Legends of Loudoun Part 5

(b) between Williams Gap, Ashley's Gap, the County line and Goose Creek to the Beaver Dam and back to the Gap; and

(c) between the Beaver Dam and the north east fork of Goose Creek

is interesting. A and C take in parts of the Quaker Settlement. Also it is traditional in the Osburn family of Loudoun that their forebears John and Nicholas...o...b..rn, sons of Richard Osburn of New Jersey and later of Chester County, Pennsylvania, came from Pennsylvania to the Shenandoah Valley near Harper's Ferry and thence in 1734 crossed the Blue Ridge and settled on its eastern foothills near the present Bluemont. It may be that with other pioneers in the upper lands they occupied their farms at first without t.i.tle and later were obliged to buy the lands they had rescued from the wilderness from the more shrewd and far-sighted land speculators for we find no grants from the Proprietor to them. Many of the earliest settlers were in that position. Catesby c.o.c.ke and Benjamin Grayson particularly, took t.i.tle to great tracts west of the Catoctin Hills and in 1740 sold their holdings to John Colvil of Cleesch as will later appear.[46] Neither c.o.c.ke nor Grayson were settlers in Loudoun.

The former was the son of Dr. William c.o.c.ke, Secretary of State and he himself had been successively clerk of the counties of Stafford, Prince William and Fairfax. Grayson, a Scotch merchant from Quantico, became the father of Colonel William Grayson of Revolutionary fame who, with Richard Henry Lee, first represented Virginia in the United States Senate.

[46] See Chapter VII post.

CHAPTER VII

SPECULATION AND DEVELOPMENT

In the Quarter century, between 1730 and the French and Indian War of 1755, the lands of the future Loudoun became progressively more populous. Although Truro Parish had been created as recently as 1732, this pressure of incoming settlers seemed to call for the division, in its turn, of Truro and in 1748 the government of the Colony set off the upper part of Truro, beyond Difficult Run, as a new parish which was named Cameron in delicate compliment to the Lord Proprietor's Scotch Barony. Most unfortunately, the first vestry book of the new parish, which would be invaluable source material for the Loudoun student seeking information for the period from 1748 until the Revolution, has vanished or been destroyed. The first parson of Cameron was the Rev.

John Andrews, probably the hero of a convivial incident soon to be related.[47]

[47] See Mrs. Browne's narrative in next chapter.

Increasing population meant rapidly rising land values, exercising an irresistible lure to many of the more active speculators of the Northern Neck. Such men of substance as Aubrey and Noland were developing the lands they purchased; but in another cla.s.s were Benjamin Grayson, Catesby c.o.c.ke, George Eskridge, the wealthy Potomac trader John Colvil of Cleesh, that turbulent though gifted son of Dublin John Mercer and even William Fairfax himself, all of whom, so far as Loudoun was concerned, were active in land ventures rather than development. The Germans we have met coming over the Blue Ridge were more intent upon subduing the wilderness than skilled in the niceties of land t.i.tles; hence they, in common with many of the other pioneers, appear to have frequently omitted to secure grants from the proprietor for their holdings, giving c.o.c.ke, Grayson, Mercer and even Aubrey the opportunity, knowingly or otherwise, to secure the legal t.i.tle to the lands of which they had taken possession.

In 1740 John Colvil bought out c.o.c.ke and his colleagues and, writes Fairfax Harrison "many lesser men and by pre-arrangement divided the territory with William Fairfax. Keeping for himself the lands lying between Catoctin Creek and the Catoctin Ridge and stretching from the Potomac to Waterford, he conveyed to William Fairfax 46,466 acres, const.i.tuting all the territory on the Potomac lying between Catoctin Creek and the Shenandoah River, including the Blue Ridge from Gregory's Gap to Harper's Ferry. The purchaser divided the property at the Short Hills into two estates, naming the northern one 'Shannondale' and the southern one 'Piedmont' and administered them as manors, on leases for three lives. By his will he left these lands, with his mansion house, Belvoir, to his eldest son, and the latter in turn, by his will of 1780, entailed them, with the intention that they should const.i.tute the 'plantation' of Belvoir House, always to be held with it. But soon after this last will was written, the success of the American Revolution made it necessary for George William Fairfax, by codicil, to change his testamentary dispositions and his proposed entail was never made effective."[48]

[48] _Landmarks of Old Prince William_, 273.

