USA > Virginia > Virginia and Virginians; eminent Virginians, executives of the colony of Virginia, Vol. I > Part 9
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memorable cruise. Robert Brooke was captured on his voyage to Amer- ica and carried to New York, from whence he was sent back to England by Lord Howe, the British Admiral. From England, Robert Brooke went into Scotland and from thence again got over to France, and re- turned to Virginia in a French frigate that brought the arms supplied the continentals by the French government. Burning with patriotic ardor, he joined at once a volunteer troop of cavalry commanded by Captain Larkin Smith, was captured in January, 1781, in a charge of dragoons by a Captain Loller, of Simcoe's Queen's Rangers at Westham, six miles above Richmond (which raid is mentioned in the preceding sketch of Governor Jefferson); but was soon exchanged, returning to the service. After the war he entered upon the practice of his profession, in which he soon acquired distinction. In 1794 he represented the county of Spotsylvania in the House of Delegates of Virginia, and in the same year was elected Governor of the State by the Legislature, entering upon his duties December 1st and serving until December 1, 1796, when he was succeeded by James Wood. In 1795 he was elected Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of Virginia (having previously served as Deputy Grand Master), and served until 1797. In 1798 he was elected Attorney-General of Virginia over Bushrod Washington, the nephew of George Washington, and who was afterward a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Robert Brooke died in the office of Attor- ney-General in 1799, aged thirty-eight years. His grandson, Robert T. Brooke, Esq., an estimable citizen of Richmond, is the Treasurer of the Virginia Historical Society. The county of Brooke, formed in 1797 from Ohio county, commemorates the name of the Governor. The third son of Richard Brooke, John, was a Lieutenant in the Revolution and a pensioner of the State for gallant service. The fourth son, Francis T. (born August 27, 1763), at the age of sixteen was appointed a first Lieutenant in Colonel (afterward General) Charles Harrison's Regiment of Artillery, serving first in the campaign of General Lafayette during the invasion of Lord Cornwallis. He was soon after placed in command of the Magazine and Laboratory at Westham, six miles above Richmond, with a force of seventy-five men. Although so young an officer, Captain Brooke acquitted himself with skill and gallantry throughout the war, win- ning encomiums uniformly from his several Generals, Harrison, Lafayette and Greene. In 1788 he commenced the practice of Law in the counties of Monongalia and Harrison, and was soon appointed Attorney for the Commonwealth of the District Court of Morgantown. In 1790 he re- moved to Essex county, which county he represented subsequently in the House of Delegates, and in 1791 married Mary Randolph, the daughter of General Alexander Spotswood and a grand niece of General Washington. Mrs. Brooke died in 1803, leaving four children, and
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Captain Brooke married secondly Mary Champe Carter, by whom he had two children. Captain Brooke was a member of the State Senate in 1800, and in 1804 Speaker of that body, and in the latter year was elected a member of the General Court of Virginia. In 1811 he was elected Judge of the Supreme Court of Appeals, of which he was long President. By successive promotions he was appointed General of the first Brigade of the State forces in 1802. He was the last Vice-President and pre- siding executive of the Virginia Branch of the Order of Cincinnati, the funds of which, some $20,000, ultimately went, by the vote of the few sur- viving members of the Order, about the year 1820, to the endowment of Washington College, now Washington and Lee University, Lexington. Va. Judge Brooke died March 3, 1851, widely revered for his sterling worth, and deeply lamented. A scarce little memorial, " A Narrative of my Life; For my Family, by Francis T. Brooke," privately printed in 1849, has furnished many of the facts in this sketch. The name Brooke is of much earlier dating in Virginia than as above stated. Nicholas Brooke, "the younger, merchant," being a patentee of 500 acres in Middle Plantations, York county, August 13, 1646.
The names of Henry, Humphrey, Paulin and George Brooke subse- quently appear as grantees of land, and the name has been frequently represented in the Legislative bodies of Virginia and in the army and navy of America. It has been asserted that all of the name of Brooke as severally represented in Virginia, and by Roger Brooke in Maryland, the ancestor of the eminent jurist, Roger Brooke Taney, are of the same lineage from the parent stock in England.
JAMES WOOD.
