USA > Virginia > The history of the Virginia federal convention of 1788, with some account of eminent Virginians of that era who were members of the body, Vol. I > Part 1
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M. L.
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 02368 3078
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015
https://archive.org/details/historyofvirgini09grig_0
1
.
*
COLLECTIONS
OF THE 1
Virginia Historical Society.
New Series.
VOL. IX. Virginia Historical Society. Richmond
13002 Laimizill MaigtiV
THE HISTORY
1563393
WM. ELLIS JONES. PRINTER, RICHMOND, VA.
-
-
THE HISTORY
OF THE
Virginia Federal Convention OF
1 788,
WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THE EMINENT VIRGINIANS OF THAT ERA WHO WERE MEMBERS OF THE BODY
BY HUGH BLAIR GRIGSBY, LL.D.
WITH A
Biographical Sketch of the Author AND
ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES EDITED BY R. A. BROCK, Corresponding Secretary and Librarian of the Society.
VOL. I.
STORICA
ORGANIZED
29™Dec 183
SOCIETY
CHARTE
CONDERE ET TRADERE
100
RED
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA. PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY. MDCCCXC.
MITENTE JEU
1
EMENDATION.
The message referred to on p. ix, line 12, may have been one of Jef- ferson Davis', President of the Confederate States of America.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
OF
Hon. Hugh Blair Grigsby, LL.D.
The pure, devoted and earnest life of Hugh Blair. Grigsby was a beneficent one, and signal in its incitations. Few, if any, among his contemporaries exerted a more inspiring influence in the cause of education and in behalf of virtuous resolve in Vir- ginia than he ; not one, certainly, in glowing utterance, and in appealing picture, sounded more surely the key-note of State grandeur and the common weal.
Justly remarked the late venerable and admirable Marshall P. Wilder,ª in his last penned effort, on his couch, in his last days-an address to be delivered before the New England His- toric Genealogical Society, upon the completion of nineteen years' service as the president of that learned body, at its annual meeting in 1887 : "Recall the traditions of men ; each genera- tion in its day bears testimony to the character of the preceding. He who worships the past believes we are connected not only with those that came before us, but with those who are to come after. What means those hieroglyphic inscriptions on the Egyptian monuments ? Says one of them : 'I speak to you who shall come a million of years after my death.' Another says, 'Grant that my words may live for hundreds and thousands of years.' The writers were evidently thinking, not only of their own time, but of the distant future of the human race, and hoped, themselves, never to be forgotten."
a Hon. Marshall Pinckney Wilder was born September 28, 1798, and died at Boston, Mass., March 16, 1886.
الرسم
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF
Hugh Blair Grigsby was born in the city of Norfolk, Virginia, November 22d, 1806, and died at his seat, "Edgehill," Char- lotte county, Virginia, April 28, 1881. He was the son of Ben- jamin Grigsby, who was born in Orange county, September 18, 1770, and was a pupil of Rev. William Graham, at old Liberty Hall Academy, the precursor of the present Washington and Lee University. Among his fellow-students was Archibald Alexan- der, the subsequently eminent divine, and who was his companion when in early manhood they sought their life-work in a horse- back journey to Southside Virginia. Leaving his companion in Petersburg, Grigsby, "with his sole personal possessions in a pair of saddle-bags," continued his solitary ride to Norfolk, where he located, and was the first pastor of the first Pres- byterian church in that then borough. Here he married Eliza- beth, daughter of Hugh and Lilias (Blair) McPherson, and providentially and faithfully labored until, as is recorded on the handsome marble obelisk erected to his memory in Trinity churchyard, Portsmouth, Virginia, "in the faithful discharge of his calling, he fell a martyr to yellow-fever on the 6th of October, 1810."b His widow married, secondly, January 16th,
b The paternal ancestor of Hugh Blair Grigsby is said to have emi- grated from England to Virginia in 1660. His grandfather, the imme- diate progenitor of the Grigsbys of Rockingham county, John Grigsby, was born in Stafford county in 1720; accompanied, in 1740, Lawrence Washington in the forces of Admiral Vernon in the expedition against Carthagena ; married first, in 1746, a Miss Etchison and settled on the Rapid Anne river in Culpeper county. His wife dying in 1762, he married secondly in 1764, Elizabeth, daughter of Benjamin and Ann (Campbell) Porter, of Orange county, Virginia. The issue by the first marriage was five children, the eldest of whom was James Grigsby, born November 10th, 1748. The issue of the second marriage was nine children, the youngest of whom was Captain Reuben Grigsby, born June 6th, 1780, in Rockbridge county ; educated at Washington Col- lege; teacher ; farmer ; member of the House of Delegates of Virginia ; Captain United States Army in the war of 1812; sheriff of Rockbridge county ; trustee of Washington College 1830-43; died February 6th, 1863. (See obituary, Richmond Enquirer, February Ioth, 1863). An interesting incident in the boyhood of James Grigsby has been trans- mitted. Whilst hunting with a pack of hounds near the Natural Bridge in 1781, he encountered the French tourist, the Marquis de Chastellux, and was his guide to the Bridge, and prevailed upon him to become the guest of his father. These attentions the Marquis records in his
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HUGH BLAIR GRIGSBY.
