It was during the French War, and while he was serving as a petty officer in an armed packet plying between Falmouth and New York, that he met Sarah Sanders, a beautiful girl, the only daughter of John and Anna Sanders, who had the distinction of being the granddaughter of an English curate.  The youthful pair were married in 1761, and two years after embarked for New York, where they landed July 18, 1763.  Upon settling in New York William Irving quit the sea and took to trade, in which he was successful until his business was broken up by the Revolutionary War.  In this contest he was a stanch Whig, and suffered for his opinions at the hands of the British occupants of the city, and both he and his wife did much to alleviate the misery of the American prisoners.  In this charitable ministry his wife, who possessed a rarely generous and sympathetic nature, was especially zealous, supplying the prisoners with food from her own table, visiting those who were ill, and furnishing them with clothing and other necessaries.

Washington was born in a house on William Street, about half-way between Fulton and John; the following year the family moved across the way into one of the quaint structures of the time, its gable end with attic window towards the street; the fashion of which, and very likely the bricks, came from Holland.  In this homestead the lad grew up, and it was not pulled down till 1849, ten years before his death.  The patriot army occupied the city.  “Washington’s work is ended,” said the mother, “and the child shall be named after him.”  When the first President was again in New York, the first seat of the new government, a Scotch maid-servant of the family, catching the popular enthusiasm, one day followed the hero into a shop and presented the lad to him.  “Please, your honor,” said Lizzie, all aglow, “here’s a bairn was named after you.”  And the grave Virginian placed his hand on the boy’s head and gave him his blessing.  The touch could not have been more efficacious, though it might have lingered longer, if he had known he was propitiating his future biographer.

New York at the time of our author’s birth was a rural city of about twenty-three thousand inhabitants, clustered about the Battery.  It did not extend northward to the site of the present City Hall Park; and beyond, then and for several years afterwards, were only country residences, orchards, and corn-fields.  The city was half burned down during the war, and had emerged from it in a dilapidated condition.  There was still a marked separation between the Dutch and the English residents, though the Irvings seem to have been on terms of intimacy with the best of both nationalities.  The habits of living were primitive; the manners were agreeably free; conviviality at the table was the fashion, and strong expletives had not gone out of use in conversation.  Society was the reverse of intellectual:  the aristocracy were the merchants and traders; what literary culture