USA > Virginia > Orange County > Orange County > A History of Orange County, Virginia > Part 8
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It was a good old fashion, too, long continued and much enjoyed, to give neighborhood dances to the young people. There were simple music, ample refresh- ments, pretty but inexpensive apparel, and happy
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HISTORY OF ORANGE COUNTY
people, young and old. It was part of the celebration of Christmas week to have these "parties," though by no means confined to that week. The young people attended them not to display gowns, or the lack of them, but to enjoy themselves in honest, simple, and innocent pleasures, which they did to the full. The poorer people, too, had their pleasant social amuse- ments "during the consulship of Plancus."
Those were the years when the men who afterwards composed the Army of Northern Virginia were reared, and when their mothers and sisters were the women of Orange, such years and such pleasures as their posterity can never enjoy-Arcadian days when people met for pleasure not for display. Hæc olim meminisse juvabit!
They were continued for some years after the war, but that violent shock to social and domestic conditions put an end to them, and they remain only as pleasing and pathetic memories.
Educational facilities were few and simple, but such education as there was appears to have been practical and thorough as far as it went. It was the day of " Old- Field Schools," when a neighborhood, or the leading men of it, would employ a teacher for their children, build a log schoolhouse at some convenient point, and throw the doors open to all comers; to boys and girls, the rich and poor alike. The overseers' sons would be at the same desk, when desks were to be had, and in the same classes with the planters' sons; and ordinarily "the three R's" would constitute the curriculum, though Latin was taught to all who wished to learn it. The
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birch and the ferule were generously administered, and the pedagogue of "The Deserted Village" appears often in the annals of the schools in colonial days. The rich had private tutors occasionally for their sons and daughters, and French, and music on the spinnet, were taught.
There was certainly a fragmentary spinnet in the County some years after the war, a sort of primitive piano.
James Waddel, the blind preacher, taught school at his home near Gordonsville, and Meriwether Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and Gov. James Bar- bour went to school to him there.
Walker Maury, a very noted teacher of his day, had a school at or near Burlington, the home of Mr. James Barbour Newman, near Barboursville. The famous statesman, John Randolph, of Roanoke, was one of his pupils. The house in which he lodged still stands in the yard. Mr. Maury died in charge of the celebrated grammar school at Norfolk in 1786. His son, Leonard Hill Maury, taught a classical school at "Halla Farm," now owned by Mr. R. L. Coleman, near Somerset, early in the last century.
One of Randolph's eccentricities was developed there. His delicate sensibilities were disturbed by noises from contiguous rooms, and he daubed his own with mud mortar to exclude the sound as much as possible. Mr. Newman long preserved a fragment of this as a me- mento of Randolph.
The girls were not highly educated, in the modern sense, in those days, and the boys, with rare exceptions, finished their education at the neighborhood schools. But they developed into splendid women and fine men
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whose superiors have not appeared under the modern system. Sessions lasted ten months, and the school hours were from eight to four or later. There were not many text-books, no "hygiene," no athletics nor peri- patetic "teams," but there was honest and thorough teaching, and a splendid citizenship, and illustrious citizens, as a result. But aspirations were different then, and it ought never to be lost to memory that "frugality" was a household word among the states- men of the earlier generations, and considered so funda- mental a principle of free government as to be inscribed in the organic law of every state of the Union.
The first mention of a local newspaper is in an order dated in 1830 directing an order of publication in "The Reporter" published at the Courthouse.
A single copy of "The Orange Express," Volume I, number 13, has been lent by Mr. A. J. Stofer, a veteran editor in Orange. It is dated at the courthouse, August 19, 1831, "By William R. Robinson," a brother of the respected merchant, Thomas A. Robinson, who so long sold honest goods on the cornor opposite the present bank of Orange. The motto of the paper was "in civitate libera linguam mentemque liberas esse debere," in a free State speech and thought ought to be free. In an advertisement notice is given of a petition to be pre- sented to the next General Assembly for the division of the County "by a line running nearly north and south from some point on the Albemarle line near Bar- boursville or Cavesville, across the County to the Mad- ison line, between Willis's Mill and Cave's Mill," which came to naught.
