USA > Virginia > Fairfax County > Fairfax County > Colchester Colonial Port on the Potomac > Part 7
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One other tavern name was that of the Castle Inn, opened by John Brown. In his sole advertisement in the Alexandria paper, on November 30, 1786, he noted that he also operated the ferry. William Millan was the last known host of the tavern at the ferry; his announcement appeared on July 1, 1809.
Other tavern licenses granted for Colchester and so listed in the Fairfax County Court Order Books, were those of William McDaniels in 1772, William Lindsay in 1785, and John Brown and Cornelius Welles in 1791. In a manuscript list (in the Virginia State Library) of licenses granted in Fairfax County between 1808 and 1822 the following men owned property in Colchester:
Innkeeper
Date of License
Andrew Beddinger
1809 - 1814
Thomas Wheeler
1813 - 1814; 1822 - 1823
Cornelius Welles
1815 - 1818
Robinson Gray
1816 - 1817
Thomas Parsons
1819 - 1820
William Lindsay
1821 - 1822
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A final comment on the taverns was given in 1801 by John Davis, an English novelist, who spent three months on the Occoquan and wrote of a tavern at the Colchester bridge in flowery prose:
Every luxury that money can purchase is to be obtained at a first summons; where the richest viands cover the table, and where ice cools the Madeira that has been thrice across the ocean .... My description of the tavern at the mouth of the Occoquan partakes of no hyperbolical amplification: the apart- ments are numerous and at the same time spacious; carpets of delicate texture cover the floor; and glasses are suspended from the walls in which a Golia might survey himself ....
No man can be more complaisant than the landlord. Enter but his house with money in your pocket, and his features will soften into the blandishments of delight; call and your mandate is obeyed; extend your leg and the bootjack is brought you. 106
Colchester During the Revolution
Because this was not a county seat the citizens did not follow the lead of other Potomac river towns in producing a set of resolves against taxation without their consent in the summer of 1774. Dumfries led off with a meeting on June 6th, Port Tobacco across the river in Maryland followed eight days later, and the residents of Fairfax County met at Alexandria on July 18th to propose an embargo on British goods until such taxes were repealed. 107
As tension increased the position of the Scottish merchants along the river became more difficult. With their commercial life oriented toward Great Britain they had not employed native Virginians, whose background "created a resistance to confinement and drudgery." 108 Many of these merchants by now owned extensive property in Maryland and Virginia. Some, like Alexander Henderson, had at first viewed their stay in the colonies as a temporary one, then married local girls. Their loyalties were divided.
After the Boston Tea Party Henderson's feeling was ambivalent. "The Bostonians ought to have destroyed the Tea, but should have sent home the payment for it im- mediately," was his reported comment. Bryan Fairfax, writing to Washington that some were not completely satisfied with the Fairfax Resolves, said that Henderson " ... joined with me in Opinion that the People at Boston were blameable in their Behaviour in other respects; and when I expressed my concern at the Bill then talked of for altering their Charter, he observed that the Measure might be necessary, considering the factious conduct of the People."109
Well before hostilities began Colchester shared in what must have been a trau- matic day. Nicholas Cresswell was in Alexandria on February 28, 1775, and wrote in his journal that this was "The last day tea is to be drunk on the Continent, by act of Congress. The ladies seem very sad about it." There is a tradition in the Mason Neck area concerning a flat rock known as "the tea table." This version of the origin of the name appeared a century later in the Alexandria Gazette:
66
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Figure 13. Sayer and Bennet, A New and Accurate Map of the Bay of Chesapeake. London, 1776. Library of Congress.
