History of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of Virginia Part 38

CHAPTER LVIII.

1747-1752.

Statistics of Virginia--Whitefield--Davies--Conduct of the Government toward Dissenters--Resignation of Governor Gooch-- His Character--The People of the Valley and of Eastern Virginia--John Robinson, Sr., President--Richard Lee, President--Earl of Albemarle, Governor-in-Chief--Lewis Burwell, President--Population of the Colonies.

FROM Bowen's Geography, published at London in 1747, the following particulars are gathered: in 1710 the total population of Virginia was estimated to be 70,000, and in 1747 at between 100,000 and 140,000. The number of burgesses was 52. Of the fifty-four parishes, thirty or forty were supplied. The twelve vestrymen having the presentation of ministers were styled "the patrons of the church." The governor's salary, together with perquisites, amounted to three thousand pounds per annum. The president of the council acting as governor received a salary of five hundred pounds, and also a small amount paid him as a councillor. The professors of William and Mary College, when they began with experiments on plants and minerals, were a.s.sisted by the French refugees at Manakintown. Dr. Bray procured contributions of books for the library.[444:A]

Sweet-scented tobacco, the most valuable in the world, was found in the strip of country between the York and the James. The number of hogsheads of tobacco shipped from Virginia and Maryland together annually was 70,000, of which half was consumed in England, and half exported to other countries.

This trade employed two hundred ships, and yielded his majesty's treasury a revenue of upwards of 300,000, in time of peace. Jamestown at this time contained several brick houses, with sundry taverns and eating-houses,--sixty or seventy houses in all. Williamsburg or Williamstadt contained twenty or thirty houses. There was a fort or battery erected there mounting ten or twelve guns. Governor Nicholson caused several streets to be laid out in the form of a W, in honor of King William the Third, but a V or one angle of it was not as yet completed, and the plan appears to have been given up. The main street was three-quarters of a mile long, and very wide; at one end of it was the college, and at the other the capitol. The college was thought to be something like Chelsea Hospital. The capitol, in the shape of an H, is described as "a n.o.ble pile." The church was "adorned and convenient as the best churches in London." Besides these there were an octagon magazine for arms and ammunition, a bowling-green, and a play-house.

There were several private houses of brick, with many rooms on a floor, but not high. It was observed that wherever the water was brackish, it was sickly; but Williamsburg was on a healthy site.[445:A] Gloucester was at this time the most populous county; Ess.e.x or Rappahannock "overrun with briars, thorns, and wild beasts." The Atlantic Ocean is denominated the "Virginian Sea."[445:B]

Whitefield, while at Charleston, in South Carolina, during the spring of 1747, being presented with a sum of money, expended it in the purchase of a plantation and negroes for the support of the orphan-house.[445:C]

Having come on to Virginia, in a letter written from Williamsburg in April of that year, he says to a friend in Philadelphia: "Men in power here seem to be alarmed; but truth is great and will prevail. I am to preach this morning." By a remarkable coincidence, Samuel Davies, so pre-eminently instrumental in organizing and extending Presbyterianism in Middle Virginia, happened to come to Virginia about the same time. He was born in the County of New Castle, Pennsylvania, now Delaware, November 3d, 1723, of Welsh extraction, on both paternal and maternal side. He was educated princ.i.p.ally in Pennsylvania, under the care of the Rev. Samuel Blair, at f.a.gg's Manor, where he was thoroughly instructed in the cla.s.sics, sciences, and theology. By close study his slender frame was enfeebled. He married Sarah Kirkpatrick in October, 1746.

