USA > Virginia > Fairfax County > Fairfax County > Colchester Colonial Port on the Potomac > Part 9
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16
There is a constant and full supply of bark of all kinds to be bought low, and there can be bought from 560 to 700 hides every year of the finest kind. It possesses a great many natural advantages, there being no tannery for a considerable distance from it. 36
From this advertisement in 1934 it is reasonable to assume that the Colchester tanyard was no longer in operation. As early as the 1820 Federal Census of Manufacturers, in fact, the sparse return from Fairfax County included only one tannery. Its owner, George Grimes, sent in no answer to the questionaire. Joseph Christy of Fredericksburg, however, did reply, and said of his tannery that the demand for his manufactures was limited and the sale dull. 37
The End of an Era
In 1784, when J.F. D. Smyth visited Colchester he was unimpressed by its appear- ance. "Colchester, although it be larger than Dumfries, has not half as much trade, and is an ill-built, nasty little town situated on the north side of the river Occoquan ... The trade of Dumfries and Colchester consists chiefly of tobacco and wheat and there is a very fine back country to support it; and a considerable number of ships were located here annually. "38
The volume of trade was large enough to induce George Mason to petition the legislature to allow him to erect additional warehouses on his land in Prince William County opposite the town, in 1787. Some shipbuilding was being carried on, 39 and the social activities that year included a ball to celebrate George Washington's birthday. Describing one such affair, the Alexandria paper said that "Joy beamed in every counte- nance. Sparkling eyes, dimpled cheeks dressed in smiles ... contributed to heighten the pleasure of the scene."40
Numerous travelers on the King's Highway paused at the taverns while they awaited the ferry which would carry them to the other side of the Occoquan. "A list of the men and women who crossed that ferry," concluded a modern writer,, " ... would read like a directory of Virginia and the colonies to the north and south. "4" The boats used in fairly protected waters were flat-bottomed lighters with sloped ends. Loaded by means of an apron or gangplank, they could be used at causeways or wharves. In size the craft could be as large as 30 feet in length and eight feet wide. In some places ferries were pro- pelled along a fixed rope; in others they were poled or rowed. 42 Sailing ferries were used where greater stretches of open water were crossed. From a description of one such
92
vessel, with a green stern and red sails, built like a ship's longboat, these boats must have been colorful indeed. 43
From a reference in Henderson's ledger to cutting the ferryway, it would seem that a causeway might have been used in 1765. At that time Joseph Gray was the ferryman. 44 When George Mason finally settled his dispute with Peter Wagener in 1789 over the ownership of the ferry rights, one concession made was that stone or earth from Wagener's land could be taken to make or repair a wharf. Mason could "land passengers, horses, or wheeled carriages or anything else crossing the ferry ... on any part of the shore ... in case of ice, wind or other stress of weather . "45
A winter crossing was never a comfortable event. Francis Asbury, the Methodist minister, said of his passage over the Potomac to Alexandria in December 1791:
We crossed ... in an open boat on whose icy bottom the horses with difficulty kept their feet; and still worse it would have been, had I not thoughtfully called for some straw to strew beneath them; we had five of them on board and the waves were high ... I was nearly frozen, being hardly able to walk or talk. 46
If high winds, low tide, or vagaries of weather caused no problems, there was always the human element. When President Washington made his southern tour he had this hazardous experience:
In attempting to cross the ferry ar Colchester with the four horses hitched to the Chariot by the neglect of the person who stood before them, one of the leaders got overboard when the boat was in swimming water and 50 yards from shore - with much difficulty he escaped drowning before he could be disengaged. His struggling frightened the others in such a manner that one after another and in quick succession they all got overboard harnessed and fastened as they were and with the utmost difficulty they were saved and the Carriage escaped being dragged after them, as the whole of it happened in swimming water and at a distance from shore. Providentially - indeed miraculously - by the exertions of people who went off in boats and jumped into the River as soon as the Batteau was forced into wading water - no damage was sustained by the horses, Carriage or harness. 47
