Legends of Loudoun Part 4

The transporting of convicts by England to her American Colonies--a far greater injustice to them than the later taxation by which they were lost to her--began early and was, in Virginia, at once and most vigourously opposed; but the everpressing demand for laborers seems to have rapidly modified the opposition, at least on the part of the larger proprietors whose power and influence was out of all proportion to their number; and it was not long before convicts were not only accepted without protest but even sought. It is the old story, in America as elsewhere, of a selfish economic advantage blinding those in power to the welfare of the State as a whole, although many continued to hold misgivings of the outcome. Thus we find Beverley in a later edition of his history, recording: "as for malefactors condemned to transportation, the greedy planters will always buy them, yet it is to be feared that they will be very injurious to the Country, which has already suffered many murders and robberies, the effect of that new law of England."[33]

[33] He refers to the Act pa.s.sed in 1718, on the transportation of convicts.

But a loose a.s.sumption that all the convicts or prisoners arriving were moral derelicts, or those whose offense essentially involved moral depravity, and that the proportion these bore to others leaving Europe for Virginia fixes the ratio of their descendants or influence in the Old Dominion's later population, would be wholly and demonstrably untrue. We must be much more discerning and a.n.a.lytical than that and, as in another instance, look to our definitions.

The penal law of England, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was far more severe than today. Literally scores of offenses were punishable by death or transportation which today are either not crimes or, if still so considered, are punishable only by fine or imprisonment.

Among the transgressions most severely dealt with, were purely political offenses; and a political offense was essentially to have picked the wrong side in the many religious, dynastic or civic disturbances of the period. After the various Irish upheavals of the seventeenth century--and that island, it may be said, was conquered by the English no less than three times within less than a hundred years--there was banishment or transportation of many of the losing side. The transportation was especially ruthless after Cromwell's operations and again, a generation or more later, after the Battle of the Boyne. But the Irish were not the only political victims. When the forces of Parliament defeated the Stuart followers, they condemned to transportation a goodly number of their opponents; treatment which was promptly reciprocated by the triumphant Royalists after the Restoration who meted out the same punishment to former Cromwellian soldiers and non-conformists as well. Again, after the abortive effort made in 1685 by the Duke of Monmouth to seize his uncle's crown, the vicious and b.l.o.o.d.y Jeffries and his colleagues, in their less frenzied moments, sentenced, as criminals, mult.i.tudes of the unfortunate followers of Monmouth to transportation to Virginia--there to be sold into as virtual slavery as any thug convicted of murder or highway robbery who had, in one way or another, been lucky enough to escape hanging. On arrival they sold for from 10 to 15 each; and we find the King adding his gentle touch to the work. "Take all care" wrote James to the Council of Virginia "that they shall serve for ten years at least; and that they be not permitted to return themselves by money or otherwise until that term be fully expired. Prepare a bill for the a.s.sembly of our Colony, with such clauses as shall be requisite for that purpose." Thus the king; but in four years he has lost his throne and William III is issuing a full pardon for all political offenders.

Hence no small part of the convicts were unfortunates, rather than criminals, to our modern way of thought. But there remained a large and unpalatable number who had been convicted of crimes of all degrees and in their ranks were found a motley crew ranging from the lowest type of profligate, whose escape from the noose had been a public misfortune, to the minor offenders punished for a first violation of law. However even this evil residue was fated to leave but a minor contamination of the Colony's bloodstream. A great death-toll was taken by sickness on the transporting ships, particularly by the dreaded "goal distemper" as it was called. Those who survived the voyage naturally received far less consideration from their purchasers than was accorded the indentured servant; the unaccustomed climate took its quota and all in all the mortality was very great. Of those who outlived their period of servitude, some rose to positions of trust; many of the incorrigibles soon made the Colony too hostile for their comfort and took themselves off either voluntarily or as fugitives--sometimes to the more remote and unseated parts of Piedmont or, more generally, to the North Carolina backwoods, a favorite refuge for the dregs of Virginia's Colonial population. And at length, in 1740, came an opportunity for a great and general house-cleaning. In raising the Virginia levies for the ill-fated expedition against Carthagena, many a convict was pressed into service and, in the disasters attending that adventure, ended his turbulent career. But unfortunately the polluted stream continued to pour in on Virginia's sh.o.r.es until after the Revolution.