Deputed to perform a mission in so perplexing a field, without experience, and in delicate health, he started with hesitation and reluctance. Pa.s.sing down the Eastern Sh.o.r.e a.s.sociated with the labors of Makemie, Davies came to Williamsburg. Here he applied to the general court for license to preach at three meeting-houses in Hanover, and one in Henrico. The council hesitated to comply; but, by the governor's influence, the license was obtained on the fourteenth of April. The members of the court present on this occasion were William Gooch, Governor; John Robinson, John Grymes, John Custis, Philip Lightfoot, Thomas Lee, Lewis Burwell, William Fairfax, John Blair, William Nelson, Esqs.; William Dawson, Clerk. This was only two days after Whitefield had preached in Williamsburg, and he and Davies were probably there at the same time. Davies, proceeding at once to Hanover, was received with joy, since, on the preceding Sunday, a proclamation had been attached to the door of Morris's Reading-house, requiring magistrates to suppress itinerant preachers, and warning the people against gathering to hear them. After a brief sojourn, returning home, he languished under ill health, aggravated by the sudden death of his wife, and threatening to cut him off prematurely. He, however, recovered sufficient strength to return to Hanover in May, 1748, and settled at a place about twelve miles from the falls of the James River. In this second visit he was accompanied by the Rev. John Rodgers, who, finding it impossible to obtain permission to settle in Virginia, returned to the North. Governor Gooch favored the application, but a majority of the council stood out against it, saying: "We have Mr. Rodgers out, and we are determined to keep him out." Some of the clergy of the established church were vehement in their opposition to Davies and Rodgers. A majority of the council lent their countenance to this opposition, but Gooch took occasion to rebuke it in severe terms. John Blair, nephew of the commissary, Commissary Dawson, and another member of the council, whose name is forgotten, united with the governor on this occasion in treating the strangers kindly, and endeavored to procure a reconsideration of the case, but in vain. According to Burk,[447:A] most of the intelligent men of that day, including Edmund Pendleton, appear in the character of persecutors. It must be remembered, however, that the council and its friends had no right to proclaim religious freedom, and that the controversy depended on the true interpretation of the act of parliament and the Virginia statutes. These made the law, and the council was but the executive of the law, without authority to repeal or amend it.

Davies was now left to labor alone in Virginia. In April the court decided the long-pending suits against Isaac Winston, Sr., and Samuel Morris, by fining them each twenty shillings and the costs of prosecution. Severe laws had been pa.s.sed in Virginia in accordance with the English act of uniformity, and enforcing attendance at the parish church. The toleration act was little understood in Virginia; Davies examined it carefully, and satisfied himself that it was in force in the colony, not, indeed, by virtue of its original enactment in England, but because it had been expressly recognized and adopted by an act of the Virginia a.s.sembly.

In October, 1748, licenses were with difficulty obtained upon the pet.i.tions of the dissenters for three other meeting-houses lying in Caroline, Louisa, and Goochland. Davies was only about twenty-three years of age; yet his fervid eloquence attracted large congregations, including many churchmen. On several occasions he found it necessary to defend the cause of the dissenters at the bar of the general court. When on one occasion, by permission, he rose to reply to the argument of Peyton Randolph, the king's attorney-general, a t.i.tter at first ran through the court; but it ceased at the utterance of the very first sentence, and his masterly argument extorted admiration; and during his stay in Williamsburg he received many civilities, especially from the Honorable John Blair, of the council, and Sir William Gooch. Samuel Davies happening to be in London at the same time with Peyton Randolph, some years afterwards, mentions him in his Diary as "my old adversary,"

and adds, "he will, no doubt, oppose whatever is done in favor of the dissenters in Hanover." Davies, who was a man of exquisite sensibility, repeatedly alludes to the torture to which his feelings had been subjected by the mortifications that he suffered when appearing before the general court.

There was eventually obtained from Sir Dudley Rider, the king's attorney-general in England, a decision confirming the view which Davies had taken of the toleration act. He expressed himself in regard to the governor and council as follows: "The Honorable Sir William Gooch, our late governor, discovered a ready disposition to allow us all claimable privileges, and the greatest aversion to persecuting measures; but considering the shocking reports spread abroad concerning us by officious malignants, it was no great wonder the council discovered a considerable reluctance to tolerate us. Had it not been for this, I persuade myself they would have shown themselves the guardians of our legal privileges, as well as generous patriots to their country, which is the character generally given them."

