USA > Virginia > History of the colony and ancient dominion of Virginia > Part 32
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During eleven years, from 1707 to 1718, while other colonies were burdened with taxation for extrinsic purposes, Virginia steadily adhered to a system of rigid economy, and during that interval eighty-three pounds of tobacco per poll was the sum-total levied by all acts of assembly .; The Virginians now began to scrutinize, with a jealous eye, the circumstances of the govern- ment, and the assembly "held itself entitled to all the rights and privileges of an English parliament."
The act of 1642, reserving the right of presentation to the parish, the license of the Bishop of London, and the recommenda- tion of the governor, availed but little against the popular will, and there were not more than four inducted ministers in the colony. Republicanism was thus finding its way even into the
* There are several rivers in Virginia called after Queen Anne: the North Anna, South Anna, Rivanna, and Rapidan; and the word Fluvanna appears to be derived from the same source.
+ Va. Hist. Reg., iv. 11.
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church, and vestries were growing independent. The parish sometimes neglected to receive the minister ; sometimes received but did not present him, the custom being to employ a, minister by the year. In 1703 it was decided that the minister was an incumbent for life, and could not be displaced by the parish, but the vestries, by preventing his induction, excluded him from acquiring a freehold in his living, and he might be removed at pleasure. The ministers were not always men who could win the esteem of the people or command their respect. The Virginia parishes were so extensive that parishioners sometimes lived at the distance of fifty miles from the parish church, and the assem- bly would not augment the taxes by narrowing the bounds of the parishes, even to avoid the dangers of "paganism, atheism, or sectaries." Schism was threatening "to creep into the church, and to generate faction in the civil government."* "In Vir- ginia," says the Rev. Hugh Jones, t "there is no ecclesiastical court, so that: vice, profaneness, and immorality are not sup- pressed. The people hate the very name of bishop's court." " All which things," he adds, "make it absolutely necessary for a bishop to be settled there, to pave the way for mitres in English America."
There is preserved the record of the trial of Grace Sherwood, in the County of Princess Anne, for witchcraft. Being put in the water, with her hands bound, she was found to swim. A jury of old women having examined her, reported that "she was not like them." She was ordered by the court to be secured "by irons, or otherwise," in jail for further trial. The pic- turesque inlet where she was put in the water is still known as "Witch Duck." The custom of nailing horse-shoes to the doors to keep out witches is not yet entirely obsolete.
The Virginians at this time were deterred from sending their children across the Atlantic to be educated, through fear of the smallpox.}
From the statistics of the year 1715, it appears that Virginia
* Bancroft, iii. 27, 28, citing Spotswood MS., an account of Virginia during his administration, composed by the governor; Hawks, p. 88.
¿ The Present State of Virginia
į Bishop. Meade's " Old Churches."
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ANCIENT DOMINION OF VIRGINIA.
was, in population second only to Massachusetts,* which exceeded her in total number by one thousand, and in the number of whites by twenty-two thousand. All the colonies were at this time slave- holding; the seven Northern ones comprising an aggregate of 12,150 slaves, and the four Southern ones 46,700. The propor- tion of whites to negroes in Virginia was upwards of four to one. Their condition was one of rather rigorous servitude. The num- ber of Africans imported into Virginia during the reign of George the First was upwards of ten thousand. In addition to the slaves, the Virginians had three kinds of white servants,-some hired in the ordinary way; others, called kids, bound by indenture for four or five years; the third class consisted of convicts. The two colonies, Virginia and Maryland, supplied the mother country, in exchange for her manufactures, with upwards of twenty-five millions of pounds of tobacco, of which there were afterwards exported more than seventeen millions, leaving for internal con- sumption more than eight millions. Besides the revenue which Great Britain derived from this source, in a commercial point of view, Virginia and Maryland were at this period of more conse- quence to the fatherland than all the other nine colonies com- bined. Virginia exchanged her corn, lumber, and salted provi- sions, for the sugar, rum, and wine of the West Indies and the Azores.
* The comparative population of the eleven Anglo-American colonies in 1715 was as follows :-
New Hampshire
White Men. 9,500
Negroes. 150
Total. 9,650
Massachusetts
94,000
2,000
96,000
Rhode Island
8,500
500
9,000
Connecticut
46,000
1,500
47,500
New York
27,000
4,000
31,000
New Jersey
21,000
1,500
22,500
Pennsylvania
43,300
2,500
45,800
Maryland
40,700
9,500
50,200
Virginia.