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As there are few men now living who know anything about the Tea Table, I will give its history as I received it from men who lived in those days and were familiar with those times: When the tea was thrown overboard in Boston harbor, Massachusetts, our people got news of it very soon and held a meeting. (I will here remark that Truro Parish was then inhabited by leading men and as true patriots as ever drew the breath of life; therefore the news from Boston necessarily came to them.) The meeting was held and they resolved that they would buy no more tea from the mother country until the unpleasantness was settled, nor would they even use tea in their houses. Having some tea, which was then considered a great luxury, on hand, and not wishing to lose it, but to enjoy it, and at the same time conform to the resolution passed, they built a table at the celebrated spot, and there repaired in fine weather with their tea kettles, tea pots, &c; made the tea and drank it, and thus it was called the Tea Table .. . 110
More serious matters claimed attention that autumn. In October rumors spread that Lord Dunmore was sailing up the Potomac with a raiding force of 4,000 men. Some inhabitants began moving belongings out of town. Dunmore's target provided to be other tidewater rivers rather than the Potomac, but the following summer British ships were operating in the neighborhood. Between July 27 and August 14, 1776, the Fairfax Militia were on duty in Alexandria "to prevent the depredations of Lord Dunmore" and the Prince William Militia guarded the mouth of Quantico Creek. The Alexandrians petitioned the Governor to provide them with cannon so that they might defend themselves from the British, a plea which Peter Wagener was still repeating in 1781.111
On July 23rd there was a skirmish on the river above Aquia Creek. Two tenders, a gondola and ten rowboats from the British fleet brought a shore party to Richland and burned William Brent's plantation house. One source states that the enemy went up the Occoquan to the flour mills two miles upstream from Colchester, setting them afire and burning a number of dwellings and parts of the landings. 112 They were driven off by the Prince William Militia. The blast furnace where John Ballendine was manufacturing shot 13 was located in the same area.
Hospitals had been established in Dumfries, Colchester and Alexandria by this time. In April 1777 the Continental Congress resolved that "Dr. James Tilton be authorized to repair to Dumfries in Virginia, there to take charge of all Continental soldiers that are or shall be inoculated, and that he be furnished with the necessary beds." Medicinal supplies for each hundred troops undergoing preventive treatment against smallpox included one pound of Peruvian bark, one of Virginian Snakeroot, two pounds of jallap, three pounds of nitre elixir vitriol and six ounces of calomel. Congress also directed
... that Maj. Gen. Schuyler be directed to send a proper officer to hasten much of the Carolina continental troops, supposed to be now on their way to headquarters; that they halt at Dumfries, Colchester, and Alexandria in Virginia, there to pass through inoculation 114 . .
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Before the process of vaccination was developed, epidemics of smallpox were combated by injection of virus taken from convalescing cases. If this procedure was done under controlled conditions before troops joined the main body of the army, the mortality rate was substantially less than if they had contracted the infectious disease naturally. The proximity of such hospitals was not well received by the communities con- cerned. Residents of Fredericksburg complained in December that "from the resort of Parties of Soldiers to the town ... and from the establishment of a hospital at that place in which numbers of infected persons are commonly kept, disorders fatal to the lives of many of the inhabitants are propagated .... "115 In Alexandria the conditions in the hospital were so bad that the director was officially investigated. One soldier testified that a patient "had no clothing but an old shirt and half of an old blanket."116 It is likely that the townspeople in Colchester saw a similar situation.
They also observed, in May, a wagonload of Tories passing through town under guard on their way from Alexandria to the prison in Williamsburg." 117 Another visitor was traveler Ebenezer Hazard, whose only mention of Colchester was that it was "a paltry village in Fairfax County. "118
On the 15th of August, when another British fleet was reported off the coast of Virginia, the Journal of the Council of the State of Virginia noted that "the Regiment lately ordered to join General Washington is still at Alexandria and Colchester under inoculation, it is thought advisable to stop them from proceeding on their march until further orders." During this alarm all private boats and canoes on the Occoquan and their other navigable rivers had been requisitioned. By September 1777 they were returned to their owners. Should an enemy fleet actually come into the Potomac, Peter Wagener and other county lieutenants were empowered to collect the boats again.
In such an atmosphere, with the British fleet blockading the Potomac and what little intracoastal trade there was being diverted to Baltimore, the merchants along the river could no longer function. Alexander Hamilton, a Scottish factor in Piscataway, Maryland, offered his dwelling and storehouse for sale; Glassford & Henderson had liquidated their Alexandria store, on Queen and Fairfax Street, the previous autumn. 119 Virginia had ordered "all natives of Great Britain who were partners, agents, factors, storekeepers ... for merchants of Great Britain ... to leave within forty days." The ruling made provision for selling off their effects and added that agents who were friends of the United States or who had wives and children here could remain. 120
Agents like Alexander Henderson and John Gibson, who succeeded Hector Ross as Colchester representative of Oswald & Denniston, chose to stay in Virginia. They seem to have taken an active part in public affairs during the Revolution. As the war progressed and alien property became forfeit to the state, much of it was acquired by men like these. Lot #5 and 38 owned by Glassford, became escheated property and were regained by Henderson in 1781. Glassford's houses and lots at Port Tobacco and Benedict, Maryland, were offered for sale by the Office of Preservation and Sale of Forfeited Estates. 121 Much of the American business transacted by British firms was taken over by the men who had acted as their agents before the war. Henderson, Ferguson & Gibson gained control of these stores along the Potomac after the close of the Revolution, and Robert Ferguson of Charles County became the firm's Maryland partner.