In his "State of Religion among the Dissenters," Davies remarks: "There are and have been in this colony a great number of Scotch merchants, who were educated Presbyterians, but (I speak what their conduct more loudly proclaims) they generally, upon their arrival here, prove scandals to their religion and country by their loose principles and immoral practices, and either fall into indifferency about religion in general, or affect to be polite by turning deists, or fashionable by conforming to the church." Of the dissenters in Virginia he says, that at the first they were not properly dissenters from the original const.i.tution of the Church of England, but rather dissented from those who had forsaken it.

Sir William Gooch, who had now been governor of Virginia for twenty-two years, left the colony, with his family, in August, 1749, amid the regrets of the people. Notwithstanding some flexibility of principle, he appears to have been estimable in public and private character. His capacity and intelligence were of a high order, and were adorned by uniform courtesy and dignity, and singular amenity of manners. If he exhibited something of intolerance toward the close of his administration, he seems, nevertheless, to have commanded the esteem and respect of the dissenters. After his departure from Virginia he continued to be the steady friend of the colony. A county was named after him.[449:A] During Sir William Gooch's administration, from 1728 to 1749, the population of Virginia had nearly doubled, and there had been added one-third to the extent of her settlements.[449:B] The taxes were light, industry revived, foreign commerce increased, and Virginia enjoyed a prosperity hitherto unknown. The frugal and industrious Germans were filling up one portion of the valley and the Piedmont country; the hardy, well-disciplined, and energetic Scotch-Irish were peopling the other portion of the valley, and planting colonies eastward of the Blue Ridge. Like the strawberry, the population continually sent out "runners" to possess the land. The contact and commingling of the English, the French, the German, the Scotch, the Irish, while it brought about some collision, yet produced an excitement which was salutary and beneficial to all. So the meeting of the opposite currents of electricity, although accompanied by a shock, results in the renovation of the atmosphere. The people of Eastern Virginia and the inhabitants of the valley have each been benefited by the other; each section has its virtues and its faults, its advantages and its disadvantages, and Virginia does not derive its character from either one, but the elements of both are mixed up in her. This is not the result of chance, or the mere work of man, but the order of a superintending Providence that presides in human affairs.

The government of Virginia now devolved upon John Robinson, Sr., president of the council, but he dying in a few days, Thomas Lee succeeded as president. Had Lee lived longer, it was believed his influence and connexions in England would have secured for him the appointment of deputy governor. He was father of Philip Ludwell, Richard Henry, Thomas L., Arthur, Francis Lightfoot, and William. As Westmoreland, their native county, is distinguished above all others in Virginia as the birth-place of great men, so perhaps no other Virginian was the father of so many distinguished sons as President Lee.

The Earl of Albemarle, after whom the county of that name was called, was still t.i.tular governor-in-chief. Of this n.o.bleman, when amba.s.sador at Paris, Horace Walpole says: "It was convenient to him to be anywhere but in England. His debts were excessive, though amba.s.sador, groom of the stole, governor of Virginia, and colonel of a regiment of guards.

His figure was genteel, his manner n.o.ble and agreeable. The rest of his merit was the interest Lady Albemarle had with the king through Lady Yarmouth. He had all his life imitated the French manners till he came to Paris, where he never conversed with a Frenchman. If good breeding is not different from good sense, Lord Albemarle, at least, knew how to distinguish it from good nature. He would bow to his postillion while he was ruining his tailor."

Lee was succeeded by Lewis Burwell, of Gloucester County, also president of the council. During his brief administration, some Cherokee chiefs, with a party of warriors, visited Williamsburg for the purpose, as they professed, of opening a direct trade with Virginia. A party of the Nottoways, animated by inveterate hostility, approached to attack them; and the Cherokees raised the war song; but President Burwell effected a reconciliation, and they sat down and smoked together the pipe of peace.

