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1959

VIRGIMIA
A (Me to tk Old Dominion

VIRGINIA

A GUIDE TO THE OLD DOMINION

Compiled by workers of the Writers' Program

of the Work Projects Administration

in the State of Virginia

AMERICAN GUIDE SERIES

ILLUSTRATED

Sponsored by James IL Price, Governor of Virginia

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK

X "^ \ f * : ^?S2- PUBLISHED IN MAY 1940

" Second printing October 1941

VIRGINIA CONSERVATION COMMISSION

State-wide Sponsor of the Virginia Writers' Project

FEDERAL WORKS AGENCY
JOHN M. CARMODY, Administrator

WORK PROJECTS ADMINISTRATION

F.C.HARRINGTON, Commissioner

FLORENCE KERR, Assistant Commissioner

WILLIAM A. SMITH, State Administrator

PRINTED IN U.S.A. BY TEE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

All rights are reserved, including the right to reproduce
this book or parts thereof in any form.

JAMES H PRICE

COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA

GOVERNOR'S OFFICE
RICHMOND

IT gives me pleasure to commend this Guidebook, and ex-
press the hope that Virginia's future contributions to the wel-
fare of all the nation may equal its past record and present-day
progress.

Virginia welcomes the traveler throughout the year. The
oldest state is favored by rugged physical beauty from sea-
shore to mountains, a pleasant climate, excellent transporta-
tion facilities, diversified manufacturing and agricultural pur-
suits, and a rich tradition of accomplishment. Our people,
largely of Anglo-Saxon blood, are friendly.

We welcome the visitor because he brings a freshness of
view and helps us to appreciate our common heritage. We be-
lieve that to see Virginia, to know Virginia, is to like our
people.

"fid 00 00 00,0006 00

Preface

A The Virginia Guide is about to be transformed into a book
through the alchemy of printer's ink, the staff of the Virginia
Writers' Project finds an alloy in its pleasure. We are thinking not
so much of what has gone into the book as of all that was necessarily
omitted. Compressing the story of Virginia within the covers of one volume
was a painful task particularly for the State supervisor, whose duty it
became to delete more words than she allowed to remain. As first written,
the Guide was perhaps four times its present length and then, according to
the judgment of some of our staff, not long enough to do justice to our
country's oldest commonwealth. Through amputations gradually and
torturously performed, the book was reduced to meet the publishers'
practical demands. We hope we have said much in few words. To those
Virginians, however, who are saddened by our omissions, we promise to
make the reserved material available in other books. The deleted passages
are not dead; they merely sleep in files carefully guarded by Pauline
Davis.

The Virginia Guide is the result of many people's efforts. A collabora-
tion it certainly is; a mosaic we hope it will appear, with its component
parts so fitted together as to present an accurate picture of our State's
yesterday and today. This book was begun in April 1937 and finished three
years later. Parts of the essay section were contributed by generous spe-
cialists ; the city and highway sections, however, are wholly the products of
workers on the Virginia Writers' Project. Men and women in the field
gathered data that were sent to the office in Richmond and carefully
checked and amplified by a dozen or more workers in the State Library.
After the material had been assembled and the points of interest listed
with their approximate locations, workers traveled along the highways
and byways and visited every city, town, and hamlet, checking mileages,
taking notes on the contemporary scene, and gathering stories unavailable
in histories or musty records. All the writing was done in the Richmond
office, and in its final form represents the craftsmanship of five writers,
with the state supervisor as co-orciinator,
No manuscript that went into the making of the book no highway

.*. . / .%; ,; * \ :

tpuc, ii) < e^ay, : npj^3j*dcfO^tiQit---is in its entirety the work of one per-
son *for within the office we developed experts who through emphasis upon
their special $c^kftame as useful to the co-ordinator as they were some-
times annoying. JoVn Sherwood Widdicombe, a graduate of the Univer-
sity of Virginia and of Oxford and a student of architecture, wrote the de-
scriptions of all our important houses; H.Ragland Eubank, a graduate of
the College of William and Mary, made us toe the mark of historical accu-
racy; and Frank A. Browning contributed all that the Guide has to say
about battlefields, wars, and rumors of wars and much more that can be
exhumed from the files for a military history of Virginia. Fortunately,
Fillmore Norfleet, having a law degree and a doctor's degree in French,
having taught languages, having worked upon biographies, and failing
though a native Virginian to take his State too seriously, frequently
brought his cynical pedagogism to the aid of the harassed supervisor.
Likewise, Ann Heaton still more Irish than Virginian refrained from
specialization and injected color of sorts into the tours she touched with
her Hibernian hand. The essay on the Negro and Negro sections of several
other essays are the work of Roscoe E. Lewis, of Hampton Institute and
the staff of the Virginia Writers' Project.

Altogether we have become authorities on Virginia history not infalli-
ble perhaps, yet capable of blasting many an error and tradition oft-
repeated by our forerunners. Whatever of untruth our specialists have al-
lowed to remain in the telling of Virginia's story, we hope to correct in
subsequent editions of The Virginia Guide, for in a book filled with the
minutiae of history we have surely been guilty of minor errors here and
there.

The essays in their final form are largely the work of the editorial staff.
Those contributed by experts in their several fields were of necessity cut
and adapted to the requirements of the book. For Agriculture and Farm
Life we are indebted to Wilson Gee, Director of the Institute for Research
in Social Sciences at the University of Virginia; for Industry, Commerce^
and Labor to George Talmage Starnes, associate Professor of Commerce
and Business Administration at the University of Virginia; for The The-
ater to Helen Clarke, Business Manager, Richmond Theatre Guild; for
Natural Setting to Arthur Bevan, State Geologist, C.O.Handley, Leader
Virginia Co-operative Wildlife Research Unit in the United States Depart-
ment of Agriculture, and R.J.Holden, Professor of Geology; for Architec-
ture to HJ.Brock of The New York Times', for material on social life and
racial elements incorporated in History to Thomas P. Abernethy, associate
Professor of History at the University of Virginia, and Richard Lee Mor-

ager for the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac* Railroad. We are
grateful also to Fiske Kimball and Eugene Bradbury; who' checked many
architectural descriptions.

Members of the advisory committee appointed by our sponsor, Gov-
ernor James H. Price, gallantly read and constructively criticized the
manuscript of the book, which was parceled out to them in sections. So we
extend our gratitude and the Governor's to Wilmer Hall, State Librarian;
H.J.Eckenrode, 'Director of the Division of History and Archaeology for
the Virginia Conservation Commission; Sidney B. Hall, Virginia Superin-
tendent of Public Instruction; Blake Tyler Newton, division Superintend-
ent of Schools, Westmoreland and Richmond Counties and Member
State Board of Education; E.G.Swem, Librarian of the College of William
and Mary and author of Swem's Index] and F.B.Kegley, historian of
Southwest Virginia. This heroic committee read carbon copies on onion
skin paper and sent to us no complaint.

Virginians must have wanted a book that tells the story of Virginia,
where dramatic episodes of history were enacted, for people all over the
State were quick to respond to our requests for co-operation. State de-
partments opened to us their doors and their files. Though we must have
annoyed the Highway Department no end, daily using their graphs and
getting up-to-date information on new routing and surfacing of roads, the
officials continued agreeably helpful. Draftsmen from the department pre-
pared two maps used in the Guide. The State Library, that happy hunting
ground of historians and genealogists, never lost patience with our pains-
taking research workers. The Conservation Commission gave us facts and
pictures and always a hearty welcome. The National Park Service drew
base maps for us and gave us much battlefield information. The State
Chamber of Commerce and chambers in Virginia cities were unstinting in
their co-operation; local historians everywhere answered our queries and
checked our manuscripts; houses were opened to us, and we were given
pictures or allowed to take them. We are sorry that it is not possible to
make our gratitude more specific.

Withal, we have tried to write without bias of a Virginia that worked for
democracy through Colonial years, whose statesmen led the fight for free-
dom from British autocracy and for the establishment of a republic, of a
Virginia that lost its leadership in 1825 and in subsequent years has
striven to regain a place among the commonwealths, of a Virginia that
passed through its commemorative era and seems about to launch upon

s, and we shall

always share with him our spoonbread, Smithneld ham, Brunswick stew,
peanuts, and tob33X) if he will but listen to the tales we like to tell of our
worthy ancestors*. In our book we have striven to record the exploits not
only of those 'not born to die,' but also of those ( to fortune and to fame
unknown,' who but for us would not have escaped undeserved oblivion.

EUDORA RAMSAY RICHARDSON
Stale Supervisor

Preface to the Second Printing

We have taken advantage of this new printing of The Virginia Guide to
include appendices of 1940 population figures, recent changes in highway
routes and numbers, a list of radio stations with the latest frequency allo-
cations, and an enlarged index, which has discarded the topical plan used
in the first printing. Minor errors that, in a book dealing with many
minutiae, were inevitably discovered by our staff and by specialists in var-
ious fields of Virginia history, have been carefully assembled for the second
edition, which we hope will be published in the not too distant future.

E.R.R.

ooodoofitfl'o^

Contents

FOREWORD, By James H. Price, Governor of Virginia V

PREFACE vii

GENERAL INFORMATION xxi

CALENDAR OF ANNUAL EVENTS XXV

Part L Virginia's Background

THE SPIRIT OF VIRGINIA, By Douglas Southall Freeman 3

NATURAL SETTING 9

INDIANS 23

HISTORY 32

THE NEGRO 76

TRANSPORTATION 87

AGRICULTURE 98

INDUSTRY, COMMERCE, AND LABOR 106

EDUCATION 118

NEWSPAPERS 130

FOLKLORE AND Music 138

ART i47

LITERATURE 156

THE THEATER 167

ARCHITECTURE 174

Part II. Cities

ALEXANDRIA 191

CHARLOTTESVILLE 204

FREDERICKSBURG 216

HAMPTON 227

HAMPTON ROADS PORT 233

NORFOLK . 239

PORTSMOUTH 252

NEWPORT NEWS 259

LYNCHBURG 264

PETERSBURG 273

ai* oe

STAUNTON *:*:*

* * *

WlLLIAMSBURC? *

WINCHESTER

283
301

307
3i3
329

Par t III. Tours

TOUR I (Washington,D.C.) Alexandria Fredericksburg Ashland Rich-
mond Petersburg Dinwiddie South Hill (Henderson,
N.C.) [US i]

Section a. District of Columbia Line to Fredericksburg
Section b. Fredericksburg to Richmond
Section c. Richmond to the North Carolina Line

TOUR IA Fredericksburg Bowling Green Hanover Richmond [State 2]

TOUR IB Junction with State 2 Sparta St.Stephen's Church King and
Queen Centerville [State 14]

TOUR 2 (Pocomoke City,Md.) Accomac Onley Exmore Eastville
Cape Charles [US 13]

TOUR 3 (Frederick,Md.) Leesburg Middleburg Warrenton Culpeper
Orange Palmyra FarmviUe Clarksville (Oxford,N.C.)
[US 15]

Section a. Potomac River to Warrenton
Section b. Warrenton to Culpeper
Section c. Culpeper to Sprouse's Corner
Section d. Sprouse's Corner to Junction with US 360
Section e. Junction with US 360 to North Carolina Line

TOUR 4 (Washington,D.C.)~ Fairfax Warrenton Culpeper Charlottes-
ville Lovingston Amherst-rLynchburg Danville (Greens-
boro,N.C.) [US 29]

Section a. Potomac River to Warrenton
Section b. Culpeper to Charlottesville
Section c. Charlottesville to North Carolina Line

TOUR 4A Gainesville Haymarket The Plains Marshall Front Royal
[State 55 (also Skyline Drive)]

TOUR 5 (Martinsburg,W.Va) Winchester Woodstock Harrisonburg
Staunton Lexington-f-Roanoke Pulaski Wytheville
Marion Abingdon (Bristol, Tenn.) [US u]
Section a. West Virginia Line to Staunton
Section b. Staunton to Junction with US 52
Section c. Junction with US 52 to Tennessee Line

TOUR 5A Winchester Front Royal Luray Waynesboro Junction with US
1 1 [State 3, State 1 2]

337
337
350
356

368
273

387
387
392
393
39^
399

400
400

405
407

412

416
427

442

TOUR SB
TOUR 6

TOUR 6A
TOUR 7

TOURS

TOXJRSA

TOUR 9
TOUR 10
TOUR ii

TOUR 12
TOUR 13

TOUR 14
TOUR 15

TouRi6

Christiansburg Blacksburg PeaHsbu'i^-v^wyovjsj-^th QreekJ '
[StateS] '- '" - r ' : - - :/ '-' * .,- J

Fredericksburg Tappahannock Saluda GIoucstr^Gloucester
Point Yorktown Portsmouth (Elizabeth:* CftirJCC.) [US

17] 448

Section a. Fredericksburg to Gloucester Point 4^.3

Section b. Gloucester Point to North Carolina Line

Glenns West Point New Kent Bottom's Bridge [State 33]

464

Virginia Beach Norfolk Suffolk Emporia South Hill Boydton

T-Danville Martinsville Marion Bristol Gate City

(Cumberland Gap,Tenn.) [US 58, State 88, US 58] 468

Section a. Virginia Beach to Emporia 453

Section b. Emporia to Danville 47 7

Section c. Danville to Marion 476

Section d. Bristol to Tennessee-Kentucky Line 47 g

Virginia Beach Cape Henry Willoughby Old Point Comfort-
Newport News Williamsburg Richmond Buckingham
Amherst Lexington Clifton Forge Covington (White Sul-
phur Springs, W.Va.) [US 60] 481

Section a. Virginia Beach to Richmond 481

Section b. Richmond to Lexington 488

Section c. Lexington to West Virginia Line 40 2

Williamsburg Jamestown Island [State 31]

494

Richmond Louisa GordonsvilL

(Franklin, W.Va.) [US 33]

Fredericksburg Wilderness Orange Barboursvill
[State 3, State 20, County 613]

-Stanardsville Harrisonburg j

497
Charlottesville

503

(Marlinton,W.Va.) Lexington Buena Vista Lynchburg

Brookneal South Boston (Roxboro,N.C.) [State 501, US 501] 511
Section a. West Virginia Line to Lynchburg ^n

Section b. Lynchburg to North Carolina Line ^ j ^

(Washington, D.C.) Fort Meyer Upperville Ashby's Gap

Boyce Winchester (Romney, W.Va.) [US 50] 5 2 o

Alexandria Falls Church Tyson's Corner Leesburg Purcellville
Berry ville Winchester [State 7! ,- 2 4

Petersburg Emporia (Weldon,N.C.) [US 301]

Bluefield Tazewell Lebanon Appalachia Big Stone Gap
Jonesville [US 19, State 64]

Fredericksburg King George Montross Warsaw Lancaster-

Kilmarnock Westland [State 3]
Section a. Fredericksburg to Warsaw
Section b. Warsaw to Westland

529

533

540
540
550

Yf8fnt;xt& Tei^e^ns^J^4-cJUao-~Heathsvme Burgess Store Reed-

TOUR 17 Ri^Hi|ibp^ Charlottesville WaynesboroStaunton Monterey

'.^itJw,W.Va.) [US 250] 56l

Section a. Richmond to Charlottes ville r(5 2

Section b. Charlottesville to West Virginia Line c^c

TOUR 18 Suffolk Wakefield Waverly Petersburg [US 460] 5 6 Q

TOUR 19 Richmond Chesterfield Hopewell Surry Smith field Suffolk

(Sunbury,N.C.) [State 10] 574

TotIR 20 Tappahannock Richmond Amelia Burkeville Halifax Dan-

ville [US 360] g

Section a. Tappahannock to Richmond r g 7

Section b. Richmond to Danville ,- Q I

TOUR 20A Central Garage King William West Point [State 30] ,-QQ

TOOT. 21 (FranMin,W.VaO Warm Springs Hot Springs Covington Clif-
ton Forge Roanoke Rocky Mount MartinsviUe (Winston-
Salem,N.C.) [US 220] 6

Section a. West Virginia Line to Roanoke 6 O ,,

Section b. Roanoke to North Carolina Line 5 o g

TOUR 22 Warren ton Washington Sperry ville Luray New Market

[US 211] 6l2

TOUR 23 Richmond Goochland Columbia Scottsville Charlottesville

[State 6, County 613, State 239] 6 1 ^

TOUR 23 A Junction with County 613 Monticello Ash Lawn Carter's Bridge

[State 239 and County 627] ^ 2 _

TOUR 24 Richmond Charles City Barrett's Ferry Junction State 31

[State 5 ] 62g

Part IV. Appendices

1 940 CENSUS FIGURES 55 9

RADIO STATIONS 5 72

RECENT CHANGES IN HIGHWAY NUMBERING 672

INDEX

Illustrations

THE OLD DOMINION Between $Qand$i

Captain John Smith's Map

St John's Church (1741), Richmond

Scene of British Surrender Moore House (.1750), near Yorktown

The Capitol (1701-05, reconstructed 1929), Williamsburg

Montpelier (1760, 1793, 1907), Home of President Madison, near Orange

Ashlawn (1796-98), Home of President Monroe, near Charlottesville

Mount Vernon (1743-87), Home of President Washington, near

Alexandria
Monticello (1770-75, 1798-1809), Home of President Jefferson, near

Charlottesville
Houdon's Statue of George Washington (1785-96), the Marble Original

State Capitol, Richmond

Portrait of Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale, N.Y. Historical Society
Statue of Robert E. Lee by H.M.Schrady and Leo Lentelli,

Charlottesville

ARCHITECTURE I Between 60 and 61

Jacobean Gable-End, Bacon's Castle (^.1655), Surry County

Adam Thoroughgood House (6.1640), Princess Anne County

Wilton (1762), Middlesex County

Westover (1730-35), Charles City County

Lower Brandon (i8th Century) , Prince George County

Bremo (1815-19), Fluvanna County

Carter's Grove (1751), near Williamsburg

Gunston Hall (1755-58), Fairfax County

Annefield (1790), near Berryville

' Great Room,' Kenmore (1752-77), Fredericksburg

Rolfe House (^.1651) Interior, near Surry

Victorian Parlor, Valentine Museum (Wickham House, 1812),

Richmond
Entrance Hall, Carter's Grove (1751), near Williamsburg

;/. >; Between 122 and 123

.* ** . . * *

The Rotunda.(\8 23-26), University of Virginia, Charlottesville

State Capitd| (^?S~9 2 > 1904-05)? Richmond

Arlington (1802-20), near Alexandria

White House of the Confederacy (1818, 1844), Richmond

Bruton Parish Church (1710-15), Williamsburg

Governor's Palace (1705-20, reconstructed 1930), Williamsburg

Wren Building (1695-99, restored 1928), College of William and Mary y

Williamsburg

Stratford Hall (1729), Westmoreland County
Pohick Church (1769-74), Fairfax County
Hanover Courthouse (1733-35), Hanover County
StLuke's Church (lyth century, restored 1887), near Smithfield
Ruins of Barboursville (^.1820), Orange County

AGRICULTURE Between 248 and 249

Daffodils for the Market, Gloucester County

Cotton, Greensville County

Eastern Shore Potato Field

Spinach Field in Early Spring, near Smithfield

Tobacco, Charlotte County

Apple Orchards, near Salem

Harvest Field in the Blue Ridge

Apple ' Runner/ Winchester

Plowing in the Piedmont

Walnut Grove, where the McCormick Reaper Was Invented (1831)

Spring Planting, near Woodstock

Valley Farm, near Roanoke

Sky Meadow, near Saltville

Dairy Herd, Rockingham County

COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY Between 342 and 343

Cigarette Girl, 'Tobacco Row,' Richmond

Hosiery Worker in a Staunton Mill

Lime Works, Eagle Rock

In the Pocahontas Coal Field

Covington

Textile Mills along the Dan, Danville

COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY CMif^ed\\ii /A 5 -,, : I v

Oystering, off Norfolk ';;;" \

Roasting Peanuts, Suffolk : v ; V

Coal Cutter, Southwestern Virginia

Pulp and Paper Mill, West Point

Loading Lumber for Baltimore, Northern Neck

Pumping Salt from Underground, Saltville

Aircraft Carrier on the Ways, Newport News

Norfolk Tidewater Terminal

CITIES AND TOWNS Between 468 and 469

Lower Prince Street, Alexandria

U.S. S.Oklahoma against Norfolk's Skyline

Five O'clock, Newport News Shipyard, Newport News

Airview of Richmond, Showing Monument Avenue

Smithfield

A Tidewater Main Street, with Courthouse and Confederate Soldiers'

Memorial Tappahannock
Village Store, Yorktown
Autumn Rain, Leesburg
Residential Street, Tangier Island
Saluda

The Big Guns, Fort Story
Artificial Whirlwind World's Largest Wind Tunnel, Langley Field

ALONG THE HIGHWAY I Between 562 and 563

In the Hills, near Lexington

A Blue Ridge Matron

Mountaineer Postmaster

Apple Peeler, Shenandoah National Park

' The Best Meal is Water-Ground '

Waiting for Trade, Urbanna

Time Off

Boxwood, Sweet Briar

Graveyard, Jamestown

Falls Church (1767-69), Fairfax County

City Market, Richmond

Sophie's Alley, Richmond

: Between 624 and 625

Natural Bridge,, Ilockbridge County
A Skyline Driyi/tta, Shenandoah National Park
In the Blue Ridge

Sharp Top, Peaks of Otter, Bedford County
Lake Drummond, Dismal Swamp, Norfolk County
Tye River, Nelson County
Abrams Falls, near Bristol
Along the Atlantic

Before the Gold Cup Steeplechase, near Warrenton
Valley of Virginia from Skyline Drive, Shenandoah National Park
Fox Hunt

Boating, Hungry Mother Park
Shenandoah River, Warren County

HEAD AND TAIL PIECES BY EDWARD A. DARBY

iroEEfe^feCSOOEECCOCODOOOO^^

Map

VIRGINIA STATE MAP back pocket
RICHMOND lack of state map

TOUR KEY fr on t en d p a p er

PENINSULA MAP 33

ALEXANDRIA jgy

CHARLOTTESVILLE 2IO anc j 2II

FREDERICKSBUR& 2I9

HAMPTON ROADS AREA 234 anc j 2 ^

NORPOLK 246 and 247

LYNCHBURG 268 and 26g

PETERSBURG 2?8 and 2Jg

WlLLIAMSBURG I()

ALBEMARLE COUNTY 340 and 34I

H&^OSGCDijOO(lCOOii(lCOOJO

General Information

Railroads: The Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac R.R, from Wash-
ington to Richmond, handles trains of the Atlantic Coast Line and the Sea-
board Air Line, both lines continuing southward to the Gulf States; the
Southern Ry. crosses the State diagonally from Washington to the North
Carolina line near Danville and has in addition lines from Richmond to
Danville, from Danville to Norfolk, and in the Southwest; the Chesapeake
and Ohio Ry., the Norfolk and Western Ry., and the Virginian Ry. cross
the State from the Hampton Roads area to the western boundary; the Sea-
board enters Norfolk from North Carolina; the Pennsylvania R.R. trav-
erses the Eastern Shore from Maryland to Cape Charles and enters Nor-
folk by ferry; the Baltimore & Ohio R.R. and the Southern Ry. traverse
the Shenandoah Valley; and numerous small lines operate in the vicinity
of Norfolk, of Northern Virginia, and in the Southwest.