But time was running out for this vital, if frequently perilous, crossing at Col- chester. In 1791, an attempt was made to establish a rival ferry farther upstream. George Mason naturally considered this unnecessary and was irate when John Hooe of Prince William County sent a petition to that effect to the legislature. Quickly drafting a counterpetition, Mason accused Hooe of obtaining the bulk of his signatures from Maryland boatmen anchored at the mills at Occoquan below the falls. "How easy it is," he wrote, "to persuade Men to sign anything, by which they can't be affected. " Coming from the author of the Bill of Rights of individual citizens, this is a provactive comment . 48 Despite Mason's opposition Hooe's ferry was approved.47 George Mason died the following year, stating in his will that the ferry rights had been vested in his family since the Occoquan area was first settled in the mid-seventeenth century and bequeathing the ferry operation to his son Thomas. When his father died in 1792, Thomas Mason
93
1
was 22. Because he seemed less inclined than his brothers George and John to become a merchant, he was not given the benefit of their training in France but was educated at an academy in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Thomas resided in Alexandria and in 1793 married Sarah Hooe. In the tangled skein of Virginia relationships, she may well have been a cousin of the entrepreneur who sought to take over the profits of the Occoquan ferry.50
There were indications that a rival ferry was not the only disturbing factor which faced the town. Writing in 1791, William Loughton Smith mentioned another ominous sign:
On Tuesday I got to Colchester to breakfast. This little place is seated on a river and seems to be in a declining condition ... passed through Dumfries, which has some trade, tho said to be on the decline, owing to a want of navigation, as the little river on which it is placed is filling up. 51
The merchants in Dumfries attempted to correct this condition by building a canal, but the towns on tributaries of the Potomac could not overcome the effects of siltation in addition to the competition from the deep-water port of Alexandria.
Although no separate figures have been found showing exports from Colchester during the 1790's, it is evident that the Alexandria District far surpassed that of Dumfries. In 1794, the registered tonnage of Alexandria was 9083 compared to Dumfries' 992. Alexandria exports in 1791 were $381,000; those from Dumfries $79,000. Four years later the difference was even greater, with Alexandria shipping $948, 000 worth of goods and Dumfries only $62,000.52
In 1796, Charles Smith's Gentlemen's Political Pocket Almanac and American Gazetteer lists Dumfries as a port of entry and post town 276 miles from New York but does not mention Colchester. Matthew Carey's American Atlas (1796) shows Colchester, but a lengthier description may be found in Jedidiah Morse's American Gazetteer in 1797.
Colchester, Port town in Fairfax County on the northeast bank of Occoquan creek, three or four miles from its confluence with the Potowmack; it is here about 100 yards wide, and navigable for boats. It contains about 40 houses and lies 16 miles southwest of Alexandria, 106 miles north by east of Richmond and 172 miles from Philadelphia. 53
Morse mentioned that Dumfries was a port of entry and post town, with an Episcopal church, court house and jail. He said of Alexandria that it had about 400 houses, 2,748 inhabitants, and that the street plan was similar to that used in Philadelphia.
The ascendancy of Alexandria as a center of trade was recognized when an attempt was made in 1797 to move the seat of the District Court serving Prince William, Fairfax, Loudoun and Fauquier Counties. Urging its removal from Dumfries to Centreville, in Fairfax County, the petition stated that roads from all parts of the District passed through their community on the way to "the most important market on the Potomac, the town of Alexandria. "54
94
(
IN
IN
MEMORY ? of
MEMORY f 0
ALEXANDER HENDERSON (of Dumfries)
who was born on the river Clide near Glasgow Scotland and departed this life in the month of Nov. in the year of our Lord 1815 in the 78th year of his age
SARAH HENDERSON (Consort of Alexander Henderson) who was born in Virginia and departed this life 1 in the month of December in the year of our Lord 1816 aged about 64 years 1
This simple memorial erected by their affectionate children
1
1
-
7
-
L
1.
