USA > Virginia > Virginia and Virginians; eminent Virginians, executives of the colony of Virginia, Vol. I > Part 4
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ried, in 1724, Anne Butler, the daughter of Richard Brayne, Esq., of Westminster, England. She derived her middle name from James Butler, Duke of Ormond, her godfather. Her portrait in this work is from one in oil in the library of the State of Virginia, at Richmond, and now first engraved. She had issue: John, Robert, Anne Catharine and Dorothea. John Spotswood married, in 1745, Mary, daughter of William Dandridge, of the British navy, and their issue was two sons: General Alexander and Captain John Spotswood, of the Army of the Revolution, and two daughters, Mary and Anne. Robert, the younger son of the governor, and an officer, under Washington, in the French and Indian war, was slain by the Indians. Anne Catharine, the elder daughter of Governor Spotswood, married Bernard Moore, Esq., of " Chelsea," in the county of King William, Va. Dorothea, the younger daughter, married Captain Nathaniel West Dandridge, of the British navy, son of Captain William Dandridge, of Elson Green.
Promoted Major-General, and on the eve of embarking with troops destined for Carthagena, Spotswood died at Annapolis, Maryland, on the 7th of June, 1740. There is reason to believe that he lies buried at " Temple Farm," his country residence near Yorktown, and which was so called from a sepulchral building erected by him in the garden there. It was in the dwelling-house at "Temple Farm" (called the Moore House) that Lord Cornwallis signed the articles of his capitulation. The widow of Governor Spotswood surviving him, and continuing to reside at Germanna, married, secondly, November 9, 1742, the Rev. John Thompson of Culpeper County, a minister of the Episcopal Church, and of exemplary character. The descendants of Governor Spotswood in Virginia are now represented, in addition to the family names already given, in those of Aylett, Braxton, Brooke, Berkeley, Burwell, Bassett, C'hiswell, Carter, Campbell, Callaway, Cullen, Claiborne, Dandridge, Dangerfield, Dabney, Fairfax, Fontaine, Gaines, Gilliam, Kemp, Kin- lock, Lloyd, Lee, Leigh, Macon, Mason, Manson, Marshall, Meriwether, MeDonald, McCarty, Nelson, Parker, Page, Randolph, Robinson, Small- wood, Skyring, Talaferro, Temple, Thweatt, Taylor, Walker, Waller, Wickham, Watkins, and others, scarce less esteemed. The portrait in this work is from a contemporaneous portrait in oil, in the possession of the eminent sculptor, Edward V. Valentine, Richmond, Va., whose late estimable wife was of the lineage of the Governor.
HUGHI DRYSDALE.
Hugh Drysdale succeeded Spotswood as Lieutenant-Governor of Vir- Finia, September 27, 1722. He was a man of but mediocre capacity, and his administration was not marked with any event of importance. It may be noted, however, that to relieve the people of Virginia from a pull-tax, a duty was laid by the Assembly on the importation of liquors
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and slaves, but owing to the opposition of the African Company and in- terested traders in England, the act was annulled by the British Board of Trade. Thus did Great Britain, and later the New England States, foster the institution of slavery so long as the importation of slaves was profitable to them, though the Southern Colonies repeatedly and ineffec- tually enacted laws prohibiting further importation. Drysdale, dying July 22, 1726, Colonel Robert Carter, President of the Council, suc- ceeded to the government of the Colony.
ROBERT CARTER.
Robert Carter, born in 1667, was the son of John Carter, an emigrant from England, who settled in upper Norfolk County, which he repre- sented in the House of Burgesses in 1642; later for a number of years the representative of Lancaster County; Commander-in-chief of the forces sent against the Rappahannock Indians, and who died in 1669. Robert Carter was long the agent of Lord Fairfax, proprietor of the Northern Neck grant, and by the extent of his landed possessions, thus acquired, obtained the sobriquet of " King Carter."
He was speaker of the House of Burgesses for six years, treasurer of the Colony, for many years a member of the Council, and, as President of that body, he was at the head of the government of Virginia from the death of Governor Drysdale, July 22, 1726, until the arrival of Governor William Gooch, October 13, 1727. Robert Carter built a fine church on the site of one formerly built by his father, near his seat, " Cor- otoman," on the Rappahannock River, in Lancaster County, and it is still standing, in good preservation. Robert Carter, by his two wives, Judith Armistead and a widow whose maiden name was Betty Landon, left many children, who are now represented by a legion of names of the most worthy people of Virginia. He died August 4, 1732, and lies beneath a handsome tomb with a long and culogistic Latin epitaph, near the east end of Christ Church, before mentioned as having been built by him.