Highways: Paved Federal and State highways form a network over the
State; county roads, taken over by the State secondary road system except
in three counties, form networks within the larger pattern. The State has
9,432 miles of primary road, of which 82 per cent are hard-surfaced. There
are 36,356 miles of secondary road, of which more than half have been
paved or improved.

Bus Lines: Interstate lines cover the main north-south and east- west high-
ways; intrastate lines cover many of the sectional areas.

Air Lines: Eastern Air Line stops at Richmond: New York Richmond,
four trips; New York Miami (Pan American); New York Atlanta
(Piedmont Flyer) ; New York San Antonio (Southwestern) ; and New
York to Tampa. Pennsylvania Central Airlines, Norfolk Washington,
connects for north and west. American Airlines, Albany, N.Y. Fort
Worth, Texas, stops at Lynchburg, Roanoke, and Bristol.

Waterways: Merchants and Miners Line, Norfolk to Philadelphia and to
Boston; Old Dominion Line, Norfolk to New York and to Miami; Balti-

. (ld Bay Line) and Chesapeake Line, Nor-

' folk to Baltimore; tliesapeake'Lme, West Point to Baltimore. Ferries run

regularly f rqn% I$fffolk, Little Creek, and Old Point Comfort to Cape

Charles. V: "* :

Traffic Regulations: Operation of private out-of-state cars is limited to six
months unless reciprocal agreements permit of longer operation. Maxi-
mum speed: on highways, 55 m.p.h. ; residential districts, 25 m.p.h.; busi-
ness districts and when passing schools, 15 m.p.h.; passing stationary
school buses, 5 m.p.h. Norfolk and Richmond (latter on trial) have park-
ing meters and both cities enforce ordinances against jaywalking.

Accommodations: All the cities and many towns have good modern hotels;
there are many tourist homes, generally near communities. Tourist camps
are at frequent intervals, some with trailer grounds; inquiry as to quality
is advisable. Campsites are in the National forests and in the Shenandoah
National Park. Cabins are available in State parks (reservations made at
Virginia Conservation Commission, Richmond). On the Skyline Drive are
many cabins, lodges, and several campsites.

Climate: Virginia climate is generally mild and equable, with short periods
of severe temperature in winter and in summer. The annual average tem-
perature is about 5 7 F.

Recreational Areas: National forests and National and State parks for var-
ious amusements; waters along Atlantic Coast and Chesapeake Bay for
saltwater bathing and fishing; Skyline Drive and Blue Ridge Parkway
and the mountains for scenic pleasures. Inquire of local communities for
diversified recreations.

National Parks: Arlington National Cemetery, across the Potomac River
from Washington; Colonial National Historical Park, on the peninsula
between the York and James Rivers ; Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania Na-
tional Military Park, around Fredericksburg; George Washington Birth-
place National Monument, 37.5 m. E. of Fredericksburg off State 3; Pe-
tersburg National Military Park, around Petersburg; Richmond Na-
tional Battlefield Park, near Richmond; Shenandoah National Park,
extends 70 m. along the west of the Blue Ridge, traversed by Skyline
Drive.

G E N E R ki-i h $ 6 A ^ A
National Forests: George Washington

Natona oress: eorge asngon apf 'V

headquarters at Harrisonburg; Jefferson National ^orestj fieadquarters'at '
Roanoke. l\l\\ ;

5/fl/e Par&s: Douthat, entrance 3 m. E. of Clifton Forge, off IIS 60; Fairy-
stone, 20 m. NW. of Martinsville, off State 57 ; Hungry Mother, 3 m. W. of
Marion, off US n; Seashore, 3 m. W. of Cape Henry, off US 60; Staunton
River, SE. corner Halifax County, off US 360; Westmoreland, 40 m. E. of
Fredericksburg, off State 3.

Federal Recreational Areas: Chopawamsic Recreational Demonstration
Area, 2 m. W. of Triangle, off US i (30 m. S. of Washington) ; Swift Creek
Recreation Park, 13 m. SW. of Richmond, off State 10; Blue Ridge Park-
way, under construction, will extend from North* Carolina line to Shenan-
doah National Park; Bull Run, 4 m. W. of Manassas.

Cautions: Fires: In the National forests and parks fires should be built only
at designated campgrounds. Poisonoiis Snakes: Rattlesnakes in the west-
ern mountains; copperhead moccasins are widely distributed; and cotton-
mouth moccasins are restricted to the Dismal Swamp area.

Information Bureaus: The Virginia State Chamber of Commerce and the
Virginia Conservation Commission issue literature descriptive of the State
and its attractions; local chambers of commerce furnish information gen-
erally restricted to their vicinities; hotels, railroad stations, automobile
clubs, and gas companies supply general information as to travel; and sta-
tions in the National forests and National parks are equipped to give guid-
ance in their particular areas.

Admission to Private Houses: Where conditions of admission to private
houses and estates have been established those conditions are given.
Houses that strangers may enter only by invitation of the owner are
marked private. Most of those that are named without mention of condi-
tions of admission or without the warning private are the homes of Virgin-
ians who are happy to receive the courteous visitor, even though he is
wholly a stranger within their gates provided that he appears at season-
able hours, preferably in mid-afternoon, and does not stay too long.
Grounds should not be used for picnicking.

iM C iiyiDii6coo<Uoo^

Calendar of Events

('nfd' means no fixed date] as many dates are subject to slight changes, items are listed in
approximate sequence.)

JANUARY
19

Stratford Hall

Robert E. Lee Birthday
Celebration

MARCH
midmonth

last half

nfd
nfd

Warrenton Warrenton Hunt Point-to-

Point Races
Gloucester and Gloucester-Mathews

Mathews Counties Narcissus Tour
Norfolk Annual Camellia Show

Middleburg Middleburg Hunt Point-to-

Point Races

APRIL

nfd

midmonth
midmonth

midmonth

nfd
nfd

Richmond
Foxville

Charlottesville

Alexandria

Norfolk
Middleburg

Alexandria

Middleburg
Hot Springs

Deep Run Hunt Race Meet
Fauquier Field Trials

Association Spring Trials
Founders Day Celebration

(Jefferson's Birthday) at

University of Virginia
Annual Narcissus Show of the

Garden Club of Virginia
Annual Spring Flower Show
The Middleburg Races flat

and steeplechase
Alexandria Association Old

Home Interiors Tour
Middleburg Spring Meet
Spring Tennis Tournament

NTS

nfd

last week

last Tuesday

last Wed. and
Thurs.

last Sat.

' Lynchburg
State- wide

Norfolk

Richmond

Alexandria

last week or first Winchester
of May

MAY
ist week

nfd
nfd
nfd
nfd

nfd
13

Stratford Hall

Warrenton
Warrenton
Virginia Beach
Warrenton

Norfolk
Jamestown

2nd Sun. Fredericksburg

midmonth Virginia Beach

23 Richmond

nfd

Hampton

Cape Henry Pilgrimage, com-
memorating the first landing
on April 26, 1607

Lynchburg Junior Horse Show

Garden Week in Virginia;
many private homes open

Annual AKC Dog Show,
sponsored by Hampton
Roads Kennel Club, Inc.

Virginia Kennel Club Show

Old Dominion Kennel Club

Show
Shenandoah Apple Blossom

Festival

Spring Celebration, sponsored

by the Robert E. Lee

Memorial Foundation
Stuyvesant School Horse Show
Virginia Gold Cup Race
Cavalier Horse Show
Warrenton Country School

Horse Show
Tidewater Horse Show
Jamestown Day;

commemorating the

founding of the first

English colony
Mary Washington Mother's

Day Celebration
Rose Show, sponsored by

Princess Anne Garden Club
Powhatan Hill Festival,

celebrating the arrival of the

English to the site of

Richmond
Hampton Horse Show

C A L'E

VS"N"T S * ^

nfd

last weekend

nfd
nfd
nfd
nfd
nfd

May to Nov.

JUNE
ist week

nfd
9

nfd
nfd
nfd

nfd
nfd
JULY

V-2

nfd

Richmond

Bristol

Warrenton

Blacksburg

Fort Myer

Norfolk

State-wide

Middleburg

Place varies

Culpeper
Petersburg

Tasley

Bassett

Upperville

Virginia Beach
Warrenton

Richmond

Norton
West Point
Stratford Hall

: ;Iep;n : Himt Club Hosse:
*

National Cliiiipionship
Motorcycle Races and Hill
Climb

Virginia Dogwood Festival

Gymkhana

V.P.I. Horseshow

Military Horse Show

Maury Regatta

Memorial Day

Polo Matches every
Thursday and Sunday

State Woman's Golf

Tournament
Culpeper Horse Show
'The Ninth of June/

celebrating the origin of

Memorial Day
Potato Blossom Festival
Bassett Horse Show
Upperville Colt and Horse

Show
Virginia Amateur Golf

Tournament
Warrenton Pony Show

National Outboard Regatta

Trials

Rhododendron Festival
Outboard Motor Regatta
Celebration in honor of two
signers of the Declaration of
Independence born at
Stratford Hall, Francis
Lightf oot and Richard
Henry Lee

*EV*;NTS

ist half

nfd

last Thurs-

nfd
nfd

Charlottesville
Hot Springs
Hot Springs

Chincoteague

Island
Hot Springs
Front Royal

Yacht Club Regatta, including
Virginia Gold Cup, Inboard
Motor Races, Sailboat
Regatta

Institute of Public Affairs

Mixed Golf Tournament

Midsummer Tennis
Tournament

Pony Penning Day

Skeet Tournament
Horse Show at U.S. Army
Remount Station

AUGUST

2nd Thurs. and

Fri.
2nd Fri. and Sat.

3rd Thurs. Fri.

and Sat.
nfd

nfd

27-30
nfd

SEPTEMBER
ist Sat. to Mon.
nfd

nfd

nfd
nfd

nfd

last week

Hot Springs
White Top Mtn.
Berryville
Keswick
Irvington

Hot Springs
Manassas

Warrenton
Norfolk

South Boston

Upperville
Fairfax

Orange
Richmond

Bath County Horse Show

White Top Folk Music

Festival
Clarke County Horse Show

Keswick Hunt Club Horse

Show
Rappahannock River Yacht

Club Regatta
Golf Tournament
Annual Dairy Fair

Warrenton Horse Show

Regatta Norfolk-Portsmouth
Yacht Racing Associa-
tion

National Tobacco Festival and
Pageant

Upperville Horse Show

Fairfax Horse and Pony
Show

Orange Horseman's Show

Virginia State Fair

c ALIE:N> AR""OF "E VE'ITTS ' "xxix

OCTOBER
nfd

12
19

nfd

Charlottesville
Stratford HaU
Yorktown
Norfolk

nfd Fredericksburg

October to March State-wide

Farmington^Hunt Club Horse

Show : -:\ -
Anniversary of the death of

General Robert E. Lee
Yorktown Day Anniversary

of Cornwallis's Surrender
Navy Day Observance at

Naval Operating Base
Dog Mart
Fox hunting at more than a

dozen nationally recognized

hunts, chiefly in northern

Virginia

PART I
Virginia's Background

oo o c o o o o o o 0000 0600 oo o o c ooooo o OOOOCCOOCGOOO c c o c o o o o olf

Spirit of Virginia

BY DOUGLAS SOUTHALL FREEMAN

THE best symbolic approach to Virginia is a southward journey
from the bridge that joins the Lincoln Memorial with Arlington,
When the traveler turns his back on Washington and sees before
him the portico of General Lee's mansion, the wheels of the motorcar may
turn as rapidly as before, but life itself has a different tempo. It is neither
the nervous accelerando of the East nor the common time of the Deep
South. Life is more leisured without being essentially indolent. Human
relations are somewhat more intimate. Tempered by the reserve of a cer-
tain personal dignity, friendliness prevails. Everywhere the dark laughter
of the Negro is to be heard. Old houses outnumber modem, but the excla-
mation points of new factory stacks punctuate a landscape familiar to
three centuries of white residents. From north to south, along the coastal
plain, the scenery and the people change scarcely at all.

It is among these people, or some of them, that traditional Virginia life
is to be observed. In the cultured circles of the larger eastern cities of the
Commonwealth, there is a curious commingling of yesterday and today.
New York is the objective of the natives 7 most frequent journeying, and
to Europe they go often; but they always will stop chattering about a new

4 VIRGINIA

play on Broadway to listen to a Negro story, and the elders seldom talk
fifteen minutes without some reference to the War between the States.
There is a deliberate cult of the past along with typically American busi-
ness activity. All eastern Virginians are Shintoists under the skin. Geneal-
ogy makes history personal to them in terms of family. Kinship to the
eighth degree usually is recognized. There are classes within castes. Alumni
of the various colleges have different affiliations. A pleasant society it is,
one that does not adventure rashly into new acquaintanceship but wel-
comes with a certain stateliness of manner those who come with letters
from friends. If conversation rarely is brilliant, it is friendly and humorous
and delightsome to the alien except when it passes to genealogical ab-
strusities.

The rural life of Tidewater is more clearly divided in economic status. A
few families have contrived for 200 years to hold to baronial estates,
though sometimes by making themselves the slaves of their houses and
their gardens. More often, Virginians who have grown rich in the North,
or Virginia women who have married men of fortune, come back in a desire
to re-establish the old plantation life. Some of them succeed in making the
river estates more beautiful than in the eighteenth century, but the differ-
ence between the fine appearance of these properties and the dilapidation
of smaller holdings near by is the difference between income spent on the
farm and money derived from farming. There probably is not a single great
plantation in eastern Virginia that can be called self-sustaining otherwise
than by sentimental, rather than actuarial bookkeeping.

If the traveler who comes from the North to Richmond or to Norfolk
will turn westward, he will find after 150 miles of travel that the scenery
and the people change with every hour's driving. Orange County and the
border of Albemarle seem the home of Richmonders who have craved a
sight of the mountains; the Warrenton and Middleburg districts are sub-
urbs of Washington or are the hunting grounds of New Yorkers. Around
Charlottesville is a society sui generis, with an English flavor somewhat
less pronounced today than it was a generation ago.

Once the Blue Ridge is passed and the exquisite Shenandoah Valley is
reached, the motorist is among people who take religion and farming more
seriously. Many of these Valley folk came Into Virginia from Pennsylva-
nia, and adhere to creeds that were Quaker in origin. Other residents of
the Valley, particularly between Staunton and Lexington, are of stout
Scotch-Irish stock and have the unflagging belief of their race in education
and in hard work. To the southwestward, one may go into counties where
cattle raising overtops agriculture. The Negro population of those counties

THE SPIRIT OF VIRGINIA 5

never was large. Politics, for that reason, have not been swayed by race
questions. Northward from Staunton, down the Valley, one comes to the
great apple-growing country. There the admixture of stock is most inter-
esting: the descendants of Scotch- Irish and the Pennsylvania Germans
live side by side with families that went to the Valley from the Alexandria
district and northern Tidewater before the American Revolution.

Along the crest and among the coves of the Blue Ridge, and in the AJIe-
ghenies that guard the Valley on its westward side, live the mountaineers
proper. That some of them ever wrest a living from their steep and narrow
fields even a student familiar with squalor would find it difficult to believe;
but they hold tenaciously to their small farms and they send surplus sons
to the mines or to the nearby new industries, the establishment of which is
perhaps the most thrilling chapter in the recent economic history of Vir-
ginia.

Among 2,500,000 people of habitat so diversified, what common inherit-
ance is there to justify the assertion that there is a distinctive spirit of Vir-
ginia? The answer is a definition, perhaps the only definition, of that
spirit. By hundreds of thousands, Virginians have gone into other States,
but those who have remained in the Old Dominion are of the same stock
and have no deep admixture of recent foreign blood. In Richmond, for ex-
ample, the percentage of foreign born was only two and three-tenths in
1930 as against thirteen in 1860. No large cities serve as electromagnets for
a melting pot. The presence of the Negro has kept out the foreigner who in
other States competes with the native manual laborer to get his start in
America.

The experience of an immense, common tragedy has strengthened the
homogeneity of the population. In Virginia, strangers often are amazed to
find how near seems the War between the States. The reason is that the
conflict reached every family, brought all of them together in defense, left
most of them impoverished, and then produced during reconstruction a
type of government that made political unity a racial necessity. Prior to
1860, Virginia was divided not unevenly between Whigs and Democrats.
After the war, disf ranchisement and the carpetbaggers' venal misguidance
of the freedmen made men Democrats because they were white and had
been Confederates,

Virginia's emergence from reconstruction and her progress in recovery
placed her for a generation and a half under the direction of men who had
confident faith that nothing which could happen to them was as bad as that
which they had survived. Courage, patience, and cheer, as exemplified by
the Confederate veterans, left so deep a mark that even in the blackest

6 VIRGINIA

days of the great depression of 1929-36, there was far less of anxious con-
cern in Virginia than in most American States.

Likewise to the war and to the reconstruction are to be traced the re-
spect for leadership that is one of the characteristics of the spirit of Vir-
ginia. The Virginians of the '6os were unrelenting individualists, reared
on their own land, but they learned from Lee and from Jackson how disci-
pline could offset odds. Thanks to the wise planning of Alexander H. H.
Stuart and others, these men saw their State readmitted to the Union
within less than six years after Appomattox. It was a lesson they did not
soon forget. Even poor leadership long was better than the lack of any.

Folkways and religion have contributed in the same manner to the per-
sistence of a distinctive Virginia spirit. Although the movement from farm
to town has torn thousands of Virginia families from the soil, there has
been a continuity of life among people of similar tradition and of Protes-
tant faith. If courtesy and neighborliness are more general than in many
parts of the Union, it is because courtesy is due old friends. In their migra-
tions, Virginians have carried with them the Lares et Penates of ancestral
altars. Had the altars not been old, the household gods would not have
been so cherished.

Much of the spirit represented by these political and historical influ-
ences should persist and doubtless will. That is the hope of those who share
a common pride in Virginia at the same time that they refuse to shut their
eyes to the shadows of a pleasant picture. There is, in Virginia, too high a
birth rate among those least able, economically or intellectually, to rear
stalwart children. The backwardness described in the essay on education
in this informative volume is not overpainted in its indigoes and black.
Negroes gradually have been forced from the skilled trades, despite all
that has been done for their training at Hampton and at such smaller
schools as StPauTs at Lawrenceville. The choice of the Negro now lies
between the extremes of overcrowded profession and underpaid common
labor or domestic service. No middle class is being developed.

Many rural communities are depressed. Virginia farmers by tens of
thousands still seek pathetically to eke a living from eroded or starved
land. Much of the industrial development of the State requires only the
semiskilled worker whose wage is adequate if he is unmarried but is insuffi-
cient for the support of a family.

The course of the sun will lighten some of these dark colors. Industrially,
Virginia will continue to progress. Those manufactories that are not main-
tained by great corporations simply to prepare materials for finish or fab-
rication in the North gradually will be forced by competition to improve

THE SPIRIT OP VIRGINIA 7

the quality of their product and, in so doing, to demand skilled labor at
higher wages than ever will be paid semiskilled operatives. This is reason-
ably certain. Virginia's opportunity lies in the preliminary vocational
training of workers who can advance along with industry. In agriculture,
which will remain the largest vocation in Virginia for at least another gen-
eration, progress depends on leadership and on adequate governmental
support. For the advance of Virginia, Blacksburg is the key position. In-
dustrialists from the North often say that the honesty and the economy of
government in Virginia are among the considerations that bring them to
Virginia; but honesty is a virtue that ought to be inherent, and economy
is a mockery and a misnomer when it is attained by neglect of public
health or at the expense of children's education.

If industry prospers and yields a larger tax-revenue, Virginia can hope
to improve steadily her educational system in all its parts from the rural
Negro school, which remains a deep disgrace, to the institutions of higher
learning. Virginia seems aware of this: the average of citizenship will never
be better or worse than the standards of the primary and secondary
schools, but leadership increasingly will depend on the colleges, the uni-
versities, and the professional institutions. It will be a mistake to diffuse
the limited funds Virginia can devote to higher education, and equally
will it be a mistake to undertake too wide postgraduate and professional
study at an early date. Prudently, and as fast as she may, Virginia must
offer this training within her borders. She has suffered much already from
the loss of those superior young men and women who go North for ad-
vanced instruction, and never return. Virginia's heaviest loss is through
the export of brains. In the attainment of her larger industrial future, Vir-
ginia will perceive, also, that short-sighted persistence in the underpay-
ment of Negro workers has driven away and will continue to deprive her
of thousands of willing hands and strong bodies.

Politically, the ominous conditions in Virginia are the gradual atrophy
of local self-government, the failure of well-educated, unselfish men and
women to participate actively in the public service, and the abstention of
tens of thousands from the exercise of the franchise. It is difficult to say
which of these three is potentially the most serious. Local boards of super-
visors and city councils long were training schools for public service. Mem-
bership, if unsolicited, was regarded as a duty. It no longer is so. Among
Virginians of means and education, the balance between activity and com-
placency too often is tipped on the wrong side. The civic conscience is
stronger than the political. Recruits for community service never are lack-
ing, but for men who unselfishly will assume public office, the drums are

8 VIRGINIA

beaten in vain. Politics no longer are the avocation of the gentleman as in
1765-89. That avocation must be revived. Virginia's future never will be
secure until there is larger participation by intelligent voters in elections
and in public office.