1
)
1
L
-
1
5
1
S.
H.
A.
-
Figure 18. Tombstone of Alexander and Sarah Henderson in Country Club Lake subdivision, near Dumfries, Virginia. Sketch by James P. Haynes.
95
Chapter IV Notes
1
Samuel Vaughan, Diary, August 10, 1787. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
2 Travels in Virginia in Revolutionary Times, ed. by A. J. Morrison, (Lynch- burg, Va .: J.P. Bell Co., Inc., 1922), p. 63. Castiglioni was in Colchester on December 29, 1786.
3 Diary of Robert Hunter, Jr .: Quebec to Carolina in 1785-1786 ... ,ed. by Louis B. Wright, (San Marino, Calif .: Huntington Library, 1943), p. 189.
4 Kate Mason Rowland, "Merchants and Mills" from the Letterbook of Robert Carter of Nominy, Westmoreland County, " William & Mary Quarterly, Ist series, XI (April 1903), 245.
5 Virginia Journal & Alexandria Advertiser. Peer's notice is on June 10, 1784, Gibson's on April 29, 1784, Brown's on November 30, 1786, and that of Huie & Reed on March 9, 1786.
6 Glassford, Records, #123:99. 7 Lewis, Famous Marines, p. 75. 8 Letter, Alexander Henderson to Robert Fergusson, August 29th and October 7, 1784; December 11, 1784, Manuscript Division, New York Historical Society. The Port Tobacco lots, retained by Henderson until 1814, are cited in Charles County (Maryland) Deed Book Z-3, p. 136, and JB-10, p. 545.
9 Washington, Writings, XXVII, 341.
96
10 Philip Slaughter, The History of Truro Parish in Virginia ... , ed. by Edward L. Goodwin, (Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Co., 1908), p. 96. The last vestry meeting was held on January 27, 1785.
11 Washington Post, February 28, 1962.
12 Letter, Henderson to Fergusson, February 7, 1787, dated Dumfries. New York Historical Society. Having sold most of his Colchester lots to William Thompson in 1779, Henderson's activities in Prince William County included service as a Burgess in 1798 (Slaughter, Truro Parish, p. 108) and membership in the Quantico Navigation Company in 1795 (Harrison, Landmarks, p. 396). He was a trustee of the town of Evansport at the mouth of the Creek (Prince William Guide, p.88) but refused to serve as a justice for Prince William in 1791 (Calendar of State Papers, V, 280). His heirs paid taxes on two Colchester lots until 1840.
13 Alexandria Gazette, Commercial & Political, November 28, 1815.
14
Maryland Gazette, October 13, 1757.
15 Washington, Writings, XXVIII, 116.
16 Letter, Henderson to Fergusson, February 7, 1787. New York Historical Society.
17 Virginia Journal & Alexandria Advertiser, January 11, 1787.
18 Washington, Diaries, March 20, 1788. Snowden, Some Landmarks, p. 80, quoting an advertisement of this period.
19 Alexandria Daily Gazette, Commercial & Political, May 12, 1809; April 21, 1812 and October 19, 1812. 20 Harrison, Landmarks, p. 530. Snowden, Some Landmarks, p. 83, says that merchants' ledgers show evidence of postal service at Colchester as early as 1760 but gives no source. Alexander Henderson's ledgers give no information.
97
21 Harry M. Konwiser, Colonial and Revolutionary Posts: A History of the American Postal Systems, Colonial and Revolutionary Periods (Richmond, Va .: Press of the Dietz Printing Company, Publishers, 1931), p. 37, citing minutes of this meeting which he found in the Manuscript Division, New York Public Library.
22 Alexandria Gazette, June 24, 1872.
23
U. S. Postmaster-General, Annual Reports, 1790-1791, American State Papers, Post Office Department (Washington: Gales & Seaton, 1832-1861) pp. 10, 13.