An unduly large proportion of these undesirables appears to have found its way into the backwoods of the Northern Neck which, in 1730, Governor Gooch described as "a part of the Country remote from the Seat of Government where the common people are generally of a more turbulent and unruly disposition than anywhere else, and are not like to become better by being the Place of all this Dominion where most of transported Convicts are sold and settled."[34] One may, without an undue straining of the imagination, discover the descendants of some of these people in modern Loudoun's small lawless element.

[34] _Landmarks of Old Prince William_, I., 162.

The negro slaves were practically confined to the eastern and southern parts of Loudoun. They were all but unknown in the German Settlement and the Quakers as a sect were so opposed to the very inst.i.tution of slavery that, as early as the eighteenth century, the Society in America reached the decision to disown any member thereof who held slaves.

In all this varied a.s.sortment of population, it is a tribute to the natural leadership of the Tidewater Virginian that he maintained his supremacy and control. From him the county inherits all that is best and most attractive in its social life--the courtesy of its people, the unfailing hospitality, the love of social intercourse, the ardour for outdoor sports, particularly the devotion to horses, dogs and fox-hunting, all of which so definitely distinguish it today and contribute to the outstanding and well-recognized charm of its life.

CHAPTER VI

ROADS AND BOUNDARIES

We have mentioned in the foregoing pages that an unusual feature in the settlement of these Stafford or Prince William backwoods, soon to be known as Loudoun, was not only the diversity of origin of the new population but that it came almost simultaneously from the north and the south and the west as well as from the Tidewater east. As the falls of the Potomac and Rappahannock blocked continuous water transport from the older settlements, the pioneers all were forced to come through the woodland trails and these trails or roads, if they could be then so called, now demand our attention.

What one might call the Appian Way of Piedmont, the _longarum regina viarum_ as Statius calls the Roman road, was undoubtedly that aboriginal trail which, perhaps beginning as a buffalo path,[35] was followed habitually by the Indians in their north-south journeys to the earliest knowledge of the whites and appears in the records of the Colony at a very early date. The Carolina Road, as it is best known, became a great highway between the north and the south and if our surmise be correct that, in common with so many of our earliest colonial roads, it owes its origin to a beaten trail made by the heavier animals of the forest, it was probably used by the Manahoacks and their predecessor tribes long before the Susquehannocks frequented it in the latter half of the seventeenth century, not only on their trading journeys between the Dutch of Manhattan and the Carolina Indians, but in their war forays as well. The Iroquois of New York, as we have seen, followed their Susquehannock kindred to Piedmont and in Spotswood's day it was their ordinary and accustomed route. We think we get our first record of it among the Susquehannock "plain paths" noted in the Virginia Act of 1662 and it was sometimes referred to by that name. Later and from about 1686 until at least 1742, that part of the road between Brent Town and the Rappahannock was also known as the "Shenandoah Hunting Path," a name still occasionally heard; but the popular name was the Carolina Road with its no less popular descriptive appellation of "The Rogue's Road"

due to the cattle and horse thieves who infested it throughout the eighteenth century. That these gentry misused the road only, rather than were residents of the country it traversed, was always maintained, and apparently with truth, by the Piedmont people; but so numerous had they become by 1742 that the a.s.sembly pa.s.sed an act[36] calling on those driving stock along the public highways to have in their possession a bill of sale of their cattle and horses to be exhibited to any justice of the peace when due demand therefor was made. Yet the rogues still continued to travel their road until the ebb and wane of its traffic in the early nineteenth century. Although the records fail to shew that highwaymen plied their trade on this or other Virginia roads, Loudoun folklore has held to a belief in their activities as witness the legend concerning Captain Harper, Loudoun's own Robin Hood:

"This portion through the present Loudoun of the old Carolina Road was then locally known as 'Rogue's Road' on account of the many bold robberies committed along its route by the famous gentleman highwayman of the day, Captain Harper, who regularly patrolled it and terrorized all those who lived adjacent to it until such was the fear of this dashing and bold highwayman, that women were afraid to venture out upon this road alone. A rather pretty story is related in this connection--a young Virginia maiden was walking this road alone one evening about twilight, hurrying from a visit to a neighbour, when a dashing cavalier rode up and reined his horse beside her. 'Are you not afraid to walk this road alone on account of Captain Harper and his band?' he asked.