Perhaps it is indicative of the changing spirit of Virginia, that this intro-
duction to The Virginia Guide should include as much of confession as of
eulogium, and more concerning present needs than past glories. This
should not be taken to mean that Virginia is losing either her pride or her
faith. Rather should these paragraphs be read as evidence that Virginia is
looking forward in a consciousness of her responsibility to justify her past.
Her sons and her daughters are not content to say, ' We have Abraham for
a Father.'

Natural Setting

A LTHOUGH three centuries of political change have gradually

/jk reduced the vast range of Virginia's original domain, the topog-
X \.raphy of the State is still unusually varied. As chartered in
1609, the Old Dominion extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and
from the approximate latitude of Columbia, South Carolina, to a parallel
above the southern boundary of the present State of Pennsylvania. Until
1784 it stretched far northwest of the Ohio River and west of the Missis-
sippi. Kentucky was part of Virginia until 1792; West Virginia became a
separate State in 1863. But, notwithstanding this contraction, Virginia re-
tains its characteristic trend * across the grain J of the continent and also a
diversity of geographic, topographic, and geologic features somewhat dif-
ferent from that of other Atlantic seaboard States.

The outline of the State is roughly the shape of a triangle. Its base is the
almost straight southern boundary, which divides Virginia from North
Carolina and Tennessee. With slight variation, this line follows parallel
36 22' from the Atlantic shore to Cumberland Gap, at 83 41' west longi-
tude. The little village of Cumberland Gap on the Virginia-Tennessee bor-
der is about 25 miles farther west than the meridian of Detroit, Michigan.
On the western side of the triangle the jagged and tortuous ridge lines of
some of the Appalachian ranges demark Virginia from Kentucky and West
Virginia as far northeast as latitude 39 28'. The eastern boundary of the
mainland is defined by the Potomac River, Chesapeake Bay, and the At-
lantic Ocean. Below the mouth of the Potomac the line crosses Chesapeake
Bay to cut off from Maryland a long outer peninsula known as the Eastern
Shore.

The total area of Virginia is 42,627 square miles, of which 2,365 square
miles are water surface. Along the southern boundary from the Atlantic to
Cumberland Gap the maximum length of the State is about 432 miles. Its
maximum width north and south is 200 miles. By highway, Cumberland
Gap is about 510 miles from Washington,D.C. The extreme airline distance
diagonally across the State from the northeast corner of Accomac County
on the Eastern Shore peninsula to Cumberland Gap is about 470 miles.

Virginia is divided physiographically into five distinct provinces the

10 VIRGINIA

Coastal Plain, the Piedmont Province, the Blue Ridge Province, the Val-
ley and Ridge Province, and the Appalachian Plateau.

Coastal Plain: 'Tidewater' is the name generally given to the broad belt
of undulating and river-gashed plain that borders the eastern seaboard of
Virginia from the Potomac to the North Carolina line. This province de-
creases ia width from 120 miles near Bowling Green, 35 miles north of
Richmond, to So miles near Norfolk in the south, and is traversed by great
estuaries, which drain into Chesapeake Bay. The interstream ridges are
narrow and relatively flat. In general the plain descends gently from an
altitude of 300 feet at its western edge near Washington to sea level, at a
rate of less than three feet to the mile. Tidal channels of four rivers sever
the northern and central part of the plain into three long peninsulas, whose
eastern extremities with the peninsula of the Eastern Shore border the
lower Chesapeake Bay and form a magnificent system of natural harbors.
This pattern of bays, deep tidal rivers, and long intervening necks of ara-
ble land has had a profound influence upon the social and commercial life
of Tidewater Virginia.

' Piedmont Province: There is no sharp line of division between the
Coastal Plain and the Piedmont Province, which broadens southward
from a width of 40 miles at the north to about 185 miles at the North Caro-
lina liae. Imperceptibly rising toward the foothills of the Blue Ridge, the
province ranges in altitude from about 300 feet at the east to from 500 to
1,000 feet at the base of the mountains, reaching its greatest height in the
southwestern part. The surface has been so channeled by streams that,
with a few notable exceptions, flat areas are few. Hills or ridges dot the
general surface near the western border. Some of these are outlying spur
ridges and foothills of the Blue Ridge; others are isolated ridges and low
mountains. They rise to altitudes as great as 2,200 feet.

Blue Ridge Province: The Blue Ridge rises rather abruptly above the
western part of the Piedmont. In the northern half of the State it is a dis-
tinct ridge, bordered here and there on each side by subordinate ridges
and with numerous deep coves in each slope. Some of the peaks have alti-
tudes of more than 4,000 feet. In its southern part the Blue Ridge Prov-
ince is a high, broad, somewhat rugged plateau a region of rolling up-
lands, deep ravines, and high peaks. The highest mountains in Virginia,
Mount Rogers (5,719 feet) and Whitetop (5,520 feet), are in the extreme
southwestern part At the North Carolina line the Blue Ridge Plateau is
about 60 miles wide, with a general elevation of about 1,500 feet above the
Piedmont upland.

Most of Virginia west of the Blue Ridge Province lies in the Appalachian

NATURAL SETTING II

Valley, commonly called the Valley of Virginia. The width of the province
in the north, between the Blue Ridge and the West Virginia line, is about
35 miles; along the Tennessee line it is about 100 miles. Altitudes vary
from approximately 300 feet above sea level at Harper's Ferry, on the Po-
tomac, to 4?5o feet at the highest points of numerous ridges. In length,
the Valley of Virginia extends 360 miles from the Potomac River south-
westward to Tennessee. It is in reality a series of elongate valleys sepa-
rated by transverse ridges, plateaus, or narrow gaps. The largest and best
known of its principal units, Shenandoah Valley at the north, is about
150 miles long and from 10 to 20 miles wide. It contains a number of nat-
ural wonders. Above its center this valley is divided into two parts by
Massanutten Mountain, a long high ridge. Other units in the Valley of
Virginia, from north to south, are Fincastle Valley, Roanoke (Salem) Val-
ley, Dublin Valley, Abingdon Valley, and Powell Valley. Dublin and Ab-
ingdon valleys, in the southwestern part, are from 2,100 to 2,400 feet
above sea level.

Appalachian Plateau: Designated by some geographers as the South-
western Plateau, the Appalachian Plateau in Virginia embraces parts of
the Cumberland and Kanawha plateaus, which extend a relatively short
distance into Virginia from Kentucky. The general elevation is between
2,700 and 3,000 feet, but the plateau is channeled by streams into a maze
of deep narrow ravines and winding ridges. Cumberland Mountain, over-
looking Powell Valley, marks the eastern boundary. Other mountains lie
along the boundary farther northeast. In place of the elongate conforma-
tions of the Valley and Ridge Province, there is a multitude of irregular
hills and peaks. The rock formations, in a few places, dip sufficiently to
create more or less definite northeast-southwest ridges, but in general the
only elevations that have a directional trend are inter-stream ridges.

CLIMATE

Virginia's climate is on the whole mild and equable, with refreshing sea-
sonal changes that vary somewhat in different areas.

Southeastern Tidewater, within a 5o-mile radius of Norfolk, has a par-
ticularly even climate. Thermometer readings in winter are rarely lower
than 15 above zero, and the average temperature of the coldest winter
month is about 40 above. This lower Chesapeake region has an average of
about 258 days of sunshine a year and an average growing season of 200
days. Summer temperatures are only a little warmer than in the Piedmont-
Tidewater zone to the north and west.

12 VIRGINIA

In the remainder of the Tidewater and in the Piedmont, average sum-
mer and winter temperatures are slightly lower than in the Norfolk region.
The coldest winter temperatures in Piedmont are from 5 to 1 5 above zero;
the summer maximum of from 105 to 107 is infrequently reached.

In the Appalachian zone, which includes the mountain and valley re-
gions to the west and the upper reaches of Piedmont near the Blue Ridge,
zero weather is frequent in winter. The average temperature for Decem-
ber, January, and February ranges around freezing point. Summer tem-
peratures in the Shenandoah Valley average a little above 75 with an
occasional 'high' of 90; but the nights are cool because of mountain
breezes that dispel the quickly radiated heat of the lower levels.

Rainfall in Virginia averages from 40 to 45 inches a year, and is well dis-
tributed. There is ample precipitation from May to September, when rain
is needed for growing crops. June, July, and August are the months of
greatest rainfall, and November is the driest month.

Snowfalls are moderate over most of the State and melt quickly, except
in the mountain section and the northern part of the Shenandoah Valley,
where the annual snowfall is from 25 to 30 inches a year. In the southeast-
ern Tidewater the fall is commonly less than 10 inches; in the Piedmont it
is 1 8 inches or more.

Midwinter days (from sunrise to sunset) in the latitude of Richmond
are about half an hour longer than in the latitude of Boston and Detroit;
midsummer days are about half an hour shorter. Clear days are most fre-
quent in the fall and spring and average 12 a month throughout the year.
Cloudy days average 9 a month, and partly cloudy 10 a month.

In the eastern section, fogs are frequent during the cooler season. They
are likely to occur in the early morning and to disperse in a few hours.
Heavy summer fogs occur in the mountain and valley regions about three
times a month.

Virginia in general escapes both the rigorous cold of States farther to the
north and the debilitating summer heat of more southerly regions. The
climate fosters a well-balanced variety of agricultural products and has at-
tracted to the State many industries to which conditions of temperature
ind humidity are important.

GEOLOGY

The mystery obscuring the pre-Cambrian eras dim ages of the early
geologic past that were longer, possibly, than all subsequent time is not
:larified by their rock remains in Virginia. If life existed during the vast

NATURAL SETTING 13

era of creation known as the Archeozoic, it was of a nature too primal and
transitory to leave traces. In looking for clues among the next younger Al-
gonkian rocks, too, the geologist is baffled by a profound metamorphism
that reduces theory to conjecture. Rocks in the Piedmont and the Blue
Ridge prove that the surface-formed materials of the pre-Cambrian eras
included both sedimentary strata and lava flows.

The story becomes more legible in the fossil-bearing strata of the Paleo-
zoic era, deposited long before the present Appalachian Mountains were
formed. During most of the era the portion of Virginia west of the Blue
Ridge, as well as a part of the Piedmont, was submerged in great inland
seas that advanced in the Cambrian period over the Mississippi Valley.
Erosion of the Piedmont uplands supplied sediment that was spread over
the beds of the seas to the west. Enormous volumes of lime silt accumu-
lated in these seas, giving rise later to the limestone valleys, such as the
Shenandoah. Great coal swamps existed during the later Paleozoic era.
Later a series of great lateral thrusts from the southeast uplifted the sea
beds of sediment to mountainous heights, folding and faulting the strata
and expelling the sea from the interior of Virginia.

Here, at the close of Paleozoic time, occurred one of the greatest revolu-
tions in the earth's history. The shrinkage of the earth had produced ac-
cumulated stresses that crumpled the weaker sediments in the sea trough,
pushed up the old Appalachian mountain system, and drove the interior
seas from the continent, never to return over such a vast area. The Appa-
lachian Mountains as they are now known, however, were not produced
until the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras.

In the Triassic period, first of the Mesozoic era, erosion of the recently
elevated mountains furnished a large amount of debris to be carried down
the eastern slopes and deposited in the deltas and on flood plains of rivers
flowing toward the Atlantic and in numerous down-warped basins. Trias-
sic muds and sands (Newark series) of Virginia were laid down in various
basins of the central Piedmont. The drainage of the Cretaceous period de-
posited sands, muds, and some limy materials in lakes, swamps, and estu-
aries over much of the Coastal Plain.

The Cenozoic era, during which forms of modern life first appeared on
the earth, embraces the Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene epochs of the Ter-
tiary or mammal age. Most geologists include in this era the ' age of man,'
the Quaternary, or ice age; by others this period is designated as the first
in the Psychozoic era. Invading the land from the east, the Atlantic laid
the Tertiary deposits of sediment at least as far westward as the present
fall line and over the whole of what is now the Coastal Plain. Later in the

14 VIRGINIA

Cenozoic era, rivers spread sand and gravel widely over the Tertiary sedi-
ments.

The recent chapters of the geologic story of western Virginia are written
in topography rather than in sedimentary deposits. Yielding to erosion,
the mountainous surface of the region diminished in Mesozoic time to a
nearly fiat surface, slightly above sea level. A vertical uplift in the late
Cretaceous period raised this plain to a height of from r,ooo to 2,000 feet
above the sea, and another vertical uplift of approximately the same force
toward the close of the Tertiary age further increased the altitude without
folding the strata. Erosion by the rejuvenated streams carved valleys in
the softer limestone and shales and left the resistant beds standing high as
great elongate mountain ridges.

The geologic divisions of Virginia today coincide with the physiographic
divisions. Each of the provinces is distinguished by characteristic groups
of rocks sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic and its boundaries
are delimited chiefly by the character and structure of its rocks.

The geologic structure of the Coastal Plain is simple. Beds of sedimen-
tary rock dip gently seaward and are exposed in wide belts of successively
older rocks from the coast to the fall line. Clays, sandstones, greensands,
diatomaceous earth, and shell marl (Cretaceous and Tertiary) range from
loose to well-indurated materials. The province contains true rocks in the
geologic sense, although few of the formations are well consolidated. Su-
perficial mantels of sand and gravel (Quaternary) occur along the main
streams and the coast. Dismal Swamp, southwest of Norfolk, is underlain
by peat

By deep borings (2,251 feet) it has been proved that the basement rocks
of the Coastal Plain are crystalline, like those of the Piedmont Province.
Artesian supplies of water are easily obtained in many parts of the province.

The Piedmont is predominately an area of very old (pre-Cambrian)
crystalline rocks, both igneous and metamorphic. It abounds in granites,
gneisses, schists, and greenstones. Slate (early Paleozoic), soapstone, and
marble occur in many places. Metamorphic rocks have been so changed
from their earlier condition that the character of many of the original
rocks is indeterminate. The major types of rock masses extend northeast
and southwest in long and relatively narrow belts. Broad elongate low-
lands of general southwest trend are underlain by much younger (Trias-
sic) red sandstone and shale. The most extensive belt of these formations
occurs in the northwestern part of the Piedmont Province and in the Rich-
mond Basin southwest of Richmond. The latter contains important bodies
of coal and some natural coke.

NATURAL SETTING 1 5

While simple in its broad outlines, the structural arrangement of crys-
talline rocks in the Piedmont Province is complex in detail. The prevailing
dip of foliation in the metamorphic rocks is toward the southeast. In places
the schists and gneisses are much contorted. Granites and other igneous
rocks have been intruded more or less along the trend (strike) of the folia-
tion or grain of the older rocks. The grain of the province is northeast and
southwest, with the different rocks in a somewhat belted type of arrange-
ment. Numerous faults occur in parts of the province.

Rocks in the Blue Ridge Province are chiefly crystalline, such as gran-
ite, gneiss, and greenstone. Schists and altered rhyolite occur in the south-
western plateau portion. The northwest flank is covered by sandstone and
quartzite (early Paleozoic) that dip under the Valley of Virginia.

The geologic structure, especially in the plateau part of the Blue Ridge,
is somewhat similar to that of the Piedmont region, except that more of
the rocks are in massive crystalline bodies, like granite and greenstone.
The ridge part of the province in the north is a huge uphold of granite and
greenstone thaL has been thrust northwestward for miles along a great
fault.

The Valley and Ridge Province is underlain by sedimentary rocks (Pa-
leozoic). The Valley of Virginia is dominantly a limestone (Paleozoic) re-
gion, although broad belts of shale are common. Adjoining ridges and those
within the valley are capped with hard sandstone. Anthracitic coal occurs
in the middle part, particularly in the vicinity of New River and Roanoke.
In the Valley and Ridge sections to the west, beds of hard sandstone sup-
port the ridges along their crests. There are outcroppings of limestone and
shale along their slopes, and most of the intermontane valleys are on shale
or sandstone. Some valleys are dominantly limestone. Formations in the
Appalachian Valley have a total thickness of about eight miles,

Laterally the sedimentary strata of the Appalachian Valley have been
squeezed into a series of great anticlines (upfolds) and synclines (down-
folds), the folds generally being overturned toward the northwest and
trending southwest parallel to the ridges and valleys. Many of them have
been broken into great fractures or faults, so that large blocks or long thick
horizontal slices of the earth's crust have been shoved miles to the north-
west. These faults cause a marked repetition in the outcrop of various lime-
stones and other formations and add to the valley's complexity of struc-
ture and diversity of topography.

In the order of their formation, the bedrocks of Virginia represent most
of the periods in the four more recent eras of geologic time. The oldest, or
pre-Cambrian rocks of igneous and metamorphic origin, are found at the

l6 VIRGINIA

surface only in the Piedmont region and in the Blue Ridge. An analysis of
radioactive mineral from the Blue Ridge indicated that some of the rocks
are eight hundred million years old. Paleozoic rocks are west of the Blue
Ridge, except for small areas of older Paleozoic in the Piedmont. The up-
per Cambrian and part of the subsequent Ordovician limestone are some-
times designated collectively as 'valley limestone. 3 The Mesozoic rocks in
Virginia crop out only in the Piedmont and along the western edge of the
Coastal Plain. The Cenozoic is represented by Tertiary marine deposits
and Quaternary sand and gravel Most of the Coastal Plain is covered by
unconsolidated Tertiary sands, clays, gravels, and marls, chiefly of Mio-
cene age. To the Quaternary age belong upland sands and gravels scat-
tered over the higher lands, as do lower terrace sands and gravels of the
Chesapeake Bay region and the estuaries.

Fossil remains of marine invertebrates, such as corals, snails, clams, and
Crustacea, occur in many of the Paleozoic shales and limestones of the Val-
ley and Ridge Province. Some of the limestones contain colonies of fossil
seaweed. Of the Mesozoic era, when reptiles dominated land and sea, Vir-
ginia's fossil records are meager. Dinosaur footprints have been preserved
in Triassic sandstones of Loudoun County. Scant records, too, exist of the
vertebrates of the Cenozoic age, which saw the rise and dominance of
mammals although the sediments of the Coastal Plain have yielded teeth
and vertebrae of whales, and there are fragmental remains of elephants in
western Virginia. Some beds abound in invertebrate shells, the cliffs near
Yorktown having yielded more than 100 species.

Fossil plants in Virginia are confined mainly to coal beds (the remains
of swamp vegetation) and to the shales associated with such beds. They
include types of ferns, rushes, and conifers that have, in the main, become
extinct. One of the formations in the Coastal Plain contains a peculiar and
industrially valuable earth, diatomite, composed of millions of tiny plants
called diatoms.

NATURAL RESOURCES

The diversified geography and topography of Virginia account for nat-
ural resources that are both varied and abundant. Many types of soils are
present; water resources range from rushing mountain streams and under-
ground reservoirs to deep navigable outlets to the sea; mineral deposits are
numerous; plant and animal life thrives in great variety.

SoUs: The soils of the Coastal Plain are of three general types. The most
fertile is the black stiff loam of tidal lowgrounds. Though boggy in wet

NATURAL SETTING 17

weather and Impregnably hard in dry weather, this soil requires little fer-
tilization. The light sandy loams just west of the lowgrounds are easily
cultivated and yield readily to fertilization for the growing of truck crops.
The still higher clay and sand loams of the Coastal Plain, even though im-
poverished, react favorably to crop rotation and produce a wide variety of
staple and special crops.

The Virginia Piedmont lands are generally fertile. The limestone and a
part of the clay lands produce bluegrass, grains, and fruits. Virginia's to-
bacco belt lies in the central and southern portions of the Piedmont.

Limestone soils predominate in the valley areas west of the Blue Ridge,
Toward the north in the Shenandoah Valley is the apple country of the
State. Here also, along with grain, hay, and vegetables, are raised fine beef
cattle, and poultry production is a profitable enterprise. In the southwest-
ern section, the raising of livestock is of chief agricultural importance.

Soil conservation in Virginia has been largely concerned with the reha-
bilitation of lands impoverished by tobacco culture. Tidewater soils, ex-
hausted in the Colonial period by intensive tobacco cultivation, were saved
from utter ruin by the introduction of crop rotation and the use of marl as
a neutralizing agent.

The present soil conservation problem centers in the Piedmont, where
soils were depleted by the production of bright tobacco. Used in cigarette
manufacture the world over, bright tobacco afforded an annual harvest of
gold until the serious decline of prices in the late i92o j s. The land on which
tobacco had been grown, moreover, was unfit for subsistence crops. In lim-
iting the tobacco crop to raise prices, some of the land was retired, hills
were terraced, dikes were built in water courses, and legume crops were
planted on acres once devoted to tobacco.

Erosion does comparatively little damage to the soils of the flat Coastal
Plain or in the mountain region where outcropping strata and the quick-
growing bluegrass hold the precious top soil; but many clay hills of the
Piedmont have been washed of their former fertility.

Water: Virginia has a tidal shore line of 1,280 miles and contains all or
part of eight river systems. About 2,365 square miles of its area are cov-
ered with water.

The Potomac River including the north and south forks of its tribu-
tary, the Shenandoah has a drainage area of 5,960 square miles, and its
tidal section is 117 miles long. The Rappahannock River system, of which
the Rapidan is chief tributary, lies entirely in Virginia, with its headwaters
in the Blue Ridge and a course stretching 105 miles to the fall line. All the
James River system, descending from high Allegheny ridges to Hampton

l8 VIRGINIA

Roads, Is In Virginia, except a few headwater creeks that extend into West
Virginia. While the Chowan River itself lies in the Tidewater region of
North Carolina, its three main tributaries, the Meherrin, the Nottoway,
and the Blackwater, are Virginia streams. The Roanoke River, with the
Dan as its principal tributary, also flows into North Carolina but has a
course of 240 miles in Virginia, from the Valley of Virginia to the south-
eastern Piedmont. The New River (paradoxically one of the oldest rivers
in North America) rises in western North Carolina and flows north and
west to cut through the Valley Ridges across the Blue Ridge Plateau and
the Valley of Virginia into West Virginia. The Holston, Clinch, and
Powell Rivers, draining the southern part of the Valley of Virginia south-
westward, are the State's principal tributaries of the Tennessee River
system.

