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GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 02368 3599
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SETTLERS WILL FIND IN ALBEMARLE
GOOD SCHOOLS, CHURCHES, SETTLED SOCIETY; GOOD MARKETS AND EASY TRANSPORTATION ; PLENTY OF WATER ; A SOIL THAT YIELDS ABUNDANT CROPS IF PROPERLY TREATED;
AND
A HEARTY WELCOME.
Albemarle untu
(VIRGINIA.)
A HAND BOOK
GIVING
A Description of its Topography, Climate, Geology, Minerals, Fruits, Plants, History, Educational, Agricultural and Manufacturing Advantages,
AND
INDUCEMENTS THE COUNTY OFFERS THE INDUSTRIOUS AND INTELLIGENT FARMER AND MANUFACTURER.
EDITED BY W. H. SEAMON, CROZET, VA. Professor of Analytical Chemistry, School of Mines, University of Missouri; Late Instructor in Chemistry and Natural History Miller Manual Labor School.
PUBLISHED BY WM. H. PROUT, CHARLOTTESVILLE.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. : JEFFERSONIAN BOOK AND JOB PRINTING HOUSE, 1888.
County Government.
County Seat, CHARLOTTESVILLE.
JUDGE OF THE COUNTY COURT, JOHN M. WHITE.
BOARD OF SUPERVISORS, LOUIS T. HANCKEL, Chairman. HENRY M. MAGRUDER.
.
W. H. HARRIS.
C. H. PARROTT, R. J. LECKIE, N. C. McGEHEE.
SHERIFF, LUCIAN C. WATTS.
COUNTY TREASURER, A. J. FARISH.
COMMONWEALTH'S ATTORNEY, MICAJAH WOODS.
COUNTY CLERK, J. SNOWDEN WOOD.
CLERK CIRCUIT COURT, R. W. DUKE.
SUPERINTENDENT OF FREE SCHOOLS, D. P. POWERS.
1202804
Introduction.
N RESPONSE to the invitation of the authorities of the Virginia Agricultural, Mechanical and Tobacco Exposi- tion, the Board of Supervisors of this County appro- priated a sum of money for the purpose of making a creditable display of the county's resources at the Exposition, and aps pointed W. H. SEAMON, of the Miller Manual Labor School, commissioner, with full power to collect and arrange the ex- hibit, and to publish a pamphlet descriptive of the resources of the county.
Acting under this authority, we respectfully offer this book to the intelligent public as an accurate, though incomplete, account of the many advantages and inducements, both nat- ural and social, offered by the county to the man of moderate means, as well as to the wealthy, for securing a comfortable home in a prosperous and enterprising community. The ma- terials for this have been collected and prepared under many difficulties, of which the chief, perhaps, has been a lack of time, in consequence whereof several articles have necessarily been omitted.
We take this opportunity of expressing our obligations to the following, who have with many others aided and encour- aged our labors in various ways-Hon. John M. White, H. M. Magruder, Esq., Mrs. E. C. Harrison, L. T. Hanckel, Esq., Prof. Wm. M. Thornton, Capt. C. E. Vawter, J. W. Porter, Esq., Hon. John E. Massey, Prof. F. W. Massey, Rev. Wm. Din- widdie, George W. Clarke, Esq., John S. Patton, Esq., D. H. Harmon, Jr., Esq., and D. P. Powers, Esq.
To Mr. Wm. H. Prout, the community owes much. For without his enterprise and liberal public spirit it is doubtful if this pamphlet would ever have been published.
THE EDITOR.
nnen/lh - .
Fourteen Reasons.
A FEW reasons why Albemarle County, Va., should be the choice of the immigrant.
First. Its unequalled climate, neither too warm nor too cold. Further South ice cannot be gathered for use during warm weather: further North the feeding season is too long. Southern suns are too hot for the greatest diversity of crops; Northern, too cold.
Second. It is a section with a minimum of fatal diseases. It is a well-known fact that English Life Insurance Companies require no additional premium from their patrons on their re -· moval to this locality.
Third. It is central, near the sea coast with great and in- creasing facilities for transportation, North and South.
Fourth. Lands are cheap.
Fifth. It is a section with the greatest capabilities of self- support, having minerals, timber, materials for fabrics and with unexcelled water power for factories.
Sixth. It has great diversity of soils, thus allowing the far- mer to engage in almost any branch of agriculture.
Seventh. Its soil is deep and susceptible of a high state of cultivation answering quickly to manures.