SIR WILLIAM GOOCHI.
William Gooch was born at Yarmouth, England, October 21, 1681. He was an officer of superior military abilities, and had served under Marlborough, and in the Revolution of 1715. He arrived in Vir- ginia October 13, 1727, relieving President Robert Carter in the gov- ernment. The council, without authority, allowing Gooch three hundred pounds out of the quit-rents in augmentation of his salary, he in return resigned, in a great measure, the helm of government to them, and so insinuating was he in his diplomacy and so facile in accom-
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modating himself doubly to the home authorities and to the people of Virginia that he greatly endeared himself to them, 'and he is said to have been the only Colonial Governor in America against whom there was never any complaint, cither from inhabitant or merchant abroad.
Owing partly to his address, and partly to a well-established revenue and the enforcement of a rigid economy, the Colony enjoyed prosperous repose during his long administration. During the year 1728, the bound- ary line between Virginia and North Carolina was run by Colonel William Byrd and Messrs. Fitzwilliam and Dandridge, Commissioners in behalf of Virginia, and others on the part of North Carolina, and the transaction is most entertainingly detailed in the " Westover MSS." of Colonel Byrd. In 1740, troops for the first time were transported from the Colonies to co-operate with the forces of the mother country in offensive war. An attack upon Carthagena being determined on, Gooch raised four hundred men as the quota of Virginia, and the Assembly voted £5,000 for their support. Major-General Alexander Spotswood, who had been appointed to the command of the four battalions raised in the Colonies, dying June 7, 1740, at Annapolis, on the eve of embarkation, Governor Gooch assumed the command of the expedition. During his absence the government of Virginia devolved on Commis- sary James Blair, President of the Council. During the administration of Gooch, the settlement of the fertile valley of Virginia was effected, first in 1734, twelve miles from the present town of Woodstock. In May, 1746, the Assembly appropriated £4,000 to the raising of Vir- ginia's quota of troops for the invasion of Canada. They sailed from Hampton in June ; the expedition, however, proved abortive. Gov- ernor Gooch, who had been appointed Commander, but declined, was created a Baronet during the year, and in 1747 was made a Major. Gen- eral. He returned to England in 1749, leaving John Robinson, Presi- dent of the Council, as the Acting Governor of the Colony. Sir William Gooch died December 17, 1751. The press in 1878 chronicled the un- happy estrangement of his descendant, Sir Thomas Gooch, the eighth baronet, from his childless wife, Lady Anne (Sutherland), because of an attempt to deceive him with a spurious heir. Broken in spirit and health, the sorrowful wife, in her death the following year, expiated her offense.
It may be of interest to note that another of the lineage of Governor Gooch, and bearing the same Christian name, preceded him as a resident of the Colony. At " Temple Farm," a seat of Governor Spotswood, near Yorktown, Va., within the structure known as the " Temple" is the tomb of Major William Gooch (who died October 29, 1655, aged twenty- nine), bearing the arms of Gooch of Norfolk (of which family was the Governor) as follows : Paly of right ar. and sa. a chev. of the first betw. three dogs of the second spotted of the field. Crest-A greyhound
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passant ar. spotted sa. and collared of the last. This William Gooch was a Burgess from York County, in 1654, and it is claimed there are those of the name, of his lineage in Virginia now.
COMMISSARY JAMES BLAIR.
James Blair, D.D., was born in Scotland about the year 1655. Hav- ing graduated from the University of Edinburgh, he was admitted to orders in the Established Church of England, and commenced his minis- try in Scotland, but finding his usefulness obstructed by popular prejudice, he went to London, and was sent by its bishop in 1685 as a missionary to Virginia. He served here first as rector of Henrico parish for nine years. His ability and great zeal displayed in furtherance of the cause of religion, procured him, in 1689, the appointment of Commissary of the Bishop of London. He removed his residence to Jamestown to prose- cute plans for the founding of an institution of learning in the Colony. Meeting with much encouragement, he proceeded to England, where, having secured a subscription of :£2,500, he obtained from the King in February, 1692, a charter for William and Mary College, with a grant of twenty thousand acres of land for its support. The King himself subscribed £2,000 towards its building out of the quit-rents. Seymour, the Attorney General of Great Britain, having received the royal com- mands to prepare the charter of the college, remonstrated against the liberality of the King, urging that the nation was engaged in an expen- sive war; that the money was needed for better purposes, and that he did not see the slightest occasion for a college in Virginia. Commissary Blair, in reply, represented to him that its intention was to educate and qualify young men to be ministers of the Gospel; and begged that the Attorney-General would consider that the people of Virginia had souls to be saved as well as the people of England. "Souls !" exclaimed the imperious Seymour, "damn your souls !- make tobacco !" The college was erected according to a design by Sir Christopher Wren, at Williamsburg, in 1694, with five professorships of Greek and Latin, the mathematics, moral philosophy, and two of divinity, with Dr. Blair as President, which position he held during life. In 1710, Commissary Blair became rector of Bruton Parish at Williamsburg. He was long a member of the Council, and, as the President of this body, was the Acting Governor of Virginia during the absence of Governor Gooch in com- mand of the Carthagena expedition from June 1740 to July 25, 1741, and perhaps later. Commissary Blair in 1727 assisted John Hartwell and Edward Chilton in compiling " The State of His Majesty's Colony in Virginia," and one hundred and seventeen of his " Sermons and Dis- courses" expository of the Sermon on the Mount, were published in four volumes Svo at London in 1742. He died August 3, 1743, aged 88,
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and was buried at Jamestown, where his tomb with a long epitaph in Latin was still standing, though in a damaged condition, just prior to our late war. By his will Commissary Blair bequeathed his library and £500 to William and Mary College.
