USA > Virginia > Fairfax County > Fairfax County > Colchester Colonial Port on the Potomac > Part 5
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The black horse which had cost -23 currency died on November 13th when Henderson was in Port Tobacco. He had spent in 1760 -70 for horses and another -18 for their feed and hire. There were now two more servants to care for, the girl Celia and the man called Milford (he had cost E100). Another +25 was spent for their clothes, and 24 cords of wood had to be brought into town by wagon for fuel for the winter.
Requests sent back to Glasgow for goods were often accompanied by advice such as "The ribbons sent are ill chosen, particularly the figured ones which are too broad and most despicable patterns. It is therefore hoped that this will be prevented" or "The inhabitants of this country have large feet and must have large shoes - those sent out this year are much too small." Some comments were none too subtle. Asking in September 1762 to have his orders filled correctly if Glassford expected any profits, Henderson mentioned the arrival of Hector Ross as an agent of Dalzell, Oswald & Company,
You have a very potent advantage over other men in trade, namely this, that you are served by your factors in this country upon better terms, and here let me inform you that I have received an offer of £100 annually to open and keep a store at Quantico, beside other privileges commonly allowed to Glasgow factors.
Henderson also patiently requested a statement of his wages over the past five years. He had added to his capital by selling lot #15 to his rival Hector Ross for nearly ten times the amount it had originally cost and by renting the landing house to Glassford for L6 annually. His personal expenses were modest enough that he considered seven shillings, sixpence spent at "a most extravagent club at William Linton's ordinary"17 a height of indulgence.
In the spring of 1763 he had a storehouse built for the use of his clerk Mr. Bayne, and worried about local competition as his own stock of shirtings, felt hats and osnaburg grew low.
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My next door neighbor is possessed of a complete assortment of goods - allow me to observe that the case being the same for two years successively is very hard on this Business which I think has been suffered for the want of proper and timely supplies of goods, in a very particular manner to languish, and I heartily wish that this may not soon be manifest.
By August the ship Jeanie sailed up the Potomac laden with some E1096 in merchandise that took eight days to unload, but the late arrival of the cargo meant that his customers had made their summer purchases elsewhere. When the Jeanie departed she carried Archibald Henderson back to Scotland. 18 He was later made a partner and by 1766 the firm had become Glassford & Henderson.
A letter of complaint from Alexander went back with the ship, saying that the tardy goods were in disorder and that
Sundry packages have sustained damage; it has been a few days of five months from the time these goods were shipped at London until their arrival at Colchester for which two reasons may be given - the ship was put up in April but not having a sufficient quantity of convicts on board she might be detained till after another time of trial to receive more, which I do belive to be the case; the other reason is the ship being destined for Pataspsco in Maryland, from which place or any other river a man can but seldom receive goods in a shorter time than he will from a Port of Clyde in a ship for this river. Goods on board Convict Ships are fre- quently damaged and more frequently pilfered. It is possible that the distemper which the convicts frequently carry from the Jails (and which is infectious and generally fatal to those who are seized by it) may be communicated by means of goods ... coming from on board an unclean ship ... 19
Henderson concluded that his employer's reasons for sending the goods so late may have seemed logical but that the consequences at the Colchester store had been bad.
At the close of the winter, supplies were being bought for a new phase of con- struction. A thousand feet of one-inch plank, 324 feet of feather-edge plank, and a timber 24 feet long, 14 inches wide and 52 inches thick were purchased in February and March. Another L2.3.4 was spent for 750 feet of refuse plank 13 feet long, while 93 bricks and 500 nails used up an extra E1. 12.6. In April 1764, a horse rack was built. The structure may have been built on Henderson's lot #14, for when he sold it in 1767 to his future father-in-law the deed stated that Henderson was then living on this land. Alexander Henderson ordered 4,000 bricks in June 1764 and had his well framed the following month. 20 He may have been watching the new tobacco warehouses being built across the street from his new house. There are numerous charges in the ledger for materials during this same period. These buildings first planned for lots #6 and 42, were going up on #7 and 20; with the public wharf lying at the foot of Fairfax Street and the warehouses opposite him, Henderson was in a strategic location.
When he balanced his books at the end of the year the store showed transactions of L36.14.8 sterling, L4934.6.7} in currency, and 8,437 lbs. of tobacco. He had shipped 143 hogsheads back to Scotland. Glassford & Company was charged for his
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6
C
Figure 7. Conveyance of tobacco to market, in Virginia. Print by Newman in William Tatham, An Historical and Practical Essay on the Culture and Commerce of Tobacco, 1800. Virginia State Library.
