Voices; Birth-Marks; The Man and the Elephant Part 11

One of Sebastian's servants had voluntarily indentured himself for five years to obtain transportation to America, with the design to become a landed proprietor at the end of his service. He had seen Mr. Campbell purchase Ruth Crawford and judging by the act that he would make a considerate master sent a note to him, stating that he was a farm hand of experience and proposed to serve his master faithfully until the end of his service.

Mr. Campbell looked him over; and satisfied with his physical appearance and appreciating that an experienced and willing servant was a better investment than a stubborn and inexperienced one; for seventeen guineas, became the master of John Mason.

Mr. Clark purchased the negro wench and a black man slave. He would not invest in the indentured servants, giving as his reason that he did not care to drill a servant five years and lose him just when he was most needed or had become efficient.

The ship came to anchor in Elizabeth river, off Norfolk, at noon on the twenty-second day of September. The next day those bound for the Virginia Valley chartered a river boat to carry them to Ricketts, just below Richmond, and shifting their belongings to it, sailed up the James River, making their first landing at Williamsburg.

At Williamsburg, while their wives were shopping, the men called upon Peyton Randolph and presented the letter which Mr. Campbell's father had given him. At the time he had more influence than any other man in the colony.

He read the letter and turning to Mr. Campbell said:

"I recall the very pleasant visit I made your father. We were great friends and were at the Temple together. He says you desire my advice in the selection of a location. If you were a man of considerable means you might buy a plantation on the York or James River or in the Northern Neck; but he says you have less than a thousand pounds. I therefore advise that you ascend the James River in boats or canoes to Balcony Falls and then proceed overland into the Valley. There you and your wife as Scotch-Presbyterians will feel more at home than with the Conformist planters of Tidewater, Virginia. You know Virginia was settled by rural Englishmen, who brought their church and cla.s.s distinctions with them.

Cla.s.s distinctions are more closely drawn in the Colony than in England; and in eastern Virginia it would be some time before you would be treated as a neighbor. Even though you are a kinsman of the Duke of Argyll, the women would never forget that your wife is the daughter of Dissenter McDonald.

"Since 1745 Irish and Scotch Presbyterians have been pouring into the colony and traveling westward have settled in the valley between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies, where they engage in raising cattle and growing wheat and Indian corn. They are democratic in their ideals, insisting upon religions freedom and self-government. On the other hand planters of the Tidewater country are satisfied with things as they are; as the law recognizes their church and they as social and political leaders rule the colony insofar as Parliament has delegated authority to the colonists. They live in great plantation houses conveniently near to navigable streams; so as to have access and a highway to the ocean. The streams swarm with small craft which furnish a way of social intercourse between plantations and a gateway to salt water.

"About fifteen years ago eastern Virginia was very prosperous. It was the golden age of the planter. In 1758 the colony exported seventy thousand hogsheads of tobacco; but its culture is declining, labor is dearer, the land is becoming impoverished and there are threatened embargoes and even a prospect of war with the mother country; which would destroy the industry and bankrupt the planters, as its growing is almost wholly for export. The labor in its production is severe, the initial outlay is great and the plantations growing it buy all their food and forage. Its almost exclusive cultivation and facilities for water transportation has given a fict.i.tious value to land along navigable streams and created the slave and bond-servant market, which in my opinion is a curse to Virginia.

"I therefore advise that you cross the mountains into the Virginia Valley and there buy a considerable acreage, if possible partly improved, and engage in raising cattle and growing wheat and Indian corn, for which products there is always a demand and a local market."

His visitors were not only grateful for, but were impressed by the advice he gave them and told him they intended to follow it. Then after an exchange of invitations and pleasant farewells, they joined their wives in the capitol grounds as had been arranged and returned by carriage to the landing; where, hailing their boat, they were taken aboard and the voyage resumed.

A short while after re-embarking they pa.s.sed Jamestown, where the first English colony in America maintained an almost futile effort for existence against starvation, the lowland fevers and, worse still, the dissensions and jealousies of their leaders. Little was left of the old settlement. On the low ground a few tumbling ruins washed by the tide marked the town-site; and on a point above, some ivy grown walls and moss covered, weather stained tombstones with half obliterated inscriptions marked the site of a once pretentious church.

They knew the history of those first colonists; how landing they spread an old sail overhead from the trees, "to shadow them from the sunne,"

and all, one hundred and five, gave thanks to G.o.d. How in a few days, they had a more substantial place of worship, where they held "daily common prayer, morning and evening, every Sunday two sermons and every three months holy communion." Here also in 1612 they built "an hospital with four score lodgings-for the sick and wounded or lame, with keepers to attend them for their comfort and recoverie."