1817, Dr. Nathan Colgate Whiteheade (born in Southampton county, Virginia, April 8th, 1792,) who, although educated as a physician, relinquished practice and was for twenty seven years the honored president of the Farmers Bank of Virginia, in Nor- folk. He died in 1856. Hon. John B. Whitehead, ex-mayor of Norfolk is the issue of this marriage. In connection with the prime service of Rev. Benjamin Grigsby as founder of the first Presbyterian church in Norfolk, it may be pleasing to add a singular exemplification of pious constancy and fealty, as recently communicated to the writer by Mr. Whitehead. He writes : " From the completion of the building of the first and only Presbyterian church in the borough of Norfolk, in 1802, to the present time, the elements for the communion service in our church have been presented by the mother and grandmother of Mr. Grigsby and the writer ; by our grandmother until 1822, and by our mother up to December, 1860 ; and by my wife to the present time, and, with the exception of three years (during the period of the late war) have been furnished from our old home (in which I reside) from the year 1808. I would also state that the Wednesday evening prayer-meetings were held in our parlors from 1808 to 1827, in which last year the late distinguished scholar and jurist, William Maxwell, LL.D. (long the effi-
"Travels," of which he presented a handsomely bound copy to his youthful guide and entertainer. James Grigsby married twice, first, in 1768, Frances Porter, the sister of the second wife of his father, and settled at "Fancy Hill," Rockbridge county. Their eldest son, the father of Hugh Blair Grigsby, was christened Benjamin Porter Grigsby, but appears to have omitted the use of the second name. He was a trustee of Washington College 1796-1807.
Among the descendants of John Grigsby were the following officers in the Confederate States Army :
Generals E. Frank Paxton, Albert Gallatin Jenkins and J. Warren Grigsby, Colonel Andrew Jackson Grigsby, and Major Andrew Jackson Paxton.
The editor is indebted to Miss Mary Davidson, Lexington, Va., of the Grigsby lineage, for the facts embraced in this note.
c The Whitehead is a family of early seating in Virginia. Thomas Whitehead was granted 162 acres of land in Hampton parish, York county, March 6, 1653. Book No. 3, page 9. Robert Whitehead, John Bowles and Charles Edmond were granted 3,000 acres in New Kent county, March 25, 1667. Book No. 6, page 45.
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF
cient Corresponding Secretary and Librarian of the Virginia Historical Society), one of the elders, built for the use of the increased congregation a beautiful edifice for the purpose."
Hugh Blair Grigsby in youth was of delicate constitution, and it was feared that he would be an early victim to pulmonary dis- ease, but prudence and systematic physical exercise on his part happily surmounted the dread tendency, and ensured to a green old age a life of abounding usefulness. He was a studious lad. Among his early tutors were Mr. William Lacy, of Prince Ed- ward county, and the Rev. W. W. Duncan, the father of the late eloquent divine and honored president of Randolph-Macon Col- lege, Rev. James A. Duncan, D. D. He subsequently entered Yale College, remained two years, and gained creditable distinc- tion in his studies and in versification. He took here, among other studies, the law course, with the view of making it his pro- fession. This design he was constrained to relinquish because of an increasing infirmity-deafness-which continued through life. His bias for biography was early evinced. There is pre- served by his family a volume in MS., written in his eighteenth year, giving sketches of the character, personal appearance and social traits of the distinguished of Virginian statesmen and clergy with whose careers he had become most familiar. Through special predilection, as was markedly evinced, he em- barked in journalism, and became the editor and owner of the Norfolk Beacon, upon which he was wont often to say he did the work of two or three persons much of the time during the six years that he conducted the newspaper. His editorials were all written in a standing posture at his desk, and his daily hours of labor were often a majority of the twenty-four. Such earnest ap- plication met its reward in a comfortable competency of $60,000, with which he retired from the paper, a step, indeed, which his physical condition indicated as judicious, as his lungs seemed to be seriously threatened. He now devoted himself to athletic exercises, and acquired quite a proficiency as a boxer and a pedestrian.
