USA > Virginia > History of the colony and ancient dominion of Virginia > Part 35
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Sir William Berkley (1671) "thanked God that there were no free schools nor printing in Virginia." In 1682 John Buckner was called before the Lord Culpepper and his council for printing
* Keith, 173.
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the laws of 1680 without his excellency's license, and he and the printer ordered to enter into bond in one hundred pounds, not to print anything thereafter, until his majesty's pleasure should be known .* The earliest surviving evidence of printing done in Virginia is the edition of "The Revised Laws," published in 1733. In 1719 two newspapers were issued at Boston; in 1725 one at New York, and in the following year a printing-press was intro- duced into Maryland. One had been established at Cambridge, in Massachusetts, before 1647. A printing-press was first esta- blished in South Carolina, and a newspaper published in 1734. The first Virginia newspaper, "The Virginia Gazette," appeared at Williamsburg, in August, 1736, published by William Parks, weekly, at fifteen shillings per annum. It was a small sheet, on dingy paper, but well printed. It was in the interest of the government, and for a long time the only journal of the colony. Parks printed "Stith's History of Virginia" and "The Laws of Virginia."
In 1732, in accordance with royal instructions, a duty was laid of five per centum on the purchase-money of slaves, to be paid by the purchaser. The difference between sterling money and the ordinary currency was twenty per centum. Stealing of slaves was made felony, without benefit of clergy.
The Nottoway Indians (1734) still possessed a large tract of land on the river of that name, in Isle of Wight County. They were much reduced by wars and disease, and were allowed to sell part of their lands for their better support. The tributary In- dians now speaking the English language, the use of interpreters was dispensed with.
An act for regulating the fees of "the practisers in physic," recites that the practice is commonly in the hands of surgeons, apothecaries, or such as have only served apprenticeships to those trades, who often prove very unskilful, and yet demand excessive fees and prices for their medicines.
The general assembly met at Williamsburg, in August, 1736, and sixty burgesses appearing, and it being the first session of this assembly, they were qualified by taking the oaths and sub-
* Hening, ii. 518.
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scribing the test. The burgesses having attended the governor in the council-chamber, and having returned, in compliance with the governor's commands, a speaker was elected, and the choice fell upon Sir John Randolph. He being conducted to the chair by two members, made a speech to the house. On the next day the burgesses waited on the governor in the council-chamber again, and presented their new speaker to his honor, and the speaker made an address to the governor, giving a concise his- tory of the constitution of Virginia, from the first period of arbi- trary government and martial law to the charter granted by the Virginia Company, establishing an assembly, consisting of a council of state and a house of burgesses, which legislative con- stitution was confirmed by James the First, Charles the First, and their successors. Under it the house of burgesses claimed, as undoubted rights, freedom of speech, exemption from arrests, pro- tection of their estates, jurisdiction over their own body, and the sole right of determining all questions concerning elections. The speaker next eulogized the administration of Governor Gooch.
The governor then addressed the gentlemen of the council, Mr. Speaker, and the gentlemen of the house of burgesses. He re- commended the better regulation of the militia for the preventing of servile insurrections, the danger of which was increased by the large importation of negroes; mentions that his majesty had been graciously pleased to confirm an act for the better support and encouragement of the College of William and Mary, and another facilitating the barring of entails of small value, to perpetuate which, in a new country like Virginia, could serve only to im- poverish the present possessor. Governor Gooch's reply closed this long series of addresses .*
The borough of Norfolk was incorporated in 1736. Sir John Randolph, Knight, was made recorder, although not a resident. t
In the year 1737 the town of Richmond was laid off near the falls of James River, by Colonel William Byrd, of Westover, who
* Va. Hist. Register, iv. 121, where a list of the members may be seen.
{ In the colony, residence was not necessary to render a candidate eligible to a seat in the house of burgesses The same practice continues to this day in England.
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was proprietor of an extensive tract of land there. Shoccoe Warehouse had been already established there for a good many years. Fort Charles, called after the prince royal, afterwards Charles the Second, was erected (1645) at the falls of James River. A tract of land there, extending five miles in length and three in breadth, and lying on both sides of the river, was claimed (1679) by Captain William Byrd, father of the first Colonel Wil- liam Byrd, of Westover .* This Captain Byrd was born in Lon- don about the year 1653, and came over to Virginia probably about 1674. He was a merchant and planter. His residence, appropriately named Belvidere, was on the north side of the river, opposite the falls. A large part of this land had, a few years before, belonged to Nathaniel Bacon, Jr. The names "Bacon Quarter" and "Bacon Quarter Branch," are still pre- served there. The word Quarter thus used, means land owned and cultivated, but not resided on-a place where servants are quartered, and is still in common use in the tobacco-growing counties. Captain Byrd had been active in bringing some of the rebels to punishment. Bacon's confiscated land at the falls, per- haps, may have been given to him in reward for his loyal services on that occasion. He was a burgess from Henrico.f His letter- book, containing letters from 1683 to 1691, is preserved in the library of the Virginia Historical Society.
