Legends of Loudoun Part 9

CHAPTER X

ADOLESCENCE

Our upper country, at last, has graduated from being cla.s.sified as merely part of the backwoods of Lord Fairfax's Northern Neck and is now enrolled in the rapidly growing roster of colonial Virginia's counties.

Unfortunately the conferring of that dignity did not alter the social problems of the frontier nor change, to any great degree, the turbulence and heterogeneous character of its population. The Irish element, particularly, appears to have been pugnacious and lawless, if one may judge from the frequency of proceedings before the Court for "battery"

wherein defendants carry distinctly Hibernian names. There was no dearth of business, civil or criminal, awaiting the court's sessions.

Those of the poorer cla.s.s, however, were not alone in taking the law into their own hands. Cameron Parish, as heretofore appears, was set up in 1748. Whether its vestry was more arbitrary and tenacious of office or merely less diplomatic than was the rule elsewhere is not clear; but that there developed great dissatisfaction with its activities the records show. The Parish vestry, it will be remembered, exercised many powers of civil government. Originally the vestry of twelve gentlemen and their successors were chosen by vote of the paris.h.i.+oners; but gradually the practice developed in existing vestries, upon the death or resignation of a member, for the survivors themselves arbitrarily to appoint his successor. There never was unanimity of religious belief in Cameron the Parish nor in Loudoun the county. From the very beginning, as we have seen, the land was peopled by men and women of definitely divergent religious views--the Churchmen from Tidewater with some Baptists and Presbyterians, a large number of Quakers from Pennsylvania, Germans from overseas and no small number whose religious convictions, if existent, were of nebulous tenuity. Had the vestries stood annually for election the populace might have felt more closely represented; but with their members.h.i.+p exclusively taken from the landowning cla.s.s which had migrated from the lower country, the Quakers, the Scotch-Irish, the Germans accepted a somewhat arbitrary rule less willingly than were they all churchmen and meeting together in common wors.h.i.+p. The friction was not confined to Cameron. Similar troubles had developed elsewhere and pet.i.tions had been sent to Williamsburg for relief. In 1759 the Legislature decided to act. "Whereas" reads the preamble to Chapter XXI of the Laws of 1758-59

"it has been represented to this present General a.s.sembly, that the Vestries of the parish of Antrim, in the County of Halifax; of the parish of Cameron in the County of Loudoun; of the parish of Bath, in the County of Dinwiddie; and of the parish of Saint-Patrick, in the County of Prince Edward, have been guilty of arbitrary and illegal practices to the great oppression of the inhabitants of said parishes ... and the inhabitants of said parishes have respectively pet.i.tioned this a.s.sembly that the said vestries may be dissolved;"[88]

[88] 7 Hening, 301.

the Legislature thereupon dissolved the vestries named, their future acts were "declared utterly void to all intents and purposes whatsoever"

and the freeholders and housekeepers of the respective parishes authorized to meet, on notice, and "elect twelve of the most able & discreet persons of the said parishes respectively to be vestrymen of the same." So far was the Legislature willing to go; but the orthodox rulers of Virginia did not for a moment propose to turn over control of the vestries in the dissatisfied parishes to a dissenting element; there was a further provision that should any vestrymen dissent from the communion of the Church of England and join "themselves to a dissenting congregation, and yet continue to act as vestrymen" they should be displaced.

During the ensuing ten years Loudoun's population grew rapidly and a parish extending from Difficult Run to the Blue Ridge covered so much territory that it made it difficult for a vestry, chosen from different parts of the parish, to a.s.semble frequently for business. The project of dividing Cameron was the subject of a pet.i.tion to the Legislature in 1769 but because of opposition and disagreement the division was not made until June, 1770, when an act was pa.s.sed creating a new parish beyond Goose Creek and running to the Blue Ridge.[89] It was given the name of Shelburne in compliment to the British statesman William Petty-FitzMaurice, Lord Shelburne.

[89] 8 Hening, 425.

This contemplated division of Cameron had repercussions in the relations between that parish and its mother parish Truro. The new Shelburne would take from Cameron many of its t.i.thables or taxpayers and suggested intensive study of its remaining economic resources. In November, 1766, or twenty-eight years after the creation of Cameron, the Legislature pa.s.sed an act empowering Truro's vestry to sell its parish Glebe and church plate and divide the proceeds between Truro and Cameron; while three years later, in the act creating Shelburne, it was provided that as the Cameron Glebe was then located inconveniently, the latter's vestry was authorized to sell it and use the proceeds "toward purchasing a more convenient glebe, and erecting buildings thereon, for the use and benefit of the minister of the said parish of Cameron, for the time being, forever."[90]

[90] 8 Hening, 202.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WILLIAM PETTY-FITZMAURICE. Earl of Shelburne, 1st Marquis of Lansdowne, for whom Shelburne Parish was named.]