After Colvil had settled with William Fairfax, he still held 16,290 acres along Catoctin Creek, to say nothing of 1,500 acres on Difficult Run, his plantation on Great Hunting Creek known as Cleesh and other lands in the Northern Neck. Born at Newcastle-on-Tyne, he was closely related to the Earl of Tankerville, through the latter's mother being his first cousin--a matter in which he took some pride and which was to be of even more moment to the Earl; for when Colvil came to make his will in 1755, he left his plantation Cleesh, then containing about 1,000 acres, to his own brother, Thomas Colvil, for life with remainder over "to the Right Honourable the present Earl of Tankerville and his heirs forever" and also "in consideration of my relation and alliance to the said Earl of Tankerville son of my father's brother's daughter," he left to him outright his 16,000 acres of land on the Catoctin, his 1,500 acres on Difficult and his interest in a certain nearby copper mine.[49]

Thenceforth these lands remained in the Earl's family until after the Revolution. Thus originated the Earl of Tankerville's t.i.tle to certain Loudoun lands, reference to which occasionally yet is heard.

[49] The will is on record in Fairfax County.

About 1739 Josias Clapham, of an ancient family of Yorkshire (which long has been a.s.sociated with the Fairfaxes there) bought land near the Point of Rocks and before his death owned much land in the Northern Neck. He died sometime prior to the 27th December, 1749, when his will, dated the 29th October, 1744, was proven in Fairfax County. In that will he left

"to my brother's son Josias Clapham two hundred fourty three Achres of four hundred joyning to Madm. Mason commonly called the Flat Spring to him and his heirs forever."

A codicil added to the will reads

"I leave my hole real Estate and Parsonable Estate to my brothers son Josias Clapham and if he dont come in, it is my desire that his brother Joseph should have it."[50]

[50] _Landmarks_, 502; also Fairfax County Wills A1, 309 and B1, 26.

Nicholas Cresswell, the journalist, as we shall see in Chapter XI, states that the younger Josias lived in Wakefield in Yorkshire and was much in debt. He decided to "come in" by emigrating to Virginia and soon appeared on his lands in the upper country. He became a great leader in Loudoun affairs. Toward the end of his long life he, in 1796, deeded to his son Samuel the estate later known as Chestnut Hill and the latter, soon thereafter, built the beautiful mansion which became another of Loudoun's outstanding and stately family seats and which still stands, in all its old-time charm, not far from the Point of Rocks, in one of the most fertile and captivating regions of Loudoun. Through the marriage of Betsy Price, a granddaughter of Josias Clapham, to Thomas F.

Mason of the Gunston Hall branch of that family (and therefore cousin to that Thomson Mason of Raspberry Plain who we are about to meet) the house and estate, until very recent years, continuously was occupied by these Mason descendants of Clapham.[51]

[51] C. O. Vandevantner in _Northern Virginian_, winter issue, 1932.

A few years after the death, in 1741, of Francis Aubrey, much of his great estate lying between the old Ridge Road (where it now pa.s.ses through Leesburg under the name of Loudoun Street) north to the Limestone Branch and from the Potomac westerly to the Catoctin Hills, came into the possession of Mrs. Ann Thomson Mason, widow of the third George of that ilk; thus introducing to our frontier of that day another of the most prominent of the Tidewater families and one which also was to play a very notable role in Loudoun for at least a century. This George Mason, at the age of forty-five, had been drowned while attempting to cross the Potomac in a sailboat in the year 1735. In 1721 he had married, as his second wife, Ann Thomson, daughter of Stevens Thomson of Hollins Hall, Staffordshire, England, who had served as Attorney-General of Virginia for some years during Queen Anne's reign.

He, in turn, was the son of Sir William Thomson of the Middle Temple, a Sergeant at Law who, to his credit, in 1680 had had the courage to act as counsel for the defendants Tasborough and Price in the malodorous Popish Plot trials of disgraceful memory. By this second wife, Mason had six or seven children, of whom only three were to survive him: George his eldest son (for his first wife had been childless) who later was to build Gunston Hall and become the author of the famous Bill of Rights; Thomson, later to become at least a part-time resident of Loudoun and a famous lawyer in his day; and Mary, who, on the 11th April, 1751, was to marry Samuel Selden of Salvington in Stafford County, near Fredericksburg. She died at her mother's plantation Chipawamsic, on the 5th day of January, 1758, leaving two children, Samuel and Mary Mason Selden, the latter inheriting her Loudoun lands.

When George Mason met his accidental death he left no will. Under the Colonial law of primogeniture, his extensive holdings of land therefore went to his eldest son. According to the family historian, his younger children were left penniless. His widow thereupon bent all her energies to create an estate for each of them. Saving what she could, through every available economy and acting under the advice of her late husband's friends, she acquired "ten thousand acres of what was then called 'wild lands' in Loudoun County, for which she paid only a few shillings per acre." She, during her lifetime, divided these lands between her two younger children "for the reason a.s.signed by her that she did not wish her children to grow up with any sense of inequality among them in regard to fortune. The investment turned out a most fortunate one, and she thereby unwittingly made her younger children wealthier than their elder brother."[52]

[52] _Life of George Mason_, by Kate Mason Rowland.