Colonel Byrd, second of the name, made a visit to his planta- tions on the Roanoke River, (1733,) accompanied by Major Mayo, Major Munford, Mr. Banister, and Mr. Peter Jones. While here, he says: "We laid the foundation of two large cities, one at Shoccoe's, to be called Richmond, and the other at the Point of Appomattox, to be called Petersburg. These Major Mayo offered to lay out in lots without fee or reward. The truth of it is these two places, being the uppermost landing of James and Appomattox Rivers, are naturally intended for marts where the traffic of the outer inhabitants must centre. Thus we did not build castles only, but cities in the air."} The following adver- tisement appeared in April, 1737, in "The Virginia Gazette:"
* Hening, ii. 453.
+ Va. Hist. Register, i. 61.
į Westover MSS., 107.
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"This is to give notice that on the north side of James River, near the uppermost landing, and a little below the falls, is lately laid off by Major Mayo, a town called Richmond, with streets sixty-five feet wide, in a pleasant and healthy situation, and well supplied with springs and good water. It lies near the public warehouse at Shoccoe's, and in the midst of great quantities of grain and all kinds of provisions. The lots will be granted in fee simple on condition only of building a house in three years' time, of twenty-four by sixteen feet, fronting within five feet of the street. The lots to be rated according to the convenience of their situation, and to be sold after this April general court by me, William Byrd." Richmond is said to be named from Rich- mond, near London, or, as others think, from the Duke of Rich- mond, whom Byrd may have known in England; but this is less probable.
Among the arrivals about this time is mentioned the ship Carter, with forty-four pipes of wine, "for gentlemen in this country ;" and a ship arrived in the Potomac with a load of con- victs. The Hector man-of-war, Sir Yelverton Peyton commander, arrived in the James River from England, by way of Georgia, whither he had accompanied the Blandford man-of-war, and the transport-ships which conveyed General Oglethorpe and his regi- ment. Captain Dandridge is mentioned as commanding his majesty's ship Wolf. "Warner's Almanac" was advertised for sale. According to a new regulation adopted by the deputy postmaster-general, Spotswood, the mail from the north arrived at Williamsburg weekly, and William Parks, printer of "The Virginia Gazette," was commissioned to convey the mail monthly from Williamsburg, by way of Nansemond Court-house and Nor- folktown, to Edenton, in North Carolina. The general post-office was then at New Post, a few miles below Fredericksburg.
1 CHAPTER LIV.
1733-1749.
Scotch-Irish Settlers-Death of Sir John Randolph-Settlement of the Valley of Shenandoah-Physical Geography of Virginia-John Lewis, a Pioneer in Au- gusta-Burden's Grant-First Settlers of Rockbridge-Character of the Scotch-Irish-German Settlers of Valley of Shenandoah.
DURING the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the disaffected and tur- bulent Province of Ulster, in Ireland, suffered pre eminently the ravages of civil war. Quieted for a time by the sword, insurrec- tion again burst forth in the second year of James the First, and repeated rebellions crushed in 1605, left a large tract of country desolate, and fast declining into barbarism. Almost the whole of six counties of Ulster thus, by forfeiture, fell into the hands of the king. A London company, under his auspices, colonized this unhappy district with settlers, partly English, principally Scotch-one of the few wise and salutary measures of his feeble reign. The descendants of these colonists of the plantation of Ulster, as it was now called, came to be distinguished by the name of Scotch-Irish. Archbishop Usher, who was disposed to reconcile the differences between the Presbyterians and Episco- palians, consented to a compromise of them, in consequence of which there was no formal separation from the established church. But it was not long before the persecutions of the house of Stuart, inflicted by the hands of Strafford and Laud, augmented the numbers of the non-conformists, riveted them more closely to their own political and religious principles, and compelled them to turn their eyes to America as a place of re- fuge for the oppressed. The civil war of England ensuing, they were for a time relieved from this necessity. Their unbending opposition to the proceedings of Cromwell drew down upon them (1649) the sarcastic denunciation of Milton .*
* Milton's Prose Works, i. 422, 430, 437.