Eighth. It is well watered with natural springs.
Ninth. It has a variety of valuable mineral waters.
Tenth. It is well timbered. There are but few farms which do not produce sufficient timber to supply fires, fences and buildings.
Eleventh. Public schools in every community protected by the Constitution of the State.
Twelfth. Its advanced schools and University are of such a degree of excellence as to be patronized by all parts of the country.
Thirteenth. The Miller Manual-Labor School maintains and educates the orphaned children of citizens of the county.
Fourteenth. Its taxes are less than one per cent. per annum. W. Gordon Merrick,
Historic Albemarle.
HERE has never been a serious attempt to write the history of Albemarle; the notices scattered through biographies, gazetteers, &c., are but broken lights of our county history ; yet none of the Piedmont counties has so luminous a history ; and that of the tidewater counties sur- passes it only in the particular that theirs opens at an earlier date and with a more stirring prologue. There was less war- less of the sudden surprise and stealthy ambush so usual at Jamestown-but a more general interest in the affairs of the country, a more enlightened statesmanship, and a better politi- cal philosophy.
The first act of our great historic drama had closed at Jamestown, and the scene had shifted westward toward the mountains, leaving its stage in ruins by the James ; that per- severing essence of history, the development which is usually called the growth of civilization, was gradually bearing the people forward to the point at which they would become weaned from the mother country ; in the mountains an apos- tle of liberty had been born in 1743, in time for his intellect to mature before the mother country should lose the touch of nature which made the parent kingdom and the infant colony kin ; when, in 1744, for reasons of church as well as of state, the county of Goochland* was dismembered by an arbitrary line drawn from the fork of the James to the Louisa county line on the one hand, and from the same point "direct to Brook's Mill," thence to Appomattox river on the other. All of the old county of Goochland situated north of this line was named Albemarle after the titular governor of the colony of Virginia, William Anne Keppel, Earl of Albemarle. He never resided here, though it would have suited him well to
*Goochland had been formed from Henrico.
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ALBEMARLE COUNTY.
do so if Horace Walpole may be credited :- " It was conve- nient," wrote Walpole, " for him to be anywhere but in Eng- land. His debts were excessive, though ambassador, groom of the stole,* governor of Virginia and colonel of a regi- ment of guards."
The Albemarle of 1744 embraced all of what is now known as Albemarle, Buckingham, Amherst, Fluvanna, Nelson, and a part of Appomattox. "In 1769," writes Mr. Jefferson in his brief autobiography,“ I became a member of the Legisla- ture by the choice of the county in which I live." The Albe- marle which the young Virginian represented had been con- tracted until it was co-extensive with the county of Albemarle as now defined, and the present county of Fluvanna.
While Virginia then was as unlike the Virginia of to-day as can be imagined, still the growing settlements toward the Blue Ridge were invaded by the arts of peace which came from the eastern part of the colony. Occasionally a copy of the first Virginia paper crept into the scattered community. It was a dingy sheet ; its small space was filled with the advertisements of the Williamsburg tradespeople and a queer mixture of personal and foreign news; and yet it was the link that bound them to the metropolis; it suggested gay scenes in the Appollo at the Raleigh, and was treasured a great deal more than the ingenious flotsam and jetsam now known as the daily paper.
In the first half century of its existence, Albemarle county, if the voice of history is the voice of truth, was chiefly en- gaged in the production of patriots. Lord Dunmore's re- moval of the deposits of gunpowder from the magazine at Williamsburg to the English sloop Madeline, produced no more excitement anywhere than here. Dr. George Gilmer's oratory aroused his countymen. A company of 119 volun- teers was soon organized of which he took command. It marched to Williamsburg to tender its service to the Colonial Committee of Safety, reaching Walker's Grove (Williamsburg) July 11, 1775. Lieut. Gilmer was the grandfather of the late
*First Lord of the Bedchamber in the household of the King of England.
.
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ALBEMARLE COUNTY.