Uniform rainfall gives the numerous streams of Virginia a fairly even
flow, and all the nontidal waters are suitable for ordinary industrial use.
The steep gradient from headwaters in the mountains makes Virginia's
larger streams a potential source of hydroelectric development with an es-
timated capacity of 459,000 horsepower.

Mineral Resources: Coal, the State's most important commercial min-
eral resource, occurs in three principal areas. The largest of these, the
southwest Virginia field, on the eastern side of the Allegheny Plateau,
covers 1,550 square miles and contains some 30 billion tons of bituminous
coal Next in importance is the Valley 'Field, in the Valley of Virginia,
which covers 100 square miles and contains more than a billion tons of
semianthracite coal. The third field, the Richmond Basin in the eastern
Piedmont, covers 150 square miles and contains more than a billion tons
of bituminous coal. This latter field was the first to be mined in the United
States (1750) but has been worked little since the opening of mines in the
mountains (1880). Natural gas in commercial quantities is found in the
southwestern part of the Valley of Virginia.

Next, in importance is a wide variety of nonmetallic minerals used in
building and manufacturing. Principally, these are limestone, dolomite,
shale, and sandstone in the Valley and Ridge regions; granite on the east-
ern Blue Ridge slope, in the central Piedmont, and along the fall line; cal-
careous marl in the Tidewater; and brick clays widely distributed through-
out the State.

Other nonmetallic minerals, not so general in their distribution, are salt
and gypsum in southwest Virginia; glass sand in the Valley region; barite
in southwest Virginia and the Piedmont; kaolin and black marble in the
Shenandoah Valley; greenstone, slate, soapstone, and talc in the central

NATURAL SETTING ig

Piedmont; feldspar, mica, and cyanide in the southern Piedmont; ocher in
southwest Virginia and the Tidewater regions; and diatomite in the Tide-
water.

Iron occurs in greater quantities in Virginia than does any other metal,
lower grades of ore being widespread in the Valley Ridges, the central Blue
Ridge, and the western edge of the central and southern Piedmont. Man-
ganese ores are common in the Valley Ridges and western Piedmont. Gold,
the first to be mined in the United States, occurs in a middle belt through
the northeastern Piedmont and at one place in the Blue Ridge Plateau.
Lead and zinc occur in southwest Virginia; pyrite and pyrrhotite in the
southern Blue Ridge Plateau and central Piedmont; and titanium in the
Piedmont. Copper occurs in the southern Piedmont; arsenic, asbestos, and
graphite in the southern and central Piedmont; nickel and cobalt in the
southern Blue Ridge; and tin in the central Blue Ridge; but none of these
appears in commercial quantities.

FLORA AND FAUNA

On the Coastal Plain in Virginia are vast stretches of pine woods, inter-
spersed with hardwood trees and splashed in early spring by flowering red-
bud and dogwood. Broomsedge covers many an impoverished field, and
near the tidal rivers and inlets are acres of waving marsh grass. Hardwood
and pine areas extend throughout the Piedmont, broken by hillsides where
broomsedge and weeds provide scant coverings. In the mountains are great
slopes and ridges of hardwood and small tracts of pine, spruce, and hem-
lock. At the higher levels, rhododendron and mountain laurel abound; and
bluegrass carpets the uncultivated fields of the valleys.

Though the original timber has long since been cut and the subsequent
growth periodically exploited, more than 65 per cent of Virginia's area still
consists of woodland. Among the varieties of trees found in the State are
twelve kinds of oak, five of pine, four of hickorv, three each of cedar, ma-
ple, birch, and elm, and two each of walnut, locust, gum, and poplar. In
the Coastal Plain, pines are of first commercial importance, but other trees
having general distribution are oak, red cedar, gum, poplar, beech, hick-
ory, persimmon, ash, walnut, locust, dogwood, and redbud, with cypress
and southern white cedar in isolated areas. The Piedmont forests contain
oak, poplar, beech, gum, walnut, dogwood, redbud, persimmon, locust,
and (less generally) red cedar and pine. The mountain forests are also prin-
cipally of hardwood, containing oak, poplar, maple, beech, basswood,
hickory, locust, walnut, red cedar, ash, dogwood, redbud, and cucumber

20 VIRGINIA

magnolia. Pine, hemlock, and red spruce, though important, are less com-
mon in the mountains.

An adequate system of forest fire control has been developed. Individ-
uals, corporations, and the State collectively maintain lookout towers and
employ fire fighters. Two National forests, a National park, and six State
parks hold a vast area of the State's woodland in reserve.

The principal native grasses of Virginia are marsh, crab, wire, and blue
grass. Marsh grass, limited to the salt flats of the Coastal Plain, serves as a
natural protection against erosion caused by encroachment of the sea and
provides valuable grazing. Crab grass on the arable lands of the coast is cut
for hay* The wire grass indigenous to all sections and bluegrass in the
mountains provide grazing and help to prevent erosion.

Many wild flowers are indigenous to Virginia. On mountain and cliff
are trailing arbutus, rhododendron, many kinds of azaleas, and mountain
laurel. Peculiar to the Alleghenies are the Canby's mountain lover, an
evergreen; St John's wort, with its large pale-yellow blossom; the moun-
tain spurge, its purple blooms hidden under low leaves; mountain mint or
Virginia thyme with its lavender- tipped white flowers; and trailing wolfs-
bane. Among the more notable flowers characteristic of the lowland woods
and fields are the abundant blue lobelia, which originated in Vir-
ginia; prolific and dainty quaker-ladies or bluets; sturdy erect blue lupine
with blossoms similar to those of the wisteria vine, which is also abundant
throughout the State; the poison-rooted May apple; the rare spring beauty;
false rue anemone; morning glory; chicory, the root of which is often
blended with coffee; lowland laurel; and delicate yellow dogtooth, Con-
federate, and wood violets.

Though Virginia's animal life is still varied and plentiful, civilization
has levied a costly toll upon many species of earlier fauna. Some moun-
tainous regions in the western part of the State are still primitive enough,
to shelter a small herd of elk, a few black bears, and an occasional wildcat;
and the Dismal Swamp is still the habitat of bears and wildcats. But the
bison that once fed on Virginia bluegrass are gone; beavers, wolves, and
panthers are extinct. The otter and the mink have dwindled to an alarm-
ing degree and survive mainly along isolated water courses. Deer, because
of conservation measures and their own shy habits, are increasing; and
the prolific muskrat is safe despite much trapping. The fox, raccoon, opos-
sum, squirrel, mole, rat, and mouse have adapted themselves to civiliza-
tion; and so, in a more limited way, have the skunk and the ground hog.
Public opinion and restricted fox hunting protect the red and gray fox.
Protective laws have saved the raccoon from extinction, and the unobtru-

NATURAL SETTING 21

sive opossum has managed to survive in spite of the epicures who would
garnish him with sweet potatoes. By canny foraging on farm gardens, the
rabbit still maintains a comfortable livelihood.

Game birds flourish under a protective conservation program. The bob-
white is widely distributed throughout the State; the wary wild turkey still
inhabits the woods; the ruffed grouse is found in hilly areas; mourn-
ing doves and woodcock, though reduced in number, exist in nearly
every section of the State; and sora appear annually in the coastal
marshes.

Although only a few game waterfowl nest in Virginia, others migrating
to the South either spend the winter or find an intermediate resting place
here. Gray and black mallards, as well as wood or summer ducks, nest in
the State or pass through on their semiannual journeys; canvasbacks,
shovelers, goldeneyes, redheads, scaups or bluebills, and many of the lesser
diving ducks winter in Virginia waters; the mallard, black duck, and pin-
tail are plentiful in marshes and shallow waters; Canada geese and brant
remain all winter on coastal feeding grounds. Of nongame waterfowl, bit-
terns, herons, several varieties of gulls, and numerous shore birds haunt
the tidal waters and marshes.

Bald and golden eagles are now restricted to a few coastal and mountain
areas. Virginia has more than a dozen species of hawks, ranging from the
large marsh hawk to the diminutive sparrow hawk; and eight species of
owls, from the great horned to the small screech owl. Hawks and owls are
commonly killed without discrimination in Virginia, though only five of
the hawk species and one of the owl are considered more destructive than
beneficial. The turkey buzzard and the black buzzard, despite their at-
tacks on small farm animals and their reputation as spreaders of disease,
are tolerated as scavengers.

Great numbers of song birds make Virginia their home. The belligerent
English sparrow dominates bird life near human habitations, and his many
cousins are common over the countryside. The mockingbird sings both
night and day; but his cousin, the catbird, is a temperamental artist who
varies his monotonous grating cry only on special occasions. Robins and
bluebirds are ever present in the fields and woods. Other birds common in
Virginia are the crow, blue jay, cowbird, meadow or field lark, oriole, pur-
ple martin, cliff and barn swallows, house and marsh wrens, nuthatch, tit-
mouse, several species of woodpecker and tanager, chuck-wilPs-widow,
whippoorwill, nighthawk or bullbat, chimney swift, hummingbird, king-
bird or bee martin, starling, wood thrush, and the glorious cardinal or red-
bird.

22 VIRGINIA

Virginia's poisonous snakes are the pit viper or rattlesnake, the copper-
head, the cottonmouth moccasin, and the water moccasin. The rattlesnake,
found in the western mountains and in some isolated eastern regions, is a
dark brown or yellowish color with contrasting darker spots. The bronze
and yellow-banded copperhead has a rather wide distribution and is the
State's most treacherous serpent. The cottonmouth moccasin, short, thick,
and vicious-looking, is restricted to the Dismal Swamp.

Of the nonpoisonous group, the black snake is the most common, but
blue and black racers are particularly prevalent. These constrictors are
valuable as enemies of small rodents. The black chicken snake, the moun-
tain or pilot black snake, and the corn snake, all larger than the racer, are
found in the mountains. The king snake, another of the constrictor group,
feeds on other snakes as well as on rodents. Other harmless serpents are two
species of garter snake, the milk snake or cowsucker, green snake, water
snake, ringneck snake, spreading adder or puff snake, and pine snake
largest of all Virginia snakes.

In the category of turtles, the diamondback terrapin, green sea turtle,
and snapping turtle are prized as food. More common are several kinds of
mud turtles and the dry-land box turtle. Among the frogs are the spring
peeper, green frog, tree frog, toad-frog, and bullfrog. Several kinds of liz-
ards and salamanders inhabit the state. "

Inland waters contain bass of three kinds the rock bass or redeye, the
smallmouthed black bass in the clear highland streams, and the large-
mouthed black bass in the sluggish rivers and ponds of the flat country.
Throughout the entire State are bream, silver and yellow perch, pike, carp,
and common catfish. Only in the New River, however, is found the giant
Mississippi catfish. Speckled and rainbow trout are restricted to certain
mountain streams, as are the few pickerel in the State.

The salt-water fish, besides being of great commercial importance, in-
clude several varieties caught for sport. Most common in tidal waters are
the croaker, hogfish, spot, white perch, gray and spotted trout, striped
bass or rockfish, alewife, menhaden, flounder, bluefish, shad, catfish, eels,
angelfish, dogfish, and shark. Sturgeon and sheepshead, once common, are
now scarce. The shellfish of importance are oysters, clams, scallops, blue
crabs, and shrimps. All the salt-water bottoms contain oyster beds. Clams
are restricted to the lower regions of Chesapeake Bay, and scallops to the
seacoast inlets. Blue crabs and shrimps are found in tidal waters.

Indians

A THE dawn of the seventeenth century, three distinct groups
of Indian tribes, representing three different linguistic stocks, oc-
cupied the territory that is now Virginia. Along the coast and up
the tidal rivers to their falls were the many palisaded settlements of the Al-
gonquian group, the Powhatan confederacy, enemy of the Siouan stock
composed of the Monacan and Manahoac federations that spread from the
banks of the upper James and the headwaters of the Potomac and Rappa-
hannock Rivers to the Allegheny Mountains. The bellicose and scattered
Iroquoian stock was represented by the Conestoga (Susquehanna) tribe of
nearly 600 warriors living in fortified towns near the headwaters of the
Chesapeake Bay; the Rickohockan, or Rechahecrian (who are identified
with the Cherokee by most ethnologists, as the Yuchi by John Reed Swan-
ton), occupying the mountain valleys of the southwest; and the Nottoway
in the southeast.

During their first years in Virginia the colonists of the London Company
found along the rivers and coast some 200 villages under the leadership of
Wahunsonacock, known to the colonists as Powhatan. This chief of an Al-
gonquian confederation, which consisted of about 2,400 warriors, had in-
herited the territories of the Powhatan, Arrowhatock, Appamatuck, Pa-
munkee, Youghtanund, and Mattapament, to which, by later conquest, he
had added other tribes, bringing the number under his dominion up to 30.
Of the 36 ' King's howses' or tribal capitals, Werowocomoco, on the left
bank of the York River, was Powhatan J s favorite, and the one in which, as
a prisoner in 1608, Captain John Smith first saw the powerful chieftain.

Arriving at Weramocomoco [Werowocomoco] their Emperour proudly lying uppon a
Bedstead a foote high, upon tenne or twelve Mattes, richly hung with manie
Chaynes of great Pearles about his necke, and covered with a great Covering of
Rahaughcums. At [his] heade sat a woman, at his feete another; on each side sitting
uppon a Matte uppon the ground, were raunged his chiefe men on each side the fire,
tenne in a ranke, and behinde them as many yong women, each [with] a great
Chaine of white Beades over their shoulders, their heades painted in redder and
[Powhatan] with such a grave Maiesticall countenance, as drave me into admira-
tion to see such state in a naked Salvage.

Displacement of the Indians began almost simultaneously with the fin-
ishing of the first stockade at Jamestown. Before the colony was two years

24 VIRGINIA

old, the principal Indian settlements had been seized, Powhatan had with-
drawn to a remote town on the Chickahominy River, and the Indians were
so intent on revenge that no Englishman was safe outside the fort. Tempo-
rary suspension of hostilities, however, was established by the marriage of
John Rolfe and Powhatan's daughter, Pocahontas, in 1614, after which the
colonists 'had friendly trade and commerce, as well with Powhatan him-
selfe, as all his subjects.'

In the treaty of peace that followed, the Indians acknowledged the Brit-
ish as their masters. But the chief of the Pamunkey tribe, Opechanca-
nough, who succeeded Powhatan in reality though not nominally, was de-
termined to annihilate the white invaders. In 1622 his carefully planned at-
tack resulted in the massacre of some 350 settlers. The colonists who es-
caped, forewarned by a converted Indian boy, retaliated at once, and dur-
ing the autumn of 1622 and the following winter killed so many Indians
and destroyed so many of their settlements that for more than 20 years
there was a truce. But in 1644, Opechancanough, now old and feeble, de-
cided upon a last effort. In the uprising that began on April 18 with a sud-
den massacre along the whole border, the Indians were routed and Ope-
chancanough was captured and brought to Jamestown, where he was mur-
dered by an outraged colonist. In October 1646 his successor made a treaty
of submission by which the Indians agreed to abandon everything below
the falls of the James and Pamunkey Rivers and to restrict themselves on
the north to the territory between the York and the Rappahannock.

The Jamestown settlers' contact with the Indians of Siouan stock was
limited. A week after landing, on May 21, 1607, Christopher Newport with
a party of 23 pushed up the James to the falls, where they were told by
Pawatah (Powhatan) that it was a 'Daye and a halfe lorney to Monana-
cah ... his Enmye/ who 'came Downe at the fall of the leafe and in-
vaded his Countrye.' In the autumn of 1608 Captain Christopher New-
port, 'with 120 chosen men, 7 went up 'fortie myles' past the falls and dis-
covered on the south bank of the James two Monacan towns. The first,
Mowhemenchouch (Mowhemcho), was an open settlement, through which
John Lederer passed in 1670, calling it Mahock, which Francis Louis Mi-
chel, a visitor in 1702, called Maningkinton, and which a Huguenot colony
took possession of in 1699. It later became Monacan Town. The second
village, 14 miles distant, was Massinacack. In August 1608 Captain Smith
with 12 men and the Indian guide Mosco, 'a lusty Salvage of Wighcoco-
mocoj ascended the Rappahannock, had an encounter with Manahoac In-
dians (of whom some 1 2 tribes wandered over the Rapidan-Rappahannock
area of the Piedmont section), and from an Indian named Amoroleck re-

INDIANS 25

ceived the information about the Siouan tribes that is contained in his
Description of Virginia (1612) :

Upon the head of the river of Toppahanock [Rappahannock] is a people called Man-
nahoacks. To these are contributers the Tauxanias, the Shackaconias, the Ontponeas,
the Tegninatoes, the Whonkenteaes, the Stegarakes, the Hassznnungaes, and divers
others; all confederats with the Monacans, though many different in language, and
be very barbarous, living for most part of wild beasts and fruits.

The Monacan confederacy, dwelling 'upon the head of the Powhatans *
along the James above the falls, consisted, according to Smith's enumera-
tion, of the Monacan proper, ' the Mowhemenchughes, the Massinnacacks,
the Monahassanughs, the Monasickapanoughs,' together with other tribes
not named. The ' chief e habitation ' of this confederacy of five tribes, whose
generic name of Monacan applied also to the territory they occupied, was
Rasauweak (Rassawek), at the confluence of the James and Rivanna
Rivers. The allied Monacan and Manahoac confederacies were constantly
at war with the Powhatan and the Iroquois (the Massawomek of John
Smith and the Massawomees of Jefferson) , ' their most mortall enemies/

Banded into a league late in the sixteenth century, the powerful Iro-
quois began thereafter their gradual descent upon these weaker tribes of
the south, annihilating some and causing others to flee, eventually to
merge for protection thus completely shattering the tribal pattern exist-
ing in 1607. About 1656, ' the Mahocks and Nahyssans,' according to Led-
erer, but more probably the Shackoconian tribe of the Manahoac confed-
eracy, seeking a new dwelling place, 'sett downe near the falls of James
river, to the number of six or seaven hundred. 7 In an attempt to dispel
them, the English, who were joined by the Pamunkey under Totopotomoi,
precipitated what was perhaps the bloodiest Indian battle ever fought on
the soil of Virginia, the last great fight between Siouan and Algonquian
tribes. The Powhatan, who had suffered even more at the hands of the
English than at those of the Iroquois, became by 1665 mere dependents of
the colony, submissive to the stringent laws enacted that year, which com-
pelled them to accept chiefs appointed by the governor. After the Treaty
of Albany in 1684, the Powhatan confederacy all but vanished.

The exploratory trip made in 1670 by John Lederer, a German who re-
ceived a ' commission of discovery' from Governor Berkeley, lifted the veil
that had so long covered the activity of these Siouan tribes. Drastic
changes, caused by the hostile wedge formed by the Iroquois in the north
and by the English in the east, had taken place among the confederations
in a little more than half a century. Leaving the falls of the James, Lederer
went southwest 'toward the Monakins,' then 'from Mahock' (Mohem-
cho), the tribe's town, 'into the province of Carolina, 3 finding in 'these

26 VIRGINIA

parts . . , formerly possessed by the Tacci, alias Dogi/ the tribe of Na-
hyssan (the Monahassanugh of John Smith) still living at their village on
the James. This tribe, called Hanohaskie by Thomas Batts (1671), be-
came in later narratives the Tutelo (Totero or Todirish-roone) , a generic
Iroquoian name applicable to all Siouan tribes in Virginia and Carolina. A
subtribe of the Tutelo was the Saponi (the Monasickapanough of John
Smith), who had moved from the Rivanna to a tributary of the upper
Roanoke, where their town of Sapon was visited first by Lederer and then
by Batts. Other tribes of Siouan stock were the Nuntaneuck (the Tauxan-
ias of Smith); the Akenatzy (Occaneechi), who lived on an island in the
Roanoke River; the Managog (Manahoac), who had but lately roamed the
upper Piedmont region; and the Monakin or Monacan, who occupied the
village of Mohemcho. All these tribes were of Siouan stock.

Between 1671 and 1701 the Saponi and Tutelo tribes withdrew from
their position at the base of the mountains, directly in the path of the Iro-
quois, and settled on two islands in the Roanoke River near the one inhab-
ited by their kinsmen the Occaneechi, an important tribe whose island was
the great trading center 'for all the Indians for at least 500 miles.' The
Occaneechi's wealth, however, was their undoing. In 1676, the Susque-
hanna (Conestoga), driven from their Chesapeake Bay home by the Iro-
quois and the English, fled to the Occaneechi, whom they tried to dispos-
sess. In the battle that ensued, the Susquehanna were driven from the is-
land. In May of the same year, Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., with 200 Virginians,
arrived there in pursuit of the Susquehanna, joined the Occaneechi, and
put the Susquehanna to flight. The latter settled near the Nottoway tribe,
their Iroquois kinsmen, and became the Meherrin. Afterwards the whites
turned on the Occaneechi, whereupon this tribe abandoned its island home,
fled into Carolina, and eventually combined with the Saponi, Tutelo, and
other tribes of Siouan stock in a body numbering about 750 persons. In
1705, according to Robert Beverley, the Indian population within the ex-
plored portions of Virginia numbered fewer than 500 able-bodied men, of
whom 350 were remnants of tribes once belonging to the Powhatan con-
federacy.

Through the persuasion of Governor Spotswood, who hoped to protect
them from the Iroquois and at the same time to make them a barrier be-
tween the Virginia settlements and the hostile southern tribes, the Saponi,
Tutelo, 'Stukarocks/ and federated tribes moved in a consolidated group
from Carolina to the vicinity of Fort Christanna, shortly after the open-
ing of the Tuscarora War (1711-12). Here Spotswood, to secure the fidel-
ity of the smaller tribes, began a school to which were admitted as pupils

INDIANS 27

and hostages the children of chiefs. But this seed of civilization fell on
sterile ground. The Saponi, or, as they were then commonly called, the
Christanna Indians, were still at war. Quarrels persisted between them
and the neighboring Nottoway and Meherrin; while the more distant Iro-
quois, who cherished toward these people 'so inveterate an enmity J that
it could be 'extinguished' only by their c total Extirpation/ continued
their attacks.