'No' replied the maiden 'for I have always heard Captain Harper was a gentleman.' The dashing horseman looked at her a moment and then walked his horse beside her until she reached the gate leading to her home. And then raising his hat and bowing he said: 'Captain Harper bids you good night' and digging the rowels into his steed he vanished as he came."[37] The writer omits to mention the local tradition that Harper, though mercilessly robbing the rich, gave generously to the poor.

[35] _Historic Highways of America_, A. B. Hulbert, I, 19.

[36] Hening, V, 176.

[37] Harry T. Harrison in _Loudoun Times_, 20 Dec., 1916.

The Carolina Road entered Virginia at a point on the bank of the Potomac, above the mouth of Maryland's Monocacy, where Noland's Ferry sometime prior to 1756 became its connecting link with Maryland; thence it ran in a southeasterly direction somewhere along the present clay road to Christ Church just south of modern Lucketts; thence south, following closely the present Leesburg-Point of Rocks State Highway, through Leesburg over what is known as King Street (the King's Highway of yesteryear) and approximately along the present James Monroe Highway (Route 15 of the United States Highway System) to Verts' Corner, thence along what is still locally called the Carolina Road (or sometimes the Gleedsville Road) to Goose Creek at Oatlands. The present hard road from Verts' Corner to Oatlands, now the main road, was probably built and the old road's traffic at that point diverted about 1830 when the rough pavement of the road was undertaken. From Goose Creek at Oatlands the old road followed United States Route 15 as at present to the Little River Turnpike, now known as the Lee-Jackson National Highway, just east of the village of Aldie; crossing this, it followed what is now but a local and little used county road which, in its progress south of the county and under changing conditions, eventually crosses the other great rivers above their falls line and so on to North Carolina. Along its route the first church in Loudoun, Aubrey's little log "Chapel of Ease,"

was erected at the Big Spring; and later many of the mansions of the Loudoun gentlefolk, such as the Noland House, Rockland, Springwood, Selma, Raspberry Plain, Morven, Rokeby, Oatlands, Oak Hill, and others in due time came to be built and historic "Ordinaries" or taverns such as that known as West's and later as Lacey's and towns such as Leesburg and the nearby Aldie grew up. All through the eighteenth century the flow of its colorful traffic continued and developed in volume until the founding of the City of Washington, as the nation's Capital, drew to the east those travelling between the northern and southern States. And now, over a hundred years after the pa.s.sing of its golden days of activity, there are rumoured plans to revive the old road as a main north and south highway and once again, in the not too distant future, we may see its old life restored, with motors and trucks speeding along its surface where the old-time foot and horse-travel and Indians and soldiers, missionaries and traders, drovers honest or otherwise, were wont slowly to pa.s.s.

Nor are the old mansions and towns the only surviving landmarks along its way. The famous Big Spring still rises in as steady volume as of yore; the Tuscarora and Goose Creeks, no longer needfully forded but now spanned by modern concrete bridges, still flow complacently in their old-time channels and between them, on the west side of the present road and two and a half miles south of Leesburg, still stand the old Indian mounds.

These mounds, for there are others scattered to the west of the one so noticeable from the highway, have always excited local interest but the present generation has all but forgotten their traditional story.

Somewhere in the neighbourhood of the house of Mr. T. W. Gaines, on whose land rises the mound nearest the road, or perhaps over the land where the mounds themselves now stand, there was fought a hardly contested Indian battle at about the time the first of the white pioneers were coming into that neighbourhood. Many years ago the late Mrs. William H. Martin, then a bride recently come to Leesburg, with the a.s.sistance of the late Miss Lizzie Worsley, who gave a lifetime of study to the past of Leesburg and Loudoun, carefully gathered up what she then could of the old story which had been handed down from generation to generation and incorporated it in a gracefully written "History and Traditions of Greenway" which was published in the _Record_ of Leesburg, then edited by her husband.