James Wood, the son of Colonel James Wood, the founder of Win- chester, Virginia, was born about the year 1750, in Frederick County, which he represented in the Virginia Convention of 1776, which framed the State Constitution. He was appointed by that body, Nov. 15, 1776, a Colonel in the Virginia line, and rendered gallant service in the cause of Freedom, as well as in the defence of the frontiers of Virginia from the Indians. He was long a member of the State Council, and by seniority in that body, Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia. He was elected Governor of the State, December 1, 1796, serving until De- cember 1, 1799, when he was succeeded by Governor James Monroe. Governor Wood was subsequently commissioned a Brigadier-General of State troops. He was also, for a time, President of the Virginia branch of the Order of Cincinnati. He died at Richmond, June 16, 1813. The county of Wood, formed in 1799 from Harrison county, was named in commemoration of his patriotic services. The wife of General Wood, who was Jean, daughter of Rev. John Moneure, a Huguenot refugee, who fled from religious persecution to Virginia, early in the eighteenth
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century, and was long the rector of Overwharton parish, Stafford county, survived her husband several years. Mrs. Wood was a lady of great benevolence of character, and was gifted with both poetic and musical talents. Of her poetry, examples are preserved in the Southern Literary Messenger. She also frequently contributed to the newspaper press, and left in MS. a volume of unpublished poetry and sketches. Mrs. Wood spent the close of her life in pious works of charity and usefulness. A noble monument to her philanthropy, is a society for the assistance of indigent widows and children, which she founded with the assistance of Mrs. Samuel Pleasants, and a Mrs. Chapman. It was styled the "Female Humane Association of Richmond," and was incorporated by the Legislature of Virginia, in 1811. Mrs. Wood was the first Presi- dent of the Society, and untiringly performed the somewhat arduous du- ties of that responsible station until her death, in 1825, at the age of sixty-eight years. Her grave is in the cemetery of the Robinson family, a little beyond the western limits of Richmond, near the banks of James river. Soon after the death of Mrs. Wood, the Rev. John H. Rice, President of Hampden-Sydney College, instituted an association of ladies for the purpose of working for the benefit of poor theological students of the College, and which, in compliment to Mrs. Wood, he called the Jeau Wood Society.
JAMES MONROE.
James Monroe succeeded James Wood as Governor of Virginia, De- cember 1, 1799, and served until December 1, 1802, when he was suc- ceeded by John Page. He was again governor from January 4, 1811, to December 5th following, when he was succeeded by George William Smith, Lieutenant-Governor of the State. An extended account of the career of James Monroe will be found in Volume II. of this work, in the serial of biographical sketches of presidents of the United States.
The period of the first service of James Monroe as Governor of Vir- ginia was, however, marked by an event, tragical in its sequence, which though frequently referred to as "Gabriel's Insurrection," but few of the present generation have any definite knowledge of, as there has been no circumstantial account of it published, since that which contemporane- ously appeared in the newspapers, of which but few files have been pre- served, and they are practically inaccessible to the public. Some notice of it, therefore, in these pages, can not but prove interesting.
In a message of Governor Monroe to the General Assembly of Vir- ginia, dated December 5, 1800, he states that on the 30th of August preceding, about two o'clock in the afternoon, Mr. Mosby Shepherd, a reputable citizen of Henrico county, who resided about three miles north of the city of Richmond, beyond a small stream known as the Brook, called upon him and informed him that he had just received advice from two of his slaves that the negroes in the neighborhood mentioned intended to rise that night, kill their masters and their families, and
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procced to Richmond, where they would be joined by the negroes there, and would seize all the public arms and ammunition, murder the white inhabitants and take possession of the city. Thereupon Governor Mon- roe took immediate measures to avert the threatened fell design by stationing guards at the state penitentiary, where the public arms were deposited ; at the magazine, and at the state capitol, and by disposing the city troop of cavalry (commanded by Captain Moses Austin, then conducting a shot tower in the city of Richmond, and who was subse- quently noted as a Texan pioneer) in detachments to patrol the several routes leading to the city from the suspected neighborhood. "The close of the day, however, was marked by one of the most extraordinary falls of rain ever known in our country. Every animal sought shelter from it." The brook was in consequence so swollen in its volume as to be impassable, thus interposing a bar to the execution of the plan of the negroes. Nothing occurred during the night of the alarming character suspected, to disturb the tranquillity of the city, and the only unusual circumstance reported by the patrolling troopers in the morning following, was, that all negroes passed on the road, in the interval of the storm, were going from the city, whereas it was their usual custom to visit it on that night of the week (Saturday), which circumstance was not un- important, as it had been reported that the first rendezvous of the ne- groes was to be in the country, The same precautions being again ob- served the succeeding night without developments of the alleged design, Governor Monroe was on the point of concluding that the alarm was groundless, when from further information from Major William Mosby and other gentlemen, residents of the suspected neighborhood, he was fully satisfied that the insurrection had been planned by the negroes, and that they still intended to carry it into effect. He therefore convened the Executive Council of the State, on Monday, September 1, who took such measures that in the afternoon of the same day twenty of the negro conspirators were apprehended on the estate of Colonel Thomas H. Prosser, a prominent and influential gentleman, and from those of others in the suspected neighborhood, and brought to Richmond. "As the jail could not contain them, they were lodged in the penitentiary." The ringleaders, or chiefs, had fled and were not then to be found.