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E60 annual wage and for another L60 as rent of a dwelling, kitchen, dairy and smoke- house from November 1763, as well as a storehouse since April 1764.21
Sometime between 1763 and 1765 Henderson and Grayson entered into a trans- action which cannot be identified because the deed was recorded in missing deedbook F. This purchase may have been located outside of Colchester, for during this period more customers were being drawn from Loudoun and Frederick Counties to the west. Those who were unknown were sponsored by someone with whom Henderson was ac- quainted, and they were so identified in his ledgers. 22 Many of the new customers were noted as overseers on back country plantations; others were wagoners bringing corn and wheat from this region (crops which began to supplant the ubiquitous tobacco) down the road to the Occoquan.
For these men, as well as for their older customers, merchants such as Henderson and Hector Ross acted as brokers in all manner of transactions. They paid militia fees and county levies, traded in bills of exchange, and performed other services. Most were billed to the customers' account and only served to increase the debts owed to Glassford & Company. In 1765 some 1800 appeared on the books in this fashion.
Actual cash came in a bewildering variety of coinage. When in June of that year Henderson sent a supply of currency to the Port Tobacco, Maryland, store, there were in it 130 dollars, 3 half guineas, 3 guineas, 27 doubloons and 8 English shillings. This mixed bag was worth -72. 14 in Maryland currency. 23 The August cash shipment back from Port Tobacco included several pistoles.
Added to this bookkeeper's nightmare was the imposition of the Stamp Act. Henderson spent two shillings for a printed copy on July 20, 1765, foreseeing perhaps that this would only add to his difficulties in collecting back bills. Indeed between March and October the store took in more than E100 worth of goods by bartering. The assets of the store, including unpaid debts, amounted to L453.7. 11} sterling, L4987.11.92 currency and 32,214 lbs. of tobacco. The store in turn owed L427. 14.5% sterling, `4897 in currency and 29,731 lbs. of tobacco. Listed as assets24 were:
goods as per inventory £1654.17.6
slaves valued at. £100
tobacco, 2850 ibs. @ 10/ £14.5.0
household furniture, cattle,
provisions
£95.0.0
cash
£112.14.7
-1903.2.10
As he balanced his books for the annual balance drawn up on September 29th (the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel), Henderson must have been uneasy over the effect which the Stamp Act would have upon the merchants along the Potomac. Passed by the British Parliament the previous February, this law requiring that tax stamps be used on all public documents was to be enforced beginning in November 1765. The opposition voiced in Patrick Henry's famous resolves was dramatized by the inhabitants of Dumfries when they set an effigy of the Stamp distributor on horseback with a halter tied around his neck, rode him backwards through the town striking the figure with
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1
9, & SOLD tothe HIGHEST RIDDER. by Decree of Faislas County Court, on living the Third of October Beat, as the Trave of Col cheffer, in the faid County,
be on by
MOET
bd of F
SUNDRIES, Mortgaged to Meffenrs HUGA . BLACKBURN and Company, Merchants in GLAsaow, iby BENJAMIN GRAYSON, Gent. of Tid County, and Foreclofed in Chancery, viz. A. Tract of LAND, in the County aforefaid, apon Occupais River, called BELMONT, contain- ing about 1046 Acres, and lies within & Mles of Confotar, and near s Saw-Mills, 2 Forges, & Far- nach and she beft Grift-Mill on the Continent, the Situation' extremely healthy and agreeable, vai plenty of Pah and Fowl, an excellent Orchard of choice grand Fruit, very fine Water from a Well, the Improvements valuable, fuck as a Brick Hoefe &4 by 18, two Rooms below and two sbere, a Wooden'House 26 by 18, three Rood dow, with a Clohet att good Callar, a new Bars to by ze, 'vell framed sod coverof With atr'd Skiaties, Ment Houfe, and Fikk Floufe : `There hold the Land sbout do Acres of, sood Meadow ~ kiabounds in Timber, in fo pkoncem a Marmer, that there might be got a leak tempo `ines ft for Sowing into Plank or Scasdies i bet, shows chejte Fitbery is exceeding valuable; Pib bas berg craght in fach Qunchin that A rol, has been hands in our Becfor, by them at af6 by the Hundred, and do stonghe, ther in a good Year -3 or too Durch made, fit for Exportation.