How in that first winter, when their food was exhausted, Pocahontas came with burden bearers, bringing hampers of venison and corn, which "saved many of their lives, that else, for all this had starved of hunger." How years later, Captain John Smith writing of her to the Queen said: "During the time of two or three years, she next to G.o.d, was still the instrument to preserve this colony from death, famine and utter confusion, which if in those days had once been dissolved, Virginia might have lain as it was at our first arrival to this day."

During the voyage from Norfolk to Richmond, the party learned much of the country and the people. Archibald Campbell wrote his father describing people and country:

"The sh.o.r.es of the broad, sluggish, brackish river are a succession of tobacco and corn fields or marshy overflowed land. The plantation houses, usually of lumber, have a dozen rooms; and as the family grows in size or importance, wings are added to the main building to meet demands. The houses are furnished in such style as to indicate that tobacco, if not now, has been a paying crop.

"The men and women of the planter cla.s.s dress in clothing imported from England or France. The men wear camlet coats, lace ruffles, blue waistcoat and trousers of broadcloth or velvet; and their shoes are adorned with silver buckles. You should see the women! They wear gorgeous silk and satin gowns of bright colors; their bonnets and petticoats are trimmed with silver and gold lace; their stomachers and mantles are ornate and gorgeously colored.

"They seem to have everything to eat. Food is cheap and abundant. Great flocks of duck and geese feed in the salt marshes; they get fish and oysters from the shallows and inlets; deer and wild turkey are common in the swamps and in the interior. Their orchards furnish fruit; and they have such vegetables as we grow in England and also native melons, cymlins, pumpkins and Indian corn.

"At the public gatherings and entertainments the planters and small farmers are inclined to a spirit of carousal, but not more so than the English country gentleman.

"Dancing is commonly engaged in; cards and dice are the gambling games; the livelier outdoor sports are horse and boat racing, wolf drives, fox hunting, turkey shooting and at night c.o.o.n hunts; while fishing, gigging or striking by torchlight, nine pins and compet.i.tive marksmanship are the quieter outdoor sports.

"Weddings, muster and court days are general holidays. A wedding is a season of extravagant and protracted gayety, lasting a week. Guests in the main come from considerable distances, in their private barges or in carriages, or on horseback, with their wives and daughters riding behind on pillions. All are entertained at the plantation house, usually remaining for several days.

"The law requires all to attend church. Thus great crowds gather and mingle, not alone for worship, but before and after the service, for social and business intercourse. Many bring their dinners in hampers and friends gathering in groups share a common spread. The women thus exhibit their latest gowns and the men talk politics, trade horses and barter for tobacco.

"The plantation house is the community center and from it a lavish hospitality is dispensed. The planters are jealous of their social and political honors, which seem attached as prerogatives to the plantation.

They even object to the establishment of a church in the neighborhood of the one supported by the plantation. They intermarry with the neighboring planter's family; and are slow to take up a stranger, though of good family.

"At Curles landing, at the site of the old Nathaniel Bacon plantation, we were given and accepted an invitation to spend the night. The house was a ten room structure, built upon an eminence overlooking distant reaches of the river. Its white stuccoed walls and commodious pillared porch, made it very distinguishable in contrast with the background of green timbered hills. Four less pretentious buildings flanked each corner and back of all were the whitewashed cabins of the 'quarters.'

"The dining room walls were decorated with English hunting scenes and a great sideboard held the silver and pewter ware. The library had many shelves of books, quite a few of which were Elzevir editions. The walls of the hall were covered with portraits of a cavalier ancestry. All the furniture of the lower floor was of solid mahogany and imported.

"Two sons of the family are attending Cambridge and have not been home for a year. The daughter who is at home is to be married before the Christmas holidays.

"Judging by Mr. Lee and his visitor, the planters are essentially English; having all of the Englishman's pride of race and love for home.

They spoke of England as home, until the conversation turned to England's right to tax the colony and the law requiring tobacco to be exported in British bottoms; then they flared up, declaring: 'We of the colony will never submit to such unjust and arbitrary laws; and if necessary will fight before submitting to such tyranny.'

"We are now at Richmond, which was first called 'None Such,' then Forte Charles, then was known as Byrd's Warehouse. The town, founded by Colonel Byrd, was incorporated in 1742."

CHAPTER III.-The Settlement.

The Meeting House, or as they were beginning to call it, The McDonald Settlement, capped a half dozen of the eastern Alleghany foothills at the head of Jackson River.

It was a community of some twenty farms, grouped for protection and company in such a way that four farm houses occupied each hill top near the central intersection of their respective boundaries. All were huddled about a large hill, capped by a grove of oak and sugar maple trees, which sheltered the stone church and the community school house of hewn logs. This arrangement had been possible because the whole boundary had been purchased and laid off by the trustees of the church.