"Numberless were said to be dead warriors," wrote Mrs. Martin, "who found their last resting place so far from their native lands beneath the mounds that were easily distinguishable in the gloom of the thick forest. This battle had been between the Catawbas of the Carolinas and the Delawares.[38] An hereditary enmity existed between these two tribes, distant as they were, the one from the other. A large band of Delawares, pushing into the territory of the Catawbas had severely punished that tribe, and victorious, were travelling northward to their home. The Catawbas followed and unexpectedly fell upon them, having overtaken them at the Potomac. Terrible and swift was their revenge, yet such were the fighting qualities of the Delawares thus brought to bay, that the Catawbas were forced to retreat, without prisoners. But when the remaining Delaware warriors looked upon their dead they saw the flower of their tribe, stark in death, and too far to be carried to their own hunting grounds. So there they were buried...."[39]

[38] According to C. W. Sam's _The Forest Primeval_ (p. 382) the Delawares and Catawbas were at war in 1732.

[39] Balch Library. Loudoun Clippings, Vol. 2, p. 66.

The surviving conquerors gathered together the bodies of their slain tribesmen and over them toiled to erect the mounds that still stand. The mounds and many hundred acres of surrounding land were early acquired by the Mead family, who later built nearby Greenway, and in that family the legend was handed down that in the springtime of each year, about the anniversary of the battle, there came through the forest a band of Indians who, when they reached the mounds, conducted weird mourning rites for their fallen brethren, made offerings of arrows and food and then disappeared in the surrounding woods as silently as they came. As the years pa.s.sed, the mourners grew fewer and fewer until at length but a solitary old warrior arrived and held what proved to be the final ceremony. But the story does not end with those last solitary rites.

According to the Mead family tradition, year after year, as the night fell on the anniversary of the battle, weird sounds of conflict came from the Indian mounds though no person or living thing could be seen.

Perhaps of equal antiquity and second only to the Carolina Road in early importance but in that respect now by far surpa.s.sing it, is the highway roughly paralleling the Potomac, the old Ridge Road now generally known as the Alexandria Pike. This road also originated in an Indian trail, possibly following an earlier buffalo path; it joined the famous Potomac Path of Tidewater above the ford at Hunting Creek and it was along its course that we have seen Giles Vandercastel and Burr Harrison, in 1699, exploring their way on their mission to Conoy Island. This was the main entrance from the lower part of the Northern Neck to at least so much of Loudoun as lies between the Potomac and the Catoctin Hills; and along its course and that of the Colchester Road to the south came the majority of the Tidewater settlers. Its route through what later was to be the Town of Leesburg is marked by Loudoun Street. The late Charles O.

Vandevanter of Leesburg, who made a careful study of the location of these old roads, believed that originally its course west of Leesburg followed what is now known as the Dry Mill Road to Clark's Gap; but there is reason to believe that he was mistaken. As the road approaches the rise of the Catoctin Hills, it certainly at one time followed the hollow to the west of the present established road and upon the land later owned by the author; so running west of the present Roxbury Hall and on to Clark's Gap, marks of its old route being still plainly discernible. When the highway was incorporated in 1831, its route at this point was changed to approximately its present location to avoid the sharpness of the grade as it left the little branch now crossed by stone culverts. Remains of the old road were discovered in 1923 when building the private road to the house last named. At the foot of the hill and in front of the present tenant house, rough piking was uncovered and nearby, where the path leaves the lane to go to the barn, some old brick were dug up. The late Samuel Norris, who died in 1933 at the age of eighty-four, said that at this point there once was a cottage where, as he had heard when a boy from older people, there had lived a man whose duty it was to care for the extra horses which were attached to the stage coaches before they began the abrupt rise of the road at that point in following the hollow northwesterly. From Clark's Gap the early road followed the present sandclay road to what is now known as Ely's Corner, past the present Paeonian Springs and Warner's Cross Roads and Wheatland and Hillsboro to the depression in the Blue Ridge known as Vestal's or Key's Gap--Gershom Keys having owned land at that point as early as 1748 and the Vestal family having operated a ferry across the Shenandoah nearby at least as early as 1754 and perhaps in 1736; for we know it was in operation at that time and that one G. Vestal was living in the immediate neighbourhood then. Washington followed this road on his mission to Fort du Quesne in 1753 and once again in 1754 as major of that expedition against the French on the Alleghany (to the command of which he later succeeded on the illness and death of Colonel Fry), which resulted in the building and surrender by him of Fort Necessity.[40] In the following year it was trodden by that brigade of Braddock's army which, under the command of Sir Peter Halkett, left the main body of the troops when that main body crossed the Potomac over into Maryland at the present Georgetown as is related in a later chapter.