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When this paper was discontinued is not known, but the next in order was "The Southern Chronicle, " estab- lished by Payne and Stofer in 1857, which died during the war. In 1867 Mr. Stofer established the "Orange Expositor," which in the fall of that year was changed to "The Native Virginian, " and published at Orange till 1869, and then at Gordonsville by Dr. George W. Bagby (Mozis Addums) and Mr. Stofer. This in turn, after a brief career, was bought by Stofer and carried back to Orange, the name being changed to "The Pied- mont Virginian " as at this day.
In September, 1873, "The Gordonsville Gazette" was launched by W. W. Scott and George W. Graham, and conducted by them till 1877, when they sold it. After many vicissitudes of fortune and as many pro- prietors, it has been lately bought by Mr. Bibb, the present editor. Mr. B. Johnson Barbour and Dr. James C. Hiden were frequent contributors to its col- umns while Mr. Scott was its editor.
A denominational paper, of the "Disciples," was published a short time at Gordonsville shortly before the "boom, " and during the boom, Mr. Albert Sidney Johnston established a paper there which died with it. The "Orange Observer" was founded in 1882 by Mr. Robinson, father of the present owners.
Looking now to economic and industrial features, the records disclose many things which appear strange to this generation.
The first County levy was not quite twenty-five thousand pounds of tobacco for all the public expenses. More than one thousand was paid out in bounties for
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wolves' heads, one hundred and forty for an old, seventy pounds for a young wolf's head. Eighty odd wolves were killed that year, and killing them continued to be an industry for a long time, though rapidly diminishing. In 1764 the number had decreased to three old and six young heads, and in 1815 there is an entry of $2 paid for one wolf's scalp, probably the last reward paid.
Attention was quickly given to roads and ferries. An early order is that "the sheriff give notice at every church in the County that the ferry at Germanna is to be let to the lowest bidder, he to be bonded for duly keeping the same."
In 1737 a ferry was established at old Raccoon Ford, William Payne, ferryman, to be kept open on court days and the day after, the minister and sheriff to be set over for 400 hundred pounds of tobacco.
In 1742 a committee was appointed to take subscrip- tions for a bridge at Germanna, and agree with work- men to build it: if subscription insufficient, balance to be levied by the County not to exceed 3,000 pounds of tobacco. In 1765 Orange and Louisa jointly built Brock's Bridge over the North Anna.
The first pretentious "public improvement" of the highway was by "The Swift Run Turnpike Company," and the road is, or was, the "old turnpike" from the courthouse to Fredericksburg, but projected to go to Swift Run. It was incorporated January, 1810, and in 1816 work was begun on it in Orange. In 1834 the Company "failing to realize 8 per cent. on its capital stock," asked permission of the Court to increase its tolls; which was refused.
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It seems almost incredible that tolls were ever paid on such a road; incredible, indeed, that such a road was ever built, if portions of it did not remain as a wonderful exhibit of the engineering and macadamizing of that period.
In 1840 condemnations began for the "Louisa Road," now the Chesapeake and Ohio. This road started at Doswell and ended at Louisa. Later it was projected to Gordonsville which was the western terminus for several years. The first survey for its extension was through Swift Run Gap to Harrisonburg, but Albe- marle and Augusta legislators got it diverted to Staun- ton, thereby losing the bulk of the great Valley trade to Richmond and the State. Early in the fifties the Valley clamored for good highways to a railroad, and turnpikes were constructed across the Blue Ridge to Gordonsville, one from Harrisonburg, the other from New Market. These were toll roads, and of great use to the army during the war. Soon after the war they were taken over by the County as "abandoned turnpikes," but are continued as public highways.
Fredericksburg smarted under the diversion of her former trade to Richmond, and the Narrow Gauge rail- road, and the plank road were soon projected, and the latter completed about 1856, a splendid highway at first but soon wearing out. The Narrow Gauge was not completed until about 1875, and until carried further into the interior can never become of great commercial importance.
The Orange and Alexandria, now the Southern, hav- ing its terminus first at Gordonsville was completed
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about 1855. Soon after the Charlottesville and Rap- idan railroad was built the Chesapeake and Ohio took a ninety-nine year lease of the nine miles between Gor- donsville and the courthouse. In the aggregate there are 50 miles of railroad in the County, operated as fol- lows: by the Southern, 19 miles; Chesapeake and Ohio, Io}; by the Potomac, Fredericksburg and Piedmont (Narrow Gauge), 19 miles.