A New York company of players were permitted to erect a theatre in Williamsburg. President Burwell, who was educated in England, was distinguished for his scholarship; he is said to have embraced almost every branch of human knowledge within the circle of his studies. The Burwells are descended from an ancient family of that name of the Counties of Bedford and Northampton, England. The first of the family, Major Lewis Burwell, came over to Virginia at an early date, and settled in Gloucester. He died in 1658, two hundred years ago. He appears to have married Lucy, daughter of Captain Robert Higginson, one of the first commanders that "subdued the country of Virginia from the power of the heathen." She survived till the year 1675.

Matthew Burwell married Abigail Smith, descended from the celebrated family of Bacon, and heiress of the Honorable Nathaniel Bacon, President of Virginia. Nathaniel Burwell, who died in 1721, married Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Robert Carter, Esq. Carter's Creek, the old seat of the Burwells, is situated in Gloucester, on a creek of that name, and not far back from the York River. The stacks of antique diamond-shaped chimneys, and the old-fashioned panelling of the interior, remind the visitor that Virginia is truly the "Ancient Dominion." There is the family graveyard shaded with locusts, and overrun with parasites and grape-vines. The family arms are carved on some of the tomb-stones; and hogs show that the Bacon arms are quartered upon those of the Burwells.[451:A]

FOOTNOTES:

[444:A] The value of coins in Virginia was:--

s. d.

Spanish double doubloons 3 10 00 Doubloons 1 15 00 Pistole 0 17 06 Arabian Chequin 0 10 00 Pieces of eight 0 5 00 French crowns 0 5 00 Dutch dollars 0 5 00

All English coins at the same value as in England.

[445:A] Williamsburg is said to be now a very healthy place, except during the months of vacation.

[445:B] Bowen's Geography, ii. 649, 652.

[445:C] Port Folio for 1812, p. 152.

[447:A] Hist. of Va., iii. 121.

[449:A] His son married a Miss Bowles, of Maryland, who, after his death, married Colonel William Lewis.

[449:B] Chalmers' Introduction, ii. 202.

[451:A] The population of the colonies at this time was as follows:--

Increase per cent.

COLONIES. per annum.

Connecticut 100,000 465 Georgia 6,000 ...

Maryland 85,000 500 Ma.s.sachusetts 220,000 446 New Hampshire 30,000 417 New Jersey 60,000 625 New York 100,000 486 North Carolina 45,000 1667 Pennsylvania[451:B] 250,000 2396 Rhode Island 35,000 521 South Carolina 30,000 684 Virginia 85,000 234 --------- ---- All cla.s.ses 1,046,000 623

By this table it appears that the greatest advance in population took place in Pennsylvania and North Carolina; the least in Virginia. The average increase of all the colonies was a little more than six per cent. in forty-eight years, from 1701 to 1749.

[451:B] Delaware included in Pennsylvania.

CHAPTER LIX.

1752.

Dinwiddie, Governor--Ohio Company--Lawrence Washington--His Views on Religious Freedom--Davies and the Dissenters-- Dissensions between Dinwiddie and the a.s.sembly--George Washington--His Lineage--Early Education--William Fairfax-- Washington a Surveyor--Lord Fairfax--Washington Adjutant-General.

A NEW epoch dawns with the administration of Robert Dinwiddie, who arrived in Virginia as lieutenant-governor early in 1752, with the purpose of repressing the encroachments of the French, of extending the confines of Virginia, and of enlarging the Indian trade. A vast tract of land, mostly lying west of the mountains and south of the Ohio, was granted by the king about the year 1749, to a company of planters and merchants. This scheme appears to have been brought forward in the preceding year by Thomas Lee of the council, and he became a.s.sociated with twelve persons in Virginia and Maryland, and with Mr. Hanbury, a London Quaker merchant, and they were incorporated as "The Ohio Company." Lawrence and Augustine Washington were early and prominent members of this company. The company sent out Mr. Christopher Gist to explore the country on the Ohio as far as the falls. He was, like Boone, from the banks of the Yadkin, an expert pioneer, at home in the wilderness and among the Indians, adventurous, hardy, and intrepid.