[40] _Landmarks of Old Prince William_, 481, 511.

In an effort to attract the increasing traffic to and from the west, Leesburg citizens incorporated in 1831 the Leesburg and Snickers' Gap Turnpike Company which built an improved road north from Clark's Gap to Snickers' Gap, as the old Williams' Gap had then come to be called; and this new road (which is the present Alexandria-Winchester Highway) took the traffic theretofore going through Vestal's Gap and has since been the northerly main route across the Blue Ridge.

To carry the old Ridge Road over Broad Run, we know that there was built, before 1755, one of the earliest highway bridges in Loudoun's territory of which record has been preserved; for on the 1755 edition of the Fry & Jefferson map a wooden bridge is shewn at that point. The picturesque stone bridge that now spans the stream, venerable as it appears, may not have been constructed before 1820, at about which time that part of the road was being improved by the Leesburg Turnpike Company; nevertheless in eastern Loudoun it is a popular legend that it was built by George Washington as a young man and the inhabitants of the neighbourhood firmly believe that to be true.

The third of the princ.i.p.al roads of colonial Loudoun is called by Fairfax Harrison the Colchester Road and is described by him as also, in its first beginning an Indian path, developed about 1728 by King Carter and his sons Robin and Charles from the Occoquan below the falls "past the future sites of Payne's Church and the present Fairfax Court House all the way to the Frying Pan run."[41] The Carters believed that there was copper on certain of their recently acquired lands and this road was developed to bring the ore to tidewater. It became known as the Ox Road and a year or so later joined Walter Griffin's Rolling Road running west across Little Rocky Run and eventually across Elk Lick and Bull Run, across the Carolina Road (near which crossing West's Ordinary was built), and so above the ford over Little River to the Blue Ridge Road to Williams' Gap. It was over this road that the youthful Washington returned in the spring of 1748 from his survey with George William Fairfax of the lands of Lord Fairfax in the valley and thus first set foot in the present Loudoun; crossing the Blue Ridge at Williams'

Gap[42] they proceeded to William West's house, later to be licensed as West's Ordinary and still later as Lacey's. Incidentally this old building and landmark continued to stand until the year 1927 when it was quite needlessly and most unfortunately torn down.

[41] _Landmarks_, 423; also C. O. Van Devanter in _Loudoun County Breeders Magazine_, spring, 1931.

[42] Washington's _Journal Of My Journey Over the Mountains_. Edited by Dr. J. M. Toner in 1892. p. 52.

The Colchester Road continued to be a main thoroughfare up to about 1806 when the construction of Little River Turnpike diverted most of its travel and the new road with its branches became the princ.i.p.al highway system in southern Loudoun.

The Virginia roads in the early days were in terrible condition for wheeled traffic. Their most earnest defenders can only allege that they were no worse than other American roads of those days and better than many, a defense that d.a.m.ns without even the proverbial faint praise.

Englishmen of the period were still asleep in their att.i.tude toward road building and many of the highways of England seem to have been as bad as those in America. One peculiarity of the Virginia road was its general lack of side-fencing. Adjacent property owners were quite apt to run their boundary fences across the highway, leaving a gate for the traveller to open and pa.s.s through. Curious as this may seem to us, it was not wholly without its advantage; for where the highway had become a sink-hole of mud, it thus was possible for the pa.s.ser-by to make as wide a detour through adjacent fields or woods as might be necessary to avoid the obstruction. This throws light upon the effort at Georgetown, predecessor settlement of the larger Leesburg, to have the course of the Carolina Road as it pa.s.sed through that hamlet definitely established by the court as early as 1742 and again in 1757.[43]

[43] Balch Library Clippings, III, 41 and 53.