24 The 1791 figures have been rounded off to the nearest dollar.
25 United States Post Office, Table of Post Offices in the United States with their distances from Washington City and the names of the Postmasters (Washington City: printed for the Postmaster General, 1811), p. 69.
26 Ibid., p. 14. Colchester was shown as being 26 miles from Washington. 27 Snowden, Some Landmarks, p. 83. 28
Alexandria Gazette & Daily Advertiser, June 11, 1818. 29
Mason, Papers, III, 891. June 1, 1787.
30 Virginia Gazette & Alexandria Advertiser, February 11, 1790; Columbian Mirror & Alexandria Gazette, October 2, 1800.
31
Fairfax County Deed Book W-2, p. 120.
32
These men are not on the tax list, nor in the deed book index.
33 Fairfax County Will Book J-1, p. 139. Estate account of William Huskins.
98
34
Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, The Old South: the Founding of American Civilization (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1942), p. 252.
35 Fairfax County Deed Book E-1, p. 40.
36 Alexandria Gazette, October 7, 1834.
37
United States Census of Manufactures, 1820, p. 240.
38 Smyth, Tour, p. 176. 39 Virginia Journal & Alexandria Advertiser, July 11, 1787; May 19, 1791.
40 Ibid., February 15, 1787; February 17, 1791.
41 Evening Star (Washington), August 1, 1920.
42
Middleton, Tobacco Coast, p. 60. 43
Maryland Gazette, October 5, 1758. The craft was: rigged with one mast, carries a main-sail and a fore-sail of Osnabrigs, with a Bumpkin, her stern painted green, has an Iron Horse, and a forecastle to the mast, her ballast consists of 12, fifty-sixes, some pig iron and stones, her stern sheets has been painted red, a locker aft, and two side lockers under the sheets, the entrance into which is round or oval holes before the after thaut, in which is kept two ox horns fixed with handles to wet the sails, she has an anchor and a common laid rope for a cable, is close sealed, the upper streak of which is painted red, and has two cleat blocks nailed for the foresheets, and a boom of juniper .
44 Glassford, Records, #187:145; #186:172.
45
Fairfax County Deed Book R-1, p. 419.
99
46 William Wallace Bennett, Memorials of Methodism in Virginia, from its Introduction into the State, in the Year 1772, to the Year 1829 (2nd edit., Richmond: by the author, 1871), p. 299.
47 Washington, Diaries, IV, 56.
48 Mason, Papers, III, 1245. On April 11, 1793, the Dumfries Virginia Gazette & Agricultural Depository advertised Hooe's ferry across the Occoquan.
ยท
49
Hening, Statutes, XIII, 283.
50 Kate Mason Rowland, The Life of George Mason 1725-1792 (2 vols .; New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1892), 1, 97; 11, 307.
51 Journal of William Loughton Smith 1790-1791, ed. by Albert Matthews (Cambridge, Mass .: The University Press, 1913), p. 64.
52 Arthur G. Peterson, "The Alexandria Market Prior to the Civil War," William & Mary Quarterly, 2nd series, XII (April 1932), 104, 392.
53
Jedidiah Morse, The American Gazetteer (Boston: Isaiah Thomas and Ebenezer T. Andrews, 1797.)
54
Petition to the General Assembly of Virginia, December 8, 1797. Virginia State Library.
100
Chapter V VOICES FROM THE PAST
As a new century began there was a poignant echo of an earlier day. When Captain John Smith mapped the Potomac in 1608 he depicted a "King's house" on the upper bank of the Occoquan River. In the vicinity of this long-vanished site, another English visitor observed the following incident in 1801:
On the north bank of the Occoquan is a pile of stones which indicates that an Indian warrior is interred underneath. The Indians from the back settlements, in traveling to the northward, never fail to leave the main road, and visit the grave of their departed hero. If a stone be thrown down they religiously restore it to the pile; and, sitting round the rude monument, they meditate profoundly; catching, perhaps, a local emotion from the place.