Finally, Governor Spotswood, hoping to put an end to the warfare be-
tween the Iroquois and the southern tribes, in 1722 promoted the Albany
(N.Y.) Conference, at which a peace treaty was signed by the Five Na-
tions of the Iroquois and their allies, the Tuscarora, Shawnee, and others
on the one hand, and by Virginia and its tributary Indians on the other.
Thus the long war ended and peace finally came in Virginia to * the Notto-
ways, Meherrins, Nansemonds, Pamunkeys, Chichominys, and the Chris-
tanna Indians ' called { Todirich-roones ' by the Iroquois, and comprising
' the Saponies, Ochineechees, Stenkenocks [Stegarakes], Meipontskys, [Ont-
poneas] & ToteroesJ all of whom were grouped at ' Sapponey Indian town/
which was ' about a musket-shot from the fort.' Dissatisfied with the prox-
imity of white settlements and at peace with the Iroquois, the restless Sa-
poni, Tutelo, and such allied tribes as the Occaneechi and the Stegarake
(only survivor of the Manahoac confederacy) abandoned the settlement
near Fort Christanna about 1740, went first to Pennsylvania and then to
New York, where they placed themselves under the protection of their tra-
ditional enemy, becoming in 1753 a part of the Six Nations.

During the first half of the eighteenth century the Shenandoah Valley
last frontier of Virginia was the hunting ground of such nonresident In-
dian tribes as the Delaware, Catawba, and Shawnee, among whom there
was continual warfare. After the completion of a chain of forts along the
border for the protection of white settlers, the Indians suddenly withdrew
from the valley in 1754, but returned in 1756 at the beginning of the
French and Indian War. Depredations continued until the end of the war
in 1763, after which the valley was left in peace. The Cherokee, as the
white settlements pressed upon them in their mountain fastness, moved
gradually westward.

In 1768, Governor Francis Fauquier, answering a question propounded
by the Lords of Trade and Plantation, revealed the state to which the abo-
rigines of Virginia had been reduced. 'The number of Indians residing in
the known parts of this Colony/ he wrote, 'is very small, there being only
some remains of the Eastern Shore and Pamunkey Indians, who are so far
civilized as to wear European dress, and in part follow the customs of the

2S V I R G I N I A

Planters, there are of the Xottoways, Meher-

rins, Tuscaroras and Saponeys; who tho' they live in peace in the midst of
us, in great the Life of wild Indians. The number of all these

very fast owing to their great fondness for Rum.'

These remnants the amalgamation of some of the numerous tribes
that had roamed the forests of Virginia. The Nottoway, strong during the
first settlement period and greatly outnumbering the Powhatan in the pro-
vincial census of 1669, were by 1820 reduced to 27 persons, of whom only
the tribal language. The Meherrin, the other Virginia tribe of
Iroquoian stock, equaled in number the Pamunkey originally the strong-
est tribe of the Powhatan confederacy in 1699, after which they rapidly
vanished. The Nansemond trite of the Powhatan confederacy, composed
of some 300 warriors in 1622, had dwindled to 45 men by 1669. In 1744
they joined the Nottoway. Today, in Virginia, there are several groups
and scattered families of Indian descent, comprising 779 persons. The
State recognizes three tribes: the Pamunkey, the Mattaponi, and the
Chickahominy.

Description of the sedentary Powhatan Indians in their 'pallizadoed
townes ' formed much of the substance of early writings on Virginia. i Their
habitations or townes' were * for the most part by the rivers, or not far dis-
tant from fresh springs, commonly upon a rise of a hill. 3 Many settlements,
particularly those on the Bay, were protected by encircling palisades, as
depicted in the water-color drawings of Secotan and Pomeioc (in Carolina)
made in 1585 by * Maister Jhon White, an Englisch paynter.' Where there
was less danger of attack, the habitations of the Algonquian spread out un-
protected on the river shore. Werowocomoco, Powhatan's favorite village,
and Kecoughtan (at or near the present site of Hampton) were typical.
1 ' Kegquouhtan . . . conteineth eighteene houses, 5 wrote Smith in Newes
from Virginia, 'pleasantly seated upon three acres of ground, uppon a
plaine, halfe invironed with a great Bay of the great River . . . the
Towne adioyning to the maine by a necke of Land of sixtie yardes.' ' Placed
under the covert of trees/ the houses all alike, i scattered without forme
of a street/ and ' warm as stoves, albeit very smoakey ' were like 'garden
arbours.' A framework of poles was set in two parallel rows inclosing the
floor space. Opposite poles were bent over and lashed to one another in
pairs to form a series of arches of equal height, and these arches were joined
by horizontal poles placed at intervals and securely tied together 'with
roots, bark, or the green wood of the white oak run into thongs/ Each of
the flat ends had a door hung with mats. Outside stood a wooden mortar
and pestle for grinding corn. The smoke from the fire kindled on the ground

INDIANS 29

inside escaped through a small vent in the roof. The coverings were gen-
erally of bark or mats of rushes, occasionally of boughs. The ordinary-
dwelling, which housed from 6 to 20 people, contained but one room, on
each side of which were platforms or bedsteads about a foot high and cov-
ered with 'fyne white mattes' and skins. In "square plotts of cleered
grownd ' near these bark-covered houses, the women raised tobacco and
such vegetables as corn, beans, an herb called melden,' squash, 'pumpons
and a fruit like unto a musk millino.' Maize was so important that plat-
forms were erected in the fields, where watchers were stationed to protect
the crop from birds, and the shelled com filled storage baskets that took

* upp the best part of some of their houses.' Among the roots used for food
were groundnuts (Apios tuber osa) and tuckahoe (Peltandra Virginica and
Orontium aquaticum). In March and April the Powhatan lived on their
'weeres, 3 feeding on 'fish, turkies and squirrells,' the fish being caught in
fish dams or shot with ' long arrows tyed in a line ' ; in May they ' set their
corne ' ; and in the ' tyme of their huntings ' they gathered ' into companyes 3
with their families and went "toward the mountaines,' where there was

* plenty of game.'

The empire ruled over by Powhatan was reduced to subdivisions, each
with a governmental hierarchy consisting of the cockarouse or sachem, the
werowance or war leader, the tribal council, and the priests. Nor did the
scheme vary under Opechancanough. 'This revolted Indian King with his
squaw/ wrote Thomas Martin in 1622, 'commaundeth 32 Kingdomes un-
der him. Everye Kingdome contayneigne ye quantitie of one of ye shires
here in England. Everye such Kingdome hath one speciall Towne seated
upon one of ye three greate Rivers . . . 3 Dwellings and gardens were
owned privately, but all other property was held in common.

Typical of the Iroquoian type of town was the village of the Nottoway,
which William Byrd visited in 1728. A strong palisade, about 10 feet high,
surrounded a quadrangle dotted with long communal ' cabins . . . arched
at the top, and covered with bark. 3 Inside there was no furniture except
'hurdles' for repose. The fortification served as a place of refuge for mem-
bers of the tribe living in outlying districts. The towns of the Siouan tribes
were similar. Within the inclosure of those that were palisaded stood the
prominent round 'town house 3 surrounded by the 'arbour-like 3 dwellings
of the people. The Cherokee towns spread out along the banks of mountain
streams or in a valley. Close by the dwellings of logs chinked with clay
stood a conical earth-covered lodge known as the 'winter hot house. 3 On an
artificial mound in the center of the village was the large oblong ' council
house, 3 center of all tribal ceremonies.

30 VIRGINIA

The male Indian costume consisted of garments of skins or woven fiber,
and moccasins; the women wore skirts of fringed deerskin or woven silk-
fiber (silk weed or Indian hemp, Asclepias pulchra), which reached
from the waist to the middle of the thigh. Members of both sexes wore in
winter mantles made of skins and feathers. Feathered headgear, necklaces
of clam shells, beads, or pearls, copper pendants, wampum head rings ? and
body tattooing completed the garish personal decoration. The Siouan In-
dians of 4 Sapponey Town/ visited by Byrd in 1728, had probably varied
little since early days in their traditional war dress. With * feathers in their
hair and ran through their ears, their faces painted with blue and vermil-
ion, their hair cut in many forms," they were 'really . . . very terrible/
Both men and women greased their bodies and heads with bear's oil or wal-
nut oil mixed with paint, either of which yielded an 'ugly smell/ The

* Sweating-houses/ little huts built with wattles, were also tribal survivals.
Heated by red-hot pebbles, they were used by sick Indians to sweat out
maladies/ a remedy . . . for all distempers/

The handicrafts were exclusively woman's province the making of
wooden dishes and trays, 'eartheni pottes/ and the thread spun from

* barks of trees, deare sinews, or a kind of grasse they call PemmenawJ
which was used variously as 'lines for angles/ 'nets for fishing/ sewing the
deerskin mantles, and the making of baskets and 'aprons . . . women
wear about their middles, for decency's sake/

In their monotheistic religion, according to Lederer, the Indians wor-
shiped Okee, called also Mannith, the 'creator of all things/ 'To him alone
the high priest or Periku ' offered sacrifices. ' The government of mankind '
was assigned to 'lesser deities, as Quiacosough and Tagkanysough that is,
good and evil spirits/ Smith, however, says 'their chief God' was 'the
Devil, him they call Okee/

Burial customs varied among the different tribes. Within most of the
temples were the image of Okee and the sepulchers of kings. The Algon-
quian buried ordinary members of the tribe in pits; while the bodies of the
chiefs were disemboweled, dried, stuffed with sand, wrapped in skins and
mats, and then laid in the temple. Henry Spelman, who lived among tribes
along the Potomac prior to 1610, described a burial resembling the type,
used by Indians of the Plains. The body, wrapped in mats, was laid on a
scaffold about three or four yards high. Ossuaries were common among the
southern Algonquian and the Siouan tribes of the Piedmont, The bones of
the dead, in a reburial ceremony, were deposited in great pits until a huge
mound was formed.

Today, along the shores of Chesapeake Bay and the banks of many of its

The Old Dominion

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH'S MAP

Photograph by courtesy of the Virginia Conservation Commission" j
ST. JOHN'S CHURCH (1741), RICHMOND

fhotogroph by courtesy of the VirgimQjStote Chamber of Commerce

SCENE OF BRITISH SURRENDER MOORE HOUSE (c. 1750), NEAR YOKKTOWM

THE CAPITOL {1701 -05, RECONSTRUCTED 1929), WIUIAMSBUfQ

fbotograph by courtesy of the Virginia Conservation Commission

Photograph by courtesy of the Virginia State Chamber of Commerce
MONTmiEft |1760, 1793, 1907), HOME OF PRESIDENT MADISON, NEAR ORANGE^

ASHIAWN C1796-9S), HOME OF PRESIDENT MONROE, NEAR CHARLOTTES VI LIE

Photograph by courtesy of the Virginia Conservation Commission

MOUNT VERNON (1743-87), HOME OF PRESIDENT WASHINGTON, NEAR ALEXANDRIA

MONTICELLO (1770-75, 1798-1809), HOME OF PRESIDENT JEFFERSON, NEAR CHARLOTTESVHJ.E

Photograph by courtesy of the Virginia Conservation Commission

Photograph by courtesy of the Virginia Conservation Commission
WASH ' NGTON <WMfl,1H6 MAMIE ORIGINAL

Photograph by courtesy of {"he New York Historical Society

PORTRAIT OF THOMAS JEFFERSON BY REMBRANDT PEALE

Pfiotogroph by Homier-Clark Studio
SIATOE OF ROBERT E.LEE BY H.M.SCHRADY AND IEO LENTELLI, CHARLOHESVILLE

INDIANS 31

tributaries are heaps of oyster shells, containing bits of pottery and stone
implements, which mark the position of many ancient Algonquian settle-
ments, some having flourished long after 1607. Westward, along the valley
of the James from the falls to the mountains, in the section once dominated
by the Siouan tribes, are traces of their village and campsites on the banks
of streams, where fragments of pottery and stone implements are scattered
over the surface. The same district contains soapstone quarries and occa-
sionally a macabre ossuary. In the Rappahannock-Rapidan area most of
the mortars, long cylindrical pestles, hammers, discoidal stones, and pipes
have been garnered; but occasionally axes, projectile points, and bits of
pottery are brought to the surface by freshets or turned up by the plow.

vWW?

History

T "1C THENonMay 14, 1607 the Sarah Constant ,Goodspeed,&n&Dis~
\/\/ cm)ery ianded at Jamestown the colonists sent by the Virginia
V V Company of London, years of futile effort to achieve British
colonization in America were terminated in the establishment of a perma-
nent settlement in the New World. All North America not Spanish or
French was then called Virginia, in honor of the Virgin Queen. In 1578
Sir Humphrey Gilbert had obtained authority from Elizabeth to colonize
lands on the Western Hemisphere not already claimed by any Christian
prince or people, but he had failed to plant an enduring settlement. Groups
of adventurers sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh either returned disheart-
ened to England or mysteriously disappeared.

In 1606, however, King James granted a joint charter to two compa-
nies one, with headquarters in London, authorized to settle southern
Virginia; and the other, with headquarters in Plymouth, authorized to
settle northern Virginia; but neither to plant within 100 miles of the other.
The expeditions sent out by the Plymouth Company met with failure, but
the London Company established the settlement at Jamestown. The years
between 1607 and 1624, encompassing the overlordship of the Virginia
Company of London, assured the permanence of the first English colony
in America.

On April 26, 1607 (O.S.) the colonists landed on a point of land they
called Cape Henry, opposite another point they named Cape Charles, hon-
oring two sons of their king. An indication of future trouble came toward
evening when a band of Indians arrived ' creeping upon all f oure from the
Hills, like Beares, with their Bowes in their mouthes.' The adventurers
ascended the river and landed at a place they named ' James Towne' to
honor the king himself.

Leadership aboard the three little boats left much to be desired; the
men had quarreled grievously among themselves; malaria lurked in the
marshy lands; and supplies were insufficient. John Smith, the most able
man in the company and the one fitted for almost any emergency by a life
of incredible adventure, was in chains when the little band reached Vir-
ginia. Fortunately, however, the opening of the sealed orders of the king

34 VIRGINIA

named Mm a member of the council along with Edward Maria Wmgfield,
Christopher Newport, Bartholomew Gosnold, John Ratcliffe, John Mar-
tin, and George Kendall. The incompetent Wingfield was made president
of the council. Smith demanded trial for the charges that had been pre-
ferred against him* was released, and by force of personality became the
acknowledged leader. On June 22, Newport sailed for England, leaving in
Virginia 100 men, more than half of whom were 'gentlemen/ unfit for the
tasks involved in making a wilderness habitable. Bickering was the order
of the day. In September Wingfield was deposed; and Ratciiffe, who sub-
sequently proved himself unequal to the responsibility, was elected presi-
dent of the council. Whether or not credence can be given to the story of
Pocahontas's saving John Smith's life, there is no doubt that Smith
became the hero of Jamestown, exploring the new land, wheedling sup-
plies from the Indians, and effectively using the strong arm in emer-
gencies.

The London Company, with stockholders looking toward gains that
might be derived from the finding of a passage to the South Sea and from
the discovery of precious metals in the New World, was guilty of inade-
quate stewardship. The ' First Supply, 7 brought by Newport on January 2,
1607 (January 12, 1608, N.S.), contained insufficient provisions and 70
new colonists. Likewise Newport's ' Second Supply/ arriving in September
of the same year, bringing again some 70 settlers, added little to the wel-
fare of the colony. Then it was that John Smith, having been chosen presi-
dent of the council, composed the letter known as i Smith's Rude Answer,'
in which he replied to the London Company's demand that the colonists
send commodities sufficient to pay the cost of the voyage, a lump of gold,
assurance that they had found the South Sea, and one member of the lost
Roanoke Colony. He wrote:

When you send againe I entreat you rather send but thirty Carpenters, husband-
men, gardiners, fishermen, blacksmiths, masons and diggers up of trees, roots, well
provided; than a thousand of such as we have: for except wee be able both to lodge
them and feed them, the most will consume with want of necessaries before they can
be made good for anything.

Chiefly because of Smith's leadership, most of the 200 settlers survived
the winter and in the spring set about planting and building cheerfully
enough. In August seven of the nine ships that had left England with Sir
Thomas Gates landed their colonists at Jamestown. In October John
Smith, having been severely injured, returned to England for medical
treatment, and the settlers faced the long and terrible winter of 1609-10
without competent leadership. Supplies were soon exhausted; no one was

HISTORY 55

capable of Intimidating or cajoling the Indians; the water was unfit for
drinking; 'sicknesse J took its ghastly toll. In May when Gates, whose ship
had been wrecked on the Bermudas, reached Jamestown as first governor,
he found only a few wretched survivors. Five hundred strong at the begin-
ning of winter, the colonists numbering but 65 pitiable creatures
started back to England on June 7, 1610. They had reached Mulberry
Island , 14 miles distant, when Lord De la Wane arrived with supplies and
new settlers. All turned back, weary but determined to carry on*

The kindly De la Wane, returning to England in the spring of 1611,
left as deputy governor George Percy, succeeded soon by Sir Thomas Dale,
whose absolutism the colonists found difficult to endure. Meanwhile, by
two clever strokes, John Rolfe became the savior of Virginia: in 1612 he
introduced the cultivation of tobacco, ending the futile search for gold;
and in 1614 he married Pocahontas, effecting a convenient alliance with
the Powhatan confederacy. George Yeardley, who became deputy gov-
ernor in 1616, set up the first windmill in America, imported a herd of
blooded cattle, turned his attention to the fertilization of the soil, and
encouraged the cultivation of touapco. But Sir Samuel Argall, appointed
in May 1617, virtually reduced the colonists to the status of slaves until
his flagrant misconduct caused his removal.

By April 1619 the colony under Sir George Yeardley, now governor, had
apparently achieved a degree of stability that augured well for continued
prosperity. Plantations had been established eastward and westward on
both sides of the James River. A few women had crossed the Atlantic to
convert the wilderness into a home, and plans were afoot for the send-
ing of 150 maids, who arrived by 1621 to become wives of the settlers.
From a Dutch man-of-war were obtained in 1619 the first Negroes landed
in Virginia 20, who were received as indentured servants and not , as
slaves for life.

VIRGINIA ACHIEVES REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT

But the most far-reaching event of 1619 was the meeting of the house of
burgesses, the first democratically elected legislative body to convene in
the New World. Each of the n duly constituted plantations sent two
members to represent it in this epoch making body. The early delibera-
tions of the burgesses centered about education. In 1618 the City of Hen-
ricus had been selected as suitable site for a proposed university. The East
India School, which was to be established at Charles City Point, was
planned to prepare students for the college; money had been subscribed

36 VIRGINIA

for both institutions; and the revenues from an iron foundry at Falling
Creek were to be used for the support of the university.

Representative government in Virginia, however, had come through an
evolutionary process. The charter of 1606 giving to the Plymouth and
London Companies authority to colonize Virginia between 34 and 45
northprovided for a superior council in England appointed by the king,
and a local governing council appointed by the superior council, the local
council to elect its own president. The charter gave to the colonists small
hope of gain, for the property held in common stock belonged to the
London Company. The second charter, however, obtained on May 23,
1609, anc ^ drafted by Sir Edwin Sandys, leader of the Liberal party in
Parliament, gave the London Company direct administration of the col-
ony and power to prescribe the form of government to be established, but
was less democratic than the first in that the governor was to be appointed
by the council in London and not by the council in Virginia. The territory,
redefined, had a frontage 200 miles south and 200 miles north of Point
Comfort, and extended 'up into the land, throughout from sea to sea, west
and northwest/

Almost at once the government of the colonists became the talking point
of liberals in Parliament, who wanted to increase the rights enjoyed by
British subjects in the face of Stuart absolutism. It was under the more
liberal charter of 1612, also drafted by Sandys, that the colonists were able
to achieve representative government. More important, however, were the
reaffirmation of those privileges the second charter had granted and the
clear statement that all laws governing Virginia were to be made by the
London Company. The execution of the order was delayed, however, by
Argall, who arrived as deputy governor in May 1617; connived with Sir
Robert Rich in England to plunder the 'common stock'; and continued
martial law in the colony. As Lord De la Warre, sent by the London Com-
pany with authority to arrest Argall, died on his way across the ocean, it
was not until the arrival of Yeardley, on April 19, 1619, that the new
government was put into effect, incorporating the principles of 'the Great
charter of privileges, orders, and laws' drawn up in 1618 by Sir Edwin
Sandys and Sir Thomas Smyth. Settlers were given their own tracts of
land; martial law and common holding came to an end; lands to be tilled
by servants during indentureship were laid out for the support of officials,
in order to relieve the people of taxation 'as much as may be'; four 'cor-
poracouns" were constituted, each with a proposed capital city; and
through the creation of the house of burgesses the colonists shared in
making the laws.

HISTORY 37

Soon after affairs had begun to run smoothly In the colony, Virginia
narrowly escaped an invasion of the Pilgrim Fathers, whose expedition-
financed mainly by members of the London Company was authorized
to settle south of the Hudson River in southern Virginia. Thrown off their
course, the Pilgrims set foot on a rock off the coast of northern Virginia.
So did chance take a hand in determining the course of history.

A 'deadly stroake' was dealt the southern colony in 1622 when the
Indians attempted by wholesale butchery to rid the countiy of white
invaders. From the marriage of John Rolfe and Pocahontas in 1614 till the
death of Powhatan in 1618 a state of comparative peace had emboldened
the colonists to spread their plantations along both banks of the James
River and to neglect their stockades. But the implacable Opechanca-
nough, who had succeeded Powhatan as chief of the Indian confederacy,
was scheming with diabolical cleverness. On March 22, 1622, at precisely
the same hour the Indians struck along a 140-mile front. Three hundred
and forty-seven colonists were killed instantly and 18 died later, reducing
the settlement by more than a third. Jamestown suffered less, however,
than the outlying plantations, for Chanco, a converted Indian, working at
the plantation of Richard Pace across the river, informed his master of
the plot. Though the surviving settlers did not desert Virginia and though
others arrived almost at once, it was many years before the colony recov-
ered from the disaster. Plans were abandoned for the East India School
and the university, which were to be established to Christianize and edu-
cate the Indians.

