Legends of Loudoun Part 14

Thomas Jefferson, with his restless intelligence, was one of the first to acquire the book. Having studied it and being impressed with Binns'

success, he wrote to Sir John Sinclair, the head of the English Board of Agriculture, a letter dated the 30th June, 1803, sending with it

"the enclosed pamphlet on the use of gypsum by a Mr. Binns, a plain farmer, who understands handling his plough better than his pen. he is certainly something of an enthusiast in the use of this manure; but he has a right to be so. the result of his husbandry prooves his confidence in it well found for from being poor, it has made him rich. the county of Loudoun in which he live(s) exhausted & wasted by bad husbandry, has, from his example, become the most productive one in Virginia: and its lands, from being the lowest, sell at the highest prices. these facts speak more strongly for his pamphlet than a better arrangement & more polished phrases would have done. were I now a farmer I should surely adopt the gypsum...."

On the same day, in a letter to Mr. William Strictland, another member of the English Board of Agriculture, Jefferson wrote

"You will discover that Mr. Binns is an enthusiast for the use of gypsum, but there are two facts which prove that he has a right to be so 1. he began poor and has made himself tollerably rich by his farming alone. 2. the county of Loudoun, in which he lives, had been so exhausted & wasted by bad husbandry, that it began to depopulate, the inhabitants going Southwardly in quest of better lands. Binns' success has stopped that immigration. it is now becoming on(e) of the most productive counties of the state of Virginia, and the price given for the lands is multiplied manifold."

Sir John Sinclair in his reply to Mr. Jefferson, whom he addresses as "His Highness, Thomas Jefferson" wrote from Edinburgh under date of the 1st January 1804:

"On various accounts I received with much pleasure, your obliging letter of the 30th June last, which only reached me, at the place, on the 19th November. I certainly feel highly indebted to Mr. Binns, both for the information contained in the pamphlet he has drawn up; and also, for his having been the means of inducing you to recommence our correspondence together, for the purpose of transmitting a paper which does credit to the practical farmers of America.

"As to the Plaster of Paris, which Mr. Binns so strongly recommends, it is singularly, that whilst it proves such a source of fertility to you, it is of little avail in any part of the British Islands, Kent alone excepted. I am thence inclined to conjecture, that its great advantage must arise from its attracting moisture from the atmosphere, of which we have in great abundance in these Kingdoms...."

But it is time to turn to Binns' own record of his work. How desperately poor the yield of grain had become in Loudoun is shown by his statement that some of his unplastered land yielded but five bushels of wheat to the acre and not more than three bushels of corn on a place so worn out, when he took it over in 1793, that his friends thought he "must starve on it." By 1798 he was getting from that farm 15-1/2 bushels of corn to the acre and the next year, on that corn land, had 27 bushels of heavy wheat per acre. In another place he notes: "I put a parcel of it"

(plaster) "on some corn in the hill which produced about 22 bushels, the other part of the field yielding about 12 bushels to the acre."

As an interesting sidelight he indicates that tobacco was being grown around Leesburg at that time. In 1803, as he wrote his book, he expected a crop of 40 bushels of wheat per acre on his farms. And by way of summarizing his work

"There are several places on the Catocton Mountain, that some few years past the corn stalks, when the tops were taken off, were not above three feet high, and which would not produce more than two or three barrels of corn to the acre, and from 5 to 6 bushels of wheat; and perhaps not yield gra.s.s enough to the acre to feed a horse for two weeks after the harvest was taken off; but from the use of plaster will now produce from six to eight barrels of corn, and from twenty to twenty-five bushels of wheat per acre; the luxuriant growth of the white and red clover after harvest gives the fields which once looked like a barren waste of country, the appearance of a beautiful meadow."

And upon sanitation he has this to say:

"... These circ.u.mstances made me anxious to cleanse my stables, stockyards, cow-pens, hog-pens, wood-yards and ash-heaps by the first June. This rule I have always followed ever since I began to farm for myself, and can say that my family have never experienced an intermittent or remittent" (fever) "unless attacked with them from home first, and upon their return they have immediately left them. In my travels where ever I have discovered those kind of fevers, I have always observed either dirty, filthy stables, hog-pens or water standing in their cellars or ponds of water not far off; I have also observed those places most liable to dysentaries...."

In contrast to present-day views, he was wholly opposed to growing rye on Loudoun lands, believing that it impoverished the soil and that wheat yielded more in bushels; that rye destroyed gra.s.s and clover and injured orchards. He approved the growing of wheat and oats in orchards to maturity and strongly recommended the use of plaster in them.