It is noteworthy that he accomplished a journey on foot to Massachusetts, through several of the New England States and the lower portions of Canada, and back to Virginia.
In the midst of his arduous editorial labors, he found variation in service in the legislative halls of his State. He was a member
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HUGH BLAIR GRIGSBY.
of the House of Delegates from Norfolk in 1829 and 1830, and during the term served also as a member of that constellation of talent, the Virginia Convention of 1829-'30, succeeding in that eminent body General Robert Barraud Taylor, who resigned his seat. That his selection for this responsible representation was judicious, his subsequent manifestations gave just evidence. It is narrated of him that "an argument advanced by him, and published in the Richmond Enquirer under the signature of ' Virginiensis,' in reply to Sir William Harcourt in an article on international law, under the signature of 'Hortensius,' in the London Times, was afterwards substantially incorporated in a message of President Buchanan."
Mr. Grigsby married, November 19th, 1840, Miss Mary Ven- able, daughter of Colonel Clement Carrington, of "Edgehill," Charlotte county, who was the son of the distinguished jurist, Paul Carrington the elder, and a battle-scarred veteran of the .Revolutionary War. Colonel Carrington, after having served first, at an early age, in several expeditions of the State line in Vir- ginia, joined as a cadet the legion of Light-Horse Harry Lee of Greene's army. At the age of nineteen he fought bravely at the bloody battle of Eutaw, where he was struck down by a severe and dangerous wound in the thigh. He faithfully served as a just and impartial magistrate of his county for more than fifty years. He died November 28th, 1847, aged eighty-five years. From the period of his marriage until the death of Colonel Car- rington, Mr. Grigsby made his home in Charlotte county. After that event he removed temporarily to Norfolk, but returned to "Edgehill," the patrimonial estate of Mr. Grigsby, upon which he henceforth resided until his death. Here, in the bosom of his loving family and in the midst of constant and admiring friends, he led a peaceful and contentful life, and yet with a marked ex- emplification of varied usefulness and moral and intellectual influ- ence. The habits of systematic application, enforced and stimu- lated by necessity in youth, together with impelling predisposition and acute mental gifts, eminently fitted him for historical re- search, the results of which was an extensive mass of informa- tion which made him not only the select medium of voicing the consensus of chaste and reverential sentiment on momentous oc- casions, but quickened him alike in mental and physical action in the requirements of everyday life. Not only did his active
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF
being find time for an extensive correspondence with scholars of varied culture, historical students, statesmen, and the votaries of science; the frequent delivery of chaste and eloquent ora- tions, but he found time withal to conduct with singular sagacity and providence the operations of a large plantation. As a friend and neighbor narrates": "In planning and executing improve- ments, constructing a dyke of some three miles in length, arrang- ing the ditches of his extensive low-grounds, so that a heavy rain fall could be easily disposed of, and bringing all into a high state of cultivation, he set an example of industry and energy which every farmer would do well to emulate. He had ample means, and we have sometimes heard his efforts characterized as fanciful or Utopian. But the result shows method, skill and in- dustry ; the process was necessarily laborious, but the result was grand." Of his prided engineering achievements in behalf of agriculture, a venerable and revered friend has taken pleasing cognizance, as will be subsequently noted. The simplicity of character of Mr. Grigsby rendered him averse to any appearance of ostentation. He was considerate and careful in his ordinary expenditures, but amply provident in every circumstance of hos- pitality. His welcome was as spontaneous as his nature was genial, and his mind far-reaching and comprehensive. With the tenderest of instincts and with sympathies immediately respon- sive to truth, socially it was not otherwise than for him to be delightsome. His just economy gave his nobility of character ampler scope for beneficent exemplification. It allowed the means for the purchase of books and the encouragement of the arts, and thus, too, in collected treasures was afforded a warming and directing impetus towards the intellectual development of his neighbors and his kind. With heart and mind acutely sen- sitive to impressions of merit and conceptions of worth, his being was an expanding treasure-house of all and aught of value and virtue of which it had or might have cognizance.