Every day now threw light on the diabolical plot and gave it addi- tional importance. In the progress of the trials of the conspirators, it was satisfactorily demonstrated that a general insurrection of the slaves in the State was contemplated by the originators of the plot. A species of organization had taken place among them, and at a meeting held for the purpose, they had elected a commander, one Gabriel, the slave of Colonel Prosser, and to whom they had given the title of General. They had also appointed subordinate officers, captains, sergeants, etc.
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They contemplated a force of cavalry, as well as of infantry, and had formed a plan of attack on the city, which was to commence by setting fire to the wooden buildings in the lower portion of it, called Rocketts, with the expectation of attracting the inhabitants thither whilst they assailed the penitentiary, magazine and capitol; intending, after captur- ing these and getting possession of arms and ammunition, to meet the people on their return and slaughter them. The accounts varied as to the number who were to inaugurate the movement. According to the testimony adduced in the trials of the conspiring wretches, it was variously stated at from five hundred to ten thousand. It was manifest, however, that it embraced a majority of the slaves in the city of Rich- mond and its neighborhood, and that the combination extended to the adjacent counties of Hanover, Caroline, Louisa, Chesterfield, and to the neighborhood of Point of Fork in Fluvanna County, and there was good cause to believe that the knowledge of the project pervaded other por- tions, if not the whole of the State. It was suspected "that the design was prompted by others who were invisible, but whose agency might be powerful." To meet such contingency, Governor Monroe called into service the 9th, 19th and 23d, and a portion of the 33d regiments of the State Militia, which were chiefly stationed in Richmond and the adjacent town of Manchester. The military force was gradually dimin- ished, until, on the 18th of October following, the residue was dis- charged.
The judicial disposition of the ring-leaders of the plot was summary, five of them were executed on the 12th of September, and five more on the 15th thereafter. "General" Gabriel, the sable chief, was appre- hended on the 27th of the same month, in the city of Norfolk, and suf- fered death in January following. The savage disposition of Gabriel, according to the records of Henrico County Court, had, a year previous to his final heinous conception, subjected him to punishment and lengthy imprisonment for biting off the ear of a fellow slave. In the testimony given by the witnesses (who were all negroes), in the trials of the con- spirators, there were some curious as well as characteristic communica- tions made. The whole plot was stupidly conceived, with a provision ludicrously trifling. The entire armament captured, consisted of twelve rude swords which had been manufactured from scythe blades by one of the conspirators, Solomon, the brother of " General" Gabriel, a black- smith, and the slave, also, of Colonel Prosser. A broken pistol was also owned by one of the conspirators, and it was stated by some of the witnesses at the trial, that "General" Gabriel had provided also six guns, ten pounds of gunpowder, and five hundred bullets, which he had moulded. It was evidently the expectancy of the bloody-minded wretches to secure, primarily, arms from the residences of their masters, whose households were to be the unsuspecting victims of midnight assassination. As in the case of Nat. Turner, the leader in the subse-
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quent and more serious insurrection which occurred in Southampton County, in August, 1831, religious fanaticism seems also to have been a factor in Gabriel's insurrection, as it was urged by Martin, one of the prime instigators, that God had said in the Bible, "If we will worship him, we should have peace in all our land, five of you shall conquer an hundred, and a hundred, a thousand of our enemies." A piece of silk, for a flag, was to be provided, with the motto "Death or Liberty" in- scribed upon it. "None of the whites were to be spared except Quakers, Methodists and French people, unless they agreed to the free- dom of the blacks, in which case they would at least cut off one of their arms." It was also designed to send a messenger to the nation of Catawba Indians in North Carolina, and to request their co-operation. The immunity stated as having been