THE EARL OF ALBERMARLE.
William Anne Keppel, second Earl of Albermarle, was born at White- hall in 1702, and received his second Christian name from Her Majesty Queen Anne, who in person and as sponsor graced his baptism. He succeeded George Hamilton, Earl of Orkney, as the Governor-in-chief of Virginia, after the death of the latter, September 6, 1737. Appointed August 25, 1717, by George I. a captain in the British army, he was con- tinuously promoted, and on February 20, 1743, was made a Lieutenant- General, and distinguished himself June 2d in that year at the battle of Dettingen in the Netherlands. In 1744 he made the campaign with Marshall Wade, and in 1745, under the Duke of Cumberland, at the battle of Fontenoy, he was wounded. On April 16, 1746, he com- manded the right wing at the battle of Culloden, and succeeded to the command in chief, as General, August 23d. Distinguished himself July 2, 1747, at the battle of Vall; was embassador to France in 1748; was created a Knight of the Garter, July 12, 1750; was made a member of the Privy Council, July 12, 1751, and on March 30, 1752, one of the Lords Justices during the absence of the King in his German dominions. He married, in 1722, Anne, daughter of Charles, first Duke of Rich- mond, and who was one of the ladies of the bed-chamber of Queen Car- oline. The issue of this marriage was eight sons and seven daughters. The portrait of Lord Albermarle, with those of Sir Charles Wager ; Charles Montague, first Earl of Halifax; Colonel Daniel Parke, Gov- ernor of the Leeward Islands, whose daughter Lucy was the wife of the second Colonel William Byrd: the third Earl of Orrery ; the Earl of Egremont ; the second Duke of Argyll; Peggy Blount, the favorite of the poet Alexander Pope; Sir Robert Walpole, Lady Betty Cromwell, Sir Wilfred Lawson, Sir Robert Southwell, and others of colonial distinc- tion, with those of the second William Byrd, and of members of his family, from a gallery formerly at "Westover," are now preserved at the hospitable seat of the Harrison family, " Lower Brandon," on James River. Lord Abermarle died at Paris, December 22, 1754, and was succeeded in the title by his eldest son George, the third Earl. Admiral Augustus Keppel, of the British Navy, was his second son. The name of Lord Albermarle is commemorated in a sound on the coast of North Car- olina and in a county in Virginia.
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JOHN ROBINSON.
The ancestor of the distinguished family Robinson in Virginia, was Christopher Robinson, of Cleasby, in Yorkshire, England, who settled about the year 1666, at " Hewick," near Urbanna, in Middlesex County. He was the brother of the Right Reverend John Robinson (born 1650. died 1722), a distinguished prelate and statesman, who was Bishop of London as well as embassador for many years to Sweden, and who represented England as First Plenipotentiary at the Congress of Utrecht in 1712.
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Christopher Robinson was born in 1645; married, first, Agatha Ber- tram, secondly, Catharine, daughter of Theodore Hone, and widow of Robert Beverley, of Virginia. John Robinson, their second son, was born in 1683. As President of the Council, he was Acting Governor of Vir- ginia from June 20th to his death in September, 1749. He married, first Catherine, daughter of Robert Beverley, and, secondly, Mrs. Mary Welsh, of Essex County, Va. His descendants through intermarriage have been connected with nearly all of the old Virginia families, and the name Robinson itself has had many worthy and valued representa- tives in the annals of the Colony and State.
THOMAS LEE.