Governor Thomas Walker Gilmer, and was the first of 208 to sign a document (now the property of the Virginia Historical Society) renouncing " allegiance to George the Third, King of Great Britain, his heirs and successors." Thus the annals of the revolution and of the trying days of disorganization im- mediately succeeding, are pregnant with meaning. It was not a time when the' dreams of the Sans-Culotte could be popular, nor were the spirits of that heroic period such as would embrace his philosophy of disorganization and annihi- lation. "It was a very great race and faced peril without shrinking, down to the very boys and girls; and what the long years of the future will remember is this heroic phase, not the treaties and protocols of American history." *
During the second half century, no longer disturbed by the throb of war drums, the people devoted themselves to gathering around them the resources and luxuries of refined life-to the establishment of that patriarchal, feudal existence in which broad acres and a host of retainers are important factors. At the height of this system the country gentleman united in his person the planter, the legislator, and the scholar and philosopher. The bowers of the Phillises, Belindas, &c., were not neglected, and the country dances were invariably attended, even by such men as Jefferson, who confessed that he knew the delights of frolicking with a fine girl.
Thus the county had made steady progress in its first cen- tury ; population was gradually moving further westward, where one .of the eminences was crowned with a great uni- versity-a light set so high that it has been seen of many since then. It had grown also in material wealth. In less than a century what was little more than a wildnerness was transformed into a populous and cultivated district. So great was the development that in 1840 there were in the county- neat cattle, 15,000; sheep, 21,000; swine, 35,000; wheat, 327,000 bushels ; rye, 117,000 ; Indian corn, 712,000; oats, 216,000 ; potatoes, 29,000; tobacco, 2,409,000 (pounds) ; capital in stores (merchandise), $302,000 ; capital in manufac-
*John Esten Cooke.
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ALBEMARLE COUNTY.
tories, $261,000 ; pupils in school, 786 ; slaves, 13,809 ; pop- ulation, 22,924.
The first court for Albemarle county was held February 8, 1744, with Joshua Fry as president, and five associates, one of whom was Peter Jefferson. Where the court sat cannot be determined with certainty, for the records of the county cov- ering that period have been lost ; still the evidence preserved seems to show that it was at "Mrs. Scott's plantation at Totier." It is certain that subsequent courts were held there. The quarters were contracted and inadequate, and the next year, May 23d, 1745, Samuel Scott proposed a little specula- tion : he would build the courthouse at his own expense, provided he would be allowed to place the edifice on his own land. The court did not object to this scheme, provided Mr. Scott would give bond with good security for £500-which was done, and the courthouse, stocks and pillory were erected near the James river, on what is now the southern border of the county. For sixteen years the present hamlet of Warren, or some spot near by, was the county seat. When, in March, 1761, Buckingham and Amherst (the latter embracing the present county of Nelson) were cut off from Albemarle, the courthouse was left on the extreme southern edge of the county ; and it became necessary, as an act of justice to the people of northern Albemarle, to locate it more cen- trally. Milton was then the largest town; there a great many Scotch merchants had settled and were selling to the whites (as well as to the Indians who passed en route to Wil- liamsburg to visit "the great father.") Their goods were, of course, imported from England. It would have seemed but natural for Milton to become the county seat, especially as Fluvanna was then a part of Albemarle. But there lived at Castle Hill at that time a shrewd and able gentleman in the person of Dr. Thomas Walker, who owned a large tract of land which enabled him to take advantage of the op- portunity to speculate in town lots. He offered a site for the courthouse ; the offer was accepted, and the courthouse was built. In those days of union between church and state it
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ALBEMARLE COUNTY.
was not inappropriate that the high priests in the service of each should meet in'a common temple, and it is true that they did : for the courthouse was in the early history of Char- lottesville the only public place of religious worship. Dr. Walker gave the land on which the courthouse now stands in good faith, but it is a singular fact that a legal transfer was never made. The statutes show that it was represented to to the legislature that fifty acres of land contiguous to the courthouse of Albemarle were laid off into lots and streets for a village, which, it was asserted, “ could be of great advan- tage to the inhabitants of the county if established into a town for the reception of traders," and the general assembly passed a law “ establishing these fifty acres into a town to be known as Charlottesville." The fifty acres were soon divided into a hundred lots, each of which sold for £3 or $15, or $1500 for the entire town.
The courthouse was built on its present site, and a tavern was soon one of the attractions of the place. It is uncertain just now whether the "Eagle" or the "Swan" was the first tavern-both were famous in their day, and one of them had for landlord no less a personage than Jack Jouitt, who con- veyed to the Legislature at Charlottesville intelligence of Tarle- ton's approach. The Swan was situated at the corner of Park and Jefferson streets while the Eagle occupied the site of the present Farish Hotel. The Swan has disappeared altogether. About these old hostelries clustered many local traditions.