The parish well may continue to take satisfaction in having been named worthily. Shelburne came of an historical and n.o.ble family, being a direct descendant of the very ancient Lords of Kerry. Born in Dublin on the 20th May, 1737, his childhood is said to have been "spent in the remotest parts of the south of Ireland and according to his own account when he entered Christ Church, Oxford in 1755 he had both everything to learn and everything to unlearn." Perhaps his friends.h.i.+p and conciliatory att.i.tude always shewn toward the American Colonies arose from his naturally amiable and considerate disposition, perhaps from his partic.i.p.ation under Wolfe in campaigns against the French. However that may be, he was well-liked and trusted in Virginia. He succeeded his father as Earl of Shelburne in 1761. During the critical years of 1766 and 1767 he was serving, under Pitt, as Secretary of State and sought, as a friend of the Colonies, to avoid the crisis which was surely developing. Unfortunately his efforts toward conciliation were blocked by others of the ministry and the King and in 1768 Shelburne was dismissed. In 1782 he rea.s.sumed office under Lord Rockingham, with the express understanding that the independence of the American Colonies should be recognized; an att.i.tude requiring courage and strength to maintain. When Rockingham died, Shelburne succeeded him as Premier but through an alliance of Fox with Shelburne's old enemy North, he was forced to resign that position in 1783. A year later, when Pitt returned to power, he caused Shelburne to be created first Marquis of Landsdowne with which his public career ended. He was succeeded in his t.i.tles and estates, upon his death on the 7th May, 1805, by his eldest son.[91]

[91] See biography in _Encyclopedia Britannica_ under name of Landsdowne.

More fortunate in its fate than the early vestry books of Cameron, which have been destroyed or lost, the first vestry book of Shelburne, covering the period from 1771 to 1805, has been preserved and after being for many years in the library of the Episcopal Theological Seminary at Alexandria was sent to the State Library in Richmond. A photostatic copy has been made and is held in Loudoun.[92]

[92] In Loudoun National Bank.

By way of contrast to the first vestry books of Virginia's older parishes, the earliest entries in that of Shelburne do not yield a great amount of interesting material. Its pages are largely filled with details of the levy of taxes and there is a protracted quarrel over the sites to be chosen for new church buildings which, in the event, prevented action until the Revolution and its aftermath deprived the Vestries of much of their authority. A few entries in the Vestry book have been abstracted:

"30th November 1772 Ordered that the Church Wardens for the Present Year do provide Benches to accomodate the persons who come to attend Divine Service at the Court House in Leesburg."

And then, to shew what a Church the Parish might have had but did not, there is this entry on the 30th December 1774. (Page 30) "Ordered that there be a Church built at or near the place where the Chapple now stands at Stephen Rozels and that it be 50 feet long & 40 feet broad in the clear. To be built either of brick or stone. To be of Sufficient Pitch for two rows of Windows, if built of brick the wall to be 2-1/2 brick thick if built of stone the walls to be 2 feet thick; the Pews & all the Carpenter work to be of pine plank (framing excepted) The Base to be of Stone 2-1/2 feet thick & to be finished off in such manner as the person appointed shall direct."

From the 10th day of June, 1776, no meeting of the vestry is recorded until the 1st day of April 1779.

At the meeting of the 4th November, 1795, Mr. Jones, the minister was ordered to preach "one Sunday at the Church at Rozels & the rest at Leesburg."

Thus the county was divided into two parishes. A little later Cameron secured the services, as Parson, of a member of another well-known family of the Northern Neck when, in 1771, the Rev. Spence Grayson returned from his theological studies and ordination in England and a.s.sumed that position. He was the son of Benjamin Grayson and Susan Monroe and had inherited from his father his home, Belle Air, in Prince William County which he left to go to England to enter the church. He married Mary Elizabeth Wagener, sister to Colonel Peter Wagener (clerk of Fairfax County and subsequently an officer in the Revolution) and became one of the original trustees in 1788 of the town of Carrborough on the south side of the mouth of Quantico Creek, where now are situated the Marine Corps Barracks. His nephew was the well-known Colonel William Grayson who, after serving with distinction in the Revolution, became one of the original two senators from Virginia.

But Shelburne was not to be cast in the shade in this matter of Parsons.