The days of the Virginia Company of London, moreover, were num-
bered. The widening breach between the liberals and the king had been
reflected in James's denunciation of Sir Edwyn Sandys. In answer to the
king's command in 1620, ' Choose the devil if you will, but not Sir Edwin
Sandys ' as company treasurer, Sandys stepped aside in favor of Ms friend,
the Earl of Southampton, whom the king found equally unacceptable. It
was Sandys, however, who drew up the liberal instrument known as the
Virginia Constitution of 1621. In 1622 the king granted the London Com-
pany a monopoly of the sale of tobacco in England. The condition that
40,000 pounds of Spanish tobacco be also imported was not satisfactory
to Spain, whose favor James sought as he looked toward an alliance be-
tween his son and the Infanta. Through the scheming of the wily Count of
Gondomar, Spanish ambassador, an investigation was ordered of the Lon-
don Company both in England and Virginia. When the commission re-
turned from the colony in June 1624 with an unfavorable report, only
partially true, the King's Bench revoked the charter of the London

38 VIRGINIA

Company and Virginia became a royal colony, extending from modern
Pennsylvania to Florida and indefinitely westward.

Anglo-Saxon love of personal liberty continued to express itself in the
Virginia colony. All the revolutionary pronouncements that emanated
from Virginia between 1763 and 1776 had their antecedents in the period
that immediately followed the dissolution of the London Company. Just
before the revocation of the company's charter the general assembly had
resolved, forecasting the words of Parliament's petition to Charles five
years later and in amazing prophecy of the doctrine condemning taxation
without representation, that 'the governor shall not lay any taxes or im-
positions upon the colony, their lands or commodities, other than by
authority of the General Assembly . . . '

The king's failure to provide for a house of burgesses in the govern-
mental plans he instituted after the demise of the London Company had
little effect upon the progress of the democratic principle. After James had
commissioned a council to take charge of affairs in Virginia, had appointed
the governor, and, forthwith, had died, Virginians sent Yeardley across
the ocean to urge the king to ' avoid the oppression of governors in colonial
affairs ' and to continue the general assemblies. Until royal recognition of
the house of burgesses came in 1628, governors Francis Wyatt, George
Yeardley, and Francis West were wise enough to allow the burgesses to
assist the council unofficially in the passing of ' proclamations, ordinances,
and orders. 3 The principle of taxation by representation was reiterated in
resolutions parsed in 1631, in 1632, in 1642, in 1652, and many other times
before a Virginian gave the Declaration of Independence to the world.

The behavior of liberty-loving Virginians must have sorely tried the
royal Stuarts, whose edicts brought forth either argument or disobedience.
During the investigation of the London Company, the clerk of the council
had lost his ears for giving the king's commissioners certain official papers,
Virginians dared to ask that the charter of the London Company be re-
newed. Other evidences of insubordination followed. There was, for in-
stance, Virginia's protest against Lord Baltimore's proprietary carved
from Virginia territory by royal grant in 1632. For some strange reason
there had been no trouble when Sir Robert Heath had received patent in
1629 to that part of southern Virginia styled ' Carolana. 7 Chief among the
agitators against Lord Baltimore was William Claiborne, who, anticipat-
ing the grant, had established on the Isle of Kent within the Maryland
territory a trading post and colony. The conflict, however, was not be-
tween Virginia and Lord Baltimore, but was a contest that Claiborne
carried on with the aid of his settlers.

HISTORY 39

Interposed in the general confusion was the not inconsiderable matter
of 'thrusting' a royal governor out of Virginia. Sir John Harvey was ap-
pointed in 1628. His arrival having been delayed, the council continued
Captain Francis West as acting governor, and the assembly convened. It
refused to agree to the king's demand regarding English monopoly of
Virginia tobacco, and sent West abroad as the first of a long line of agents
who presented the colony's cause to the king. Dr. John Pott was then
named acting governor. When Harvey finally reached Virginia, in 1630, he
discredited Pott, usurped the powers of the general assembly, and refused
to forward to the king the general assembly's 'denial' of the tobacco mo-
nopoly. Finally, when the governor dissolved the assembly, the house of
burgesses defiantly continued its sessions. In peaceful revolution the gov-
ernor was 'thrust out/ and the council in 1635 named John West his suc-
cessor. Though Harvey took his appeal to the king, who ruled that the
deposed governor must return to Virginia as governor if just for a day,
Virginia's first popular revolution was successful. In 1639 the king ap-
pointed Sir Francis Wyatt governor.

In the meantime new governmental machinery had been installed.
In 1634 the four ' corporacouns > that had been created in 1619 gave place
to eight shires, later designated as counties. All free male citizens had
the right to vote for members of the house of burgesses and for county
officers.

Then came Sir William Berkeley, who supplanted Wyatt in 1641 and
continued in office until 1652. Though the staunchest of royalists, Sir
William endeared himself to Virginians at once by exercising justice and
good sense. After the massacre of 1644, led by the aged Opechancanough,
had wiped out about 300 colonists, Berkeley dealt with the Indians cou-
rageously and promptly. The civil war in England was reflected, however,
in Berkeley's intolerance toward dissenters. When three pastors from the
Massachusetts Bay colony accepted Captain Richard Bennett's invita-
tion to settle in Virginia, they were ordered to return 'with all conven-
ience. 7 The oppressive act against nonconformists passed in 1647 caused
many Puritans in Virginia to migrate to more tolerant Maryland.

Berkeley's intense loyalty to the Crown furnishes the key to his char-
acter. He went to England to offer aid to Charles I; after the execution of
his sovereign, he refused to recognize Cromwell; and he extended to
Charles II an invitation to make his home in Virginia. When Virginia.was
at last ' reduced * to Parliament, the loyal servant of the king retired to
Green Spring near Jamestown.

Under the Commonwealth Virginia enjoyed almost complete political

40 VIRGINIA

freedom. Fortunately, the Navigation Act, first passed in 1651 limiting
colonial trade to England and her possessions, was not strictly enforced.
That Virginians had learned to govern themselves was attested by the
averting of a civil war that was threatened by the inhabitants of the east-
ern shore. These Isolated settlers, in a protest drawn up on March 30,
1652, embodying a complaint that dated back to 1647, based their refusal
to pay taxes on the grounds that, since they had received no summons for
election of burgesse^ they considered themselves 'disjointed and seques-
tered from the rest of Virginia/ Moreover, without authority from the
general assembly, they had made their own reprisals against the Dutch
among them, who they claimed had been selling arms to the Indians. No
blood was shed In the settlement of the difficulty, and the eastern shore,
then Northampton County, remained within Virginia.

The Restoration ushered in one of Virginia's darkest eras. The chaotic
situation In England and the death of Governor Mathews in 1660 caused
Virginia to turn again to their old leader. Accordingly, the house of bur-
gesses elected Sir William Berkeley governor, and soon thereafter Charles
II reappointed Mm.

Though It was quite another Berkeley who resumed office, he worked
at first In the interest of the colonists. The Navigation Act of 1660, more
thoroughly enforced than Cromwell's, imposed real hardship upon Vir-
ginia planters by requiring all trade with Virginia to pass through English
ports with payment of high duties. Governor Berkeley traveled to Eng-
land In 1661 to make personal protest against the obnoxious regulation
that was reducing the price of Virginia tobacco, and in 1664 he endeavored
to obtain the co-operation of Carolina and Maryland in concerted restric-
tion of tobacco planting. The governor also had a hand in the general
assembly's inauguration of a works program, by means of which factories
were established both to provide employment and to furnish the colonists
with needed commodities.

His philosophy, however, was that of the benevolent despot, who would
brook no opposition to his authority. Satisfied with the representatives
whose election he had influenced in 1661, when reaction against the Com-
monwealth had increased his popularity, he issued no other writ for an
election until forced to do so by the rebellion that ended his career. Ac-
cordingly, control of the colony fell into the hands of an oligarchy that
controlled Virginia for 15 years. Restriction of the franchise to 'freeholders
and housekeepers 'who were 'answerable . . . for levies further strength-
ened the throttle hold of Berkeley's political machine. Charles IPs grant
of the Northern Neck the area lying between the Potomac and the

HISTORY 41

Rappahannock from the Chesapeake back to the headwaters of both rivers
to four royal favorites in 1669 was deeply resented by Virginians.

VIRGINIA'S FIRST REBELLION

In 1674 a young man came out of England with courage to defy auto-
cratic rule. His name was Nathaniel Bacon; his family was old and dis-
tinguished; he had been educated at Oxford, and he had traveled exten-
sively. Upon taking up lands in Virginia, he was almost at once made a
member of the council. Though the fundamental cause of unrest in Vir-
ginia was economic and brought about by dire distress of the small farm-
ers, liberty-loving Anglo-Saxons were holding responsible for their plight
the arrogant rule of the governor, who they believed had deprived them
of the freeman's right to petition for redress. The immediate occasion of
what is known as Bacon's rebellion was an Indian uprising, which Berkeley
failed to handle with dispatch.

Following depredations of the Susquehannock in northern Virginia in
1675, which Berkeley had sent troops to punish, and the unfortunate kill-
ing of Indians who came bearing a flag of truce, the Susquehannock had
sought revenge upon the whites and had enlisted other tribes as allies.
Although the governor authorized an expedition to be led by Sir Henry
Chicheley, suddenly disbanding the militia, he remained inactive while
atrocities continued. When Virginians petitioned for commanders to lead
them in defense of their lives and estates/ the governor not only refused
but forbade further requests ' under great penalty/ Then it was that Na-
thaniel Bacon assumed leadership and sent messengers to the governor
asking that he be given a commission. When Berkeley lost no time in
refusing and in declaring Bacon a rebel, the affair took on the nature of an
insurrection. An autocratic governor had arrogantly offended a man who
became over night the spokesman of the aroused masses.

While fighters flocked to Bacon's ranks, the governor issued a writ for
the election of a new house of burgesses. Having already dealt summarily
with the Indians, Bacon was elected a burgess. Though Berkeley had
dubbed him ' the greatest rebel that ever was in Virginia/ he was pardoned
and again took his seat as a member of the council. The rebellion was not
at an end, however. Soon Bacon, hearing that Berkeley plotted against
him, left Jamestown, again without a commission to proceed against the
Indians. Thenceforth the rebels concentrated their attack upon Berkeley's
government. With his motley followers, Bacon appeared again at James-
town and forced the governor to sign the commission so long sought. Under

42 VIRGINIA

BacoB ? s influence the burgesses liberalized the laws of the colony. The
unhappy governor left Jamestown, finally going to the eastern shore, and
Nathaniel Bacon was for a time the virtual head of government. From
Middle Plantation, now WiEiamsburg, he issued a proclamation calling
upon Virginians to * consult with him for the present settlement of His
Majesty's distressed colony/ The people came and 'none or very few'
failed to sign an oath that pledged them to aid in the Indian war, to op-
pose the governor, and to resist any effort that England might make to
suppress Bacon until the king could be acquainted with the ' grievances ? of
the colony.

The young leader then made his fatal mistake. He seized the British
guardship, put two of his lieutenants in command, and sent it across the
bay to capture Berkeley without first removing the British captain. Upon
arrival at the eastern shore, the captain delivered the ship to the governor,
and Bacon's men were held captive. When Berkeley returned to James-
town, Bacon followed and stormed the capital Berkeley fled to the guard-
ship, and Bacon set fire to Jamestown. From Berkeley's home, Green
Spring, 100 years before another Virginian phrased the Declaration of In-
dependence Bacon issued a proclamation declaring that, should Berkeley
be upheld by England, Virginians must defend their liberties or abandon
the colony. The young leader then set out upon a grand tour of Virginia.
In Gloucester County he was stricken with a fever and died before his
leadership could be challenged by the king.

Virginia's second rebellion against autocracy ended with the terrible
vengeance of an old man who believed that the divine right he represented
had been defied. In demented fury Berkeley hanged without trial more
than 20 men and confiscated the property of many others. Charles II
snorted in disgust upon hearing the news: 'That old fool has hanged more
men in that naked country than I have done here for the murder of my
father/ Recalled to England, Sir William Berkeley died within a year. In
Virginia, however, a fire had been rekindled, which succeeding decades of
conservatism were powerless to extinguish.

Although self-government in Virginia was immediately threatened, the
uprising served as a warning to other governors and prepared Virginia to
accept joyfully the expulsion of James II. In particular the experience
created among the poorer planters a sense of solidarity. Bacon's Rebellion
was the first organized and violent resistance on a large scale to British au-
thority in America.

Out of the confusion following Berkeley's departure emerged a succes-
sion of even more incompetent governors who, as royal agents through the

HISTORY 43

decade preceding the Glorious Revolution/ despoiled the colony and
sought to destroy popular government in Virginia. Against even the de-
termination of James II, however, the burgesses successfully defended
their two most precious prerogatives: control over general taxation and
initiation of legislation.

After the trying first years, life in Virginia had soon taken on except
for the effects of Negro slavery and eighteenth-century affluence the
character it retained in Tidewater even after the newer colonists of Pied-
mont and the Valley altered radically the total picture. In the seven-
teenth century Virginia society had been divided into three main classes:
a small group, privileged and secure, if not wealthy; the vastly preponder-
ant yeomen, who were to become a true middle class after slavery had been
thoroughly introduced; and the indentured servants. Static among the
nonf ree laborers was the Negro minority. Members of the miniature aris-
tocracy owned large, but rarely enormous, tracts of land, stretching back
from the wooded banks of the great rivers or on navigable tributary
creeks, and lived in comfortable houses. No one had very many slaves or
the more usual indentured servants. A few leaders managed a little better,
usually by doing something besides raising tobacco. Planter William Fitz-
hugh practiced law and engaged in trade; William Byrd I traded and spec-
ulated in frontier land. These big planters monopolized the seats in the
governor's council and, with him, ran the colony. M.Durand a Huguenot
forerunner of the French to come later observed in 1687: 'There are no
lords, but each is a sovereign on his own plantation. The gentlemen called
Cavaliers are greatly esteemed and respected, and are very courteous and
honorable. They hold most of the offices in the country.'

Mention of books from the earliest days and the existence later of fair-
sized libraries indicate a respectable level of education among the few.
Many small collections of books were recorded during this period. In 1667
a Mr.Mathew Hubard died in possession of more than 30 volumes, includ-
ing John Smith's Historie of Virginia and the poetry of John Donne; and
an inventory of Colonel Ralph Wormeley's library in 1701 listed above
500 titles. The office-holding planters of substance had their children
taught at home and frequently sent eldest sons to schools in England. In
1 68 1 there had been an abortive attempt to establish a printing press in
the colony.

Without luxury and reduced to bare necessities for the majority, life in
seventeenth-century Virginia was not, however, without merriment. There
was time for a good deal of drinking, it seems, and a good deal of convivial
visiting. And everybody smoked. A decade after Bacon's Rebellion,

44 VIRGINIA

M.Durand could say in a pamphlet designed to attract his persecuted
coreligioEists: "The land is so rich and so fertile that when a man has fifty
acres of ground, two men-servants, a maid and some cattle, neither he
nor Ms wife do anything but visit among their neighbors . . . When a
man squanders his property he squanders his wile's also, and this is fair,
for the women are foremost in drinking and smoking.'

In 1682 another rebellion was launched by Virginians. Bumper crops
and the failure of the government to authorize a year's cessation brought
the price of tobacco in London down to the point of crisis. Taking cessa-
tion into their own hands, desperate planters rode through the night tear-
ing up tens of thousands of young plants. It took several months and the
execution of six 4 plant-cutters' to discourage the practice. Robert Bever-
ley, formerly a loyalist, suspected of instigating the riots, was imprisoned.
This unofficial crop control was only a temporary and slight tonic. Lord
Culpeper, a proprietor of the Northern Neck and then governor, wrote the
Privy Council in 1683, the year following the Tobacco Riots: 'I soe en-
couraged the planting of tobacco that if the season continue to be favor-
able . . . there will bee a greater cropp by far than ever grew since its
first seating. And I am confident that Customs next year from thence will
be 50,000 more than ever heretofore in any one year.' Though admitting
that ' the great Cropp then in hand would most certainly bring that place
[Virginia] into the utmost exigencies again/ he promised to put down any
disturbances that might result! The effect on the Exchequer of the conse-
quent decline in price of tobacco was offset by raising the rate of customs,
already over 300 per cent. Taxes in Virginia were also raised.

In 1689, however, Virginia made a fresh start. Amid rumors of a pro-
jected Indian-Catholic massacre and threats of another revolt, the happy
news arrived of the expulsion of James II and the peaceful accession of
William and Mary. Later that year the passage in England of the Bill of
Rights cleared the way for Anglo-American progress. In 1693 education
was given a real impetus in Virginia by the founding of the College of
William and Mary, the second college in America. Finally, the beginning
of the new era was marked symbolically by the removal in 1699 of the
capital from Jamestown to Williamsburg. By 1700, when the population
had reached about 70,000, the most important new trends were under way:
quantity production of tobacco on a vast scale; the consequent growth of
slavery as the foundation of the colony's economy with the parallel sup-
pression of Virginia's sturdy yeomanry; the immigration of new racial ele-
ments; and westward expansion.

The essential history of Virginia from 1690 to 1776 is a record of the eco-

HISTORY 45

nomlc and territorial expansion of a maturing colony. Henceforward to-
bacco dominated Colonial Virginia. A comparatively prosperous decade
following the Revolution in England was terminated by the War of the
Spanish Succession (Queen Anne's War), which virtually closed most of
the ports of Europe to British trade and thus deprived Virginia of a world
market. Cut into by export duties in Virginia and the tax on tobacco en-
tering England 600 per cent by 1705 profits almost vanished. It became
clear that America's real enemy, responsible for adverse legislation, was the
middle class in England, made up of businessmen who were determined to
force empire trade through English channels at all costs.

Negro slavery was the inevitable answer to Virginia's economic impasse.
After 1690, and especially after 1710, the proportion of Negro immigration
rose sharply. Negro slaves increased from about 5 per cent of the popula-
tion in 1670 to 9 per cent in 1700, 25 per cent in 1715, when they numbered
about 23,000 against a total population of about 95,000, and to about 40
per cent by the middle of the century. Having prospered briefly after 1689,
the hardy, independent l peasantry ' never recovered from the blow inflicted
by the Spanish War. Many migrated to other colonies, particularly Penn-
sylvania, but most of them either sank to become the new class of *poor
whites' or rose to become petty, slaveholding planters.

The colony did not come into its 'great days 7 easily. Overproduction
soon resulted from the importation of too many slaves, and a semiprohibi-
tive duty was imposed in 1710. Many attempts to limit or prohibit the
slave trade were obstructed by the British government, which acquired a
monopoly of the valuable traffic in slaves in 1713 by the Treaty of Utrecht.
Tobacco depressions gave a slight encouragement to the development of
manufactures in spite of opposition in England and to the export of na-
val stores and other raw materials. Governor Spotswood established the
first successful smelting furnace in 1715, and other furnaces were set up a
few years later in the Valley of Virginia. Except for coarse ' Virginia cloth '
and farm implements, however, manufacturing made small headway in Co-
lonial Virginia, without skilled artisans or an invigorating climate. During
this period pirates also interfered with trade, but Governor Spotswood did
much to discourage piracy when he destroyed Blackbeard and his crew
in 1718.

Regulation of the tobacco trade became a necessity. From about one and
a third million pounds in 1640, exportation had risen to more than 18,000,-
ooo pounds by 1688, to considerably more by 1699, and after the war
slump had climbed back to about 20,000,000 pounds in 1731. A new in-
spection law, enacted in 1730 through the efforts of Sir John Randolph sent

46 VIRGINIA

to London by the general assembly to present the case of Virginia planters,
brought about an era of prosperity by providing for the issuance of notes
in receipt for crops stored in public warehouses. In 1755, when there
were about 175,000 whites and 120,000 Negroes in the colony, more than
42,000,000 pounds of tobacco were exported.

Geographic, racial, religious, and social changes marked the first half
of the eighteenth century. Steadily new plantations were developed as the
frontier was pushed westward. Governor Spotswood and a cavalcade mix-
ing business with pleasure paid the first formal visit to the Valley in 1716.
As early as 1650-51, however, Abraham Wood and Edward Bland, seeking
a new fur-trading field distant from the encroachments of Maryland, had
made into the southwest a journey of exploration, which was followed spo-
radicallt by other pilgrimages. In 1728 William Byrd II headed a commis-
sion that surveyed the Virginia-North Carolina line from the ocean about
240 miles westward. By this time pioneers from Tidewater had begun to
take up Piedmont land. Large grants, made in 1749 to the Loyal Com-
pany and the Ohio Company, threw much of the western territory
into the hands of speculators and stimulated exploration. That year
Christopher Gist reached the falls of the Ohio, the site of the present
Louis vile.

During the period 1699-1755 several racial strains, other than the Afri-
can, were added to the English stock of Virginia. From the beginning, small
groups of foreigners had come to the colony; eight ' Dutch-men ' and Poles,
sent over in 1608 to make ' soap-ashes ' and glass; a few Frenchmen in 1620
to help found a silk industry; and from time to time a sprinkling of Swed-
ish, Polish, German, and other artisans. Elias Legardo, Joseph Moise, and
Rebecca Isaacke, who arrived from England in 1624, were the first Jews to
reach Virginia. The last of many convicts felons or rebellious victims of
oppression, who were shipped out frequently over a period of about 60
years against the protest of Virginians were 52 Scottish prisoners in 1678,
probably Covenanters. Throughout the seventeenth century small groups
of intransigent Irish had been sent over as political prisoners. In 1699, h w ~
ever, members of the first large influx of foreigners began to come: French
Huguenot refugees fleeing from persecution following the Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes in 1685. The small groups of Germans, who came in 1714
and 1717 to settle at Germanna, the site of Governor Spotswood's iron
furnaces, later joined their compatriots in the Valley. Scottish immigrants
constituted another valuable ingredient in Virginia's new ' melting-pot.'
Having previously ventured across the Atlantic in search of religious free-
dom, these Presbyterians came freely after the Toleration Act was passed

HISTORY 47

In 1689 and on equal terms with the English after 1707, when the Union of
Scotland with England was accomplished.