Lingering reverently in the glorious walks of the past, with an instinct born of purity, and a mental grasp only possible in emu- lous affection, he proudly held in mirrored brightness to the contemplation of his fellows of this generation the moral worth
d Leonard Cox, Esq., editor and proprietor of The Charlotte Gazette, in the issue of his paper of May 12, 1881.
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HUGH BLAIR GRIGSBY.
and glory of the past, as he conjured, to our mind's eye, in ten- derness and reverence, in vivid reality, the forms of our fathers, whose deeds gave it value. Such a man, such a master-mind, systematically trained to the requirements of the present, con- stantly alive to enlightened progress, mental and material, could but invoke ennobling and healthful impulse-incarnation as he was of the Christian, the scholar and the patriot.
His whole being seemed a sensitive cluster of clinging tendrils, which ever sought to grasp and twine themselves about some ob- ject or action of the past to be cherished. Ennobling as he was in his warming conceptions, stimulating as he was in his glowingly pictured lessons, his being found vent also in exemplification, if less brilliant, yet scarcely less enduringly useful. "Man is a natu- rally acquisitive animal." Scarce one of us with an object or aim in life, it has been urged, but who is in some sense a "collec- tor." The value of the collector is patent in the only satisfac- tory elucidation of the past yielded by its records, its monuments, and specially by the familiar belongings-the concomitants and appliances of every-day life-of our kind who have preceded us.
Mr. Grigsby was possessed with an insatiable fondness for and enthusiastic eagerness to possess, to hold as his own, not only the works of the great, the good, and the gifted-books, works of art, and objects of curious interest and beauty-but also souvenirs of possession, objects that had been loved and used by those worthy of his love. His library, for which he had con- structed a separate building peculiarly adapted to the purpose, numbered some six thousand volumes in the varied branches of literature, in which probably the ancient classics and history and biography predominated. Many of the volumes were singularly endeared to him because they had belonged to and been lov- ingly conned by predecessors of worth and learning. It con- tained many volumes from the choice library of the erratic John Randolph, of Roanoke, to the auction sale of which Mr. Grigsby, with much self-satisfaction, liked to tell that he trudged on foot. The relics treasured by him were many and varied. Perhaps as endeared as any, approaching the claim to a collection, was that of canes which had belonged to great men and cherished asso- ciates, or had grown in spot historic and sacred. These sup- porting staffs he was, with jealous impartiality to the memory of the donor or departed friend, in the habit of using in turn, thus
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one day he was assisted in his walks with the cane of a loved uncle, Reuben Grigsby, another with that of his revered friend, Governor Tazewell, another with a staff from the Mount of Olives, and so on through more than a score of reverential ex- ercises.
Every available space of the walls of his dwelling and library were covered with beautiful and choice paintings, and every nook and appropriate niche was graced with a piece of statuary -busts of the great and good, or idealic creations.
He did much, if not more than any other man. to foster the genius of our lamented Virginia artist, Alexander Galt,e and
e His ancestry is said to have been of Norman origin, and the name originally Fitz Gaultier. They were brought with other Normans to Scotland in the twelfth century to instruct the natives in military tactics, and lands were granted them at Galston (quasi Galtstown) in Ayreshire. The immediate ancestor of the Galts of Tidewater Virginia was a Cove- nanter. Two of them were banished as Presbyterians to Virginia by the Scotch Privy Council with Lord Cardross, about 1680. One married the daughter of a wealthy planter, the other returned to Scotland after the Revolution of 1688 and was the ancestor of the well-known writer, John Galt. Alexander, the second son and fourth child of Dr. Alex- ander and Mary Sylvester ( Jeffery) Galt, was born in Norfolk, Virginia, January 26, 1827. His talent first exhibited itself at fifteen years of age when he began to draw pencil portraits. His next advance was in carving in alabaster and conchilia, and he executed many faithful por- traits in cameo. In 1848, he went to Florence, Italy, for instruction in art, and in a short time was awarded the highest prize then offered for drawing. He returned to Virginia, bringing several pieces of his work. The " Virginia " was his first ideal bust. He remained in America several years, visiting in the while the Southern States and executing a number of orders. At the State Fair held in Charleston, S. C., he received prizes for work exhibited there. He returned to Florence in 1856, with many orders, among them one from the State of Virginia for a statue of Thomas Jefferson, which preceded him on his return to Virginia in 1860, and now adorns the Library Hall of the University of Virginia. A Virginian in every pulse and instinct, he naturally tendered his service to the mother State in the rupture of the Union, and was first connected with the Engineer Corps near Norfolk in planning forti- fications. Later he served on the staff of Governor Letcher. In the winter of 1862 he visited the camp of General T. J. Jackson in execu- tion of some commission-but with the design also of studying the features of the great chieftain to prepare him for the making of a statue. He unfortunately contracted, during this visit, small-pox, from which he died in Richmond, January 19, 1863. His remains rest in
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possessed a number of his choicest works, among them being "Columbus," "Sappho," "Psyche," and " Bacchante."