72,000
23,000
95,000
North Carolina
7,500
3,700
11,200
South Carolina
6,250
10,500
16,750
375,750
58,850
434,600
(Chalmers' Amer. Colonies, ii. 7.)
CHAPTER L.
1714-1716.
Indian School at Fort Christanna-The Rev. Mr. Griffin, Teacher-Governor Spotswood visits Christanna-Description of the School and of the Saponey Indians.
GOVERNOR SPOTSWOOD, who was a proficient in the mathema- tics, built the Octagon Magazine, rebuilt the College, and made improvements in the governor's house and gardens. He was an excellent judge on the bench. At his instance a grant of £1000 was made by the governors and visitors of William and Mary College in 1718, and a fund was established for instructing In- dian children in Christianity,* and he erected a school for that purpose on the southern frontier, at fort Christanna, established on the south side of the Meherrin River, in what is now South- ampton County.} This fort, built on a rising ground, was a pen- tagon enclosure of palisades, and instead of bastions, there were five houses, which defended each other; each side of the fort being about one hundred yards long. It was mounted with five cannon, and had a garrison of twelve men. The Rev. Charles Griffin had charge of the school here, being employed, in 1715, by Governor Spotswood to teach the Indian children, and to bring them to Christianity. The Rev. Hugh Jonest says that he had seen there "seventy-seven Indian children at school at a time, at the governor's sole expense, I think." This appears to be a mis- take. The school-house was built at the expense of the Indian Com- pany.§ They were taught the English tongue, and to repeat the catechism, and to read the Bible and Common Prayers, and to write. These some of them learned tolerably well. The ma-
* Keith's Hist. of Va., 173.
¿ Huguenot Family, 271, and map opposite page 357. The names on this lit- tle map, taken from a letter by Peter Fontaine, are reversed, by mistake of the engraver.
į State and Condition of Virginia.
¿ Rev. C. Griffin's Letter, in Bishop Meade's Old Churches, etc., i. 287. (384)
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ANCIENT DOMINION OF VIRGINIA.
jority of them could repeat the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and Ten Commandments, behaved reverently at prayers, and made the responses. The Indians became so fond of this worthy mis- sionary, that they would sometimes lift him up in their arms; and they would have chosen him chief of their tribe, the Sapo- neys. They alone remained steadfastly at peace with the whites. They numbered about two hundred persons, and lived within musket-shot of Fort Christanna. They had recently been go- verned by a queen, but she dying they were now governed by twelve old men. When Governor Spotswood visited them in April, 1716, these old men waited on him at the Fort, and laid several skins at his feet, all bowing to him simultaneously. They complained through their interpreter of fifteeen of their young men having been surprised, and murdered, by the Genitoes, and desired the governor's assistance in warring against them until they killed as many of them. They governor agreed that they might revenge themselves, and that he would furnish them with ammunition. He also made restitution to them for losses which they complained they had suffered by being cheated by the Eng- lish. Sixty young men next made their appearance with feathers in their hair and run through their ears, their faces painted with blue and vermilion, their hair cut in fantastic forms, some looking like a cock's-comb; and they had blue and red blankets wrapped around them. This was their war-dress, and it made them look like furies. They made no speech. Next came the young women with long, straight, black hair reaching down to the waist, with a blanket tied round them, and hanging down like a petti- coat. Most of them had nothing to cover them from the waist upwards; but some wore a mantle over the shoulders, made of two deer-skins sewed together. These Indians greased their bodies and heads with bear's oil, which, with the smoke of their cabins, gave them a disagreeable odor. They were very modest and faithful to their husbands. "They are straight and well-limbed, of good shape and extraordinary good features, as well the men as the women. They look wild, and are mighty shy of an Eng- lishman, and will not let you touch them."*
* Huguenot Family, 272.
25
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ANCIENT DOMINION OF VIRGINIA.