designed the Quakers, might have been actuated by a consciousness of the active philanthropy of that society towards the negroes, but why Methodists should be spared is less satisfactorily comprehended. Perhaps there were many followers of that church among the negroes. The coincidence of the mercy to the French, and the proposed mission to the Catawba Indians is strikingly curious, and affords grounds for the supposition that a tradition had lingered in the minds of the benighted negroes of the dread French and Indian War of some fifty years previous. The Indians of North Caro- lina, it may be added, had given the colonists much trouble some forty years earlier, even in the administration of Governor Spotswood. The matter is one to engage interest and speculative thought. An exempli- fication of the characteristic superstition of the negro is afforded in the desire of the conspirators to "enlist the outlandish (i. e., foreigners) people, because they were supposed to deal with witches and wizards, and of course useful in armies, to tell when any calamity was to befall them." Monroe County, now in West Virginia, formed in 1799 from Greenbrier County, was named in honor of Governor, afterwards President, Monroe.
JOHN PAGE.
No patriot among the worthies who have illumined the annals of the Old Dominion could boast a more widely honored lineage and more in- fluential family connections than the distinguished subject of this sketch, John Page, of " Rosewell," Gloucester county, Virginia. John Page, the first of the family in the Colony, a relative of Sir Gregory Page, baronet of Greenwich, County Kent, England, was born in England, about the year 1627; emigrated to Virginia in 1650; married in 1656, Alice Luckin, of County Essex, England; became a member of the Colonial Council ; died January 23, 1692, in the county of York, and was buried in Bruton parish churchyard, Williamsburg, Virginia. A chaste and substantial monument was erected over his remains in 1878,
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by Dr. R. C. M. Page, of New York City, a descendant. A MS. legacy of pious instructions from Hon. John Page, to his children, was pub- lished in 1856, under the title of a " Deed of Gift," by the late Bishop Wm. Meade, of Virginia. Matthew, the second son of Hon. John Page, was born in 1659, and died January 9, 1703, at his seat, "Rosewell," in Gloucester county. He was also a member of the Council, and one of the members of the original board of trustees of William and Mary College. He married, in 1689, Mary, only child and heiress of John and Mary Mann, of "Timberneck," Gloucester county. Of their chil- dren, Mann was the only survivor, born in 1691; member of the Coun- cil; died January 24, 1730, at "Rosewell," the imposing mansion at which seat, still standing, he completed the year of his death; his tomb is also there. He was twice married; first, in 1712, to Judith, daughter of Hon. Ralph Wormeley, secretary of the Colony, and secondly, in 1718, to Judith, second daughter of Hon. Robert ("King") Carter. Mann, the eldest child of the second marriage, born about 1718; mar- ried first in 1743, Alice, daughter of Hon. John Grymes, of Middlesex county, a member of the Council; married secondly, about 1748, Anne Corbin, daughter of Hon. John Taylor, of "Mount Airy," Spotsylvania county, a member of the Council. John Page, the eldest child of the first marriage, and the subject under notice, was born at " Rosewell," April 17, 1743 (old style). After private tuition under the Rev. William Yates, and one learned and worthy William Price, he entered the grammar school of William and Mary College in 1760, and graduated from that institution in 1763, with distinction. His classical attain- ments brought him under the favorable notice successively of the Colo- nial Governors Dinwiddie, Fauquier, Lord Botetourt, and the Earl of Dunmore. He was appointed a Visitor of William and Mary College in 1768, and in 1773 represented it in the House of Burgesses, and was also a member of the Council, and by his opposition in that body, in 1775, to the measures of Lord Dunmore, incurred his displeasure, par- ticularly in boldly advising him to give up the gunpowder which the Governor had seized. Continuing in the Virginia Assembly, he was distinguished by his talents and patriotism, and as a member of the Committee of Safety, in 1775, and of the First Council under the Con- stitution, in 1776, and as Lieutenant-Governor of the Commonwealth, he rendered important services in the Revolutionary struggle. He also contributed freely from his private fortune to the publie cause, and served as colonel of militia from Gloucester county in 1781. In the midst of exacting public service, and the exciting events of the period of the incipieney of the American Revolution, John Page yet found time for investigations in natural and in physical science, of which evidences in his MS. of Meteorological Observations have been preserved, one of them being in the possession of the present writer. In testimony of his attainments, John Page was, June 16, 1774, elected the first president
