USA > Virginia > City of Hampton > City of Hampton > Early history of Elizabeth City County, Virginia, 1607-1783 > Part 5
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Thus although Joane was technically a slave, and as much a part of the Eaton prop- erty as the acres themselves, in actual fact she had some
Court Records, Deeds Volume, February 7, 1791.
24. 25. Court Records, November 28, 1696.
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of the responsibilities of freedom.
Mulattos, as has been said, became long term in- dentured servants rather than slaves, at least when their mothers were white. And although no deeds of emancipation are to be found prior to the close of the Revolution, the records indicate the presence of a small number of free Negroes in the county from the earliest days of the eighteenth century. Like white freemen they entered the records only when they ran afoul of the law, and it is difficult to learn much about them and how they supported themselves in a society which had little place for free labor. That they found it hard to hold their own as freemen is suggested by the story of Quash, named as a free Negro when he was sued for damaging 26 27
a canoe in 1724 and was in 1727 suing for his freedom. What had happened to him in the meantime does not appear. Possibly someone had paid his damages in 1724 in return for services and then refused to dispense with the services; perhaps, as was to happen often in the next century, he had been "sold" or arbitrarily hired out by the sheriff to pay his tithes. This is mere guesswork, however. The only thing certain is that Quash was free in 1724 and was some- how in bondage again three years later.
26. Court Records, March 18, 1723/4.
27. Ibid, July 19, 1727.
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IX
EDUCATION
It is a pity that there is nothing at all in the way of contemporaneous account of the education given in the county's famous free schools in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. To be sure, frequent references to them in the records prove that their existence was continuous and their efficient management a matter of public interest, but these references are mostly wholly concerned with the property of the Syms and Eaton schools.
We know the names of some of the schoolmasters. There was, for instance, a Mr. Ebeneezer Taylor, who having just given up the Eaton "Ffree School" in 1692 was rebuked for his scandalous neglect of "ye Negro woman belonging to ye school -- shee being almost naked." The court ordered Mr. Taylor to provide "one new cotten waste coate and petty coate," three yards of material for a shift, "one paire new shoons and stockings and also three barrels of sound Indian corn for 1
said Negro's use. "
Apparently the woman in question was the "Negroe Joane" mentioned four years later when she was pronounced levy free because of her age, and allowed "whatever she makes of corne and tobacco or pulse, the same to her own use for her maintenance." 2 This incident is of interest in that it in- dicates that Joane, belonging to a piece of public property rather than to a private owner, had a certain measure of in-
1. Court Records, October 19, 1692.
2. Ibid, November 28, 1696.
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dependence. Her status seems more like that of a Russian "crown serf" than of an ordinary slave.
Robert Crooke, schoolmster of the Syms School in 1693 is on record as being given the two old cows in pay- 3 ment for his services in repairing the schoolhouse. George Eland was with the consent of the court elected schoomaster at Eaton's in 1697 to teach all such children in "English and gramer learning as shall be sent to him that belong to the county. " 4 The "gramer", according to Bruce, probably 5 included Latin.
In the respective years of 1735 and 1759 the Syms and Eaton schools were by statutes of the House of Bur- gesses put in the hands of a board of trustees consisting of the justices, minister and church wardens. The duties of the latter were to appoint the schoolmaster, who must first have been examined by the minister and licensed by the governor, visit his classes, redress abuses, remove him when necessary, and administer the estates, renting out 6 the land, selling timber, for the upkeep of the schools.
The occasion for the acts is not entirely clear, though they were obviously aimed at taking the management of the property out of the hands of the schoolmasters them- selves and enforcing a more careful administration over the schoolmaster's teaching. The wording of the second statue 3. Court Records, November 20, 1693.