The Saponey town was situated on the bank of the Meherrin, the houses all joining one another and making a circle. This circle could be entered by three passages, each about six feet wide. All the doors are on the inside of the circle, and the level area within was common for the diversion of the people. In the centre was a large stump of a tree, on which the head men stood when making a speech. The women bound their infants to' a board cut in the shape of the child; the top of the board was round, and there was a hole for a string, by which it is hung to the limb of a tree, or to a pin in a post, and there swings and diverts himself out of harm's way. The Saponeys lived as lazily and as miserably as any people in the world. The boys with their bows shot at the eye of an axe, set up at twenty yards distance, and the governor rewarded their skill with knives and looking-glasses. They also danced the war-dance; after which the governor treated them to a luncheon, which they de- voured with animal avidity.
CHAPTER LI.
1716.
Spotswood's Tramontane Expedition-His Companions-Details of the Explora- tion-They cross the Blue Ridge-The Tramontane Order-The Golden Horseshoe.
IT was in the year 1716 that Spotswood made the first com- plete discovery of a passage over the Blue Ridge of mountains. Robert Beverley, in the preface to the second edition of his "History of Virginia," published at London in 1722, says: "I was with the present governor* at the head-spring of both those rivers, t and their fountains are in the highest ridge of mountains." The governor, accompanied by John Fontaine, who had been an ensign in the British army, and who had recently come over to Virginia, started from Williamsburg, on his expedi- tion over the Appalachian Mountains, as they were then called. Having crossed the York River at the Brick-house, they lodged that night at the seat of Austin Moore, now Chelsea, on the Ma- tapony River, a few miles above its junction with the Pamunkey. On the following night they were hospitably entertained by Ro- bert Beverley, the historian, at his residence in Middlesex. The governor left his chaise there, and mounted his horse for the rest of the journey; and Beverley accompanied him in the explora- tion. Proceeding along the Rappahannock they came to the Germantown, ten miles below the falls, where they halted for some days. On the twenty-sixth of August Spotswood was joined here by several gentlemen, two small companies of rangers, and four Meherrin Indians. The gentlemen of the party appear to have been Spotswood, Fontaine, Beverley, Colonel Robertson, Austin Smith, who returned home owing to a fever, Todd, Dr. Robinson, Taylor, Mason, Brooke, and Captains Clouder and Smith. The whole number of the party, including gentlemen, rangers,
* Spotswood.
+ York and Rappahannock.
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pioneers, Indians, and servants, was probably about fifty. They had with them a large number of riding and pack-horses, an abundant supply of provisions, and an extraordinary variety of liquors. Having had their horses shod, they left Germantown on the twenty-ninth of August, and encamped that night three miles from Germanna. The camps were named respectively after the gentlemen of the expedition, the first one being called "Camp Beverley," where "they made great fires, supped, and drank good punch."
Aroused in the morning by the trumpet, they proceeded west- ward, each day being diversified by the incidents and adventures of exploration. Some of the party encountered hornets; others were thrown from their horses; others killed rattlesnakes. Deer and bears were shot, and the venison and bear-meat were roasted before the fire upon wooden forks. At night they lay on the boughs of trees under tents. At the head of the Rappahannock they admired the rich virgin soil, the luxuriant grass, and the heavy timber of primitive forests. Thirty-six days after Spots- wood had set out from Williamsburg, and on the fifth day of September, 1716, a clear day, at about one o'clock, he and his party, after a toilsome ascent, reached the top of the mountain. It is difficult to ascertain at what point they ascended, but proba- bly it was Swift Run Gap.
As the company wound along, in perspective caravan line, through the shadowy defiles, the trumpet for the first time awoke the echoes of the mountains, and from the summit Spotswood and his companions beheld with rapture the boundless panorama that lay spread out before them, far as the eye could reach, robed in misty splendor. Here they drank the health of King George the First, and all the royal family. The highest summit was named by Spotswood Mount George, in honor of his majesty, and the gentlemen of the expedition, in honor of the governor, named the next in height, Mount Spotswood, according to Fon- taine, and Mount Alexander, according to the Rev. Hugh Jones .* The explorers were on the water-shed, two streams
* He says that Spotswood graved the king's name on a rock on Mount George; but, according to Fontaine, "the governor had graving-irons, but could not grave anything, the stones were so hard."