It is thus so many of the beautiful modern estates between Leesburg and the Limestone Branch trace their t.i.tle back to the Mason family. Mrs.

Ann Thomson Mason died on the 13th November, 1762, "leaving a reputation among her connections and neighbours for great prudence and business capacity, united to the charms of an amiable, womanly, character." Her Rector, friend and relative, the Rev. John Moncure, described her as "a good woman, a great woman, and a lovely woman."[53]

[53] _Idem._, 79.

Though she planted the Mason line in Loudoun, she herself does not appear ever to have lived in that rough and for those days remote frontier country. The actual seating of her line on her large purchase was left to her son Thomson who, after going to England to acquire his training in law and being admitted to the Middle Temple on the 14th August, 1751, as its records show, returned to Virginia, practiced law at Dumfries, became, perhaps, the most eminent lawyer of his time at the Virginia Bar and vigourously aided the American Revolution. He either had improved and extended the first Raspberry Plain home or, as Lancaster says, built a new one for he deeded the existing structure with the supporting land to his son Stevens Thomson Mason, confirming the grant in his will, together with the plate and furniture then in the dwelling; which indicates a more impressive home than the first building.

Thomson Mason died at Raspberry Plain on the 26th February, 1785, and was there buried; but the first mansion and burial place were not where the imposing modern house of the same name now stands but rather much to the north, near the fine spring and branch for a long time included in the present Selma lands, for the latter estate was, of course, at that time and long afterward but another part of the extensive Mason holdings. It is of interest to note that this original Raspberry Plain holding was never acquired by Francis Aubrey nor was it part of Mrs. Ann Thomson Mason's purchase. On the contrary, it comprised a small grant, stated to be 322 acres, made by the Proprietor to one Joseph Dixon, a blacksmith, by patent dated the 2nd July, 1731.[54] Dixon, in turn, sold it to Aeneas Campbell by deed dated the 15th July, 1754, for a consideration nominally stated as "five shillings"--the old-time equivalent of our "One Dollar and other good and valuable considerations"--and Campbell was living there when commissioned the first sheriff of Loudoun in 1757. In the deed to him the plantation is described as being "On the branches of Limestone run called and known by the name of raspberry plain" and the grant goes on to give the exact location by metes and bounds. It apparently had been more carefully surveyed and found to have more area than first believed, for it is further described as containing "393 acres as appears by a survey thereof" and the grant specifically includes "all houses, buildings, orchards, ways, waters, water-courses," etc. Therefore Dixon may be credited with having built the first Raspberry Plain house, a matter long in doubt locally.[55] The estate was subsequently sold by Campbell and Lydia his wife to Thomson Mason, by deed dated the 15th day of May, 1760, for 500 pounds current money of Virginia.

[54] Liber 3, Fol. 181, N. N. Grants.

[55] Fairfax County Land Records Liber C1 p. 806.

Around 1750 there came from Scotland to this same country, north of the present Leesburg, that William Dougla.s.s who is to be so frequently mentioned by Nicholas Cresswell in his journal at the time of the Revolution. Colonel Dougla.s.s, as he afterward became, was the son of Hugh Dougla.s.s of Garalland in Ayshire who, in turn, was sixth in descent from the Earl of Douglas and also a descendant of the Campbell Barons of Loudoun, thus making the Dougla.s.s family of Loudoun County kinsfolk to the Earl of Loudoun for whom the county was to be named. Our William Dougla.s.s owned the estates of Garalland and Montressor in Loudoun, served as one of her justices (1770) and as sheriff in 1782. He died in the latter year, leaving a will which was probated on the 24th September 1782.[56]

[56] _Dougla.s.s Family_, by J. S. Wise.

In the meanwhile the settlement of the Quakers was increasing rapidly in population. As early as 1736, it is said, Hannah Janney, the wife of Jacob Janney, held the services of her sect twice a week on a tree-stump in the forest "and on that spot a log house was built in 1751 and a meeting established" which was and still is known as the Goose Creek meeting. This log hut in 1765 was superseded by a stone building and as the congregation grew and the latter building was found too small, it was replaced, in 1817, by a brick meeting-house; but the old stone building of 1765 still stands and is owned by the Friends. Remodelled as a dwelling house it is now occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Taylor.

A monument today marks the place, now in the village of Lincoln, where the good Hannah Janney worshipped. It stands in a grove of trees and reads:

"Here on a log in the unbroken forest Hannah Janney, wife of Jacob Janney, worshipped twice weekly in 1736. In 1738 Friends meetings were held in a private house once a month. Then a log meeting house. Then the old stone house in 1765 and the brick house in 1817."