In 1771 there was inducted there as minister the man who, of her long line of clergy, has left in Church, State, and Nation the most prominent name of all. The Rev. Dr. David Griffith had been born in the city of New York in 1742. Like the Rev. Charles Green, early minister of Truro, Dr. Griffith first became a physician, taking his medical degree in London and then returning to New York and beginning his practice as a physician there in 1763. Determining to enter the church ministry, he returned to England and was ordained in London by Bishop Terrick on the 19th August, 1770. Again he returned to America and worked as a missionary in New Jersey, whence he came to take charge of Shelburne Parish in 1771. When the Revolution came on, he, in 1776, became Chaplain of the 3rd Virginia Regiment and, in December of that year, he "was acting as a surgeon in the Continental Army in Philadelphia." Long a close and confidential friend of George Was.h.i.+ngton, he became the Rector of Christ Church, Alexandria, in 1780, in which position he continued until his death. He was a leader in building up the church in Virginia from its depressed condition after the Revolution, was a member of its first convention in Richmond in 1785 and was elected first Bishop of Virginia at the second annual convention of the Diocese in May, 1786.

Unfortunately there were no funds available to pay his expenses to England and thus he was never formally consecrated. He died at the house of Bishop White in Philadelphia, while attending a church convention there, in 1789. He has been described as "large and tall in person but firm in manner. Without perhaps being brilliant, he was an able man of sound judgment and consecrated life, who had the esteem and affection as well as the confidence of his contemporaries. His memory ought to be held by us in highest honour."[93]

[93] _The Colonial Church in Virginia_, Rev. E. L. Goodwin, p. 116. Also see _Colonel Leven Powell_, by Dr. R. C. Powell and Appleton's _Encyclopedia American Biography_.

In those days Loudoun shared, with other of Virginia's frontier counties, a pest of numerous wolves which indeed penetrated into the older counties as well. There was a broad demand that the bounty for killing the animals be increased and in 1765 the a.s.sembly pa.s.sed an act authorizing Loudoun and six other counties to pay larger bounties, providing that a person killing a wolf within their respective boundaries "shall have an additional reward of fifty pounds of neat tobacco for every young wolf not exceeding the age of six months, and for every wolf above that age one hundred pounds of neat tobacco, to be levied and paid in the respective counties where the service shall be performed."[94] The act was to continue in force, however, only three years.

[94] 8 Hening, 147.

Five years later the hunting activities of Leesburg, at least, took on a more domestic hue. The inhabitants of the little town were busy in building up the reputation of a famous Virginia delicacy but apparently were rather overdoing it. "It is represented" reads an act of 1772 "that a great number of hogs are raised and suffered to go at large in the town of Leesburg, in the county of Loudoun to the great prejudice of the inhabitants thereof;" so the act forbade owners from allowing such liberties to their porkers and permitted any person to "kill and destroy such swine so running at large."[95]

[95] 9 Hening, 586.

That Francis Aubrey established the first ferry from Loudoun's sh.o.r.e across the Potomac prior to 1741 has been noted in Chapter IV. It was at the Point of Rocks and was inherited by Thomas Aubrey, son of its founder, who obtained a license for its operation in 1769. By 1775 the travel was very light at that point and complaint was made of inadequate equipment. In 1834 it, with the surrounding land on the Loudoun side, was in the possession of Rebecca Johnson and in 1837 in that of Margaret Graham. The construction of the Point of Rocks bridge by the Potomac Bridge Company in 1847 ended its usefulness.

A second ferry, also across the Potomac and heretofore recorded, became far more famous than that of the Aubreys. When Philip Noland acquired land on that river where travel over the old Carolina Road had, from time immemorial, crossed it, he had the most valuable and frequented ferry-site in the neighborhood. He had sought, but unsuccessfully, a ferry license as early as 1748; in 1756, with or without a license, he was operating his ferry. Its operation was eventually authorized by the Legislature in 1778 to the land of Arthur Nelson in the State of Maryland. No other ferry from Loudoun's sh.o.r.es acquired the fame that did Noland's. At the height of its activities the travel at that point is said to have supported a country store, a blacksmith's shop, a wagon shop, a tailor and a shoemaker. The coming of the railroads and the construction of the Point of Rocks Bridge together were responsible for its ultimate abandonment. We have a suggestive glimpse of conditions there. In May, 1780, the Moravian emissary John Frederick Reichel, in the course of his ministrations to those of his faith in America, undertook a journey from Bethlehem in Pennsylvania down the Carolina Road to the present Winston-Salem in North Carolina. One of his companions kept a journal from which we learn that upon successfully crossing into Virginia at Noland's Ferry, Bishop Reichel and his company "made camp near Mr. Th. Noland's house close to the road which turns to the right from the Foart road towards Noland's Ferry which crosses the Patomoak two miles from here. So far our journey had been very pleasant.