Allo, This LOTS in the Towa of Coklute whtrcon rth : Toberce Warsboules wert kysy badr, number'd 6, 7, and ag. Abo Five Ofwar LOTS, what'd Improvement, la the SH T of ckw. wed member'd 18, 5. 17. 39 80 ALS . Gel Mil on Pobich Kan, and as ing; for your Negro B flow in Bhekt
1
Figure 8. Advertisement for sale of Benjamin Grayson's property. Maryland Gazette, August 1, 1765.
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canes and whips, and burning it as a finale.25
Viewing the example of fellow merchant Benjamin Grayson, whose Belmont plantation, eight lots in Colchester, grist mill on Pohick Creek and several servants had been put up at auction in August to pay debts due Hugh Blackburn & Company in Glasgow, Alexander Henderson could not have but wondered how similar colonial debts might affect his own firm. An observer in Glasgow, chronicling the events of that year, wrote of the refusal of colonial merchants to import British goods until the Stamp Act was repealed. "In America all was confusion Anarchy and Discontent - no trade no Court held and no Remittances coming home." The true reason for the repeal of the Act a few months later was, in his opinion, "the great sums owing by the Ameri- cans to Great Britain which made it improper to execute the law at that time ... the town of Glasgow was reckoned itself to having owing them in America near E1, 000,000 sterling and one house, viz. Mr. Glassford had owing them upwards of E60,000. "26
Whatever his opinion on affairs of business, Henderson probably viewed his election to the vestry of Truro Parish with satisfaction. It solidified his standing in the community. The colonial vestry, sometimes called "the twelve lords of the parish," performed administrative duties beyond the purely religious. Responsible for the jevying of tithes, for the care of the poor and for establishing property boundaries, their positions were a logical step toward the office of justice of the county court. Alexander Henderson became a vestryman in 1765. Three years later he was made a justice27 and served in both positions for the next 20 years.
Being now referred to as "Gentleman" rather than simply "merchant" did not ditract him from business affairs; he began to supply claret to the parish28 for use during the communion service. He built a poultry house in November and in April 1766 he began construction of a flatt which would carry 36 hogsheads of tobacco. A breakdown of costs appeared in his ledger for +34.4.92.29 The flatt hauled oyster shells, coal, tobacco, pig iron from the Occoquan furnace and freight between Glassford & Company's stores and their ships.
Although the 1766 balance was -200 lower than the previous year, 30 that for 1767 showed a substantial increase in the assets of the business. The goods, horses, and store equipment came to ₺2950, the flatt and its tender worth E59, but more importantly he had on hand tobacco worth some L815 and actually possessed ₺770 in cash. 31
The month of September 1767 saw him selling his lot #14 to Henry Moore of Frederick County but leasing it back the following day.34 There were a store and stable on the lot. In 1759 the lot had cost Henderson E20. He sold it to Moore for -500. A fortnight before this profitable transaction, 1,600 feet of one-inch plank, 200 feet of 12 inch plank, 2, 500 bricks and 4,000 shingles were purchased. Listed on the same page of his ledger33 is a payment of El to architect William Buckland "for drawing a plan and estimate of a house some years past." Alexander Henderson may have been looking forward to this new dwelling when he bought from the executors of George Johnston's estate six prints with gilt frames, They could have been among the dozen he had sold that attorney some years ago. 34
Building began that winter. The very volume of plank, scantling and laths purchased (some 1,200 feet as compared to the 400 required for the structure erected
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.
in 1760) indicates that this was to be a substantial dwelling. The mortar required 80 bushels of oyster shells and 10 bushels of cow hair. Stonemasons Benoni and Duncan constructed two chimneys and a cellar. The windows used 66 squares of glass. Labor costs of -17.10 came to the equivalent of 20 months work by a single man, but they would be a drain on Henderson's salary of £100 annually.
While the new house was being built he and his clerks boarded with Henry Moore. Food purchased at this time shows that he was eating well. Oysters, wild duck and blue wings, crabs, venison, beef and pork are mentioned, as well as shad and whitefish in the springtime. At two week intervals Henderson used three quarts of molasses for making small beer. He also kept two cows and their calves at Moore's Colchester house.
