* Sally Coles Stevenson's letters from England have been recently published in the "Century Magazine." She was the sister of Edward Coles, Secretary of President Madison and second Governor of Illinois.
Isaac Winston's son William had wild blood in his veins, and was a great hunter and beloved by the Indians in their western wilds, where he had a hunting lodge. The elder Wirt pronounced him an orator scarcely inferior to his nephew, Patrick Henry, who was said to have inherited his rare gift of eloquence from his Quaker ancestors. An old letter[6] from Albemarle county claims that it was to him more than to Washington that the credit of saving the day at the time of Braddock's defeat was due. The troops had refused to move farther, and Washington's remonstrances availed not, until William Winston sprang to the front and addressed them with such stirring eloquence that each one threw up his hand and demanded to be led forward. Judge Edmund Winston, son of William Winston, read and practiced law with his cousin Patrick Henry, and the firm of Henry and Winston carried all before it. Patrick Henry died in 1799, and Judge Winston married his widow, "Dolly Dandridge," and died in 1813 in the "fifth score year of his age."
"Dolly Dandridge" died in 1831. "Cousin Dolly" she always was to her namesake, Dolly Madison.
Colonel William Byrd.
Colonel William Byrd of Westover, a polished gentleman and wit (but, alas! also a "spendthrift and gambler"), in his "Progress to the Mines" called on Sarah Syme,[7] then a widow, formerly "Sarah Winston, of a good old family." "This lady, suspecting I was some lover, put on a gravity which becomes a weed, but as soon as she learned who I was brightened up into an unusual cheerfulness and serenity. She was a portly, handsome dame, of a lively, cheerful conversation, with much less reserve than most of her countrywomen. It became her very well, and set off her other agreeable qualities to advantage." "The courteous widow invited me to rest myself there that good day, and go to church with her, but I excused myself by telling her she would certainly spoil my devotions. Then she civilly entreated me to make her house my home whenever I visited my plantations, which made me bow low and thank her very kindly. She possessed a mild and benevolent disposition, undeviating probity, correct understanding and easy elocution." For his supper Colonel Byrd writes that he was served with a "broiled chicken" and a "bottle of honest port," and no doubt he came again!
Sarah Winston afterward married John Henry,[8] a man of Scotch ancestry and sterling worth, who for some time represented his county of Hanover in the House of Burgesses, where later the three brothers, John Syme, and William and Patrick Henry, sat year after year.
The name of one more member of this family will occur in later pages:—William Campbell Preston, M.C. from South Carolina, the opponent of John C. Calhoun in "nullification days" (1832).
Other branches of the family furnished men of great ability, congressmen, senators, governors, warriors. To-day the United States Senate mourns the vacant seat of that "grand old man" Edmund Winston Pettus,[9] who died recently in his eighty-seventh year, the oldest man in public life in the United States, and Alabama loved him as a father.
The daughters of the family, too, inherited the ready flow of language, the quick wit and pleasing address characteristic of the family, and which, added to good looks, made them much sought in marriage. In after years these same qualities made them worthy helpmates in smoothing out the social tangles of official life.