By far the largest and most far-reaching infusion into Virginia's
stock, however, was the invasion of the tramontane Valley by Germans,
Scotch-Irish, English Quakers, and a scattering of Welsh Baptists, who had
settled in Penn's tolerant colony. About 1730, just when outpost settle-
ment advancing from Tidewater had reached the mountains on the east ?
these people industrious merchants, yeomen, and peasants began a mi-
gration into the Valley that continued in full spate beyond the middle of
the century. These nonconformists brought a dissent that was to destroy
the Anglican establishment and a tough philosophy that was later to over-
ride Tidewater and take the lead in revolt against British oppression.

HEYDAY OF COLONIAL LIFE

By the middle of the eighteenth century Colonial Virginia had achieved its
heyday. Affluence had polished the manners and enriched the life of old
Tidewater and newer Piedmont gentry, while a i hardy race had settled in
the Valley; and beyond the mountains hunters and pioneers were pushing
toward the Ohio.' Estates had expanded along with tobacco production
and slavery until several nabobs held vast domains. Upon these rose the
great Georgian Colonial houses of eastern Virginia, most of which were
built between 1730 and 1760. Libraries grew in number and size. William
Byrd II, with nearly 4,000 volumes, owned the largest, perhaps, in America
at the time. As early as 1724 the Reverend Hugh Jones was recording:
' . . . good Families . . . live in the same neat manner, dress after the
same Modes, and behave themselves exactly as the Gentry in London;
most Families of any Note having a Coach, Chariot, Berlin, or Chaise. 5

Virginians preferred the country. The well-known mansion of brick or
stone, with its various outbuildings, was the center of an almost self-suffi-
cient community. Poor farmers lived in small houses of frame or brick, far
more numerous than the ' great } houses. Stories were long told of remote
planters haunting the nearest roadside to watch for the weekly stage, hop-
ing to find a traveler who could be persuaded to stop over for a day or a
week or a month, Early in the century Governor Spotswood had showed
small Concern in reporting that upon an official Occasion he had enter-
tained four Hundred Guests at Supper.' Colonel James Gordon of Lancas-
ter County noted one day in his diary: 'No company, which is surprising.'

During this mid-eighteenth-century period, life in the Valley was vastly
different from that in the Tidewater. The Germans, who peopled the

48 VIRGINIA

lower region, and the Scotch-Irish, whose province became the upper Val-
ley, brought traditions of hard work from their native lands. They built
small stone houses that were strongholds against the Indians, still inhab-
iting this frontier country. Just behind the vanguard of these industrious
folk sprang up mills, furnaces, forges, and even small factories. The rich
land was turned rapidly into profitable farms. Nonconformist churches
soon flourished here, and education was not far behind.

Defense of Virginia's western frontier in the I75o 3 s provided a seminary
for the Revolution. The French and Indian War, begun in 1754, schooled
Americans to fight British regulars and thrice baptized in leadership their
future commander in chief. Land was behind it all The Anglo-Americans
were pushing farther and farther westward into the 'Great Woods'; while
the French, having long intended to make the Alleghenies if not even-
tually the ocean their eastern boundary, were setting up outposts in
territory already granted to the new land companies. By 1753 the French
had begun stirring up unfriendly Indian tribes and pushing eastward to
implement their claim to the Allegheny westward. On the basis of the
royal charters of 1606, 1609, and 1612, Virginia laid claim later estab-
lished to the West and Northwest as far as British territory extended.
Twice Governor Dinwiddie had sent George Washington out to protect
the interests of Virginia and the land companies the first time to deliver
a formal protest and soon afterwards to join Colonel Joshua Fry's small
force. Washington fell into command when Colonel Fry was killed acci-
dentally. A fort, originally planned by the British at the site of the present
Pittsburgh, had been built by the French and named Duquesne. The
French, advancing from their stronghold, forced Washington to evacuate
Fort Necessity, which he had built at the present Farmington, Pennsyl-
vania, Because the British Government was eager to prevent backdoor
encroachments of the French, General Edward Braddock and British
troops were sent to Virginia in 1755 to lead an offensive. With two complete
regiments of regulars, several companies from Virginia and two other
colonies, and with Washington on his staff, Braddock reached a spot near
Fort Duquesne in July. The general led his redcoats forward in formation
to engage the French and Indians. Surrounded by an enemy hidden be-
hind trees, his men were cut to pieces as they fled, and General Braddock
was mortally wounded in the rout.

Washington, left once more in command, was soon recommissioned as
a colonel and made commander in chief of Virginia forces. Troops were
collected and drilled and forts were built along the immediate frontier.
Though attempts were made to take Fort Duquesne, it was not occupied

HISTORY 40

until late in 1758 and then only after the French, deserted by

and hotly engaged farther north by the British, had it up,

Washington and Ms Virginians were first to enter the rums. This

war, which ended in America the following year ^n the Plains of
and was formally closed by the Treaty of Paris In 1763, marked Virginia's
coming of age. The defeat of the British leadership and British in

1755 had vindicated 'bush-fighting" and given Americans a self-
confidence. Events during these war years had revealed also the
the value of intercolonial co-operation.

The West had become a permanent scene of action. No sooner the
Treaty of Paris signed than George III Issued his restrictive
of 1763, prohibiting trade with the Indians or grants of beyond the
Alleghenles. This challenge trod on too many Virginia toes to tje
seriously, but settlement was further opposed by a renewal of border war-
fare with the Indians. Other troubles were in store for Virginia. In 1769-70
the Walpole Company was formed by associates in England and France^
as well as in America, who began negotiations for a tract on a scale that
would have dwarfed Its predecessors. When it became generally known
that 20,000,000 acres within Virginia's domain were Involved, and thai
the king contemplated a new colony to be known as Vandalia y opposition
flared. Even, reactionary Governor Dunmore, who arrived in 1771, took
Virginia's part in protests that ran on into 1773-74 and forestalled the
enterprise.

A long series of frontier e outrages* became general war again in 1774.
Governor Dunmore led a detachment of Virginia troops into the West and
ordered Major Andrew Lewis forward with another. While the governor
was negotiating peace with the Indians at a point some distance away, the
Battle of Point Pleasant took place on October 10 at the junction of the
Ohio and Great Kanawha Rivers, and the Indians were driven back across
the river. The whole campaign may have been intended to divert public
attention from the political crisis then at hand. Nevertheless, pacification
followed speedily in the West, and it was possible to form the County of
Kentucky in 1776, before troubles incident to the Revolution broke
out again on the frontier.

VIRGINIA DEFIES THE KING

No sooner had the curtain fallen on the prologue, with the Treaty of
Paris in 1763, than it rose on the first act of the pre-Revolutionary drama.
Young Patrick Henry shouted the first frank challenge at the king. Failure

1.10-:.,!:)

50 VIRGINIA

of the tobacco crop had obliged the Virginia assembly in 1758 to pass the
Two Penny Act, providing that for 12 months obligations should be paid
in currency at the rate of two pence per pound of tobacco, the price of
which had then risen to six pence per pound. The clergy complained to the
Board of Trade and Plantations and, after the king vetoed the act,
brought suit for their usual quantity of tobacco and for damages. When
Patrick Henry appeared for the defense in the Parsons' Cause in Hanover
County in 1763, he spoke so eloquently, declaring that f by this conduct
the King, from being the father of his people, had degenerated into a ty-
rant and forfeited all Ms right to his subjects obedience/ that the crowd
broke into a tumult. The jury's award of only one penny damages to the
plaintiff amounted to denying the right of the king's action. Already the
old order was on the way out.

Although Anglo-American economic rivalry was the basic cause, ex-
penses resulting from the war and consequent taxes became the occasion
for the quarrels with the British Government, which believed itself justi-
fied in taxing America to help pay its own debt. The colonies held an op-
posite opinion. The Sugar Bill in 1764 was the first of many attempts to
tax the colonies without their consent. The Virginia assembly was the first
legislative body to take an official step in facing the Stamp Act issue. Bur-
gesses and council protested against both the Sugar Bill and a proposed
stamp tax as violations of constitutional rights, asserting that no subjects
of Great Britain could justly be made subservient to laws passed without
their consent.

The Stamp Act, passed in March 1765, evoked an immediate response
from Virginia. Patrick Henry on May 29 stirred the Virginia general as-
sembly to pass the Virginia Resolves on the following day, setting forth
Colonial rights according to constitutional principles, and carried mainly
by the representatives of a united interior, voting against those from east-
ern Virginia. 'Caesar had his Brutus/ cried the young orator, ' Charles I
his Cromwell, and George III may profit by their example. If this be
treason, make the most of it. ? Governor Fauquier was obliged to dissolve
the assembly, but the die had been cast. Governor Hutchinson of Massa-
chusetts declared, ' No thing extravagant appeared in the papers till an ac-
count was received of the Virginia Resolves.' Nine years later Edmund
Burke in his speech on Colonial taxation gave Virginia credit for arousing
the general resistance to the Stamp Tax.

In the decade that began in 1764 Virginia continued to lead constitu-
tional opposition to the new British policy. On February 8, 1766, the Act
was flatly outlawed by the Northampton County court, which declared

HISTORY 51

'the act did not bind 7 affect ? or concern the of this

colony, inasmuch as they conceive the same to be unconstitutional, aad

the said several officers may proceed to the execution of
tlve offices, without incurring any penalties by means thereof.' On Febru-
ary 27 the outstanding planters of northeastern Virginia, led by
Henry Lee ? met at Leedstown in the Northern Neck 115 strong and
leveled against the Stamp Act resolutions that embodied the principles
later written into the Declaration of Independence. Another association in
Norfolk, the 'Sons of Liberty/ met on March 31 and made pro-

tests. The most important single instrument, however, to form American
opinion during this period was probably An Enquiry the
British Colonies, a pamphlet in which Richard Bland presented in
1766 the first printed argument that Virginia, like the other colonies^ was
*no part of the Kingdom of England/ but united with the British Empire
solely through its allegiance to the Crown a doctrine the American peo-
ple afterwards accepted as the ground upon which they resisted Parlia-
ment. This was a remarkable statement of the political theory actually
underlying the Empire but not recognized by statute until 165 years
later.

Virginians were delighted at the repeal of the Stamp Act on March iS 7
1766. After more than a year of surface tranquility, the Revenue Act was
signed by the king on June 29, 1767. This external tax on glass, paper,
white lead, painters' colors, and tea gave rise to memorials from burgesses
and council and to protests from county after county.

In the autumn of 1768 Lord Botetourt arrived as Virginia's new gov-
ernor. Leadership was .slipping into the hands of a new element from Pied-
mont and farther west. When news reached Williamsburg early in 1769 of
the order to transport the Boston rioters to London for trial, Virginians
were incensed. The assembly, meeting in May, drafted resolutions con-
demning the attempt to transport Americans across the sea for trial,
claiming the right of the colonies to concerted action and appeal, reiterat-
ing the exclusive right of the colony's assembly to levy taxes. Sympathetic
Governor Botetourt was obliged to dissolve the disloyal burgesses, who
withdrew to the Raleigh Tavern, where they signed a strict agreement not
to import any slaves, wines, or British manufactures. The Non-Importa-
tion Agreement was soon adopted in all the colonies. The British Govern-
ment was forced to give up the idea of transporting the patriots of Massa-
chusetts for trial and by April 12,1770, had rescinded all except the tax on
tea and the principle involved. Beloved Governor Botetourt having died,
haughty Lord Dunmore reached Virginia late in 1771 . A royal order forbid-

52 VIRGINIA

ding assent to any restriction of the slave trade led the Virginia assembly
in February 1772 to send the king a petition, in which the trade was
castigated as a 'great inhumanity J and one endangering 'the very exist-
ence of your Majesty's American dominions/

Early in 1773 Virginia took a step that was to organize revolution. Re-
newal of the threat to transport Americans for trial in England empha-
sized the need for greater co-operation among the colonies. Led by Rich-
ard Henry Lee, a group of legislators, including Thomas Jefferson, Patrick
Henry, and George Mason, proposed and the legislature created a
standing committee of correspondence, representing the lower house, to
inform the other colonies through similar committees, which they recom-
mended be set up, of Virginia's reaction to the latest moves of the British
ministry, to receive theirs in return, and to keep in touch with Virginia's
London agent. Unlike the local and unofficial committees of correspond-
ence, originated by Samuel Adams a year earlier to consolidate anti-Brit-
ish sentiment in the faction- torn townships of Massachusetts, this Virginia
committee was an official, centralized body modeled on the permanent
standing committee originated in 1759 to correspond on similar business
with an agent in London. This committee, active until 1772, left four of its
members to the new committee. The effort to transport Americans for trial
was abandoned, and before the year was out Parliament repealed the duty
on tea not without retaining, however, the three-penny custom collect-
able in American ports. Associations against tea drinking were revived.
Virginia had its ' tea-party ' near Yorktown, similar to the one that took
place in the Boston harbor.

From the moment in May 1774 that news reached the colonies of the
Boston Port Bill, closing that harbor in punishment of the tea dumpers,
events moved swiftly to successive climaxes. The Virginia assembly re-
solved to set aside June i, when the bill was to take effect, as a clay of fast-
ing and prayer. Governor Dunmore dissolved the legislature, and mem-
bers gathered the next day at the Raleigh Tavern, declared common cause
with Massachusetts, recommended that a general congress be held annu-
ally, that no East India Company commodity be imported, and advocated
a general commercial boycott of Great Britain. Revolution was in the air
when Virginia's first convention met in Williamsburg on August i, pledged
supplies to Boston, suspended transatlantic debts and commerce, and
elected delegates to a continental congress,

Peyton Randolph of Virginia was made president of the First Continen-
tal Congress held in Philadelphia in September. Here Washington, with-
out pretensions of eloquence, shone as a man of * solid judgment and in-

HISTORY 53

formation.' At the Second Virginia Convention, opening on March 20,
1775, Patrick Henry again was the central figure of high drama. Giving
his impassioned plea for 'embodying, arming and disciplining* Virginia
militia, he closed with the fiery words :

Gentlemen may cry 'Peace! Peace! 7 but there is no peace. The war is actually
begun ! ... Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of
chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may
take, but, as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

Patrick Henry's resolution was adopted and steps were taken for estab-
lishing manufactories to make both arms and other commodities that had
formerly been imported from England.

On April 20 Governor Dunmore provoked the first armed resistance in
Virginia by ordering the gunpowder stored in the public magazine in
Williamsburg to be removed to a warship. Although the governor filled his
palace with marines and threatened to 'proclaim liberty to the slaves and
reduce Williamsburg to ashes' if he or his affairs suffered any injury, he
was forced by the approach of Patrick Henry at the head of troops from
Hanover and other counties to pay 320 for the powder. As soon as the
little army had dispersed, his lordship declared Henry an outlaw match-
ing Governor Berkeley's treatment of Bacon just a century earlier. The
burgesses, called by Lord Dunmore to consider Lord North's proposals,
met once more on June i. They rejected the 'Olive Branch J and, to defray
the expense of the late Indian war, proposed a tax of 5 per head on im-
ported slaves. To protect the slave trade the king's representative exer-
cised his veto power for the last time in Virginia. When the burgesses were
ready for his assent to bills passed, the governor refused to leave the
Fowey, the ship to which he had fled on the night of June 8, and the bur-
gesses adjourned on June 20, never to meet formally again. On June 15 the
Continental Congress had elected George Washington commander in chief
of American forces. The Third Virginia Convention, meeting in July,
quickly provided for a committee of safety, for the raising of regular regi-
ments, and for dividing the colony into 16 military districts. Lord Dun-
more retired to Norfolk, where lacking troops he remained inactive for
several months among a nest of Tories,

Meanwhile the Fourth Virginia Convention passed scathing resolutions
condemning Lord Dunmore and announcing that the people of Virginia
were ready to protect themselves * against every species of despotism.' In
November the ex-governor had declared the colony to be in revolt and had
proclaimed all slaves in Virginia free. On December 9 his defending forces
were routed at Great Bridge by 'shirt men/ militia acting under the Com-

56 VIRGINIA

with 250 men to Charlottesville to capture Thomas Jefferson and the Vir-
ginia legislature. Reunited without these prizes at Elk Hill, the British
moved eastward toward Williamsburg, followed by La Fayette, whose
troops numbered about 5,000 after General von Steuben had joined him.
On July 4 Cornwallis left Williamsburg, paused near Jamestown, where a
part of his forces fought the inconsequential Battle of Greenspring, crossed
the James, and proceeded to Portsmouth and thence to Yorktown, which
he entrenched as a naval base.

With the arrival of 3,000 French regulars from the fleet under Admiral
de Grasse. the initiative slipped irretrievably into the hands of the patri-
ots, who strung themselves out across the peninsula. Washington and
General Rochambeau arrived on September 15, and seven days later the
Continental army reached Jamestown by water from the North. While the
French fleet prevented the arrival of British re-enforcements, the .com-
bined American and French forces began on September 28 to converge on
Yorktown. The siege ended on October 19, with General Cornwallis's sur-
render.

VIRGINIANS IN THE MAKING OF THE CONSTITUTION

In the movement toward stronger union that resulted in the adoption of
the Constitution, Virginia again played the leading part. Under the Arti-
cles of Confederation the Government was without power to regulate
trade, raise revenue, or make foreign treaties all pressing needs. James
Madison, justly called the father of the Constitution, introduced into the
Virginia general assembly in 1785 the resolution inviting commissioners
from Maryland to meet with commissioners from Virginia to discuss com-
mon problems of trade and navigation. The conference, which opened in
March at Alexandria and was continued at Mount Vernon, resulted in a
plan for the two States' joint regulation of commerce and was the first step
toward permanent union of the thirteen commonwealths. On January 21,
1786, the general assembly of Virginia adopted resolutions inviting all
other States to meet for the purpose of considering the trade of the United
States. Five States sent commissioners to the Annapolis Convention of
September 11-14, 1786. Though navigation and commerce were still the
points at issue, Washington and Madison were seeing the meeting of rep-
resentatives of the several States as another step toward a stronger union.
At Annapolis the Virginians were reinforced by Alexander Hamilton of
New York. The convention adopted Hamilton's address that pledged the
delegates to endeavor l to procure the concurrence of the other states in

HISTORY 57

the appointment of commissioners, to meet at Philadelphia, on the second
Monday in May next to take into consideration the situation of the
United States.'

George Washington was elected president of the convention that opened
in Philadelphia on May 14, 1787. Governor Edmund Randolph of Vir-
ginia presented the ' Virginia Plan,' which incorporated James Madison's
ideas and furnished the basis of deliberations. Madison spoke more fre-
quently than any other delegate, kept copious notes that have enlight-
ened historians, and wrote 20 of the 85 Federalist papers, which created a
public opinion favorable to the adoption of the Constitution. The seven
Virginia delegates George Washington, George Wythe, George Mason,
James Madison, Edmund Randolph, John Blair, and James McClurg
fought for the inclusion of a bill of rights, for the immediate cessation of
the slave traffic, and for a progressive program of abolition. Because a bill
of rights was omitted, because the Deep South and New England traders
forced a compromise that continued the slave traffic until 1808 and failed
to provide for the ultimate abolition of slavery, and because a mere ma-
jority of Congress was permitted to determine tariff policies, George
Mason and Edmund Randolph refused to sign the instrument. James Mc-
Clurg and George Wythe were absent. George Washington, James Madi-
son, and John Blair signed, believing that the faults could be corrected
immediately by amendments.

Virginia was the tenth State to ratify the Constitution. Meeting on
June 2, 1788, the rank and file of delegates to the State convention split
on sectional lines, Tidewater and the northwest favoring ratification,
while Piedmont and the slaveless southwest, refusing to sanction the com-
promise between commercial North and plantation South over slavery
and the tariff, fought for a second convention and revision. Among the
leaders, Mason and Henry, encouraged by Richard Henry Lee writing
from Chantilly, directed the opposition; Madison, Wythe, Pendleton,
Henry Lee, and even Randolph, backed up by Washington's letters from
Mount Vernon, conducted a successful defense. The attempt by the
Northeastern States, acting through John Jay in 1786, to surrender navi-
gation on the Mississippi to Spain had aroused such suspicion of New
England's intentions that it took all of visionary Madison's persuasive
talents to win ratification at last on June 26 by a small margin, and then
only with the assurance that the first Congress would submit to the States
amendments constituting a bill of rights, and with the clear proviso that
the people of Virginia could cancel ratification setting up the Union 'when-
ever the powers granted unto it should be perverted to their injury or op-

58 VIRGINIA

pression.' The convention suggested 40 amendments, which were the
bases of the 10 that became the Bill of Rights in the Constitution the first
nine introduced by James Madison and the tenth by Richard Henry Lee.

Meanwhile Virginia had been undergoing important geographical'
changes. Byrd's line between Virginia and North Carolina was extended
west in 1779, although the exact location was disputed for another cen-
tury; and the north-south boundary between Virginia and Pennsylvania,
agreed upon that same year, was run in 1784-85. Within a year of the
peace treaty, which recognized Virginia's claims, the Old Dominion sur-
rendered the entire Northwest Territory the vast section between the
Ohio River and the Canadian border west from Pennsylvania to the Mis-
sissippi, and including the Great Lakes area to the United States. In
1792 Kentucky became a State, thus fixing the limits Virginia preserved
until 1 86 1. Meanwhile, an interior change of territorial status had taken
place the disappearance of the great proprietary of the Northern Neck.
Taken up first in 1673 by Thomas, Lord Culpeper, who acquired five-
sixths of the territory from the original grantees, the proprietary had
passed in 1689 by marriage into the family of the fifth Lord Fairfax and
was abolished by the general assembly in 1786.