A party of indians, while I was at Occoquan, turned from the common road into the woods to visit this grave on the bank of the river. The party was composed of an elderly Chief, twelve young War Captains, and a couple of Squaws. Of the women, the youngest was an interesting girl of seventeen; remarkably well shaped, and possessed of a profusion of hair, which in color was raven black. She appeared another such object as the mind imagines Pocohontas to have been.
The Indians being assembled round the grave, the old Chief rose with a solemn mien, and, knocking his war-club against the ground, pronounced an oration to the memory of the departed warrior .... The whole scene was highly dignified. The fierceness of his countenance, the flowing robe, elevated tone, naked arm, and erect stature, with a circle of auditors sitting on the ground and in the open air, could not but impress upon the mind a lively idea of the celebrated speakers of ancient Greece and Rome.
Having ended his oration, the Indian struck his war-club with fury against the ground, and the whole party obeyed the signal by joining in a war-dance - leaping and brandishing their knives at the throats of each other, and accompanying their menacing attitudes with a whoop and a yell, which echoed with ten-fold horror from the banks of the river ... it was scarcely finished, when the Chief produced a keg of whiskey .... The keg was soon emptied .... To complete the scene, the old warrior was uttering the most mournful lamentations over the keg he had emptied; inhaling its flavor with his lips, holding it out with his hands in a sup- plicating, attitude, and vociferating to the bystanders. 'Scuttawawbah!
101
'Scuttawawbah!' More strong drink! More strong drink!'
Two years later another event occurred which must have been equally as impressive, if not quite to dramatic. What was most likely the last Indian burial in the neighborhood was reported by the Alexandria newspaper:
Died at Colchester on Saturday last, Col. John Ayers, a distinguished warrior of the Catobin Indian trade, who fought bravely for our Independance, as is certified by General Morgan and other officers ... he had been on a visit to Washington; and on his return was taken with pleurisy and could get no farther than Colchester. He was attended by his nephew and grandson William Young and Ellick George, and everything necessary was provided for him by the liberality of the inhabitants of the neighborhood during his illness, the next day after his decease his body was interred after the manner of his nation and with the honors of war, attended by a large concourse of citizens. 2
102
Chapter V Notes
1 Morrison, Travels in Virginia, p. 129, quoting John Davis's account.
2 Alexandria Daily Advertiser, February 1, 1803.
103
Chapter VI THE DEATH OF A SMALL TOWN
Bridges on the Occoquan
The first town established within the present boundaries of Fairfax County was also one of the first to decline. Just as its location had been determined by the most suitable landing place for the ferry, so its function was dominated by the essential role played by that same public transport. After 1807, when the Occoquan River crossing was made upstream at Ellicott's bridge on the then main thoroughfare to the south, a basic reason for the existence of Colchester was no longer valid.
In 1793, John Hooe's ferry was operating two miles upstream from Colchester. A public road was open from Dumfries to Alexandria, which utilized the new crossing at this spot near the mills. " Hooe may not have consciously set out to destroy the town of Colchester, but he set in motion a chain of events which had a large part in bringing about this result. The bridge which replaced his ferry was built by Nathaniel Ellicott, owner of the Occoquan Mills, who subsequently obtained control of the stagecoach and mail contracts. This accomplished, he constructed a cutoff from the King's Highway north of Colchester and succeeded in diverting through traffic to this new route.