Crossing the Ohio, he found the country well watered and wooded, with here and there plains covered with wild rye, or meadows of blue gra.s.s and clover. He observed numerous buffaloes, deer, elk, and wild turkeys.

Returning to the Ohio and recrossing it, Gist proceeded toward the Cuttawa or Kentucky River. Ascending to the summit of a mountain, he beheld that magnificent region long before it was seen by Daniel Boone.[453:A]

On the 13th of June, 1752, a treaty was effected with the western Indians at Logstown, on the Ohio, by which they agreed not to molest any settlements that might be made on the southeast side of the Ohio.

Colonel Fry and two other commissioners represented Virginia on this occasion, while Gist appeared as agent of the Ohio Company.

Thomas Lee, the projector of this company, having not survived long after its incorporation, the chief conduct of it fell into the hands of Lawrence Washington. Governor Dinwiddie and George Mason were also members. There were twenty shares and as many members. Lawrence Washington, being desirous of colonizing Germans on the company's lands, wrote to Mr. Hanbury as follows: "While the unhappy state of my health called me back to our springs,[453:B] I conversed with all the Pennsylvanian Dutch whom I met with, either there or elsewhere, and much recommended their settling on the Ohio. The chief reason against it was, the paying of an English clergyman, when few understood and none made use of him. It has been my opinion, and I hope ever will be, that restraints on conscience are cruel in regard to those on whom they are imposed, and injurious to the country imposing them. England, Holland, and Prussia, I may quote as examples, and much more, Pennsylvania, which has flourished under that delightful liberty so as to become the admiration of every man who considers the short time it has been settled. As the ministry have thus far shown the true spirit of patriotism, by encouraging the extending of our dominions in America, I doubt not by an application they would still go farther, and complete what they have begun, by procuring some kind of charter to prevent the residents on the Ohio and its branches from being subject to parish taxes. They all a.s.sured me that they might have from Germany any number of settlers, could they but obtain their favorite exemption. I have promised to endeavor for it, and now do my utmost by this letter. I am well a.s.sured we shall never obtain it by a law here. This colony was greatly settled, in the latter part of Charles the First's time and during the usurpation, by the zealous churchmen, and that spirit which was then brought in has ever since continued, so that, except a few Quakers, we have no dissenters. But what has been the consequence? We have increased by slow degrees, except negroes and convicts, while our neighboring colonies, whose natural advantages are greatly inferior to ours, have become populous."[454:A] He also wrote to Governor Dinwiddie, then in England, to the same effect. He replied that it would be difficult to obtain the desired exemption for the Dutch settlers, but promised to use his utmost endeavors to effect it. It does not appear whether the ministry ever came to a decision on this subject. The non-conformists augured favorably of Dinwiddie's administration. The Rev. Jonathan Edwards, in a letter addressed to Rev. John Erskine, of the Kirk of Scotland, says: "What you write of the appointment of a gentleman to the office of lieutenant-governor of Virginia, who is a friend to religion, is an event that the friends of religion in America have great reason to rejoice in, by reason of the late revival of religion in that province, and the opposition that has been made against it, and the great endeavors to crush it by many of the chief men of the province. Mr. Davies, in a letter I lately received from him, dated March 2d, 1752, mentions the same thing. His words are, 'We have a new governor who is a candid, condescending gentleman. And as he has been educated in the Church of Scotland, he has a respect for the Presbyterians, which I hope is a happy omen.'" Jonathan Edwards was invited in the summer of 1751 to come and settle in Virginia, and a handsome sum was subscribed for his support; but he was installed at Stockbridge, in Ma.s.sachusetts, before the messenger from Virginia reached him.[454:B]