The chief agricultural products are the cereals, hay, and apples. Little tobacco is now raised, but down to the war tobacco houses dotted every plantation, and it was a staple crop.
Fat cattle, lambs for the early market, and fine horses constitute leading industries, and dairy farming is carried on very successfully.
CHAPTER XV.
Crimes and Punishments.
There are some notable instances of crimes, and particularly of punishments, in the earlier records; punishments that in these days would be called bar- barous, but which were the identical punishments for the particular crimes prescribed by the laws of Eng- land, then the laws of the colony. A crime by a serv- ant against his master, by a wife against her husband, if sufficiently grave, was "petty treason," as in the cases of Peter and Eve hereafter narrated.
Hog stealing seems to have been so persisted in that special penalties were denounced upon it, until finally a second conviction was punishable by death ; and hogs, then as now, had a special fascination for the negroes.
It is to be observed, too, that the "unspeakable crime, " though of rarer occurrence in those days than now, was by no means unheard of as has been asserted.
The tradition that Negro Run, formerly Negro-head Run, was so called because the head of a negro who had been drawn and quartered for crime had been set up near it, is not sustained by the records of Orange; if true, the incident must have occurred before the County was formed, but there really seems no substantial basis for it.
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HISTORY OF ORANGE COUNTY
The cases that follow are taken from the order books where they still may be read at large by the curious. It must be borne in mind that in those days the County Courts were often constituted "Courts of Oyer and Terminer," that is, to hear and make final deter- mination.
At a Court of Oyer and Terminer held June, 1737, present Goodrich Lightfoot, Robert Slaughter, Robert Green, John Finlason, Francis Slaughter and William Russell, gentlemen justices.
Peter, a negro slave of John Riddle, deceased, being indicted for feloniously murthering his said master upon arraignment plead guilty. On consideration whereof the Court are of opinion that the said Peter is guilty of the said felony; therefore it is considered by the Court that the said Peter be hanged by the neck till he be dead. Memorandum. The said Peter was exe- cuted accordingly and it is ordered that the sheriff cut off his head and put it on a pole near the courthouse to deter others from doing the like.
At October term following, Zachary Lewis, King's attorney, informed the Court that at the houses of Lewis Stilfy and John Smith several persons, the famous Benjamin Borden, a justice of the peace, being one"of them, do keep unlawful and tumultuous meet- ings tending to rebellion.
In November, 1740, Zacharias Bell being enlisted into his Majesty's service as a soldier to serve against the Spaniards and having deserted, it is ordered that the sheriff, immediately after the adjourning of this
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court, do sell the said Bell to the highest bidder as a servant for the space of five years, and apply the money according to law.
Thomas Kennerley ordered ten lashes for stealing a handkerchief, and Alexander Sweeney committed to general court for coining, counterfeiting and debasing the Spanish current coin. John Cranch prays to receive corporeal punishment instead of being sent on to the grand jury; which is administered. Frank, a negro slave hanged for breaking open a store and stealing goods of the value $10, and Cuffy, an accessory to the crime, prayed benefit of clergy and was ordered to be burnt in the hand and receive 39 lashes.
The following, however, is the most sensational item in all the records; the burning at the stake of Eve, a negro woman slave of Peter Montague, for poisoning her master, administering the same in milk served on the table. The indictment in this case, spread out in full on the order book, is a literary curiosity.
She was tried Thursday, January 23, 1745, and found guilty; "Therefore it is considered by the Court that the said Eve be drawn upon a hurdle to the place of execution and there to be burnt," which sentence was executed on the following Wednesday.
A hurdle was a sort of sledge used for hauling traitors to execution.
Mr. Charles S. Waugh, a venerable and highly respected citizen of Orange, remembers that his grand- father pointed out to him the little knoll near the old courthouse about Somerville's Ford where Eve was burnt. A hole was drilled in a rock and the stake
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inserted. Ploughing this knoll some years ago Mr. Waugh's ploughshare slid over a rock and, recalling the narrative, he carefully scraped off the earth with his knife, and found the round hole drilled in it. There can be little doubt that this was the identical rock to which she was chained.