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ANCIENT DOMINION OF VIRGINIA.
rising there, the one flowing eastward and the other westward. Several of the company were desirous of returning, but the go- vernor persuaded them to continue on. Descending the western side of the mountain, and proceeding about seven miles farther, they reached the Shenandoah, which they called the Euphrates, and encamped by the side of it. They observed trees blazed by the Indians, and the tracks of elks and buffaloes, and their lairs. They noticed a vine bearing a sort of wild cucumber, and a shrub with a fruit like the currant, and ate very good wild grapes. This place was called Spotswood Camp. The river was found fordable at one place, eighty yards wide in the narrowest part, and running north. It was here that the governor undertook to engrave the king's name on a rock, and not on Mount George.
Finding a ford they crossed the river, and this was the ex- treme point which the governor reached westward. Recrossing the river, some of the party using grasshoppers for bait, caught perch and chub fish; others went a hunting and killed deer and turkeys. Fontaine carved his name on a tree by the river-side; and the governor buried a bottle with a paper inclosed, on which he wrote that he took possession for King George the First of England. Dining here they fired volleys, and drank healths, they having on this occasion a variety of liquors-Virginia red wine and white wine, Irish usquebaugh, brandy, shrub, two kinds of rum, champagne, canary, cherry punch, cider, etc. On the seventh the rangers proceeded on a farther exploration, and the rest of the company set out on their return homeward. Gover- nor Spotswood arrived at Williamsburg on the seventeenth of September, after an absence of about six weeks. The distance which they had gone was reckoned two hundred and nineteen miles, and the whole, going and returning, four hundred and thirty-eight. "For this expedition," says the Rev. Hugh Jones, they were obliged to provide a great quantity of horseshoes, things seldom used in the eastern parts of Virginia, where there are no stones. Upon which account the governor upon his re- turn presented each of his companions with a golden horseshoe, some of which I have seen covered with valuable stones resem- bling heads of nails, with the inscription on one side, 'Sic juvat transcendere montes.' This he instituted to encourage gentle-
390
ANCIENT DOMINION OF VIRGINIA.
men to venture backward and make discoveries and settlements, any gentleman being entitled to wear this golden horseshoe on the breast who could prove that he had drank his majesty's health on Mount George." Spotswood instituted the Tramon- tane Order for this purpose; but it appears to have soon fallen through. According to Chalmers, the British government pe- nuriously refused to pay the cost of the golden horseshoes. A novel. called the "Knight of the Horseshoe," by Dr. William A. Caruthers, derives its name and subject from Spotswood's exploit .*
* Memoirs of a Huguenot Family, 281, 292; Introduction to Randolph's edi- tion of Beverley's Hist. of Va., 5; Rev. Hugh Jones' Present State of Virginia. The miniature horseshoe that had belonged to Spotswood, according to a de- scendant of his, the late Mrs. Susan Bott, of Petersburg, who had seen it, was small enough to be worn on a watch-chain. Some of them were set with jewels. One of these horseshoes is said to be still preserved in the family of Brooke. A bit of colored glass, apparently the stopper of a small bottle, with a horseshoe stamped on it, was dug up some years ago in the yard at Chelsea, in King Wil- liam County, the residence of Governor Spotswood's eldest daughter.
CHAPTER LII.
1715-1718.
Condition of the Colonies-South Carolina appeals to Virginia for Succor against the Indians-Proceedings of the Council and the Assembly-Disputes between them-Dissensions of Governor and Burgesses-He dissolves them-Black- beard, the Pirate-Maynard's Engagement with him-His Death.
THE twenty-five counties of the Ancient Dominion were under a government consisting of a governor and twelve councillors appointed by the king, and fifty burgesses elected by the free- holders. The permanent revenue, established at the restoration, now amounted to four thousand pounds sterling, and this sum. proving inadequate to the public expenditure, the deficit was eked out by three hundred pounds drawn from the quit-rents-private property of the king. Relieved from the dangers of Indian border warfare, and blessed with the able administration of Governor Spotswood, Virginia, under the tranquil reign of the first George, advanced in commerce, population, wealth, and power, more rapidly than any of her sister colonies.
A few of the principal families affected to establish an aristo- cracy or oligarchy, and Spotswood, at his first arrival, discovered that it was necessary "to have a balance on the Bench and the Board." He subsequently warned the ministers, "that a party was so encouraged by their success in removing former governors,. that they are resolved no one shall sit easy who doth not entirely submit to their dictates; this is the case at present, and will con- tinue, unless a stop is put to their growing power, to whom not any one particular governor, but government itself, is equally disagreeable."