Thomas Lee, the fourth son of Richard and Lettice (Corbin) Lee, and descended in the third generation from Richard Lee, who emigrated from Shropshire, England, and settled in Westmoreland county, Virginia, in 1641, was born about the year 1680. He married in 1721, Hannah. daughter of Philip Ludwell, and granddaughter of Lady Berkeley (widow of Sir William), who married, thirdly, in 1680, Philip Ludwell. Thomas Lee was long a member of the House of Burgesses and of the Council, and as President of that body after the death of John Robin- son, became the Acting Governor of Virginia, and but for his death, which occurred in the early part of 1751, it was presumed, from the in- fluence of his connections in England, that he would have received the appointment of Deputy or Lieutenant-Governor, for which, it is said, a commission had been executed. He had been also the recipient of royal bounty, it is said, upon the destruction of his residence by fire, being then aided from the privy purse of Queen Caroline towards the building of the famous " Stratford " mansion.
He was a member of the historical Ohio Company, and was a man of great enterprise and sagacity. Rarely has a sire been so distinguished in his offspring as was Thomas Lee, the father of six sons, severally eminent among the lustrous patriots of the Revolution. The names of Philip Ludwell and Thomas Ludwell Lee are indelibly engraven on the pages of the history of Virginia, whilst the fame of Richard Henry and of Francis Lightfoot Lee (signers of the instrument of American Free-
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CAPT. GEORGE PERCY, Treasurer of the Colony of Virginia, and Governor in 1609. From the original at Syon House, England, seat of the Earl of Northumberland.
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dom) and of William and Arthur Lee, is food for national pride. The grand hero, Robert Edward Lee, was a descendant in the third genera- tion of Henry Lee, the brother of Governor Thomas Lee.
LEWIS BURWELL.
The Burwell family is "of very ancient date upon the borders of England and Scotland." It was settled at Berwick-upon-Tweed as early as the year 1250. The names Minion Burrell and William Burrell appear in the list of adventurers for Virginia. The ancestor of the family in the Colony was Major Lewis Burwell, who settled on Carter's Creek, in Gloucester County, in 1640. In 1646 he was a member of the deputa- tion sent to invite Charles the Second to come to Virginia as its King. He married Lucy, daughter of the "valiant Captain Robert Higginson, one of the first commanders who subdued the country of Virginia from the power of the heathen." Of the issue of this marriage, Major Nathaniel Burwell, the fourth son, born about 1680, married Elizabeth, eldest daughter of " King " Robert Carter, who, after his death in 1721, married Dr. George Nicholas, and was the mother of Robert Carter Nicholas, long the Treasurer of Virginia. The eldest son of Major Nathaniel and Elizabeth (Carter) Burwell, Lewis Burwell, known by the name of his seat, as of " The Grove," Gloucester County, was born about the year 1710. He matriculated at Caius College, Cambridge, England, in 1731, and was a man of genius and learning. He married in October, 1736, Mary, daughter of Colonel Francis and Ann Willis, He was a Burgess from Gloucester County as early as 1736, a little later became a member of the Council, and as the President of that body, after the death of Thomas Lee, was, on February 12, 1751, acting Gov- ernor of Virginia. He was relieved by the arrival of Lieutenant-Gover- nor Robert Dinwiddie, November 20, 1751, and died in 1752.
ROBERT DINWIDDIE.
The period of the accession of Robert Dinwiddie as the executive of the Colony of Virginia, was one of anxiety and momentous presage in its history, and the dignity of Lieutenant-Governor at this critical exi- gency was conferred on him in royal recognition of the singular ability, zeal and fidelity exhibited by him in previous positions of governmental trust. The Dinwiddie is an ancient Scotch family of historic mention. On the " Ragman's Roll," A. D. 1296, appears the name of Alleyn Dinwithie, the progenitor, it is said, of the Dinwiddies who were long seated as chief proprietors on lands called after them, in the parish of Applegarth, Annandale, Dumfries-shire. The immediate ancestors of Governor Dinwiddie were denizens of Glasgow, and had been, for some
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generations probably, merchants in honorable esteem, as was his father, Robert Dinwiddie. His mother was of an old Glasgow family of the ame calling. She was Sarah, the daughter of Matthew Cumming, who was Baillie of the city in 1691, 1696 and 1699. The son, Robert Din- widdie, was born in 1693, at Germiston, his father's seat.