June, 1753, "On the motion of Daniel McClayland who in a fight lately had a piece of his left ear bit off, it is by the Court ordered to be recorded."
This is an unique order. It will be seen later that cropping ears was a punishment for crime, which stigma Daniel probably sought to avoid by this record.
In September, 1767, Tom, a negro belonging to John Baylor, under two indictments for burglary and felony, not guilty of the first, guilty of the second, and having already received the benefit of clergy, the Court do adjudge that he suffer death. His crime was felon- iously breaking the house of Erasmus Taylor, Gent., and stealing goods of the value of 25 cents! Stealing and such modern trifles "came high" in those days, and James Madison, Sr., was the president justice.
July, 1768. Cornelius and Ann Cornelia, vagrants, the said Ann "profainly swearing four oaths before the Court and failing to pay the fine: "ten lashes at the whipping post, they promising to leave the County immediately.
In 1776 Hampshire, a slave of Charles Porter, for notoriously running away and lying out so his master could not reclaim him; "ordered that the sheriff take him to the pillory and nail his ears to the same, and there to stand half an hour and then to have his right ear cut off."
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In 1782 appears the first record of the unspeakable crime, when Cary, a negro slave of William Vawter, is hanged for rape.
In 1794, Caleb, a slave, found guilty of hog stealing ; "Ordered that the sheriff take him to the pillory and nail one ear thereto, and in one hour thereafter to cut it loose from the nail, then to nail the other ear and in another hour's time to cut that loose from the nail, this being the second offense."
In 1799, a negro from Culpeper hanged for ravishing a married white woman of Orange County.
In 1801, "it appearing that George Morris has been and is still guilty of a flagrant contempt in confining the body of his wife Susannah, ordered that he be attached and kept in custody until he permit her to be entirely at liberty; Robert T. Moore and Dabney Minor dissenting."
In 1818, 1821 and 1823 negroes were hanged for rape, and in 1839 a negro "only seventeen years old" con- demned to death for ravishing a white woman is unan- imously recommended for executive clemency, or else to transportation, "in consideration of his youth." There's a falling away.
But probably the most unique of all the punish- ments was that prescribed for habitual absence from church; 50 pounds of tobacco or its equivalent in cash, and in default of payment, "ten lashes on the bare back." This was the law for some forty years, 1680- 1720. There is no record of the lash for this offense in Orange, but many of the fine.
CHAPTER XVI.
The Orange Humane Society.
In 1749 William Monroe proved his importation into this colony from Great Britain. This was a formal proceeding before court in order to obtain what was called a "head right," that is, the right to take up 50 acres of land, a sort of bounty and inducement to immigrants.
We hear no more of him till his will is proved in 1769, and that will constitutes no inconsiderable item in the history of the County. By its terms his whole estate, after the death of his wife, was devoted to the cause of education. The estate was to be sold by his executors to the highest bidders, and the money invested; "the principal to be kept intact and the interest arising from the same to be disposed of towards schooling such poor children as my executors shall think most in want."
The land was sold accordingly, and the proceeds invested, and the interest re-invested from year to year; but the executors, fearing that the will was void for uncertainty, failed to make any application of the interest to the purposes of education. There is little doubt that the will was void, but as Monroe left no heirs in this country, certainly none that appeared to claim as such, and so the estate would legally have been
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escheated by the Commonwealth, it was determined to invoke the action of the Legislature to the end that the intent of the testator might be carried into effect.
In January, 1811, The Orange Humane Society was incorporated by the Legislature, and the County Court was authorized and required at the ensuing March term, and every four years thereafter, to elect twelve trustees in whom should be vested the proceeds of the sale of the glebe lands of the church and of this fund, known as "the Monroe Fund;" to be by them managed in such manner as they deemed best and most condu- cive to promote the object of the Act, and be exclu- sively appropriated to the poor children, inhabitants of Orange, provided that they should only apply the interest arising from the said funds.