Purchases made from the store by Henry Moore of fine flounced bonnets, girls' stays, and "colored kid mitts for Miss Sally" indicate that the food may not have been the main attraction for his boarders. Could Alexander have had this new resident in mind when importing these new models of "Ladys head dresses" ?35
The Fly Cap a la Greek @ 4/ ---
The Cockney
@ 7/
The two Scotch bonnets
@ 7/6
The Graceful
@ 8/6
The Advantage
@ 12/
The Arch Dutchess
@ 12/
The Delicate Air @ 12/
In this busy year of 1768 the number of customers in Loudoun County increased, John Semple shipped 1, 543 bars of iron back to Scotland on the ship Ann and another ship was being built for Glassford & Company. One Thomas Fleming used 232 tons of iron for the hull as he worked on the new "Jeanie" in Alexandria. Tar, pitch and turpentine were brought from Suffolk, while the "ship's head" and iron work for the windlass came from Philadelphia. James Connell did the carpenter work. The ship took 16 months to build and cost -1638. 17.5.36
Henderson made a trip to Philadelphia to inspect the newly-invented windlass and buy an electrical rod (lightning rod?) for the Dumfries store. He also purchased two maps, a pair of gloves, and some books for his personal use. September found him spending 68/9 for a ball in Alexandria3/ and he went to another one in that town in December. This time Hector Ross went with him to celebrate George Washington's reelection to the Virginia Assembly. Both men returned with the Colonel and spent the next day foxhunting at Mount Vernon. 38
Another journey was made in May 1769. He went to Philadelphia and New York to buy West Indian commodities and bring back currency in his saddlebags. The saddle, borrowed from Dr. Ross, was lost en route, replaced in Philadelphia, and finally located in Annapolis. 39 Lengthy accounts were kept with other merchants in Philadelphia and Norfolk and in closing his books at the end of September he listed 286 people in debt to the company, mostly in bonds or settlement transactions. Some L1200 was for currency, which he doubted would be repaid. Those debts termed "good"
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Figure 9. John Glassford and his family by McLaughlan. Courtesy of the Glasgow Art Galley Museum, Scotland.
amounted to L814.6.8 sterling, L6962.9.11 in currency and 537 lbs. of tobacco. Glassford & Company (which had in 1766 become Glassford & Henderson) owed £199.13.6} in sterling, E1033.3.2} currency and 499 lbs. of tobacco. "In classing these several debts I have proceeded with my best judgment, " Henderson wrote. "Certainty is not to be expected, in business of this sort it cannot be. "40
With these words written on April 6, 1770, the unbroken series of Colchester ledgers comes to an end. They are of importance not only for mercantile details such as these but also for their identification of customers' occupations and for information on the iron works at Occoquan or the growing significance of wheat and corn shipments from the back country in the west.
Because of the continuity supplied by the ledgers reaching an end at this time, Henderson's activities become more obscure. In the 1770's his property transactions picked up. He sold lots #5 and 38 to Glassford & Henderson (although they were escheated back to him as enemy property in 1781). Three months later (December 1772) he began acquiring lots at the intersection of Essex Street and Ox Road, pur- chasing #25 and 39 on the northeast corner. That these lots were unimproved is evident from the low price of E12. Henderson, undoubtedly cognizant of the fact that the Virginia Assembly had recently declared the road from the Occoquan to Williams Gap "one of the great roads" by which "great numbers of waggons came from the northwestern parts of the colony to the town ... of Colchester," bought three adjacent lots the following August. These formed the #19-21-23 complex upon which the tavern now known as the Fairfax Arms was situated. Hector Ross bought these when Henderson bought the two corner lots. 41
There was a major event in his personal life as well. On January 7, 1773, he and Henry Moore's second daughter signed a marriage contract. Two tracts of land and seven African slaves were put in a trust to provide her with E125 Virginia money if she outlived her husband. Sally Moore has been described by one writer as "a witty beauty with red hair who loved to sing." George Washington mentioned the marriage, although his opinion of her beauty was more restrained, saying in a letter, "Mentioning of one wedding puts me in mind of another, tho of less dignity. This is the marriage of Mr. Henderson of Colchester to a Miss More (of the same place), remarkable for a very frizzled head, and good singing, the latter of which I shall presume it was that capitivated our merchant . "42
Besides her hair and her voice Sally Moore brought with her into marriage two slaves. A poignant note from her father 43 accompanied this dowry:
Sir: I have given you my daughter in marriage - I now give you mulatto Ann and her daughter Dorchas for slaves (horrid word) as its the greatest part I can now give you, or perhaps may ever have in my power to give. I am in hopes Sally will endeavor to make up the deficiency-
Henry Moore
The town in which the newlyweds lived was prosperous during this period before the Revolution. More space was needed for storing tobacco and lot #8 was added to the warehouse area in 1772.44 Although Henderson, Ross, and Wagener each acquired one
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of the three remaining waterfront lots south of the enlarged area, they realized that the commercial center of gravity had shifted to the crossroads. As wagon trade from the west increased the wear and tear upon Ox Road made that thoroughfare almost impassable. The Assembly levied an annual sum for the repair of the public roads leading to Alexandria and Colchester, naming Henderson as one of the trustees. 45 Across Essex Street from his holdings, his father-in-law bought #22, 24 and 40, Peter Wagener, Jr., bought #37, easternmost lot on Fairfax Street, on the same day that Henderson got the two ("30, 32) next to him. These latter sales in 1775 marked the last lots sold by the Trustees of Colchester, although in 1788 they recon- firmed the sale which they had made in 1771 to Peter Wagener, Sr., of five scattered lots. 46 While this final flurry of sales was in progress Henderson also bought from Wagener the 23 acre strip running behind his #19-39 tier of lots north of Essex Street.