4. Ibid, November 18, 1697, quoted in Armstrong, The Syms- Baton Free School.
5. P.I. Bruce, Institutional History of Virginia, I, 355. 6. Hening, Statutes at Large, VI, 389ff; VII, 317ff.
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indicates that the schools had not suffered any loss of pres- tige with the parents of the county, since it complains that the Eaton School "hath been abused by admitting a great number of children whose parents are well able to pay for their education." Henceforth, the act provided, the pupils were to be admitted without consent of the master except as the trustees declared poor children "to be the proper object of the pious founder's charity. "
George Wythe, no less, leased all but one acre of the Syms property in 1760 for 30/5/0 yearly. Besides the money payment, Wythe contracted to supply four good milch cows for the use of the school between April and November, to plant an orchard of 100 trees, and to leave any houses he might build on the land in good repair. 7
That education was very much on the minds of the county authorities is proved by the wording of the indentures binding out orphans and apprentices. In binding out a
young child the justices and church wardens nearly always exacted that some measure of book learning be given him, and one cannot follow the records without being impressed by their care in seeing that these orders were carried out, and that the youthful bondsman was not mistreated. A typical instance is recorded in 1694 when the justices commanded that Stephen Howard put Thomas Powell to school
7. Indenture, july 15, 1760, quoted in Armstrong, The Syms- Eaton Free School.
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to learn to read a chapter of the Bible, and to cease from whipping and abusing him or else return the child to his 8 mother.
To what extent little girls were given the same education as their brothers is not entirely clear. The eleven year old Eliza Miller, bound out in 1692 to Thomas and Eliza Hawks, was to be taught "to read a chapter in the Byble, the Lord's Prayer and the ten commandments", and if her masters failed to teach her, they were to forfeit 500 pounds of tobacco. 9 But less was exacted in behalf of the fourteen year old Martha Pott when in 1718 she was given into the charge of Jane Baker. Martha was merely "to learn anything of woman's work that she is capable to learn", without mention of whether woman's work included the ten commandments. 10 It must be admitted that the church wardens were on the whole more strict and specific concerning edu- cation when they hired out boys. When a lad who seems to have been Martha's own seven year old brother Phillip was bound out in 1724 to Martha Taylor, widow, and energetic proprietor of one of Hampton's most respectable ordinaries, the latter was to "learn him or cause him to be learned to 11
read, write, and cast accounts." It is only fair to add that at fourteen Martha Pott may have already learned her letters at the nearer of the two free schools.
8. Court Records, November 19, 1694.
9. Ibid, September 10, 1692.
10. Ibid, August 20, 1718.
11. Ibid, March 18, 1723/4.
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Besides providing for the education of the destitute, the justices later in the century exerted pressure on the more well-to-do parents to force them to see to their children's schooling, so that it can be said of Hampton in the middle of the eighteenth century that education was compulsory. At least four parents are on record between 1756 and 1762 as being summoned to court "to show cause why they have neg- lected the education of their children," one of them being William Smelt, a man of some standing in his day, for all 12 that he also sometimes neglected to attend divine service.
The gentry, of course, did not send their children to the charity schools. Where they did send them is not entirely certain, but all guardian's accounts of the period contain items of expenditures for schooling. Bruce deduces from such items the existence of neighborhood schools, kept 13 usually at the parsonage.
A pound Sterling was yearly paid for Thomas Mingham's education between 1757 and 1764, a sum which sounds like a 14 probable charge for tuition at such a school. On the other hand John Tabb's guardian paid Mr. Warrington, rector of St. John's 6/7/6 for schooling and books in 1765 and six pounds yearly after that. 15 This sum is so large, more than half of what was paid for the youth's board in the earlier year, that it is probable that the rector was giving him advanced private tutoring. It should be added of the
12. Court Records, August 3, September 7, 1756.
13. Bruce, Institutional History of Virginia, I, 33lff. 14. Deeds and Wills, November, 1766.
15. Ibid, June 28, 1770.
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Virginia raising of young Tabb that he acquired a "wigg" for 1/12/0 and a "laced hatt" for thirty shillings in 1767, the year in which his education was pronounced complete.
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X
COLONIAL INTERIORS
Back in the 1680's, when Hampton was a rakish, sea-going town, Henry Richass used to trot to town on a steed whose dapple gray was set off by the purple covering of his saddle. The rider wore "one old black capp plush", two "gould rings", and quite possibly, if it were an im- portant occasion, his broadcloth coat. At home he had among other possessions three more horses, two white and 1 one bay, a silver tankard and two silver spoons.
And what was he doing in Hampton this day? Ac- counting for his ride to town involves a pleasant exercise in historical reconstruction. He may have come in to testi- fy for a neighbor who had a lawsuit on his hands. Friends from all the county would be about, since it was court day; he would gossip with them, stop to observe who was in the pillory and how he was taking it, and perhaps have the pleasure of watching the sheriff flog a miscreant. Since court day was also market day, he would stop at market to appraise the horses and buy a quart or so of oysters. Prob-
ably he would also find time to get over to the tobacco warehouse to check his deposit of the "sweetscented" with the notes he held against it.
