1799, May 22nd: Anne Roane, the wife of Spencer Roane, died Wednesday, about 3 o’clock in the afternoon. She was at Montville, the home of her younger sister Elizabeth, “Betsy,” and her husband Philip Aylett, in King William County. The sisters were very close. (via Judge Spencer Roane – some descendant details – Roane – Family History & Genealogy Message Board – Ancestry.com.)

Philip and Betsy had a son born here, Gen. Philip Aylett, who named his own son after “Grandpa” Patrick Henry. That son – Spencer Roane’s great nephew and Patrick Henry’s great-grandson – Patrick Henry Aylett died in the great Capitol Disaster of 1870, the great metaphor of the Civil War itself, as the symbol of Patrick Henry’s Commonwealth came crashing down in deadly ruins.

Now we drive by the Aylett place frequently – it is on Highway 360, the main Tappahannock-Richmond road, just west of the village called Aylett after the first Philip Aylett. The current house is a mid-twentieth century reproduction of an 1805 house on the site, which had to be burned due to “bat infestation” in 1908. But the original house – the one Anne would have died in – hosted the traveling George Washington on the trip during which he met Martha, the widow Custis, at the nearby “White House” on the Pamunkey just a few miles distant.  (source: http://www.archive.org/stream/oldkingwilliamh00clargoog/oldkingwilliamh00clargoog_djvu.txt: Old King William Homes and Families: An Account of Some of the Old Homesteads and Families of King William County, Virginia., from its Earliest Settlement; by Peyton Neale Clark, Louisville, Morton & Co., 1897)