The result of Binns' work was acclaimed throughout Virginia. His methods became known as the "Loudoun system" and the term became as significant and popularly familiar as the "Norfolk system" of farming in England. Of his work and his book True says:

"In spite of the fact that 'it is not written in a scholastic style,'

few books have been written in which more sound practical agriculture is crowded into so small a s.p.a.ce. Binns' chapter on the life history of the Hessian fly stands as a piece of careful observation that might have done credit to Dr. Thomas Say himself. The three fundamental supports on which agriculture prosperity in Loudoun County rests were never more clearly or soundly appreciated: gypsum, clover and deep plowing. This was the background of the famous 'Loudoun System' which came to be recognized as the progressive practice for that part of the country a hundred years ago."[122]

[122] See article on Binns by Rodney H. True in 2 William and Mary Quarterly (2) 20.

Binns died in 1813. His will, dated the 11th January in that year, was offered for probate on the 1st November following. In it he makes provision for freeing his slaves after a certain period. As he left his estate to his wife and nieces, it is surmised that no children survived him. The family, however, is still represented in Loudoun. Captain John A. Tebbs, U.S.M.C., is a descendant of Charles Binns, Jr., the younger brother of our agronomist.

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that religious thought and observance were at a low ebb in Virginia in the latter part of the eighteenth century. It was an age of transition, in some respects not unlike that of today. Old ties were being broken, tradition and old-time loyalties no longer received their former adherence. No small responsibility attaches to that negligent and selfish minority of the clergy of the colonial church and to an equally reprehensible element in the early Federal days for remissness in their duties; and their culpable behavior tends to attract more attention than the loyal devotion of the majority of their brethren. It was inevitable that the established church should be regarded as a part of the repudiated British government and when its civil powers and ecclesiastical predominance were taken from it and much of its property ruthlessly confiscated, there ensued a period of confusion in religious matters, with an unfortunate colouring of vindictive animosity on the part of other communions. Concurrently the spread of Methodism took from the older church many of its erstwhile adherents. Indeed, for a disconcertingly long period after its "erection" in 1758, Leesburg appears to have had no building devoted to religious purposes, services, when held, having been at the courthouse. Cresswell, in his journal, confirms this as does the first Shelburne Vestry book and also an advertis.e.m.e.nt in Leesburg's '_True American_' of the 30th December, 1800: "The Reverend Mr. Allen" it reads "intends to perform divine service in the Court House, on the 4th January, at half past eleven o'clock; he also proposes preaching every fortnight from that date."

This situation was repaired between 1780 and 1785, when the Methodists, organized as a separate denomination in 1784, erected their stone church on Cornwall Street with galleries around three of its sides and with its interesting old-fashioned sounding board, which church came to be endowed with many a.s.sociations until its needless destruction about 1901. Then, in 1804, the "Presbyterian Society of Leesburg," which had probably existed since 1782, was more formally organized as a church by the Rev. James Hall, D.D., of Concord, North Carolina, at that time the Moderator of the Presbyterian General a.s.sembly. The erection of the present quaint old brick church on Market Street, the oldest church building now standing in Leesburg, had already been begun in 1802 and was completed in 1804. It was dedicated in May, 1804, by Dr. Hall. Its first pastor was the Rev. John Mines, who served until 1822 and the first Elders were Peter Carr, Obadiah Clifford, and John MacCormack.

Through the courtesy of the Presbyterians, their neighbors of the Episcopal faith held their services from time to time in this old church until the erection of the first Saint James Church on Church Street in 1812, long delayed because of conflicting views as to whether the new building should be in town or country.

This first Saint James Church "was built of brick and quite small, the windows not arched and there was a yard in front. This church was torn down in 1836 and a new one, much wider and larger built, the foundation brought more to the front. It was enlarged in 1848, the vestibule built over the remainder of the yard, bringing the front of the church even with the street."[123] This building continued to be used until the present Saint James Church of gray stone on the corner of Cornwall and Wirt Streets was completed in 1897.

[123] _Old Saint James Episcopal Church_, by Miss Lizzie Worsley.

To the diversity in origin of the county's population frequent reference has been made. The inhabitants of the southern part were far more in sympathy in political philosophy, in manner of living, in agricultural practices and in traditional background with the people of Fairfax than were they with, perhaps, the majority of the heterogeneous population of upper Loudoun. Also their leaders belonged to the cla.s.s which has ruled in Tidewater Virginia since its English beginnings and they none too willingly faced the prospect, after the Revolution, of dividing their authority with and perhaps losing their dominance to the upper-country people. In 1782 they sought to create a new county coextensive with Cameron Parish; failing in that, a compromise was reached in 1798 by which the erstwhile area of Loudoun, south of Sugar Land Run, was returned to Fairfax--"All that part of the County of Loudoun" reads the act of division "lying between the lower boundary thereof and a line to be drawn from the mouth of Sugar Land Run, to Carter's Mill on Bull Run, shall be and is hereby added to and made a part of the County of Fairfax."[124] This action had the immediate result of greatly strengthening the political power of the Quakers, Germans and Scotch-Irish in the remaining part of the county and correspondingly diminishing the influence of the descendants of the old Tidewater aristocracy there.