The days of the Revolution drew on, and found Albemarle more thickly settled. The people had imbibed all the ardor for freedom so well portrayed to us in the persons of many of its citizens who then stepped from obscurity into the full light of history. Charlottesville had been founded, but was a mere hamlet still, though "famous," as may be gathered from Anburey, one of the British officers quartered here with the Saratoga troops. "This famous place we had heard so much of," he writes in his "Travels," (a rare book), "consisted only of a courthouse, one tavern and about a dozen houses, all of
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ALBEMARLE COUNTY.
which were crowded with officers." The soldiers camped "in a wood near the town." This wood was on the farm of Mrs. George Carr. The road leading out of Charlottesville towards the northwest is to this day called the Old Barracks Road. This excellent redcoat writes a few sentences about the want of food, but fills many with sorrowful plaints about the want of decent drink. "Many officers," is his lugubrious confession, "to comfort themselves, put red pepper in water to drink by way of cordial." But all of them did not resort to pepper and water. "The officers drank freely of an abominable liquor called peach brandy, which, if drunk to excess, the fumes raise an absolute delirium, and in their cups were guilty of deeds which would admit of no apology."
Albemarle of to-day can offer our English cousins a tipple which even a British officer would not pronounce as bad as that "peach brandy," nor a red-coated dragoon compare with the pepper and water his ancestors drank "to comfort them- selves." Here the blood of the vine is shed to some purpose, and the vintage is not inferior to that
whose father grape grew fat
On Lusitanian summers.
Charlottesville occupies no small place in the annals of staging in Virginia, and it is to be regretted that some Vir- ginia Dickens has not given eternal life to our Tony Wellers. One line of stages ran from Washington by way of Warren- ton and Orange to this point; another from Fredericksburg by Orange and Gordonsville ; another from Richmond-in short, there was direct connection "by coach" with every important point in the State.
Albemarle has been the home of many distinguished people. Jefferson lived at Monticello with Monroe (at Ash Lawn) for neighbor ; Thomas Mann Randolph at Edge Hill, Wilson Cary Nicholas at Warren, the present home of Mr. John Coles; Thomas Walker Gilmer at Mount Ayr, Andrew Stev- enson (Minister to England) at Blenheim, Meriwether Lewis at Locust Hill, Gen. George Rogers Clark, "the Hannibal of the West," a few miles east of Charlottesville, near Pantops ;
3 1833 02368 3599
ALBEMARLE COUNTY.
William C. Rives at Castle Hill, the home of Mrs. Amélie Rives-Chanler ; Judge Hugh Nelson (Minister to Spain) at Belvoir-indeed, the list is too long to be printed here. Joshua Fry also resided for a time in the county.
To this illustrious roll should be added the name of Dr. Thomas Walker, the founder of Charlottesville; and that of his distinguished son-in-law, William Wirt. For Wirt was built the house now known as Rose Hill (a mile north of Char- lottesville) which is now occupied by the Misses Craven. It is a neighborhood legend that Mr. Wirt often rehearsed his orations on the quiet and unfrequented banks of the Rivanna near Pen Park. It is a curious fact that Wirt's old law office was sold and moved from the premises of Rose Hill to the nearest county road, and is now occupied by a colored family. John S. Patton.
[Extract from Martin's Gazetteer of Virginia, published in 1836.] Piedmont Virginia.
This section is as healthy as any portion of the world, the water is excellent and plentiful throughout ; the lands fertile producing in abundance all the staples of the State; easily re- covered when exhausted; and always susceptible of high im- provement by judicious management ; the farms are smaller than in the Tidewater district ; the people are industrious and intelligent, and from James River to the Potomac perhaps are the best farmers in the State. Mr. Jefferson pronounced that portion of this section which lies under the Southwest Range of mountains, to be the garden spot of America ; and General Washington, when written to by Sir John Sinclair to recom- mend to him some spot for a residence in America, after pass- ing in review the whole Union, pronounced a residence some- where on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge, between the Potomac and the James, to combine most advantages, and be the most desirable.
Monticello Home Life.
Life in Albemarle has flowed so smoothly that we have no wonderful deeds of heroism to record amongst her daughters. The earnest army of men which. has gone forth from her alone testify to the faithfulness and wise rule among the mo- thers ! who have developed and strengthened minds and char- acters, which have marched forth to shape the destinies of a nation ! This work, done so quietly and effectively, has de- veloped no heroines, no great authoresses amongst us. Two of Albemarle's daughters have been called on to represent the United States at foreign courts. Mrs. Wm. C. Rives rep- resented us so gracefully and acceptably at the Court of Ver- sailles, that the good queen Amélie bestowed her name on, and " stood sponsor for the Democrat's daughter."
