He had never consiered himself cut from the same fabric as the rest of the prominent landowners, and had gone to some pains to distinguish himself from their upright and uptight behavior. Abraham Woodhull was proud of being the black sheep of his straitlaced family, and he assumed the burden of familial duty with reluctance; it smacked of Old World thinking. If he was to reject King George's authority on the basis that the monarch had simply been born into his position, why could he not also reject his own family's expectations for him to pick up the mantle of Woodhull respectability simply because he was the sole surviving son-of-a-son-of-a-son-of-a-son?
(from George Washington's Secret Six, by Brian Kilmeade)
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