All this is completely probable. The fact is, however, that nothing is known of Henry Richass except the miscellany contained in the inventory of his estate made in
1. Court Records, September 22, 1690.
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1690 after his death. Such inventories and wills afford piquant material for the recreation of the color and pattern of daily living in old Hampton.
The wills suggest the deepest piety on the part of the old county folks. Here is the opening of one drawn up in 1690:
2 " In the name of God Amen, I, John Smith, being very sick and weak but of perfect memory, blessed be God Al- mighty for ye same, doo make this as my last will and testa- ment as follows- Item- I freely Bequeathe my Soul into ye hands of my maker with full hope and Assurance of Everlast- ing life in ye world to come, in and through ye merrits of my blessed Saviour and redeemer Jesus Christ, and my body to be decently buried according to ye devotion of my exe- cutors hereinafter named." All of which is truly touching, and there is no reason whatsoever to suspect the sincerity of John smith. But when runs across almost the same phraseo- logy in nearly every will drawn up in the next half century, one is forced to the depressing conclusion that the prevail- ing piety was largely a matter of legal form.
Both the sea going character of the town and the fact that it was a primitive little self-sustaining commun- ity are suggested by the inventory of the estate of Seb- 3
astian Perrin taken two years earlier. Eight acres and a Negro woman in the Barbados formed part of the property. Items of the local estate suggested that the late Mr.
Court Records, September 22, 1690.
Ibid, March, 1688/9.
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Perrin had been active in the militia, liked to hunt, and ground his own corn; they included a musket, carbine, a grindstone, and an iron handmill. Part of the household slept soft in the depths of the two featherbeds placed on the one bedstead, and the rest slept in two hammocks. He had two horses and saddles, seven head of cattle, and four Negroes. One of the latter was the boy Willeby, who was later com- plained of at court as a "pagan slave" who threatened God- 4
fearing citizens and rode neighbors' horses to death.
Charles Jennings has the honor of giving the earliest evidence of cultural interests in Hampton. His will drawn up in 1693 mentions "five draughts of ye foure 5 parts of ye world" valued at three pounds Sterling.
But Joan Smyth had a "new guilded Bible". Whether she could read it or not is problematical. Certainly she
couldn't write; she put her mark to her will, a most in- genious little autograph, no vulgar X, but a perpendicular line with three firm little horizontals across it. 6 We're
It was full getting along now; her will was made in 1715.
of loving detail, and gives a good picture of a plain, honest little house of her day. Her lot, by the way, adjoined to that of the "Widow Bayley", apparently the same Judith Bayley whose misconduct was to scandalize Hampton a few years later.
4. Court Records, March 18, 1696/7.
5. Ibid, January, 1692/3.
6. Ibid, July 20, 1715.
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First Joan's bedroom. When she made her mark on this paper, she was most likely propped up amid the "pillos and boulsters" of her one featherbed and four post curtained bedstead. It was her only bed, but like the more well-to-do Perrins she had hammocks, and likewise the luxury of a warming pan.
The "appurtenances" of her kitchen suggest the briskest industry. She had a spit, a "box iron and heater", a baker and frying pan, a pair of "iron rocks", whatever they might be, an iron fork and a brass skillet. And when she served up her southern fried chicken or her spoon bread fresh from the blaze in her kitchen chimney, she laid it on pewter plates. All her eating dishesy Were{ pewter, her four dishes, seven plates, one basin, one tankard, three porringers, and her dozen spoons.
When she was done with cooking and the washing of pewter plates, she sat down to one of her two spinning wheels, one for flax, one for "wooling", or stepped out to look after her heifer Hart "now about two years old." Or she could go over to gossip with the still respectable Widow Bayley, or her granddaughter Jane Bacchus, or she could just sit at home and pore over her gilded Bible in its leather case, though probably, as as been said, she couldn't read it. The executors of the John Smith who died in 1723 made an inventory of his estate so detailed as to satisfy
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the most insatiable curiosity. He had been ferryman of the "lower James", which probably means that he kept the ferry from the public wharf in Hampton to Sewell's Point, and thus possessed three craft, a twenty-seven foot shallop valued at 18 L with her gear and pont, and eighteen and a half foot horse boat, and a yawl.