Of Mrs. Andrew Stevenson it was said that " no foreigner was ever received as much in the family circle while resident at the Court of St. James." Her mental endowments and cul- tivation caused her society to be sought, but the gentle, cor- dial sympathy of her manners opened to her all hearts. For the mothers of the present day we would draw a lesson from an example of the past, an example showing what a mother busy with many cares and varied duties may yet achieve for the advancement of her children.
In the family of Mr. Jefferson's oldest daughter, we have such an example. Martha Jefferson was born in 1773, losing her mother in 1782 ; she was taken to Paris by her father in '83, and her education completed in the school of the Penthe- mont, under the charge of Catholic sisters. The last year of her school life her education was presided over by the good Abbé Edgeworth, who accompanied Louis XVI to the scaf- fold, and strove to console the royal family in the sad days of their imprisonment. Judging from the school girl letters and from the braids of hair and other mementos which lie before
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ALBEMARLE COUNTY.
me, school girls in 1788 were very much like those of 1888. Returning to America in 1788, Martha Jefferson was married in 1790 to Thomas Mann Randolph. Mr. Randolph had just finished his education at Edinburgh. Life now begun for these young people in the retirement of the country and amidst the ceaseless round of duties devolving on owners of large land and slave property-no idle life, as all Southerners can testify. Added to these were the cares of hostess and mother of a growing family. The early days of Mrs. Ran- dolph's married life, she employed all her spare time in keep- ing up. her education. The hours when the nurses' meals threw the children on her charge, were utilized in studying Italian verbs. Constant reading and the careful improvement of the little moments, enabled her even amidst the seclusion of Edge Hill to keep abreast with the literature of the day, and to fit herself to carry on, unaided by governesses or mas- ters, the education of her six daughters-only one of these daughters, and she the youngest, ever went from home to school.
Whether at Edge Hill or in Washington, or in the constant coming and going of guests at Monticello, the education went on uninterruptedly. The cultivated father and mother raised around their family an atmosphere of mental activity, which inspired each one to improve "the shining hours." Books did not engross the household, although the dome room was fitted up as a study and school room; the hall was often called in requisition for the dance. Mrs. Randolph's house- hold duties were shared by her daughters, each taking her turn to carry the keys. Needles were not allowed to remain idle, and each did her own work, even to making dresses. And there were no bolder horsewomen in the country than were these five sisters of Monticello. Nor did their education ever cease. Exiled from the home at Monticello, in society in Washington, Boston or Paris; in the burning heats of Cuba, or following a husband's fortunes to China, still the education went on. Such unceasing perseverance resulting in more varied attainment than is often met with.
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ALBEMARLE COUNTY.
Mrs. N. P. Trist (the fourth daughter) congratulated herself at the age of eighty that she could at last read Don Quixote in the original, a feat rarely attempted even by a Spaniard. Nor was this influence confined to the daughters. The oldest son's (Col. Thos. Jefferson Randolph) only educational advan- tages (beyond those of the home circle) consisted in what he acquired at an " old field school," one year under the highly educated but eccentric Englishman, Ogilvie, in Milton, and a six months' course of anatomical lectures in Philadelphia. Yet dying at eighty-three, he left few men behind him with the same amount of general knowledge. Dr. Benjamin Franklin Randolph, another brother, who successfully prac- ticed medicine in this county for fifty years, showed this thirst for knowledge. His varied reading made him a constant referee in mooted points. The youngest son, Gen. George Wythe Randolph, entered the United States Navy at thirteen; this to most boys would have meant the close of his educa- tion. With only two years at the University of Virginia, one of which was devoted to the study of his profession, he never flagged in his efforts for scholastic attainment ; he died at fifty-one a learned lawyer and a ripening scholar, attributing his success in life to the love for books acquired at his moth- er's knee. No one can adequately appreciate the value of this home culture, save those who have themselves been teachers.
The weary hopelessness of arousing a mind allowed to lie dormant! To cultivate ground, which has never known plow, or even rain or dew, is an easy task compared with this. And in view of the much that can be done, and all that is so often left undone, we would urge the young mothers of the present day to earnest work at self-culture. Let them not weary themselves over sewing machines, and lay more stress on the adornment of the minds than the bodies of their children; so may they live in the memory of a grateful country, and after ages rise up and call them blessed.
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