At "the ensuing March term" the Court elected the trustees; Isaac Davis, James Burton, Francis Cow- herd, James Barbour, Philip Pendleton Barbour, For- tunatus Winslow, Robert Taylor, Catlett Conway, John Gibson, George Grasty, Thomas Coleman, and Thomas Woolfolk. The mere names of these trustees constitute a sufficient indication of the importance of the trust confided to them.
At that time, under the terms of the statute creating the "General Literary Fund of Virginia, " of which Gov- ernor Barbour of Orange was the protagonist, there was a Board of School Commissioners in each county charged with the disbursement of the proceeds of that fund in the education of poor children. Just ten years after the Humane Society was organized, James Barbour, its president, having made his annual report in conformity
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with the order of the Court, and having requested their opinion as to consolidating the fund set apart for the education of the poor children and that under the con- trol of the Society, the Court coincided with him as to the propriety of the measure, and recommended the delegates of the County to use their best endeavors to obtain the passage of a law to that effect. Diligent search has failed to find that such a law was enacted, and it was likely found that it was unnecessary, for from that time on when the Court appointed a trustee of the Society it at the same time appointed him a School Commissioner; so that the trustees and com- missioners were one and the same. As late as 1838, the Court, "appointing directors or commissioners for the distribution of the public funds for the education of the destitute, decree that the funds of the Humane Society be exclusively appropriated to the education of the destitute children of the County."
It appears that the fund, at one time, amounted to more than $30,000, for when Greene was formed in 1838, her share was agreed to be one-third, or $10,300. It was carefully managed, and many poor children were educated, the interest only being used. Forty- three hundred dollars was in bank stock, the balance represented by bonds of citizens of the County secured on real estate. Thus matters went on until the war, during which the principal of some of the bonds was paid and reinvested in Confederate bonds. When the war ended these bonds and the bank stock were worth- less, and the trustees appear to have lost interest in the Society.
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A balance of about $4,000 was still due to Greene, with interest accumulations, and litigation over it ended in a consent decree of October, 1873, in favor of Greene for $5,000, with interest from date. The County school board brought suit, in 1874, for the fund still in the control of the Society, claiming under the Act of 1872 establishing the public school system, and failing in this suit, resort was had to special legislation in 1876 whereby the original charter of 181I was repealed and the school board authorized to take pos- session of the assets. Litigation now became fast and acrimonious. Suit was brought to compel the paying again of a bond paid off in Confederate money, and was successful in the lower court. The decree was reversed, however, on appeal, and in Wambersie v. the Orange Humane Society, 84 Va., it was held that the Society which had been rejuvenated in 1880 by the appointment of new trustees by William R. Taliaferro, then judge of the County Court, had no legal existence by reason of the repeal of the charter in 1876. Mean- time the costs had been enormous, and, what with the losses and the expenses of litigation, there was not much left of this noble charity for the school board to administer. How much came into their hands the records do not disclose; indeed it is said that the records of the school board that first came into possession of the fund have been lost!
It is known that the High School building at the courthouse was paid for, in part or in whole, out of the fund. The visible, available assets, in personal bonds of individuals, amount to less than three thousand
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HISTORY OF ORANGE COUNTY
dollars. It is understood that the school board will soon assume actual and active control of this remnant, and administer it, in their wisdom, in the interest of educa- tion.
Information derived from a prominent citizen of Greene is to the effect that her portion of the fund con- stitutes a real factor in the public school system. Her portion was one-third of the whole.
A letter written by Gov. James Barbour, in February, 1839, to Hon. John S. Pendleton, then a member of the House of Delegates from Culpeper, protesting against the claim of Greene County for a division of the fund, is filed with the Orange petitions in the State Library, and the following extracts are taken from it. As he was so long president of the Society, and took such a warm interest in its management, this letter, written but a few years before his death, has all the force of an official utterance.
We commenced with a capital of some $13,000; we have educa- ted over a thousand children, and have increased the capital to about $30,000, retaining and converting the interest in part into principal, and thus looking to the probable demand we have the means that will correspond with the progress of the Society. * Not a farthing has been lost. At my instance the Court of Orange have, by appointing the same persons directors of the Humane Society also commissioners of the School Fund, united both these benevolent funds. (Proceeds of sale of the glebe lands, etc.)
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