[124] 2 Shepherd, 107.

In the year 1787 Colonel Leven Powell laid out the town of Middleburg on the road running to Ashley's Gap, for his purpose devoting fifty acres on the southerly edge of the 500 acre tract of land he had purchased from Joseph Chinn in 1763;[125] the town, of course, obtaining its name from the position it occupied approximately halfway between the major towns of Alexandria and Winchester as well as halfway between the courthouses of Loudoun and Fauquier. The first trustees were Francis Peyton, William Bronaugh, William Heale, John Peyton Harrison, Burr Powell, Josias Clapham, and Richard Bland Lee.[126]

[125] See Chapter VII ante.

[126] 12 Hening, 605.

The much older town of Waterford did not receive formal legislative sanction until 1801. Then by the fifth section of an act of the Legislature, the place is recognized as already in existence: "the lots and streets as the same are already laid off at the place known by the name of Waterford." The first trustees were James Moore, James Griffith, John Williams, and Abner Williams. Section 7 of the act further provided "that as soon as Mahlon Janey and William Hough, shall lay off into lots with convenient streets, so much of their lands not exceeding ten acres adjoining the said town of Waterford, the same shall thence-forth const.i.tute and be deemed and taken as a part of the said town."[127]

[127] 2 Shepherd, 270.

The next year another old settlement was, in its turn, given legislative acknowledgment. Hillsborough, somewhat belatedly, was "established" on twenty-five acres already divided between a score or more of owners: Mahlon Hough, Thomas Purcell, the representatives of John Jenny (sic), deceased, Thomas Leslie, Thomas Hepburn, Joseph Tribby, Josiah White, John Foundling, Edward Conrod, Mahlon Roach, Thomas Stevens, Thomas Hough, Samuel Purcell, John Wolfcaile, Richard Matthews, James Prior, John Stevens, Richard Copeland, and Mahlon Morris. The first trustees were Mahlon Hough, Thomas Purcell, Thomas Leslie, Josiah White, Edward Conrod, Mahlon Roach, and Thomas Stevens.[128]

[128] 2 Shepherd, 549.

In 1810 Aldie makes its appearance. It was laid out by Charles Fenton Mercer, a great Loudoun figure in his day,[129] on a part of his plantation to which he had given the name of Aldie in tribute to Aldie Castle in Scotland, the seat of that Mercer family from which he believed himself descended. The act of establishment describes the town's location as "thirty acres of land lying on the westerly extremity of the Little River Turnpike road, in the county of Loudoun, the property of Charles F. Mercer, as soon as the same shall be laid off into lots with convenient streets." The Little River Turnpike road had been extended to that point but a few years before. The town's first trustees were named as Israel Lacey, William Cook, Matthew Adams, John Sinclair, James Hexon, David Gibson, Charles F. Mercer, and William Noland.[130]

[129] See Chapter XIV post.

[130] Acts 1810, p. 37.

Bluemont, under its earlier name of Snickersville which it bore until the year 1900, was established in 1824. As early as 1769 Edward Snickers had obtained a grant from John Augustine Washington of 624 acres at this point and before and after that time had acquired other lands in the neighbourhood. He it was who, according to our local tradition, conveyed the first bushel of wheat easterly across the Blue Ridge and gave his name not only to the village but to the gap through the Blue Ridge and, on the other side, to the historic ferry across the Shenandoah which he owned for many years. He was born about 1735, married Elizabeth Toliaferro about 1755 and died in 1790. In 1806 a postoffice had been established at the little village with Lewis Stevens acting as postmaster. When the town came to be formally "established" in 1824, its location was described as being upon "ten acres at the entrance of Snickers Gap, of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the county of Loudoun, property of Amos Clayton, Martha Clayton, William Woodford and others, as soon as the same shall be laid off into lots with convenient streets and alleys." The first trustees were James Cochran senior, Craven Osburn, Mordecai Throckmorton, Stephen Janney, Doctor E. B. Brady, Amos Clayton, and Timothy Carrington.[131]

[131] Acts 1824-5, p. 86. For historical sketch of village see 2 Balch Library Clippings, 1. For Snickers also see 2 Landmarks, 509.

The above list, with Leesburg, is the roll of earlier incorporated towns of the county. Hamilton (1875), Lovettsville (1876), Purcellville (1908), and Round Hill (1900), as the dates indicate, were not formally organized until much later. The pleasant little village of Lincoln remains unincorporated.

As the eighteenth century neared its end, an increasing number of representatives of the Tidewater gentry came to Loudoun and with their neighbours already living there, built far more pretentious homes than the county had theretofore known. As has been stated in the preface, to tell something of the stories of these old estates was the original incentive to the writing of this book; but those stories, involving as they do their share of romance, tragedy and drama, must in their more extensive narration, be left for a later volume. It is appropriate however, in this place, to very briefly comment on a few of these old plantations.