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By October 1779, British vessels patrolling the mouth of the river had made it dangerous for incoming ships to check in at the Naval Office at that vicinity. Mer- chants and "adventurers to Sea" in Alexandria petitioned for a separate Naval Office in that town, declaring that "Alexandria, Dumfries and Colchester, own almost all the Vessells on this River, and there is scarcely a foreign Vessell but what comes addressed to some Merchant in one part of these towns." If such a change could be made "those whom it may suit, can clear out at the present Office, and the Merchants and trading people at Potomac River and Foreigners bound to the Towns aforesaid, can with safety and convenience enter and clear." This request was subsequently granted.
122
According to Bishop William Meade, the tireless nineteenth century chronicler of colonial Virginia, Alexander Henderson is said to have retired to his farm in the interior of Fairfax County to avoid capture by British raiders. The sale of three of his lots in 1779 might provide a clue as to his residence at that time, but the record book containing the deed is missing. Henderson owned Moore Hill, on the waters of Bull Run, and referred to himself as a "farmer" in a 1781 deed which designated his residence as Fairfax County rather than in Colchester. 123
Little evidence of town life during the middle period of the war has been discovered, with the exception of an occasional notice in the Virginia Gazette that the old tobacco warehouse lots were for sale or that tickets for the third class of the United States Lottery could be obtained from Captain William Thompson. 124 General Washington mentioned in a letter that the route of the North Carolina Regulars passing from West Point, New York, toward the south led through Colchester. .125 When Maryland troops marched into town in November 1780 they were forced to wait two days for a favorable wind before being ferried across the Occoquan. 126
In the spring of 1781, however, George Mason wrote of the British once again coming up the river. On one occasion, he said, ships came within two or three miles of Alexandria, burning and plundering houses and carrying off slaves. Supplies were commandeered from Mount Vernon; Washington subsequently sent a tart letter to his manager stating that he would have rather seen the house burned than aid the enemy. Even as the British harassed those living on the Potomac, the French force under Lafayette was moving south through Virginia.
In September General Washington also passed through Colchester on his way to Yorktown. Some baggage trains of the army crossed the Occoquan upstream at the ford at Wolf Run Shoals in order to avoid delay at the ferry. After the battle of York- town the French army went into winter quarters. Baron von Closen, a French officer traveling south, breakfasted in Colchester on May 1, 1782. When the French army marched north in June von Closen wrote:
On the 17th we arrived very early in Colchester ... the artillery, two miles before entering the town, took the left road to the ford ... the troops, as well as wagons, took the right road, in order to cross the Occoquan by the ferry. Fortunately this river is so narrow there that all the wagons were over after dinner. Colchester is a small place containing nothing, the few houses are built half way up the hill . 1'27
..
71
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Figure 15. Camp 'a Colchester. Plans des differents camps occupes par L' Armée aux Ordres de MI le Compte de Rochambeau. Amerique Campagne, 1782. Map Division, Library of Congress.
72
With that comment, the Baron went on to Mount Vernon. He noted in his journal on June 19th that "Mme. Washington begged me to write to M. le Compte de Custine, whose regiment was at Colchester that day, to invite him and all his officers to ... dine." The language barrier between the French and the Americans was sometimes bridged by conversing in Latin. 128
On the 16th of July General Rochambeau's forces camped just north of the town along Giles Run. Three days later another Frenchman, Claud Blanchard, arrived at the encampment. "This town," he commented, "is small and miserable as well as the country." Blanchard marched with the 4th Division, which included Saintogne's regiment and a detachment of artillery. They were under the command of Count Custine. 129
Another meeting took place that day. The Marquis de Chastellux wrote in his journal about encountering the American General Daniel Morgan (who in his youth had driven wagons loaded with wheat to the mills at Occoquan):
I was then at Colchester, where the first division of the troops had just arrived, after having crossed in boats a small river that flows near this town. The baggage train and the artillery had taken another route to reach a rather difficult ford. General Morgan met the baggage train when it was engaged in a narrow gorge, and finding that the wagoners were not managing very well, he stopped and showed them how they should drive their wagons. After having put everything in order, he called at my quarters and had dinner with me ...