All this was not managed without opposition from the residents downstream. Ellicott's opening move, publicized in the Columbia Mirror and Alexandria Gazette on May 23, 1795, was quickly countered on July 7th by Thomas Mason's proposal to build a toll bridge across the Occoquan from Colchester to his land in Prince William County. On December 17th the legislature passed acts allowing for the construction of both bridges. These were not to interfere with navigation on the Occoquan. The rate of toll was set at three cents for a man or a horse. Should the bridges not be completed by the end of 1798, the permit would be revoked. The same condition was to be in force if, after completion, either bridge proved to be "unfit for passage of anything."2
Mason's bridge was in use by January 2, 1798; the toll rate was set by the legis- lature. The cost was now six cents. Fare structure was similar to that for ferries:
coach, chariot, wagon and driver =
6 horses
cart, 4-wheeled chaise and driver
=
4 horses
2-wheeled chaise or chair
=
2 horses
hogshead of tobacco
= 1 horse
one head of cattle = 1 horse
each sheep, hog, etc. = 1/5 the charge for a horse3
104
Special arrangements were made that spring for mares to cross without paying toll if they were being sent to be bred by Young Sportsman, a horse owned by Thomas Mason's brother. 4
No mention was made in the Act of 1798 of Ellicott's bridge, nor was it named in the 1804 legislature which increased the toll to eight cents. Col. John Hooe, the entrepreneur who started the rival ferry, seems to have been a completely defeated opponent in the transportation struggle at the Occoquan. He was drowned in the river near Colchester. Reporting his tragedy, the writer commented that "his previous de- jection of Spirit, and conduct on the fatal morning, has given rise to an idea that he did it intentionally."> We are not informed of the cause of Col. Hooe's despondency.
John Davis, the Englishman who was tutoring Ellicott's children at Occoquan, described the tavern at the end of the bridge and the Indian ceremony which took place not far away but his only mention of the structure itself was scant. The bridge, he wrote, was one "whose semi-elliptical arches are scarcely inferior to those of princely London. "6 It was apparently a truss bridge." Both Thomas Mason's plantation and the present com- munity of Woodbridge took their name from this distinguishing feature of the landscape.
Mason and his bridge, however, had but short lifespans. He died in 1800 leaving four children (one of whom was to be gruesomely murdered half a century later), 33 slaves, and an estate valued at L2760.8 His house survived until the 1870's but his bridge, although spoken of as "excellently strong and safe" in 1805, was carried away in a heavy rainstorm in August 1807.9 By this time through traffic had been diverted to the town of Occoquan and the bridge was not rebuilt.
An Interlude
While these serious changes were occurring a minor tempest received considerable local coverage in the Alexandria paper. On August 24, 1801, Walter Belt, a store- keeper in Colchester, inserted this notice:
Dr. James H. Blake of Colchester, having tried in an underhanded and most villainous manner to injure me, and will not give me satisfaction as a gentleman, I do, therefore, pronounce him a lyar and a coward.
Dr. Blake, who was living in Ann Thompson's house10 (the present Fairfax Arms) at the time, seemed to be a substantial citizen. He later represented Fairfax County in the Virginia legislature. 1 Refusing to fight a duel, he quickly retorted that Belt's "infamous conduct must consign him to eternal infamy" and called him a "pusillanimous puppy" and "among the most degraded of the human species." Belt claimed that Dr. Blake had maligned his character and had insulted him further by refusing to fight. Dr. Blake defended himself against the charge of cowardice, saying that "the testimony of some of the most respectable characters in Maryland can ... prove that I have been unfortunately engaged as a principal in more duels than one" and repeating that he was not afraid of Mr. Belt.
105
William Huskins, who owned the tanyard, joined the letterwriters in support of Belt's forebearance:
I do hereby certify, that some time ago, I was insulted by Walter S. Belt, when I struck him several times, which he calmly received without resenting it. 12
Huskins subsequently reversed his stand, declaring that Belt was a villain and a coward. Belt, in turn, rounded up nine "respectable men" to attest to his good character. "Just and honest, no disgrace can be attached to his reputation," wrote his neighbors. 13 Support for Belt grew as a fellow merchant took a full page advertisement to defend him, but poor Belt was finally forced to close his store in Colchester where, according to his friend, "he has had, for thousands of dollars, sales over the last several years." 14
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.