Now, however, the Virginia air brought storms." While the weary travelers were resting that night from their journey, some of Noland's negroes left their "Quarters" and proceeded to lay their hands on the strangers' equipment. The diarist on the next day indignantly records the following "Note. Mr. Th. Noland and his father and father in law have 200 negroes in this neighbourhood on both sides of the Potomoack and this neighbourhood is far-famed for robbery and theft." On their return the travellers found that Mr. Noland had busied himself in recapturing much of the loot and duly returned the articles to their rightful owners.[96]

[96] _Landmarks_, 504.

Between Noland and Josias Clapham there was a controversy for many years over which of the two should control the very profitable ferry business over the nearby stretches of the Potomac. Both had powerful a.s.sociations and friends and both were, through their own activities and characters, outstanding figures in the Loudoun of their day. Noland as the son-in-law of the most prominent of Loudoun's earliest settlers, Francis Aubrey, and through his wife in possession of part of Aubrey's great land-grants, could well have entertained a conviction that he was Aubrey's representative and as such ent.i.tled to especial consideration as well as for his own accomplishments; while, on the other hand, Clapham's inherited friends.h.i.+p with Lord Fairfax and his own recent military services as a lieutenant in the troublous times following Braddock's defeat and death, his early and continued owners.h.i.+p of extensive tracts of land, his sound personal qualities and the high esteem in which he was held by his neighbours, made him a formidable opponent and rival. He successfully fought Noland's application to the Legislature for a ferry license in 1756 and in 1757 obtained one himself for the operation of a ferry below that of Noland, "from the lands of Josias Clapham, in the County of Fairfax, over Potowmack river, to the land on either side of Monochisey creek, in the province of Maryland; the price for a man four pence & for a horse the same."[97] Though this license was afterwards suspended, Clapham appears to have operated his ferry until 1778 when the Legislature ordered it discontinued as inconvenient. As Clapham at that time was himself a member of that body, it is probable that the old rivalry between the neighbours had ended.

[97] 7 Hening, 126.

We learn something of yet another ferry from this same act of the Legislature pa.s.sed in the war year of 1778. Therein it was also provided "that publick ferries be constantly kept at the following places and the rates for pa.s.sing the same be as follows, that is to say: From the land of the earl of Tankerville, in the County of Loudoun (at present in the tenure of Christian s.h.i.+mmer) across Potowmack river to the opposite sh.o.r.e in the state of Maryland, the price for a man eight pence, and for a horse the same: ..." The act authorized Noland to collect the same tolls at his ferry, thus permitting the doubling of the ferry charges by the act of 1757.[98]

[98] In this ferry situation, _Landmarks of Old Prince William_ is an invaluable guide.

CHAPTER XI

REVOLUTION

When the American Colonies joined issue with Great Britain in the controversy which was to result in American independence, Loudoun's population, beginning with a thin trickle of adventurers, had been growing for over fifty years, during which time, save for the short period before and after Braddock's defeat, her sure but steady development and increase of people had received no serious reversal. The exact number of her inhabitants in 1775 is unknown; but fifteen years later she was credited with 14,747 whites and 4,030 slaves or a total of 18,777 individuals. One writer goes so far as to a.s.sert that the county was one of the most densely populated in the Colony at that period.[99]

Toward the close of the conflict, in 1780 and 1781, her militia numbered no less than 1746 men, which is claimed by Head to have been "far in excess of that reported by any other Virginia County." When it is remembered that her present population does not greatly exceed 20,000 inhabitants and that, in the years which have intervened, the towns have substantially increased in number and size, it is probable that the country districts were quite as populous in 1775 as they are today.

[99] Goodheart's _Loudoun Rangers_, 6.

With her early diversity of population, it might well be expected that the county's inhabitants would be divided in their att.i.tude as to the wisdom of war with England. There seems, however, to have been practically a solid front, save for the Quakers who, because of their oppugnance to all war, opposed the Revolution in Loudoun as elsewhere and suffered bitterly in consequence as later will be related.

As it was, Loudoun lost no time in placing herself on record, as the following amply demonstrates:

"At a meeting of the Freeholders and other inhabitants of the County of Loudoun, in the Colony of Virginia, held at the Courthouse in Leesburg, the 14th June 1774--F. Peyton, Esq., in the chair--to consider the most effective method to preserve the rights and liberties of N. America, and relieve our brethren of Boston, suffering under the most oppressive and tyranical Act of the British Parliament, made in the 14th year of his present Majesty's reign, whereby their Harber is blocked up, their commerce totally obstructed, their property rendered useless

"_Resolved_, That we will always cheerfully submit to such prerogatives as his Majesty has a right, by law, to exercise, as Sovereign of the British Dominions, and to no others.