e of the old and prominent residents of the city.

William Costin's mother, Ann Dandridge, was the daughter of a
half-breed (Indian and Colored), her grandfather being a Cherokee
chief, and her reputed father was the father of Martha Dandridge,
afterward Mrs. Custis, who, in 1759, was married to General
Washington. These daughters, Ann and Martha, grew up together on the
ancestral plantations. William Costin's reputed father was white, and
belonged to a prominent family in Virginia, but the mother, after his
birth, married one of the Mount Vernon slaves by the name of Costin,
and the son took the name of William Costin. His mother, being of
Indian descent made him, under the laws of Virginia, a free-born man.
In 1800 he married Philadelphia Judge (his cousin), one of Martha
Washington's slaves, at Mount Vernon, where both were born in 1780.
The wife was given by Martha Washington at her decease to her
granddaughter, Eliza Parke Custis, who was the wife of Thomas Law, of
Washington. Soon after William Costin and his wife came to Washington,
the wife's freedom was secured on kind and easy terms, and the
children were all born free. This is the account which William Costin
and his wife and his mother, Ann Dandridge, always gave of their
ancestry, and they were persons of great precision in all matters of
family history, as well as of the most marked scrupulousness in their
statements. Their seven children, five daughters and two sons, went to
school with the white children on Capitol Hill, to Mrs. Maria Haley
and other teachers. The two younger daughters, Martha and Frances,
finished their education at the Colored convent in Baltimore. Louisa
Parke and Ann had passed their school days before the convent was
founded. Louisa Parke Costin opened her school at nineteen years of
age, continuing it with much success till her sudden death in 1831,
the year in which her mother also died. When Martha returned from the
convent seminary, a year or so later, she reopened the school,
continuing it till about 1839. This school, which was maintained some
fifteen years, was always very full. The three surviving sister own
and reside in the house which their father built about 1812. One of
these sisters married Richard Henry Fisk, a Colored man of good
education, who died in California, and she now has charge of the
Senate ladies' reception-room. Ann Costin was for several years in the
family of Major Lewis (at Woodlawn, Mount Vernon), the