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The persecutions that followed the restoration (1679) and afterwards, at length compelled the Scotch-Irish to seek refuge in the New World, and many of them came over from the north of Ireland, and settled in several of the colonies, especially in Pennsylvania. From thence a portion of them gradually mi- grated to the western parts of Virginia and North Carolina, inhabiting the frontier of civilization, and forming a barrier between the red men and the whites of the older settlements. The Scotch-Irish enjoyed entire freedom of religion, for which they were indebted to their remote situation .* The people of eastern, or old Virginia, were distinguished by the name of Tuckahoes, said to be derived from the name of a small stream; while the hardy mountaineers, west of the Blue Ridge, were styled Cohees, according to tradition, from their frequent use of the term "Quoth he," or "Quo-he."
In the month of March, 1737, died the Honorable Sir John Randolph, Knight, speaker of the house of burgesses, treasurer of the colony, and representative for William and Mary College. He was interred in the chapel of the college, his body being borne there at his own request, by six honest, industrious, poor housekeepers, of Bruton Parish, who had twenty pounds divided among them. His funeral oration in Latin was pronounced by the Rev. Mr. Dawson, a professor in the college. Sir John was, at the time of his death, in his forty-fourth year. His father, William Randolph, a native of Warwickshire, England, came over to seek his fortunes in Virginia some time subsequent to the year 1760. He was poor, and it is said, for a time "made his living by building barns." By industry, integrity, and good fortune, he acquired a large landed estate, and became a burgess for the County of Henrico.t On the maternal side, Sir John Randolph was descended from the Ishams, an ancient family of Northamp- tonshire, in England, which had emigrated to the colony. A
* Foote's Sketches of North Carolina; Grahame, ii. 57; Davidson's Hist. of Presbyterian Church in Kentucky, 16.
Va. Convention of '76, by Hugh Blair Grigsby, 77, citing Carrington Me- moranda. Mr. Grigsby has given an interesting account of several of the dis- tinguished Randolphs in a newspaper article, entitled "The Dead of the Chapel of William and Mary."
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love of learning which he early evinced was improved by the tuition of a Protestant clergyman, a French refugee. His edu- cation was completed at William and Mary College, for which he retained a grateful attachment. He studied the law at Gray's Inn and the Temple; and, after assuming the barrister's gown, returned to Virginia, where he soon became distinguished at the bar. He was gifted with a handsome person, and a senatorial dignity. With extraordinary talents he united extensive learn- ing; in his writings he indulged rather too much the native luxu- riance of his genius. In his domestic relations he is described as exemplary; his income was ample, and his hospitality propor- tionate. Blessed with an excellent judgment, he filled his public stations with signal ability. He was buried in the chapel of William and Mary; and his elegant marble tablet, graced with a Latin inscription, after having endured one hundred and twenty- three years, was recently destroyed by the fire which consumed the college. Sir John Randolph was succeeded in the office of treasurer by John Robinson, Jr.
From the preamble to the act for the better preservation of deer, it appears that in the upper country they were so numerous that they were killed (as buffalo often are in the far West) for their skins. They were shot while feeding on the moss growing on the rocks in the rivers; and their carcases attracted wolves and other wild beasts to the destruction of cattle, hogs, and sheep. Many deer were also killed by hounds running at large, and by fire-hunting, that is, by setting on fire, in large circles, the coverts where the deer lodged, which likewise destroyed the young tim- ber, and the food for cattle.