At a council held at Williamsburg on the 26tn day of May, 1715, the governor presented a letter, received by express, from Governor Craven, of South Carolina, representing the deplorable condition of that colony from the murderous inroads of the Indians, the several tribes having confederated together and
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HISTORY OF THE COLONY AND
threatened the total destruction of the inhabitants, and request- ing a supply of arms and ammunition. The council unanimously agreed to the request, and, conceiving that Virginia was also in imminent danger of invasion, desired the Indian Company to take from the magazine so much ammunition as was necessary for South Carolina, and to return the same "by the first conveniency, that so this colony may not be unprovided for its necessary de- fence." It was further ordered, that the governors of Maryland, New York, and New England, be exhorted to send ships of war to Charleston, and that the governor of South Carolina be in- vited to send hither their women and children, and such other persons as are useless in the war. Three pieces of cannon were sent to Christanna, and ammunition to Germanna, these being the two frontier settlements. Colonel Nathaniel Harrison was empowered to disarm the Nottoway Indians.
In June, upon the application of the governor of North Caro- lina for preventing the inhabitants of that province from deserting it in that time of danger, a proclamation was issued by Governor Spotswood ordering all persons coming thence, without a pass- port, to be arrested and sent back.
A letter from the governor of South Carolina, brought by Arthur Middleton, Esq., requested assistance of men from Vir- ginia. South Carolina proposed, in order to pay the men, to send. to Virginia slaves to the number of the volunteers, to work on the plantations for their benefit. The council unanimously resolved to comply with the request, and to defray the charges incurred until the men should arrive in South Carolina, and for this pur- pose the governor and council agreed to postpone the payment of their own salaries. It was ordered that a party of Nottoway and Meherrin Indians should be sent to the assistance of the South Carolinians. An assembly was summoned to meet on the third of August. The duty of five pounds on slaves imported was sus- pended for the benefit of planters sending their slaves from South Carolina to Virginia as a place of safety. The contract entered into on this occasion between the two provinces, for the raising of forces, was styled "A treaty made between this government and the Province of South Carolina." Early in July, Spotswood dispatched a number of men and arms.
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ANCIENT DOMINION OF VIRGINIA.
The king of the Saran Indians visited Williamsburg, and agreed to bring chiefs of the Catawbas and Cherokees to treat of peace, and to aid in cutting off the Yamasees and other enemies of South Carolina.
The assembly met on the 3d of August, 1715, being the first year of the reign of George the First. The members of the council were Robert Carter, James Blair, Philip Ludwell, John Smith, John Lewis, William Cocke, Nathaniel Harrison, Mann Page, and Robert Porteus, Esquires. Daniel McCarty, Esq., of Westmoreland, was elected speaker of the house of burgesses. The governor announced in his speech that the object of the ses- sion was to secure Virginia against the murders, massacres, and tortures of Indian invasion, and to succor South Carolina in her distress, and he made known his desire to treat with the Indian chiefs who were expected, at the head of a body of men, on the frontiers. The burgesses expressed their hope that as the people of Virginia were so unable to afford supplies, the king would sup- ply the deficiency out of his quit-rents, and requested further in- formation as to the treaty made with South Carolina, and the aid required. A bill was introduced in the house for amending an act for preventing frauds in tobacco payments, and improving the staple. The burgesses requested the governor's assistance in arresting Richard Littlepage and Thomas Butts, who defied their authority. It appears that these gentlemen, being justices of the peace, sitting in the court of claims, in which the people presented their grievances, had refused to certify some such as being false and seditious. The governor refused to aid in en- forcing the warrant. The house sent up a bill making a small appropriation for the succor of South Carolina, but clogged with the repeal of parts of the tobacco act, and the council rejected it, "the tacking things of a different nature to a money bill" being "an encroachment on the privileges of the council."
A controversy next ensued between the council and the house as to the power of redressing the grievances of the people. A dispute also occurred between the governor and the burgesses relative to the removal of the court of James City County from Jamestown to Williamsburg. The governor said: "After five years' residence upon the borders of James City County, I think
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HISTORY OF THE COLONY AND
it hard I may not be allowed to be as good a judge as Mr. Marable's rabble, of a proper place for the court-house."
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