An order had gone out from the County Court on July 22, 1773, to have the town resurveyed and the lots again laid off. This survey, if made at all, has disappeared from the county records but a verbal description of Colchester at this time appeared in a Philadelphia newspaper:
I was ferried over the Occoquan, a deep and capacious stream with romantic surroundings and pleasant prospects, where a town has been projected and chartered and called Colchester. It is beautifully situated in a fine region, has wide streets with an ample market space and substantial landings. Numerous houses have been built, some of them quite elegant, and vessels from Europe often come into the docks with cargoes of broadcloths, kersies, duffelds, cottons, crapes, rugs, blankets, Norwich stuffs, linens, furniture, wearing apparel, calicos, Persians, Taffaties, and other East India silks, Holland sheetings, wines, spices, coffee, tea, sugars, tropic fruits, axes, locks, hinges, nails, carpenters' joiners' and smiths' tools, fire arms, anchors, and all other supplies needed for a new and thriving settlement. These ships take back with them tobacco, indian corn, wheat, flour, pork, hemp, masts, staves, boards, walnut planks, iron ore and furs. Imported commodities are sent coastwise in shallops and other small sailing craft to many other points on the tidewater, and a large trade in all kinds of provisions is kept with remote posts on the frontiers and over the mountains by the two great wagon roads to Williams and Vestals gaps on the Shenandoah. 47
As these last years of peace drew to an end the residents of Colchester heard through the pages of the Maryland Gazette (to which Henderson subscribed) of the six "elegant pieces of Music" being published by Charles Leonard in Alexandria or of the invention of "the so long sought for perpetual motion machine" by a man in Dumfries, Scotland. Because Alexandria had no paper of its own until 1784, nor Dumfries until 1791, the closest source of news was Annapolis. Interspersed with worsening news of the relationship between Great Britain and the American colonies could be found an occasional intriguing item such as that of the strange demise of the Maryland proprietary agent who died in Bermuda of the "flying gout." "This unfortunate gentleman, " com- mented the Gazette, "had an entreprizing temper the sallies of which, even when he was on the brink of the grave, often filled his friends with Astonishment . "48
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The Tobacco Warehouses
In May 1761, a petition was presented to the county court asking that the public warehouse be moved from Occoquan to Colchester. Enabling legislation was passed by the Assembly in November 1762, stating that the old warehouse be discontinued by March 10, 1763. The new building was to be large enough to hold one-half the number of hogsheads inspected during the present year at Occoquan. The Act directed that the new facility be built on lots #6, 29 and 42, owned by merchant Benjamin Grayson.
The inspector at Colchester was to receive 40 pounds of tobacco (two-thirds of the amount given at Quantico warehouse) and the proprietor would be paid a fee of eightpence for each hogshead inspected. From October 1st to the following August the inspector was required to be in attendance at the warehouse in order to deliver the tobacco for export, Sundays and holidays excepted. Annual accounts were to be presented at the county court in September or October. 49
Tobacco notes of transfer issued at the new warehouse were legal tender for paying levies, quitrents and officers' fees in Fairfax, Fauquier and Prince William County. Edward Washington, who had been inspector at Occoquan as early as May 1749, was appointed to serve in that capacity by the April,1763 session of the Fairfax court .
The major role that Maryland and Virginia tobacco played in the world market did not come about because of the superiority of the soil in the Chesapeake Bay region. Tobacco could be grown elsewhere in the colonies. It was the network of natural waterways, the many rivers and creeks emptying into the bay, which made the area so well suited for easy transport of the tobacco crop to outgoing ships. Until 1730, in Virginia (and 1747 in Maryland) no public warehouses were established. British ships picked up tobacco from individual planters' warehouses or wharves along the rivers.
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