From the settlement of Jamestown a century elapsed before Virginia began to extend her settlements to the foot of the Blue Ridge. Governor Spotswood (1716) explored those mountains beyond the head-springs of the confluents of the Rappahannock. After a good many years, Joist Hite, of Pennsylvania, obtained from the original patentees a warrant for forty thousand acres of land lying among the beautiful prairies at the northern or lower end of the valley of the Shenandoah. Hite, with his own and a number of other families, removed (1632) from Pennsylvania, and seated themselves on the banks of the Opeckon, a few miles south
armorending in the whole In section for
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of the site of Winchester. This handful of settlers could ven- ture more securely into this remote country, as coming from Pennsylvania, a province endeared to the Indians by the gentle and humane policy of its first founder, William Penn. Toward the Virginians-the "Long Knives"-the Indians bore an implacable hostility, and warmly opposed their settling in the valley .*
In her physical geography Virginia is divided into four sec- tions: the first, the alluvial section, from the sea-coast to the head of tide-water; the second, the hilly, or undulating section, from the head of tide-water to the Blue Ridge; the third, the valley section, lying between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies; and the fourth, the Trans-Alleghany or western section, the waters of which empty into the Ohio. The mountains of Virgi- nia are arranged in ridges, one behind another, nearly parallel to the sea-coast, rather bending toward it to the northeast. The name Apalachian, borrowed from the country bordering on the Gulf of Mexico to the southwest, was applied to the moun- tains of Virginia in different ways, by the European maps; but none of these ridges was in fact ever known to the inhabitants of Virginia by that name. These mountains extend from northeast to southwest, as also do the limestone, coal, and other geological strata. So also range the falls of the principal rivers, the courses of which are at right angles with the line of the moun tains, the James and the Potomac making their way through all the ridges of mountains eastward of the Alleghany range. The Alleghanies are broken by no water-course, being the spine of the country between the Atlantic and the Mississippi River. The spectacle presented at Harper's Ferry-so called after the first settler-impresses the beholder with the opinion that the moun- tains were first upraised, the very signification of the word in the Greek, and the rivers began to flow afterwards; that here they were dammed up by the Blue Ridge, and thus formed a sea, or lake, filling the whole valley lying between that ridge and the Alleghanies. The waters continuing to rise, they at length burst their way through the mountain, the shattered fragments of this
* De Hass's Hist. of Western Va., 37; Kercheval, 70. 41
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disruption still remaining to attest the fact. As the observer lifts his eye from this scene of grandeur, he catches through the fissure of the mountain a glimpse of the placid blue horizon in the distant perspective, inviting him, as it were, from the riot and tumult roaring around to pass through the breach and participate in the calm below .*
A settlement was effected (1734) on the north branch of the Shenandoah, about twelve miles south of the present town of Woodstock. Other adventurers gradually extended the settle- ments, until they reached the tributaries of the Monongahela. Two cabins erected (1738) near the Shawnee Springs, formed the embryo of the town of Winchester, long the frontier out-post of the colony in that quarter. The glowing reports of the charms of the tramontane country induced other pioneers to plant them- selves in that wild, picturesque region. For the want of towns and roads the first settlers were supplied by pedlars who went from house to house. Shortly after the first settlement of Win- chester, John Marlin, a pedlar, who traded from Williamsburg to this new country, and John Salling, a weaver, two adventurous spirits, set out from that place to explore the "upper country," then almost unknown. Proceeding up the valley of the Shenan- doah they crossed the James River, and had reached the Roan- oke River, when a party of Cherokees surprised them, and took Salling prisoner, while Marlin escaped. Carried captive into Tennessee, Salling remained with those Indians for several years, and became domesticated among them. While on a buffalo-hunt- ing excursion to the Salt Licks of Kentucky, a middle or debate- able ground of hunting and war, the Flanders of the Northern and Southern Indians, with a party of them, he was at length captured by a band of Illinois Indians. They carried him to Kaskaskia, where an old squaw adopted him for a son. Hence he accompanied the tribe on many distant expeditions, once as far as the Gulf of Mexico. But after two years the squaw sold him to some Spaniards from the Lower Mississippi, who wanted him as an interpreter. He was taken by them northward, and finally, after six years of captivity and wanderings through
* Jefferson's Notes, 16.
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strange tribes and distant countries, he was ransomed by the Go- vernor of Canada, and transferred to New York. Thence he made his way to Williamsburg, in Virginia. About the same time a considerable number of immigrants had arrived there- among them John Lewis and John Mackey. Lewis was a native of Ireland. In an affray that occurred in the County of Dublin, - a - with an oppressive landlord and his retainers, seeing a brother, auch an officer in the king's army, who lay sick at his house, slain be- fore his eyes, he slew one or two of the assailants. Escaping, he found refuge in Portugal, and after some years came over to Vir- ginia with his family, consisting of Margaret Lynn, daughter of the Laird of Loch Lynn, in Scotland, his wife, four sons, Thomas, William, Andrew, and Charles, and one daughter. Pleased with Salling's glowing picture of the country beyond the mountains, Lewis and Mackey visited it under his guidance. Crossing the Blue Ridge and descending into the lovely valley beyond, where virgin nature reposes in all her native charms, the three deter- mined to fix their abode in that delightful region. Lewis selected a residence near the Middle River, on the border of a creek which yet bears his name, in what was denominated Beverley Manor; Mackey chose a spot farther up that river, near the Buffalo Gap; and Salling built his log cabin fifty miles beyond, on a beautiful tract overshadowed by mountains in the forks of the James River .* John Lewis erected on the spot selected for his home a stone-house, still standing, and it came to be known as Lewis's Fort. It is a few miles from Staunton, of which town he was the founder. It is the oldest town in the valley. He obtained patents for a hundred thousand acres of land in different parts of the circumjacent country, and left an ample inheritance to his children.
