Northampton, and especially All Saints' Church, is of peculiar interest to those from the United States of America. The connection between the early settlers of Virginia and New England, and the one time mayor of Northampton is now well established. Lawrence Washington, born c. 1500, was mayor of Northampton in 1532 and 1545, and is a direct ascendent of the Washingtons of Virgina. He resided at Sulgrave Manor in Northamptonshire.
It is also a little known fact that the mother of President George Washington was Mary Ball, a descendant of a family most prominent in the life of All Saints' Church in Elizabethan and early Stuart days. The incumbent of All Saints' in the early part of the 17th century was Thomas Ball, and several Ball families were prominent parishioners. From one of these, the mother of George Washington was descended. There are many entries in the registers of All Saints' relating to the family of a certain Daniel Washington in the reigns of James I and Charles I, but his exact relationship to the head of the family has never been quite clear.
As to the New England pioneers, Thomas Dudley, deputy to John Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts and afterwards his successor in that office, was once a parishioner of All Saints', his wife being the daughter of Edmund Yorke of Northampton. He was the son of Captain Roger Dudley (who served under King Henry of Navarre, and was killed at the battle of Ivry) and is supposed to have been born in or near Northampton.
Besides the Washingtons and the Dudleys, the names of many families of early Virginia and New England appear in the registers of All Saints'. Indeed, one of the early counties of Virginia was named Northampton, and that one of the early towns of Massachusetts received a similar designation.
On April 30, 1789, George Washington, standing on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York, took his oath of office as the first President of the United States. "As the first of every thing, in our situation will serve to establish a Precedent," he wrote James Madison, "it is devoutly wished on my part, that these precedents may be fixed on true principles."