Bridges were few, far between, and primitive. There was, as we have shewn, a wooden bridge prior to 1755 carrying the Ridge Road over Broad Run and it is believed that prior to 1739, the same road crossed Difficult near Colvin Run over a bridge of sorts; but for the most part fords were used to cross streams, or ferries in the case of the Potomac and other great rivers. When fords and ferries failed, the mounted traveller swam his horse across, leaving the wayfarer on foot to such more precarious adventure as conditions and his courage offered.

In a preceding chapter we have seen the Vestrymen of Truro Parish engaged in ecclesiastical affairs committed to their charge; among their secular duties was to appoint every four years reputable Freeholders to "perambulate" the Parish, that is to say to travel over the plantations and farms within it and renew their landmarks. In Virginia this was called "processioning" but it derived from a very ancient English practice know as "beating the bounds" believed to have been brought by Saint Augustine to England from Gaul where "it may have been derived from the Roman festival of Terminus, the G.o.d of landmarks, to whom cakes and ale were offered, sports and dancing taking place at the boundaries." In England we find the "beating of the bounds" observed under Alfred and Aethelstan, whose laws mention it. In later days, maps still being rare, it continued an English parish custom, generally observed on Ascension Day or during Rogation Week. A procession was formed, headed by the Priest of the Parish, the Churchwardens and other Parish dignitaries and followed by a crowd of boys who were armed with sticks with which they beat the Parish boundary stones and were sometimes beaten themselves at each marker in order to fix those markers in their minds and to insure the location of the boundary stones being remembered through the life of the younger generation. The procession frequently ended in a "parish-ale" or feast which doubtlessly a.s.sisted in reconciling the boys to it all.[44] In earlier days the Priests sought the Divine blessing for the following harvest on the lands within the parish. But translated to Virginia the procedure was robbed of much of its formality and many of its picturesque features and came to apply to renewing the landmarks of private holdings rather than confirming in memory those of the Parish bounds. There was a Truro Vestry meeting held on the 8th October, 1743, to appoint "Processioners," which meeting, the record states, was pursuant to an order of Fairfax County Court, Loudoun then being included in Fairfax. The Vestrymen at their meeting "laid off the said Parish into Precincts and appointed Processioners in manner following." As the men appointed were representative men in their neighbourhoods and as the "Precinct" may be taken to forecast the later division of Loudoun into its Magisterial Districts of modern days, it is interesting to study so much of the record as refers to the country above Difficult Run which in a few years was to be organized as Loudoun:

"That John Trammell and John Harle procession between Difficult Run and Broad Run; that Anthony Hampton and William Moore procession between Broad Run and the south side of Goose Creek as far as the fork of Little River; that Philip Noland and John La.s.swell procession between Goose Creek and Limestone Run as far as the fork of Little River; that Amos Janney and William Hawling procession between Limestone Run and the south branch of Kitoctan.

[44] _Encyclopedia Britannica_, and W. S. Walsh's _Curiosities of Popular Customs_.

"Between the south fork of Kitoctan and Williams Gap, no free holder in this precinct; between Williams Gap, Ashley's Gap, the County line and Goose Creek, to the Beaver Dam, and back to the Gap, no freeholder in this precinct. Between the Beaver Dam and the north east fork of Goose Creek no freeholder in this precinct."

Level Jackson and Jacob La.s.swell were ordered to procession between the northeast and northwest forks of Goose Creek; John Middleton and Edward Hews between Little River and Goose Creek; William West and William Hall Junior between Little River and Walnut "Cabbin" branch; George Adams and Daniel Diskin between Walnut Cabbin branch, Broad run and Cub run and Popes head. The editors of the record add that these Processioners owned land within their several precincts at that date.[45]

[45] _History of Truro Parish in Virginia_, 19.

The statement that there were no freeholders

(a) between the south fork of "Kitoctan" and Williams Gap; and