The Marquis was then commanding the French troops, General Rochambeau having traveled on to Philadelphia.
Rochambeau's cartographers sketched each camp site along the march north from Williamsburg, leaving a unique record of the Virginia villages through which the army passed. "On their arrival at their quarters on the march," commented an observer, "the whole country came to see them and it was a general scene of gaiety and good humor." Perhaps festivities as these in the camp at Alexandria occurred at Colchester:
.... the most elegant and handsome young ladies of the neighborhood danced with the officers on the turf, in the middle of the camp, to the sound of military music and (a circumstance which will appear singular to European ideas) the circle was in great measure composed of soldiers who from the heat of the weather, had disengaged themselves from their clothes, retaining not an article of dress except their shirts, which in general were neither extremely long nor in the best condition; nor did this occasion the least embarrassment to the ladies, many of whom were of highly polished manners, and the most exquisite delicacy; or to their friends or parents; so whimsical and arbitrary are manners. 131
That life was indeed returning to normal in this month of July was confirmed by a letter from Dr. James Craik, Jr., who wrote "I spent the last week very agreeably as we had a great race at Coalchester on Thursday and an elegant ball in the evening „132
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1
Chapter III Notes
1
Fourteen ledgers are from the Colchester store 1758-1769 (#184-196 and 216); #225 covers 1795-1800. References in this section to the Glassford records will be cited by ledger and page numbers. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
2 Harrison, Landmarks, p. 378. lan Charles C. Graham, Colonists from Scotland: Emigrants to North America 1707-1783 (Ithaca, N.Y .: Cornell University Press for the American Historical Association, 1956), p. 163.
3 #216:2.
4 Marcus Whiffen, The Eighteenth Century Houses of Williamsburg, Williams- burg Architectural Studies Series, (New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, Inc., for Colonial Williamsburg, 1960), p. 119.
5
Henderson, Letterbook, December 29, 1759.
6 #184:63. 7
Maryland Gazette, July 9, 1767. Lot #3 was advertised as being "where Alexander Henderson formerly lived."
8
#184:74. The Metzger house is 18 feet by 30 feet. The 1759 building may be one of the buried foundations in front of this house.
9 #184:93. 10
Fairfax County Deed Book D-1, p. 869.
74
= #184:88.
12 Henderson, Letterbook, June 1760.
13 #184:179.
14
Henderson, Letterbook, September 25, 1761.
15
His assistant, John Campbell, went to the Nottingham, Maryland, store. Brice stayed in Colchester until July 1762.
16 #185:1. 17 #185:7.
18 Henderson, Letterbook, June 21, 1763. In April 1769, Archibald Henderson served as justice of the Prince William County Court; by August 1770 he was living in Great Britain (Calendar of State Papers, I, 261, 263).
19 Henderson, Letterbook, September 17, 1763.
20 # 186:197. 21 # 186;236.
22 #187:34.
23 #187:185. 24
#188:1.
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25
Maryland Gazette, September 12, 1765. On October 10th the paper announced that because of the Stamp Act it was "Expiring, in Hopes of Resurrection to life again." Regular publication did not resume until March 1766.
26 "Brief Extract from the Journals of J. Brown, " February 1766, #91 in the MSS Bogle Papers on "Extracts Relating to Virginia and the Tobacco Trade 1729-1787," Mitchell Library, Glasgow. Microfilm *5803, Alderman Library, University of Virginia. These papers chiefly are concerned with their store in Falmouth, Virginia. Bogle was in partnership with Hugh Blackburn in Glasgow as Hugh Blackburn & Company in 1765. The firm name changed to Blackburn & Bogle. Their factor in Colchester was Benjamin Grayson. After 1773 (Deed Book K-1) no further transactions are indexed for the firm. Fairfax County Deed Book G-1, p. 260 lists the names of the partners.
27 Fairfax County Court Order Book, August 15, 1768.
28 #188:154. 29 #188:173. 30 #188:190. The assets in 1766 were L1698.3.6. 31 #193:210. 32 Fairfax County Deed Book G-1, p. 287.
33
#192:12. No clue as to which lot was built upon appears in the ledger.
34 #193:7. Johnston's 1758 purchase is mentioned in Chapter III of this study. 35 #192:12.
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