Dinwiddie, the new governor, an able man, had been a clerk to a collector in a West India custom-house, whose enormous defalcation he exposed to the government; and for this service, it is said, he was promoted, in 1741, to the office of surveyor of the customs for the colonies, and now to the post of governor of Virginia. She was at this time one of the most populous and the most wealthy of all the Anglo-American colonies. Dinwiddie, upon his arrival, gave offence by declaring the king's dissent to certain acts which Gooch had approved; and in June, 1752, the a.s.sembly remonstrated against this exercise of the royal prerogative; but their remonstrance proved unavailing. The Virginians were in the habit of acquiring lands without expense, by means of a warrant of a survey without a patent. Dinwiddie found a million of unpatented acres thus possessed, and he established, with the advice of the council, a fee of a pistole (equivalent to three dollars and sixty cents) for every seal annexed to a grant. Against this measure the a.s.sembly, in December, 1753, pa.s.sed strong resolutions, and declared that whoever should pay that fee should be considered a betrayer of the rights of the people; and they sent the attorney-general, Peyton Randolph, as their agent, to England, with a salary of two thousand pounds, to procure redress. The board of trade, after virtually deciding in favor of Dinwiddie, recommended a compromise of the dispute, and advised him to reinstate Randolph in the office of attorney-general, as the times required harmony and mutual confidence. The a.s.sembly appear to have been much disturbed upon a small occasion. During Randolph's absence Dinwiddie wrote to a correspondent in England: "I have had a great deal of trouble and uneasiness from the factious disputes and violent heats of a most impudent, troublesome party here, in regard to that silly fee of a pistole; they are very full of the success of their party, which I give small notice to."

The natural prejudice felt by the aristocracy of Virginia against Dinwiddie, as an unt.i.tled Scotchman, was increased by a former altercation with him. When, in 1741, he was made surveyor-general of the customs, he was appointed, as his predecessors had been, a member of the several councils of the colonies. Gooch obeyed the order; but the council, prompted by their old jealousy of the surveyor-general's interfering with their munic.i.p.al laws, and still more by their overweening exclusiveness, refused to permit him to act with them, either in the council or on the bench. The board of trade decided the controversy in favor of Dinwiddie.[456:A]

It was during Dinwiddie's administration that the name of George Washington began to attract public attention. The curiosity of his admirers has traced the family back to the Conquest. Sir William Washington, of Packington, in the County of Kent, married a sister of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, and favorite of Charles the First.

Lieutenant-Colonel James Washington, taking up arms in the royal cause, lost his life at the siege of Pontefract Castle. Sir Henry Washington, son and heir of Sir William, distinguished himself while serving under Prince Rupert, at the storming of Bristol, in 1643, and again a few years after, while in command of Worcester. His uncles, John and Lawrence Washington, in the year 1657, emigrated to Virginia, and settled in Westmoreland. John married a Miss Anne Pope, and resided at Bridge's or Bridge Creek, in that county. It is he who has been before mentioned as commanding the Virginia troops against the Indians not long before the breaking out of Bacon's rebellion. He and his brother Lawrence both died in 1677; their wills are preserved; they both appear to have had estates in England as well as in Virginia. His grandson, Augustine, father of George, born in 1694, married first in April, 1715, Jane Butler; and their two sons, Lawrence and Augustine, survived their childhood. In March, 1730, Augustine Washington, Sr., married secondly, Mary Ball. The issue of this union were four sons, George, Samuel, John Augustine, and Charles, and two daughters, Elizabeth or Betty, and Mildred, who died an infant. George Washington was born on the twenty-second day of February, N. S., 1732. The birth-place is sometimes called Bridge's Creek, and sometimes Pope's Creek; the house stood about a mile apart between the two creeks, but nearer to Pope's. Of the steep-roofed house which overlooked the Potomac, a brick chimney and some scattered bricks alone remain. George, it is seen, was the eldest child of a second marriage.

Not long after his birth his father removed to a seat opposite Fredericksburg; and this was the scene of George's boyhood; but the house has disappeared. He received only a plain English education, having obtained his first instruction at an old field school, under a teacher named Hobby--the parish s.e.xton. The military spirit pervading the colony reached the school; in these military amus.e.m.e.nts George Washington was predominant; but he found a compet.i.tor in William Bustle.