The gentle, loving heart of Mr. Grigsby went out to all things animate, and with a keen sense of the beauties of nature his ad- miration found grateful expression in pen and converse. "His loving nature," as his fondly cherished wife writes, " made pets of animals and birds," and was especially demonstrative "to little children, whose clear infantile voices reached his impaired hearing more distinctly than did the tones of adults." "A scholar, and a ripe and good one," his commune with his books was daily, with every moment to be spared from active demands and social claims. "He was a rapid reader, and read with pen in hand. With French and Latin authors he was in as constant communion as with the writers of his own tongue."' Although his infirmity rendered conversation with him difficult, yet his own discourse, in its easy dignity and range of digested informa- tion, was singularly entertaining, lightened, too, as it was with frequent ripples of playful fancy, and made piquant with a vein of quiet humor which often found striking expression.
Mr. Grigsby was a devout and earnest Christian, and a wor- shipper in the forms of his Presbyterian ancestors, and for years had been in the habit of leading the regular devotions of his household. "Although his name was not on the church book," he "was a punctual and large contributor to his minister's salary." He possessed the faculty of chaste versification in a striking de- gree, and some of his productions are as impressive as were the powers of his gift of oratory. His absolute trust in his Maker is touchingly exemplified in the following :
Hollywood Cemetery. A number of his ideal works were stored in the warehouse of a friend in Richmond, and were destroyed in the con. flagration of April 3, 1865, incident on the evacuation of the city. His meritorious works which are extant probably number two-score or more, and include, with the statue of Jefferson, busts of eminent men and chaste and beautiful ideal creations. Representative ancestors of Alexander Galt in several generations have reflected lustre on the medical profession in Virginia, and been most beneficently connected with her asylums for the unfortunate insane. The editor is indebted to Miss Mary Jeffery Galt, the niece and heir of the subject of this note, for the details embodied.
f" In Memoriam," by Rev. H. C. Alexander, D. D., LL.D., Hampden- Sydney College, Va., Central Presbyterian, Dec. 14, 1881.
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF
HYMN.
Written on the morning of the 22d of November, 1877, when I entered my seventy-second year. H. B. G.
I.
Lord of the flaming orbs of space ! Lord of the Ages that are gone ! Lord of the teeming years to come- Who sitt'st on Thy Sovereign Throne :
IL.
Look down in Mercy and in Grace On a poor creature of a Day, Whose mortal course is nearly run, Who looks to THEE, his only stay.
III.
In Thee, in Thee alone, O Lord ! Thine aged Servant puts his Trust Thro' the blest passion of Thy Son, Ere his frail frame returns to dust.
IV.
Uphold him thro' Earth's devious ways- Sustain him by Thy gracious Power ; And may the Glory of Thy Praise Break from his lips in Life's last Hour.
V.
Grant the dear Pledges of Thy Love, Thy mercy has vouchsaf'd to him- PEACE in the shadow of Thine Ark- REST 'neath Thy shelt'ring Cherubim.
VI.
Lord, heed Thy servant's grateful praise For all the mercies Thou hast given :- For Health and Friends and length of Days- Thy bleeding Son-a promised Heaven.
VII.
Oh! may he live in fear of Thee- Oh! may he rest upon Thy Love, When he shall cross that stormy Sea That keeps him from his Home above.
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VIII.
Oh! bless those lov'd ones of his Heart, While ling'ring on Earth's lonely Shore, 'Till we shall meet no more to part, And chant Thy Praises evermore.
What a triumphant refrain is this :
I CANNOT DIE. John xi, 26.
By FORTH WINTHROP. g
Time may glide by -- My pale wan face may show the waste of years ; My failing eyes fill with unbidden tears ;- But I'll ne'er die ! Fierce agony, That racks, by night and day, the mortal frame, May leave of life aught but the empty name ; But I'll ne'er die !
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