The settlement was not only prosperous, but peaceful and homelike. Its inhabitants had never deemed it necessary to build a block house though more Indians visited their community than the less remote settlements which had suffered from attack and depredation, while they had escaped; it may have been in part due to the natural mountain barrier just at their back, but they attributed it to their treatment of the Indians, with whom they made friends.

The log houses were ruggedly comfortable. As each house had in turn been built at a community log rolling, all exhibited a similarity of style and construction. Each was carefully and cozily built, had four rooms and an attic, a front and ell porch and two large sandstone chimneys. At the edge of the side porch was the well with its pole sweep and back of each house was a barn, the lower story of which was of stone and set in the hill-side, where possible.

While to the casual observer these homes presented little apparent difference, individuality of ownership was perceptible in ornamentation as also prosperity or the reverse by the situation and fertility of the farm and the live stock in the farm yard and pastures.

The church marked the center of the community and was the most pretentious building west of Blue Ridge. It was of hewn stone with a wooden roof and spire; and in the belfry hung a sweet-toned bell which Angus Cameron had brought from Scotland in 1758. There were two front doors; the one on the right for the men and the one on the left for the women; and between, extending from the front wall to within six feet of the pulpit, exactly bisecting the church, was a six foot part.i.tion, over or through which no one saw except some of the boys and possibly a girl or two; who during one of the regular two hour services each Sunday, had surrept.i.tiously with jack-knife or gimlet or hair ornament, perforated it.

By crowding, three hundred persons could find seats on the slab benches.

They were filled to capacity each Sunday and some of the communicants and visitors rode more than fifteen miles rather than miss the meeting.

When in 1759, Samuel Davies had preached the dedication sermon, more than five hundred had crowded it. All the settlers of the valley had attended as well as many from Blue Ridge, the Shenandoah and Greenaway Court. Now eleven years old, the church was looked upon as an ancient landmark and known throughout Virginia as the Jackson River Meeting House.

More than once its doors had been closed in the name of the law, as enacted and administered by the Burgesses, most of whom were conformists. When this had happened Davies and other Scotch and Irish Presbyterian preachers and long and solemn faced ruling elders, refugees from Scotland and Ulster, Ireland, had gathered at Williamsburg; and so insistently and ably pet.i.tioned, that the easy-going planter delegates, worried by importunities; not only rashly promised their influence against further persecution, but legislation permitting to Presbyterians religious freedom throughout the colony. When the Baptists and Quakers learned of these promises, they demanded the same rights for themselves, but met with less favor.

The school house was a large structure of two rooms. The girls sat in one and the boys in the other; though the cla.s.ses made up of both, recited in either room. There were two teachers, Jeremiah Tyler, a graduate of Oxford and an elder of the church, who taught the advanced cla.s.ses, and Grandma McDonald, who taught the little children.

The Shorter Catechism and the Westminster Creed were printed in the back of the primer; and were taught all beginners. No one was promoted to the higher grade until he could recite the catechism without material blunder and could answer the essentials of doctrine propounded by the creed. The Bible was the text book of the advanced pupils, not only for its precepts but for its style and because it was the only book, a copy of which each family possessed.

Friday afternoon the boys and girls of the advanced grade held spelling and quotation battles. The sly old teacher watched to catch a boy exhibiting an interest in a girl pupil; then he chose the boy for captain of the boys and the girl for captain of the girls. The side lost whose captain was first quoted or spelled down. All quotations and words were from the Bible and no quotation once recited could be repeated.

Each captain when first called upon was supposed to recite such quotations as he knew were known by the opposing captain; but no quotation could exceed a chapter or psalm in length. One of the lazy boys, having learned from the little brother that his sweetheart knew the 119 Psalm memorized and recited the 176 verses as his first quotation.

When supposed sweethearts were not available as captains, the master would select the laziest boy and girl. Then the school and sometimes the whole community, exhibiting an interest, would get behind the captains and by threat and persuasion urge each to earnest effort.

Jeremiah Tyler had emigrated to Virginia from Ulster and was one of the first to come to the settlement. He had a.s.sisted in building the church and upon its completion had made the journey to Williamsburg to bring Rev. Samuel Davies of Princeton for the dedicatory service.

While at Williamsburg, being a thrifty Scotchman, he had patented one thousand acres of fertile land adjoining the community boundary of seven thousand acres. His patent included a broad and fertile mountain cove of several hundred acres, overlooking the settlement.

He married Judith Preston in 1762; and they had built their home in the outer edge of the cove. From the house you looked down upon the houses of the settlement; and the white church and school house on the hill stood out against the grove and the green valley beyond, as two full-rigged ships, with expanded sails on a calm sea.