He had two beds, one with white calico curtains and "vales", one with blue stuff curtains. Their sheets were of brown holland, and one was spread with "one old linnen coverlid furbelowed with silk. "
One of the special interests of this inventory is that Mr. smith, to judge from one vague reference and the amazing quantity and miscellaneous nature of his belongings, kept a store. Thus it is a record not only of his personal effects, but of furnishings that eventually entered other county homes. His set of shoemakers' tools, 5,000 English bricks, and six candle moulds and three "Tom Hawks" were certainly not all for his own private use. Neither were his forty chairs, a dozen of which were of Turkey leather, and the rest cane, flag, or just plain "old fashioned", and also his ten tables. But his pendulum clock must have been his own, as were probably the silver watch and chain, the new escritoire and the puzzling article listed as a silver "ear picker and seal" worth four pounds Sterling. He must have gone in for the purchase of fragments
Court Records, February 19, 1723/4.
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of old silver and gold, for he had a quantity of it about, besides a bit of Spanish money, a pair of gold earrings, and an enamelleu stone ring. Best of all he had some "women's apparel", the only style note put on record in the entire history of Hampton. They were then wearing silk damask gowns, petticoats lined with green poplin, or venetian satin petti- coats with silver open lace, black crape gowns, and an un- explained article called "Tabby jumps". There was also a magnificent umbrella worth 3 L.
In 1759 the estate of Anthony Tucker demonstrates that eighteenth century luxuries had been coming into Hamp- ton. He was a man of substance, being possessed of twenty- eight Negroes, two mulattoes, and nearly as much livestock as the patriarch Job. It included twelve cattle, three year- lings, sixteen cows, one young steer, one bull, six draught steers, one bay mare, one young stallion, two sorrel mares, seven old sows, nine pigs. In his house, side by side with his pewter plates he had the daintier and more new fangled china ware, one bowl, seven china saucers and five cups. Obviously two Cups had been broken, and probably someone had remarked that if the Tuckers had stuck to pewter like people of sense this wouldn't have happened. He also had a desk, and grandest of all a dozen new leather chairs, possibly the same that John Smith had offered on sale in his store.
owned one book, a large old Bible worth ten shillings. 8 He
8. Court Records, Deeds and Wills, 1759.
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Thomas Tabb had four mahogany chairs and two mahog- 9 any tables. Westwood Armistead, who obviously had large orchards, left his heirs the inspiriting legacy of twenty- five gallons of apple brandy and fifty gallons of peach 10 brandy; likewise one dictionary and twenty-four Negroes.
One most interesting inventory from a cultural standpoint is that of William Parsons in 1760. 11
Apparently
he was the forerunner of that Samuel Parsons who in 1821 amazed the town by willing half of his estate to a mulatto daughter by a Negro slave. This earlier Parsons was a man of some means ( fourteen slaves) who even in isolated Virginia managed to keep up with the intellectual life of England. Thus he had a six volume set of The Spectator, a History of Marlboro, The Whole Duty of Man, Bayley's Dictionary, and an assortment of law books, prayer books, Bibles. A later reference indicated that he also subscribed to the Virginia 11
Gazette. One might also mention for local color, since his executors did, his two "wigg boxes."
John Tabb had both literary and artistic interests. In his 4 L bookcase and desk he kept, according to the in- ventory made in 1762
12 a two volume edition of Josephus, a seven volume History of England, five volumes of something indecipherable connected with Turkey, four books of sermons, a large prayer book, and a bundle of Latin books. There
9. Deeds and Wills, August 7, 1759.
10. Ibid, January 1, 1760.
11. Ibid, July 7, 1767.
12. Ibid, March 2, 1762.
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was also the Body of Virginia Laws and Mercer's Abridged, which he studied when faced with a knotty problem in connection with his duties as justice. His walls contained a dozen framed prints, he had a fairly complete set of china dishes, and such fascinating sundries as a silver hilted swoard and belt worth 3 L and a brass hilted sword worth seven shillings. The plutocrat of pre-Revolutionary Hampton was 13 Charles Jennings, who in 1765 left an estate valued at 1,388 L, for those days no inconsiderable sum. His far-flung real estate included 513 acres in Lunenburg County, 400 in Dinwiddie,120 in Brunswick, 100 in Prince George, 100 in his own county of Elizabeth City, and one town lot in Hampton. It is probably of no importance whatsoever than in 1764 Roe Cowper sold for 100 L to Edward Marshall of New York his Negro boy Jack, his single riding chair with harness 14 and his bay horse Silver Eye; or that Mrs. D. W. Curle's 15 estate in 1767 included one birdcage, but these also are documented historic facts.
