively engaged in the tobacco trade between Whitehaven and Virginia. In America, George Gale married the young widow Mildred Warner Washington. She, and her Washington children, came over to Whitehaven with George Gale. One of these children, then aged 6, was Augustine Washington who was to grow up to be the father of George Washington, the first President of the UnitedStates. The future father of George Washington was, for a time, a childhood playmate in Whitehaven of Thomas Tickellof Egremont, the poet.

A note on the slave servant of Mildred Warner Washington: Amateur researcher Jean McInally, who hails from Kells but now lives in Scotland, has spotted the unique nature of the slave burial in English history. She said: "I have been asked why I think the burial of Mildred Gale, her baby daughter and her African slave in St Nicholas's Churchyard, Whitehaven, is so important. "It was very important as in 1665 New Amsterdam was taken by the British from the Dutch and renamed New York. The British then brought in very harsh laws against the African slave population. "America was, at this time and at the time of Mildred Gale's burial, a colony of Britain. Mrs McInally said: "From all accounts passed down to me, Mildred Gale had this slave girl educated and had her dressed as well as herself. They were great friends. "Mildred Gale was 300 years ahead of her time – as was Whitehaven regarding this burial. Cumbria was more advanced than the rest of the country by about 100 years! "William Wilberforce, the son of a wealthy Hull merchant born 1759, became an MP at age 20, and fought for over 50 years to stop the slave trade. Before he died in 1833 he knew his bill was going through Parliament and it was passed just after he died, The Abolition of the Slave Trade. He had friends in Cumbria. "American gave them their freedom in 1863. A civil war was fought over it and it was the 1960s, 1970s, before the colour bar started to fall. "Mildred Gale's short life was certainly amazing. America would be a wild place as she was growing up in the 1670s. Pirates raiding the coastal settlements. Britain, France and Spain all fighting over the sugar, tobacco and rum trade. American Indians fighting to keep their land and way of life and the terrible slave ships and auctions. "Her burial is exactly opposite the fish restaurant on Duke Street, the tall dark headstone about 5ft high, about 10ft from the back wall, looked on to Duke Street, with just enough room for the burial in front. Whitehaven proclaimed it to all the world on the headstone. It read: d 1700, Mildred Gale nee Warner of Warner Hall Virginia, wife of George Gale merchant of Whitehaven, Here also lie with her, her baby daughter and her African slave Jane."

More info may be found at Google Books: "Side-Lights on Maryland History" by Hester Dorsey Richardson, 1903, p.102, 103,310-312,465.