In the spring of 1736 John Lewis, the pioneer of Augusta, visiting Williamsburg, met there with Burden, who had recently come to Virginia as agent for Lord Fairfax, proprietor of the Northern Neck. Burden, in compliance with Lewis's invitation, visited him at his sequestered home in the backwoods; and the visit of several months was occupied in exploring the teeming
* Ruffner, in Howe's Hist. Coll. of Va., 451.
× County Donegal
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beauties of the Eden-like valley, and in hunting, in company with Lewis and his sons, Samuel and Andrew. A captured buf- falo calf was given to Burden, and he, on returning to Lower Virginia, where that animal was not found, presented it to Go- vernor Gooch, who, thus propitiated, authorized him to locate five hundred thousand acres of land in the vast Counties of Frederick and Augusta, (formed two years thereafter,) on condition that within ten years he should settle one hundred families there, in which case he should be entitled to one thousand acres adjacent to every house, with the privilege of entering as much more at one shilling per acre. This grant covered one-half of what is now Rockbridge County, from the North Mountain to the Blue Ridge. The grantee was required to import and place on the land one settler for every thousand acres. For this purpose he brought over from England (1737) upwards of one hundred families from the north of Ireland, Scotland, and the border counties of Eng- land, and it is said that he resorted to stratagem to comply ap- parently with the conditions .* The first settlers of this Rock- bridge tract were Ephraim McDowell (ancestor of Governor James McDowell) and James Greenlee, in 1737. Mary Green- lee, his sister, attained the age of one hundred years and upwards, and was known to two or three generations. The Scotch-Irish retained much of the superstitious nature of the Highlanders of Scotland, and Mary Greenlee was by many believed to be a witch. At a very advanced age she rode erect on horseback. Robert and Archibald Alexander also settled in the Rockbridge region. Robert, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, taught the first classical school west of the Blue Ridge. Archibald, who was agent of Burden and drew up all his complex convey- ances, was grandfather of the Rev. Dr. Archibald Alexander. Besides these, among the early settlers of this part of Virginia, were the families of Moore, Paxton, Telford, Lyle, Stuart, Craw- ford, Matthews, Brown, Wilson, Cummins, Caruthers, Campbell, McCampbell, McClung, McKee, McCue, Grigsby, and others. t
* Ruffner, ubi supra.
¡ The Grigsbys, from whom is descended Hugh Blair Grigsby, removed into the valley from Eastern Virginia, having originally come into the colony at the time of the restoration.
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An austere, thoughtful race, they constituted a manly, virtuous population. Their remote situation secured to them religious freedom, but little interrupted by the ruling powers. Of the stern school of Calvin and Knox, so much derided for their Puritanical tenets, they were more distinguished for their simpli- city and integrity, their religious education, and their uniform attendance on the exercises and ordinances of religion, than for the graceful and courteous manners which lend a charm to the intercourse of a more aristocratic society. Trained in a severe discipline, they expressed less than they felt; and keeping their feelings under habitual restraint, they could call forth exertions equal to whatever exigencies might arise. In the wilderness they devoted themselves to agriculture, domestic pursuits, and the arts of peace; they were content to live at home. Pascal says that the cause of most of the trouble in the world is that people are not content to live at home. As soon as practicable they erected churches; and all within ten or twelve miles, young and old, re- paired on horseback to the place of worship. Their social inter- course was chiefly at religious meetings. The gay and fashiona- ble amusements of Eastern Virginia were unknown among them .* Other colonies, emanating from the same quarters, followed the first, and settled that portion of the valley intervening between the German settlements and the borders of the James River. The first Presbyterian minister settled west of the Blue Ridge was the Rev. John Craig, a native of the north of Ireland. His congregation was that of the church then known as the Stone Meeting House, since Augusta Church, near Staunton, in the County of Augusta. He became pastor there in the year 1740. Augusta was then a wilderness with a handful of Christian set- tlers in it; the Indians travelling through the country among them in small parties, unless supplied with whatever victuals they called for, became their own purveyors and cooks, and spared nothing that they chose to eat or drink. In general they were harmless; sometimes they committed murders. Such was the school in which the tramontane population were to be moulded and trained, civilizing the wilderness, and defending
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