He was disciplined in the counting house, and was probably for a time a merchant in Glasgow. He was appointed, December 1, 1727, a col- lector of the customs in the Island of Bermuda, which position he held under successive commissions, until April 11, 1738, when, in acknowl- udgment of his vigilance and zeal in the discharge of official duty, in the detecting and exposing a long practiced system of fraud in the collection of the customs of the West India Islands, he received the ap- pointment of "Surveyor General of the customs of the Southern ports of the Continent of America."
He was named, as his predecessor had been, a member of the respect- ive Councils of the American Colonies. This mandate was recognized by Governor Gooch, of Virginia (in which colony Dinwiddie appears to have fixed his chief residence), but was resisted by the Councillors, who, jealous of interference with their prerogatives, refused to allow him to sit with them, and transmitted a remonstrance to the King for his exclusion. The controversy was decided by the Board of Trade in May, 1742, ad- vising that the royal purpose should be enforced, in opposition to claims dangerous because they were new. Dinwiddie was specially commis- ioned, August 17, 1743, with the designation of "Inspector General," to examine into the duties of the Collector of Customs of the Island of Barbadoes, and, in the discharge of this trust, exposed to the English Government an enormous defalcation in the revenues there. In 1749, he appears to have resided in London as a merchant, engaged in trade with the colonies. He was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia, July 20, 1751, and with his wife Rebecca (nee Affleck) and two daughters, Elizabeth and Rebecca, arrived in the Colony November 20th following. He was warmly welcomed with expressions of respect and regard, but in a little while gave offence by declaring the dissent of the King to certain acts which his more insinuating predecessor, Gooch, had approved. Governor Dinwiddie finding that the regulations governing the patenting of lands were but little regarded, and that a practice had long prevailed of securing the possession and use of lands by warrants of survey without the entering of patents, by which more than a million of acres of land were unpatented, and the royal revenue from the quit- rents of two-shillings annual tax upon every fifty acres, seriously de- frauded-with the advice of the Council, in an endeavor to correct the abuse, and by the exaction of a fee of a pistole (about $3.60 in value) un every patent issued, incurred yet greater animosity. The House of Burgesses unavailingly remonstrated against this exercise of the royal pre- rogative, and, in 1754, sent Peyton Randolph (then Attorney-General
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of the Colony and ultimately distinguished as the first President of the Continental Congress) to England, as its agent, with a salary of £2500, and bearing a petition to the King for relief from the fec. The decision of the Board of Trade was virtually in favor of Governor Dinwiddie, though their instructions were at first singularly indefinite. This differ- ence, when harmony in Council and concert in action were so essential, was unfortunate. The aggrandizing policy in North America of the French-who asserted their claim to the whole Mississippi Valley, in virtue of primal rights of discovery and occupation under the explora- tions of Marquette, La Salle, and others-was a constant menace to English colonization. In every treaty between the two competing powers, the territorial limits of France had been left undecided. To that fatal treaty between Charles I. and Louis XIII., by which " was restored to France, absolutely and without demarcation of limits, all the places possessed by the English, in New France, Lacadie and Canada, particularly Port Royal, Quebec and Cape Breton," holds McPherson, may be ascribed the subsequent troubles with France. From 1690, the colonies from New Hampshire to Georgia were engaged in almost unre- mitting hostilities with the savages on their borders, instigated by the French in the North and the Spaniards in the South. The intent of the French to link their possessions in Louisiana and on the St. Lawrence by a chain of forts on the Ohio, was manifest. Governor Dinwiddie, viewing with alarm their encroachments, at the close of October, 1753, dispatched Major George Washington, then only twenty-one years of age, to M. Le Gardeur de St. Pierre, the Commandant of the fort on the Ohio, to demand by whose authority an armed force had crossed the lakes, and to urge a speedy and peaceable departure. The mission, ac- complished under many hardships, was ineffectual, and Governor Din- widdie immediately instituted the most energetic and widespread efforts for defense. His vigilance, zeal and activity were signal. Though suf- fering from the debilitating effects of a stroke of paralysis, his personal activity for the public good would have been creditable to one of physi- cal capacity the most favored. He promptly reported the impending danger to the English government, and to the Executives of the several Colonies, urging immediate and effectual measures of resistance, and praying their assistance. He had but meager response in America, but in the course of the year 1754 was aided with a grant of £20,000, arms and ordnance stores from Great Britain. The money was ordered to be reimbursed from the export duty of two shillings per hogshead on tobacco. The English Ministry perceiving, from the unfortunate events of 1754, that expedients were fruitless, and that no effective conjoined action of the American Colonies could be hoped for, determined on an offensive policy by sea and land, and early in 1755, Admirals Boscawen and Mostyn were sent with a powerful fleet into the North American scas, to intercept the reinforcements of France; and General Braddock,
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