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of the "Society for the Advancement of Useful Knowledge," in Vir- ginia. In 1784 he served with Bishop James Madison and Robert Andrews, of Virginia, and Andrew Ellicott, of Pennsylvania, in aseer- taining and fixing the boundary line between the two states. In 1785 he was a lay deputy from the convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Virginia, with Rev. Dr. David Griffith and Rev. Samuel S. McCroskey, D.D., in the National Convention held in New York City. In 1789 he was elected one of the earliest representatives in Congress from Virginia, upon the adoption of the Federal Constitution-the seat of government being at that time in the city of New York-and con- tinued to act in that capacity until 1797. In 1794 he served as lieuten- ant-colonel commandant of a regiment from Gloucester county in the suppression of the " Whiskey Insurrection" in western Pennsylvania. In 1796 and 1799 he published Addresses to the People, and in 1800 was a Presidential elector. December 1, 1802, he succeeded James Monroe as Governor, filling the office most acceptably, and by two suc- cessive annual re-elections, under the provisions of the state constitu- tion, serving until December 1, 1805, when, not being eligible again until after an interval of four years, he was succeeded by William H. Cabell. In 1806 Governor Page was appointed by Jefferson United States Commissioner of Loans for Virginia, and acted in that capacity until his death at Richmond, October 11, 1808. He was buried in the churchyard of the venerable sanctuary of St. John, at Richmond, and his grave, in the eastern portion of the grounds, was ummarked until 1SS1, when Dr. R. C. M. Page, of New York, reverently placed over his remains a handsome tomb of Carrara marble. Governor l'age was twice married, first, about 1765, to Frances, daughter of Colonel Robin and Sarah (daughter of "Scotch Tom" Nelson) Burwell, who dying in 1784, aged thirty-seven years, Governor Page married secondly in 1789, in New York City, Margaret, daughter of William Lowther, of Scotland. By the first marriage he had twelve children, nine of whom survived; of these nine, five married sons and daughters of their illustrious kinsman, General Thomas Nelson. Of eight children, the issue of the second marriage, only two married. The descendants of Governor Page comprise the worthy names of Nelson, Smith, Digges, Pendleton, Meade, Berkeley, Blair, Anderson, Saunders, and others.
The county of Page, formed from those of Rockingham and Shenan- doah, in 1831, was named in honor of Governor Page. The following is a just tribute to his worth: "Hon. John Page was, from his youth, a man of pure and unblemished life. He was a patriot, a statesman, a philosopher, and a Christian. From the commencement of the Ameri- can Revolution to the last hour of his life he exhibited a firm, inflexible, unremitting, and ardent attachment to his country, and rendered her very important services. His conduct was marked by uprightness in all
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the vicissitudes of life-in the prosperous and calamitous times through which he passed-in seasons of gladness and affliction. He was not only the patriot, soldier, and politician, the well-read theologian and zealous churchman-so that some wished him to take orders, with a view to being the first bishop of Virginia-but he was a most affectionate domestic character."
There are two original portraits of Governor Page in existence. One representing him as a handsome youth, at the age of fourteen years, said to have been painted by the celebrated Benjamin West, and now in the possession of his descendant, Dr. R. C. M. Page, of New York City, who generously presented the State of Virginia, in October, 1880, with a copy by G. P. A. Healey, of New York City, and which copy is in the State Library at Richmond, Virginia. The other, by Charles Wilson Peale, is in the Museum of the Indepen- dence Hall building, Philadelphia.
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