13 Deeds and Wills, February 5, 1765.
14. Ibid, September 4, 1765.
15. Ibid, July 7, 1767.
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GETTING AROUND
The one reassuring thing about trying to piece history together is that though the captains and the kings depart and the records of the tumult and shouting get lost, the land remains. Hopelessly difficult as it sometimes seems to arrange a true clear pattern of the old human Hamp- ton and its county, the level lands and their circumambient sea are here today, in their general aspects just as the Colonials and the Kecoughtan Indians knew them. If the schoolmaster of the eighteenth century Syms school ever assigned their students as subject for a composition the theme, "The Contours of Elizabeth City County", the latter might have written somewhat as follows: "Our county occupies the tip of the Peninsula between the blue Chesapeake and the yellow James. It is deeply indented by the broad lagoons and marshy inlets of Back River on the north, and by the lesser but more populous waters of Hampton River on the south, whose headwaters cut nearly into Back River. The eastermost tip of the Peninsula is sandy Old Point Com- fort, an outlook of curious dreamy glamour whence one may watch the sails come in between the Virginia Capes to enter the little inland sea at our south called Hampton Roads. " And exactly thus might a rather sentimental inmate of the present Syms-Eaton School describe this place.
From this may be judged the truth of the present
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county clerk's pet saying that "the back country of Hampton is the salt water." The county's waterways have always been of prime importance throughout itss history. Tradition has it that all the larger estates here, as elsewhere in Colonial Virginia, had their own private wharfs. Neverthe- less the existence of these waterways did not dispense with the need for roads. Many lesser planters had no frontage on the shore. They had to have some means of getting their produce overland to the tobacco warehouse and public wharf in Hampton, and of getting themselves to market and to court. And even the local bigwigs had sometimes to find their way overland to the adjacent counties of Warwick and York, and to the capital in Williamsburg.
So there were roads of a sort. Pretty terrible ones, it's quite plain from the records, and a depressing contrast to the smooth and pleasant waterways; the royal governor was denouncing their condition to the disconcerted 1 there was a crisscrossing of some species of bridle path throughfare in Colonial Hampton, and they were a story in themselves.
Elizabeth City County justices back in 1699, but nevertheless
This story is the more easily traced in that Hamp- ton, in contrast to many old New England settlements, has in the main been faithful to her traditional place names. Thus a court order concerning the clearing of highways in
1. Court Records, January 18, 1698/9.
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1694 would be fairly intelligible to any old time county man today. He might be stumped by the "road by John Chandlers down to ye church", since John Chandler has not figured large in local annals, but the names of Back River, Fox Hill, "Buck Row", Strawberry Banks and "ould Poquoson" would be entirely familiar. To be sure the name "Strawberry Banks" is no longer in use, but the old timer would hazily remember that it once applied to the approximate stretch of shore now oc- cupied by the National Soldiers' Home.
By act of Assembly in October, 1705, a network of public roads was prescribed for all Virginia counties. They were to lead from one county to the next and to Williamsburg, and within the county to the courthouse, parish church, and to all public mills and ferries. Also every planter was to main- tain a good bridle path to his house. The public roads were to be thirty feet broad (it sounds like a rather improbably optimistic provision, but the Hampton justices always ordered them to be that width) to be "well cleared from woods and bushes and the roots well grubbed up." Local surveyors of the highways were to lay them out and keep them in repair by commanding all male laboring tithables to work on them 3 when necessary.
This law had by no means marked the beginning of road building in Elizabeth City County. As far back as the records go it is plain that road building and reparring had
Court Records, September 18, 1694.
2. 3. Hening, Statutes at Large, III, 392.
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been looked on as an obligation that the resident owed his county over and above his tithes. But whereas the latter were payable yearly at the county levy in tobacco or in pence, this contribution was made in labor, the poor man taking time out from farming to work with his own hands, the gentleman contributing the labor of his indentured servants and slaves. In general it was a neighborly affair; the planter was often held responsible not only for the upkeep of his own private bridle path, but also for so much of the' public road as passed by his plantation. To see that he kept his end up, six surveyors of highways, also called overseers, were appointed yearly by the justices, each to keep an eye on road conditions in his own precinct, and to present in court offenders who failed to do their part. Their job was no sinecure; they were subject to court order, could be presented themselves for remissness in the execution of their duty, and drew no pay, any more than did the humblest road builder.
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