SPRINGWOOD

Among the newcomers, in this post-revolution period, was Colonel Burgess Ball, a great-grandson of that dignified old aristocrat Colonel William Ball of Millenbeck on the Rappahannock, in Lancaster County, who had come to Virginia in 1657. During the Revolution Burgess Ball had served on the staff of General Washington, his first cousin, then as a captain in the Continental Line and later had raised and equipped a Virginia regiment at his own expense and served with it as lieutenant colonel.

After the war, his health broken and his generous fortune seriously impaired by his expenditures for military purposes and by his extravagant hospitality at his home, Travellers Rest in Spotsylvania County, he in 1795, was obliged to seek refuge in what was still known in Tidewater as the Loudoun wilderness. On the 4th November, 1795, he purchased for 1741 (the proceeds of his back pay for military services it is said) from Abraham Barnes Thomson Mason, only acting executor and trustee under the will of Thomson Mason, a tract of 247 acres including the Great Spring and running to the Potomac. Here Colonel Ball either built a rustic lodge for his home or, as has been surmised, occupied and improved the old home of Francis Aubrey, calling his estate Springwood.

On that same 4th November, 1795, there was purchased in trust for Colonel Ball from Stevens Thomson Mason by William Fitzhugh, Mann Page, and Alexander Spotswood "three of the trustees appointed by an Act of General a.s.sembly to sell certain lands devised by James Ball deceased to his grandson Burgess Ball for his life," another tract of 147 acres about two miles north of the Great Spring for 441, current money of Virginia. Other adjacent tracts were purchased by Colonel Ball or by his trustees until he controlled a very large estate from the Great Spring to the Limestone Run of the most fertile land in the county.[132] Far from his old military companions, he kept up a correspondence with them in his distant abode and many of them visited him there from time to time; for whether surrounded by the refinements of Travellers Rest or the wilderness of Springwood, Colonel Ball's lavish hospitality was a part of the very man himself. He died on the 7th March, 1800, and was buried just outside the graveyard surrounding the old chapel above Goose Creek on the hill above the Great Spring. This first Springwood dwelling was not on the site of the present mansion but is believed to have been on the south side of the present road on what is now a part of the Big Spring estate, in recent years known as Mayfield. The existing Springwood residence was built by George Washington Ball, later Captain C.S.A., grandson of Colonel Burgess Ball, between 1840 and 1850. Louis Philippe is said to have been an overnight guest there and, during the Civil War, General Lee, a cousin of Captain Ball who had served on his staff, held a military conference in the present dining room. The estate was acquired in 1869 by the late Francis Asbury Lutz of Washington who substantially remodelled the mansion very soon thereafter. Since then it has been in the possession of the Lutz family, its present occupants being Mrs. Samuel S. Lutz, her son-in-law and daughter, Judge and Mrs.

J. R. H. Alexander and the latter's two sons.

[132] See Loudoun Deeds W271, W263, Y132, etc.

RASPBERRY PLAIN

The genesis of Raspberry Plain, just north of Springwood, has already been given. As shewn in Chapter VII, the property had been originally acquired from Lord Fairfax by Joseph Dixon in 1731 and he had sold the farm which he had improved with a dwelling, orchard, etc., to Aeneas Campbell in 1754. Campbell, as we have seen, was Loudoun's first sheriff. He maintained the county jail and the ducking-stool at his home while he held that office. He sold the place in 1760 to Thomson Mason.

So far the residence, long since vanished, was near the large spring, now a part of Selma. Mason is said by T. A. Lancaster, Jr., to have built a new house about 1771 (on the site of the present beautiful home). He then conveyed it to his son Stevens Thomson Mason, subsequently confirming his action in his will. Later, according to local tradition, another Mason descendant, Colonel John Mason McCarty was living there when he killed his cousin, General A. T. Mason in the famous duel in 1819, perhaps as a tenant, for the county records show that in 1830 the estate, then of about 250 acres, was conveyed by the executors of General Mason's will to George, John, Peter and Samuel Hoffman of Baltimore for $8,500. It remained in the Hoffman family for over eighty-five years and until sold by the Hoffman heirs on the 29th April, 1916, to Mr. John G. Hopkins who built the present imposing brick edifice of colonial architecture. The estate was purchased by Mr.

and Mrs. William H. Lips...o...b..of Washington in 1931 and, until Mrs.

Lips...o...b..s death, was the scene of many a gay and picturesque hunt breakfast given in honour of the Loudoun Hunt of which Mr. Lips...o...b..was Master.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OATLANDS. Built by George Carter from 1800 to 1802. Now the home of Mrs. W. C. Eustis.]

BELMONT