By 1743 or 1744 the Friends had erected a church, known as the Fairfax Meeting, at Waterford, where as we have seen in a prior chapter (V), they soon had become very numerous and through their energy and thrift had really established that little settlement's early character and prosperity. This first meeting house of the Friends followed the fate which appeared to hover over so many of Virginia's early structures; it duly disappeared in flames and in its place in 1868 there was constructed the present substantial and commodious edifice, now only too seldom used because of the dwindling of the Quaker population there.

Concurrently another religious organization had been growing rapidly in the colonies. The Baptists had experienced the well-proved truth that religious persecution is a most fertile soil for religious growth.

"Magistrates and mobs, priests and Sheriffs, courts and parsons all vainly combined to divert them from their object," writes one of their historians. The Baptists in Virginia are said to have originated from three sources--emigrants in 1714, directly from England, settling in the southeasterly part of the Colony, others from Maryland about 1743 going to the northwesterly part, and still another group leaving New England about 1754 and going to what is now Berkely County in West Virginia.

Between 1750 and 1755 John Gerrard, a Baptist preacher of Maryland, is said to have gone to Berkely County and thence journeyed over the Blue Ridge into the present Loudoun "where he found the people ready to listen to the proclamation of the gospel." The first Baptist church in Loudoun (and perhaps in Virginia as well) was built at Ketocton in 1756 or 1757, according to tradition, to be followed by a stone building in 1815 and then, in 1856, by the present brick edifice.

Until 1765 the Baptist congregations in Virginia were united to the Philadelphia a.s.sociation but in that year obtained their dismissal and set about the task of building their own a.s.sociation in Virginia. Their first convention was held "in Ketocton in Loudoun" the old church there thus giving the first Baptist a.s.sociation in Virginia its name. At that time the Colony had only four Baptist churches but all of them were represented at this first convention by the following delegates

Ketocton: John Marks and John Loyd.

Smith and Lynsville Creek: John Alderson.

Mill Creek: John Garrard and Isaac Sutton.

Broad Run: David Thomas and Joseph Metcalf.

A resolution was adopted to seek from the parent a.s.sociation in Philadelphia instructions for the guidance of the new organization. As their a.s.sociation grew in membership, it "was divided into two in 1789 by a line running from the Potomac a south course." The westerly portion retained the Ketocton name and that to the east was known as the Chappawamsick. This division continued until 1792 when the districts were again united.[57]

[57] _Baptists in Virginia_, by R. B. Semple; also 3 Balch Library Clippings, 64.

It is believed that a congregation of the German Reformed Church at Lovettsville was organized before 1747 and possibly at once on the arrival of the first German settlers in the Lovettsville neighbourhood, about 1731. Again we are faced with the loss or destruction of early records; but the Rev. Michael Schlatter, one of the early founders of the Reformed Church in America, kept a journal from which it appears that he preached to a Reformed congregation in our German Settlement at the home of Elder William Wenner in the month of May, 1747. It is believed that there was, at a very early day, a building of logs used as a church and as a schoolhouse as well and that this continued to serve its congregation until 1810, when a larger brick building was erected which gave way in 1901 to another structure.[58]

[58] Balch Library Clippings, IV, 4.

By patent dated the 7th day of December, 1731, Rawleigh Chinn of Lancaster County acquired from Lord Fairfax 3,300 acres near Goose Creek and adjacent to a huge patent of 13,879 acres lying along the east side of Goose Creek which already had been granted to Colonel Charles Burgess, also of Lancaster. This grant to Chinn was on the Proprietor's usual terms, reserving to the latter "yearly and every year on the feast day of Saint Michael the Archangel the fee rent of one shilling sterling money for every fifty acres of Land hereby granted and so for a greater or lesser quant.i.ty"; and also meticulously reciting, "Royal mines excepted and a full third part of all lead, copper, tin, coals, iron mines and iron ore that shall be found thereon." Raleigh Chinn had married Esther, a daughter of Colonel Joseph Ball of Epping Forest, Lancaster County, an older sister of Mary Ball who was to marry Augustine Washington; and he, although never living on his purchase of forest lands in the "upper country," appears to have been so well pleased with his investment that he subsequently added heavily thereto; so that at the time of his death in August, 1741, he left to his children a large estate in what later became Loudoun and Fauquier Counties. One of Raleigh Chinn's sons, Joseph, in January, 1763, sold to Leven Powell 500 acres of his inheritance and on a part of this land Colonel Powell later (1782) laid out the town of Middleburg. Thomas Chinn, a brother of Joseph, lived on the land on Goose Creek he had inherited from his father and according to family tradition, employed his young cousin, George Washington, to survey it for him, Washington occupying "an office on a beautiful hill," built for him by Chinn.