George Washington, who took office as first President under the new
Government on April 30, 1789, exerted a calming influence upon a decade
of growing pains and political turmoil. Back from Paris in December 1789,
Thomas Jefferson was appalled at the antidemocratic spirit he found in
the highest places. Three months later Washington chose him Secretary of
State. In opposition to Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton,
he began to marshal the growing ranks of antifederal extremists who were
to overthrow the conservatives in 1800. In the meantime the conservatives
were ascendent. Led by Hamilton, they forced through the Assumption
Bill in 1790, which Virginia and the other Southern States, with the ex-
ception of South Carolina, opposed on the ground that their debts were
almost paid and the Government's assuming the debts of the Northern
States inflicted an unfair hardship upon the South. As a sop to the agr&r-
ian opposition, they threw in the Southern choice of a site on the Potomac
for the National capital, for which Virginia had already ceded territory.
The next year Jefferson fought Hamilton's creation of the Bank of the
United States. When war broke out between England and France in 1793
and John Jay negotiated a thoroughly Federalist treaty with England,
attitudes split squarely; the banking and commercial imperialists, led by
Hamilton, sympathized with England; the agrarian progressives, led by
Jefferson, remained true to the cause of revolution and to America's old

HISTORY 59

ally. In 1796 President Washington, having served two terms, retired to
Mount Vernon, expressing regret that the ' increasing weight of years'
admonished him ' to decline being considered among the number of those
out of whom a choice is to be made/ but over Adams's administration he
watched benevolently. In 1798 the Federalists enacted the infamous Alien
and Sedition Laws, which made it possible to deport persons of less than
14 years' residence and to throw into jail others who should express un-
American sentiments in other words, ideas openly and severely in op-
position to administration policies.

THE VIRGINIA DYNASTY

The accomplishments of Thomas Jefferson's administration, antithetical
to that of Adams, were the clear articulation of democratic philosophy, the
acquisition of a vast territory, and the futile enunciation of the principle
that peace was more to be desired than the profits of commerce.

This man who had sprung from privileged aristocracy had from his
youth espoused the cause of the masses. Upon assuming office, he dis-
carded the monarchical rituals that had characterized the first two ad-
ministrations and at once abolished from public entertainments all prece-
dents as to rank and distinction. Opposed to the aristocratic doctrines of
Alexander Hamilton and distressed because of Washington's conserva-
tism, he had left the cabinet in 1794. As vice president during Adams's ad-
ministration he had fought the Alien and Sedition Laws and had drafted
the Kentucky Resolutions that eloquently protested the silencing, as he
said, 'by force and not by reason the complaints and criticisms, just or
unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of our agents.' The first of the
alien laws, raising the number of years for naturalization from 5 to 14, was
repealed in April 1802; the third, permitting the President to order ' dan-
gerous ' aliens out of the country, died at the end of the two-year period to
which it was originally limited; and the sedition law, classifying as a crime
criticism of the Government and of Federal officials, expired in March
1801, The establishment of a citizen's right to expatriation was a further
expression of Jeffersonian democracy.

In acquiring the Louisiana Territory, Thomas Jefferson exceeded his
constitutional authority to the great advantage of the United States.
Robert R. Livingston, whom Jefferson had appointed minister to France,
had expressed naive faith in existing treaties and apparently did not share
Jefferson's belief that French occupation of Louisiana would be 'very
ominous to us.' An ocean, moreover, separated Jefferson from Livingston,

60 VIRGINIA

and letters were in danger of interception. So the President sent to France
as an envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary another Virgin-
ianhis trusted friend, James Monroe without written authorization to
purchase the whole territory. Livingston, somewhat piqued, tried to con-
summate the purchase while Monroe was on the ocean, but failed. So, to
the vision of Thomas Jefferson and the immediate diplomacy of James
Monroe belongs the credit for striking the bargain by which the United
States almost doubled its area for the sum of $15,000,000. Though the
Constitution gave the Federal Government no authority to buy and hold
territory, Jefferson decided to postpone asking Congress to pass an amend-
ment lest Napoleon change his mind. Jefferson sent two Virginians, Meri-
wether Lewis and William Clark, to explore the vast western territory.
The expedition started from the mouth of the Missouri in the spring of
1804, and the explorers returned to the vicinity of St.Louis in the fall of
1806, having reached the mouth of the Columbia River.

Napoleon's Berlin and Milan Decrees and the British orders in Council
three decrees that restricted American trade and led to the impressment
of American soldiers and the search and seizure of American ships-
brought about the Embargo Act of 1807, which Jefferson considered pref-
erable to war. Off the Virginia capes the American Chesapeake had been
fired upon by the British Leopard, with consequent fatalities and the im-
pressment of American sailors. When the money changers cried for war,
Thomas Jefferson substituted economic sanctions. America's experiment
was doomed to failure, however, for the New England traders and owners
of vessels were so vociferous in protest that Congress in 1809 repealed the
Embargo Act and, hoping to stimulate home manufactures, passed in its
stead the Non -Intercourse Act.

Jefferson's mantle fell in 1809 upon the shoulders of another Virginian,
James Madison. The peace policies of Jefferson collapsed during Madi-
son's administration, chiefly because the popular demand for war made in-
roads upon the thinking of cabinet members and lawmakers. In June 1812
Congress declared a state of war to exist between the United States and
Great Britain. Again the Virginia coast became a British target. In Feb-
ruary 1813 Admiral George Cockburn, commanding British vessels, en-
tered the Chesapeake, made headquarters at Lynnhaven Bay, landed a
force of i, 800 men, and plundered coastal plantations, In April the British
St.Domingo captured the U.S.S. Dolphin in the Rappaharmock River. In
June, though Cockburn had been reinforced by Admiral Borlasse Warren,
the enemy fleet was repulsed in its effort to take Norfolk and Portsmouth,
A few days later, however, Cockburn successfully pillaged the little town

Architecture I

Photograph by W, Lincoln Hightan

MCOtfAN GABIE.END, BACON'S CASTtE (c 165S),SDIRY COWNW|

Photograph by courtesy of the Virginia State Chamber of Commerce
WILTON (1762), MIDDLESEX COUNTY

ADAM THOROUGHGOOD HOUSE (c. 1634), WWNCESS ANNE COUNTY

Photograph by courtesy of the Virginia Conservation Commission

Photograph by courtesy of the Virginia State Chamber of Commerce

WESTOVER (1730-35), CHAUtES OTY COUNTY

LOWER BRANDON (18th CENTURY), PRINCE GEORGE COUNTY

Photograph by courtesy of the Virginia Conservation Commission j^

&IEMO Oei5-19),FLUVANNA COUNTY

Photograph by W. Lincoln Highton

CARTER'S GROVE (175)), NEAR WILLIAMSBURG

Photograph by W Lincoln Htghton

Photograph by W, Lincoln Highton

GUNSTON HAIL (V755-58), FAIRFAX COUNTY

ANNiFIELD (T790), NEAR BERRYVlLLEl

Photograph by W. Lincoln Highton

Photograph by courtesy of th Vifjjfaki Cowrvotlou Comm$$!on
'GREAT ROOM/KENMORE (1752-771 FREDERICKSBURG

Photograph by W. Lincoln Highton

ROLFE HOUSE (c. 1651) INTERIOR, NEAR SURRY

VICTORIAN PARLOR, VALENTINE MUSEUM (WICK HAM HOUSE, 1812), RICHMOND

Photograph by courtesy of the Virginia Conservation Commission

MtANGE HAlt, CAWTirS G|OVi (1751% NCAI

Photogroplt by W. Lincoln

HISTORY 6l

of Hampton, but soon thereafter turned his attention to the Carolinas.
Despite Cockburn's return to the Chesapeake Bay in August 1814, Vir-
ginia suffered during the rest of the war little more than the shock of see-
ing Washington burned and President Madison and his plumply pretty
wife Dolly seek refuge on its soil. The ratification of the Treaty of Ghent
in February 1815, establishing the principle of the freedom of the seas,
brought peace to the last year of Madison's second term, and sounded the
death knell of the Federalist party, which had been expiring for some time
with painful gasps. In addition, it paved the way for the 'era of good
feeling 7 coincident with the two terms of James Monroe, the last of the
Virginia dynasty.

As President of the United States, Monroe prevented the fortification
of the Canadian border, acquired the Floridas, was party to the Missouri
Compromise, and enunciated the great doctrine that has continued to
dominate the foreign policy of the United States. Madison had wanted
war vessels removed from the Great Lakes. Monroe all but achieved the
goal. He sent to the British ministry 'a precise project for limiting the
force 7 ; in January 1817 Lord Castlereagh accepted the proposal; the ac-
tual reduction became effective the following year. The powers agreed to
the maintenance of but one vessel on Ontario, two on the upper lakes, and
one on Champlain. Thus the unfortified border made possible permanent
peace between Canada and the United States and proved that disarma-
ment promotes good will and security.

In annexing all Florida Monroe merely completed the task he had set
out to accomplish when he went to France as Jefferson's special represent-
ative in 1803 and again in 1804. When Napoleon had sold the Louisiana
Territory, he had said clearly that West Florida was included. Both Mon-
roe and Livingston thought that the entire area had been purchased only
to be rudely awakened soon after the bargain was sealed. Later an up-
rising of the Seminoles, which was speedily, though unauthoritatively,
quelled by General Andrew Jackson, expedited the settlement of the Flor-
ida question. On February 22, 1819, Secretary John Adams arranged
the treaty that effected the purchase from Spain of all East and West
Florida.

The Missouri Compromise, framed by Virginia-born Henry Clay, was
passed in March 1820. Jefferson had consistently opposed slavery; Madi-
son had spoken of it as a ' dreadful calamity/ Monroe took steps toward
the repatriation of the blacks to Africa. In Liberia, where the town of
Monrovia still bears his name, several colonization projects were under-
taken with his encouragement.

62 VIRGINIA

On December 2, 1823, Monroe sent to Congress his annual message that
embodied the principles later known as the Monroe Doctrine, The Holy
Alliance, created to suppress liberalism, was about to interfere with the
new republics in South America. Jefferson, who had stood consistently
against entangling alliances, corresponded with Monroe immediately be-
fore the message was written. Thus the doctrine protesting future Euro- 7
pean colonization in America and the extension on this hemisphere of such
systems as those the Holy Alliance promoted was the contribution of both
Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe.

The treaty with Russia signed on January u, 1825, establishing the
northwest boundary of the United States, was one of the last significant
accomplishments of Monroe's administration.

Meanwhile sectionalism in Virginia had reared its head in a contest be-
tween a cismontane and a tramontane people. Unbalanced political repre-
sentation between the two parts of Virginia led to threats of State dis-
memberment. In 1816, the year of James Monroe's presidential election, a
compromise was reached by which the west 'obtained a representation in
the Senate based upon white numbers in exchange for a law equalizing
land values for purpose of assessment/ Slavery agitation subsided, inter-
nal improvements began, and a crop of young politicians matured. The
rising spirit of nationalism was typified by the American System, which
had crept into Virginia with the demand for better means of communica-
tion between the eastern and western sections.

Partly because of this system Virginia moved into an epoch of solidifi-
cation and construction. The general assembly authorized in 1816 the
President and Directors of Public Works. The whole State united in 1819
against the establishment of Federal banks. But with agriculture, the case
was different. Between 1817 and 1830 the eastern part of the State expe-
rienced a great industrial decline and loss of population. Tobacco planters
gave up their impoverished farms to briars and broomsedge and moved to
the western frontiers or into the new Southern cotton states, Fairfax
County by 1833 tad become a ruin; Norfolk, said Henry Ruffner in 1847,
had lost half its commerce in 25 years. In much of the Piedmont and Tide-
water, plantations were so run down that they could support only their
owners; land values fell from $206,000,000 to $90,000,000 from 1817 to
1830; the total increase in the white population was only 91,213 in the dec-
ade following 1820. Similarly, the decrease of Virginia's exported goods
fdl from $8,212,860 in 1817 to $3,340,185 in 1828. The eastern part of the
State was left with only the resource of surplus Negroes.

During the years following 1818 Virginia was enveloped in one of Amer-

HISTORY 63

ica's periodic depressions. The planters of Tidewater and Piedmont dis-
carded tobacco for cotton and tried to rejuvenate wornout land. They at-
tributed their failure to the American System's doctrine that a high pro-
tective tariff was essential for making the nation self-supporting. Western
Virginia, however, was developing rapidly. Wheat, sheep, and iron were
coming to the front as economic products. But the inefficiency of the State
in supplying this section with adequate means of communication brought
dissatisfaction. Unable to fit slavery into their industrial scheme, the
mountaineers turned against the American System just at the time that
the depleted land of the east was being brought back to fertility and the
sale of slaves had become an important economic factor.

Sectionalism was nowhere so apparent as in education. Only on the
promise that free schools should later be established did the western part
of Virginia consent to an annual appropriation of $15,000 for a proposed
university. When the University of Virginia was founded in 1819, the site
chosen was close to the mountains.

The Missouri Compromise had thrown the balance of political power to
the North. The slavery question was dimmed, however, by agitation that
centered about the tariff. The ' Tariff of Abominations/ enacted in 1828,
caused the South to unite solidly against the North and brought about
talk of secession.

SECTIONAL STRIFE AND SLAVE BREEDING

Although Andrew Jackson, elected in 1828, was against the American
System, he did nothing at first toward lowering the high tariff. After South
Carolina's Nullification Act, Governor John Floyd announced that any
attempt to cross Virginia's territory would be met with armed resistance.
Talk of secession was temporarily suspended by the passage of Clay's
compromise tariff, providing for a gradual reduction of rates until 1841,
and after 1842 for no duties above 20 per cent.

At the Whig Convention of 1839, presided over by James Barbour of
Virginia, were nominated the party's first successful candidates, William
Henry Harrison and John Tyler, both Virginians. Tyler, who followed
Harrison's short tenure of office (March 4 to April 4, 1841), pursued the
policies of the Virginia dynasty and fought the attempted revival of the
American System. During Tyler's administration the Treaty of Washing-
ton was signed (1842), fixing the Canadian boundary as far west as the
Rocky Mountains, and Texas was annexed. Though Governor William
Smith called out three regiments for participation in the Mexican War

64 VIRGINIA

(1846-48) and only one was accepted, the war's two heroes were Virgin-
ians Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott.

The question of slavery now dominated the scene. With the exhaustion
of Tidewater soil and the rise of King Cotton, eastern Virginians were
driven into a nefarious traffic that of supplying the new South 's demand
for more slaves. As the interstate slave trade increased, Virginia was
dubbed the ' breeder of slaves. 7 In the western part of the State, abolition-
ists came to the front. In Virginia the slave industrial system was in a
death grapple with the free industrial system. Nat Turner's slave insur-
rection of 1831 crystallized sentiment for and against abolition. Citizens
flocked to one of three standards: removal of free Negroes from the Tide-
water and Piedmont sections; deportation of the entire Negro population;
and a plan for gradual emancipation. In the legislature of 1832 an act that
provided for colonization of free Negroes and another that would have
brought about emancipation were lost by narrow margins. Later the
' Atherton Gag/ preventing discussion of slavery, was passed by the Na-
tional House.

The Wilmot Proviso intensified hatred and misunderstanding. Virginia
declared itself against the proposed exclusion of slavery from all territory
to be acquired from Mexico. A crisis was averted, however, by Clay's
Compromise of 1850, During 1852, the year Uncle Tom's Cabin was pub-
lished, the Virginia branch of the American Colonization Society sent 243
Negroes to Liberia. The slavery question was revived in 1854 by the
Kansas-Nebraska Bill, allowing local option as to slavery in new Terri-
tories; and in 1857 by the Dred Scott Decision. On the night of October 16,
1859, John Brown's band seized the United States arsenal at Harpers
Ferry. At night 100 marines under Colonel Robert E, Lee arrived, sur-
rounded the arsenal, and captured the raiders. In a swift trial, John Brown
was convicted of murder and treason and hanged.

But Virginia remained union minded and declined South Carolina's pro-
posal for a Southern convention. By 1860, however, the State needed only
the shot fired at Fort Sumter by Edmund Ruffin, a Virginian, to crystal-
lize anti-union sympathies. When Lincoln issued a call for troops on
April 15, 1861, Governor John Letcher refused to supply Virginia's quota.
On the 1 7th the State Convention voted to secede from the Union. On
April 23 Governor Letcher placed Robert E, Lee in command of Virginia
troops. On the 25th Virginia joined the Confederate States. On May ai,
1861, Richmond was made the capital of the Confederacy.

The Virginia that seceded from the Union retained the forms, if not the
substance, established during the half century that ended with the inau-

HISTORY 65

guration of John Quincy Adams. The caste system placed its entire weight
on slavery. Just above the slave was the free Negro, fettered with legal re-
strictions, despised by 'poor whites/ that great mass of miserable people
strewn about the Tidewater and Piedmont. In contrast were the poor
' mountain whites/ primitive, rugged, proud. Above these was the yeoman
farmer class, independent, self-respecting, deeply religious. The planter
class, at the top, had its own strata 'the rabble of small planters/ pos-
sessing few slaves; the middle-class planters; and lastly a handful of upper-
class planters. In 1860 out of a white population of 1,047,299 only 52,128
persons owned slaves; half of these held from one to four, and only 114
individuals owned as many as 100 slaves.

In mid-century Virginia shared with the rest of the States in the spate
of immigration that followed the collapse of liberal movements in Europe
when the revolutions of 1848 failed. Among the newcomers, who settled
chiefly in Richmond, were many Jews. Although they had filtered into the
colony from the beginning and there were 26 heads of families in Rich-
mond who organized in 1789 Virginia's first Jewish congregation, Jews
had not been attracted to agrarian Virginia. By the end of the eighteenth
century they were coming in steady, if thin, streams, which swelled
abruptly in 1848.

Except for the few towns, Virginia's Tidewater and Piedmont land-
scape was a patchwork of farms wedged between plantations. In the 'big
house ' the table was weighted with food and wines, and entertaining was
on a grand scale. As many as 20 people often dined at Boiling Hall and
remained the night, subjected only to a little 'doubling up.' Henry Bar-
nard, who visited Shirley in 1833, left a minute description. At eight
o'clock the family had breakfast a cup of coffee or tea drunk 'fashion-
ably/ cold ham 'of the real Virginia flavor/ and a variety of hot breads.
About one o'clock the invited guests arrived, the gentlemen consumed
'grog/ and at three o'clock dinner was served. After champagne, the upper
cloth was removed for the elaborate desserts. 'When you have eaten this,
off goes the second table cloth, and then upon a bar,e mahogany table is
set the figs, raisins, and almonds and ... 2 or 3 bottles of wine.' The
planter, as a rule oft-married and sire of many children, bought his whis-
key by the barrel, fraternized at the tavern, went to barbecues, hunted,
and took his daily tour of the plantation.

The slaves, grouped together in the 'quarter/ had plenty of fuel and a
daily ration of a quart of corn meal and half a pound of salt pork for each
adult, supplemented by vegetables in season. Coarse winter clothing,
shoes, and blankets were issued in October; and medical attention was

66 VIRGINIA

provided. They had their dances, baptizings, 'preaching,' house-raisings,
and hunted rabbit, 'coon, and 'possum. The plantation was a factory, a
school, a parish, a matrimonial bureau, a nursery, and a divorce court.

After 1835, the growing of wheat began to predominate south of the
James, particularly in Tidewater; and farm land increased enormously in
value, rising from $216,401, 543 in 1850 to $371,761,661 in 1860. Industry's
output in Virginia rose from $29,602,507 in 1850 to $50,602,507 in 1860.

BATTLE GROUND OF THE 'SIXTIES

Virginia was the central battle ground of the war. Hoping for a quick sub-
jugation, Federal armies occupied Alexandria and western Virginia (ad-
mitted as a separate State on June 20, 1863), reinforced the garrison at
Fort Monroe, and threatened to enter the Valley near Harpers Ferry.
Outmaneuvered north of Winchester and decisively defeated at Manassas
on July 21, 1 86 1, the North began molding a finer military organization;
while the South, except for unsuccessful efforts to recover western Vir-
ginia, awaited the next Federal move.

Declaration of martial law around Richmond, the Hampton Roads
posts, and other threatened zones, early in March 1862 followed by the
battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac on March 9, the evacuation
of Norfolk on May 9, and preparations for the evacuation of Richmond
the following week was the result of Federal activities in the fall of 1861
and the winter following. Union forces took the forts at Cape Hatteras
in August and those at Roanoke Island in February, thereby opening the
back door to Norfolk. The coast of South Carolina below Charleston was
occupied in November. Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and Fort
Donelson on the Cumberland were captured in February, leading to the
loss of Kentucky, half of Tennessee, and of Nashville, for the duration of
the war. The Trent A/air purely naval -in November and December al-
most culminated in war between the United States and Great Britain and
momentarily raised Confederate hopes. The capture of New Orleans in
April closed the mouth of the Mississippi, The battle of Shiloh on April 6
and 7 resulted in the loss of General Albert Sidney Johnston. The loss of
Island No.io on April 8 opened the upper stretches of the Mississippi to
the Union fleet and resulted in the subsequent evacuation of Corinth and
Fort Pillow and in the Battle of Memphis and the consequent destruction
of the Confederate river fleet.

Military movements on a large scale began in Virginia in March 1862.
General Joseph E. Johnston withdrew from the vicinity of Washington to

HISTORY 67

the Rappahannock. McClellan transferred his army to the vicinity of Fort
Monroe and in May began an advance on Richmond, retarded by John-
ston, now on the Peninsula; and Jackson's Valley campaign kept Wash-
ington on tenterhooks. The Federal fleet steamed up the James River to
aid in taking Richmond, but on May 14, was effectively stopped at
Drewry's Bluff a fortification never taken.

After the indecisive battle of Seven Pines on May 3i-June i, 1862, Lee
was placed in command of the Army of Northern Virginia. He defeated
McClellan and relieved Richmond and began to withdraw to strike at
Pope in northern Virginia. In August a decisive victory at Manassas over
Pope now commanding most of McClellan's army as well as his own
produced a near panic in Washington and necessitated the hurried restora-
tion of McClellan to command. Lee's invasion of Maryland, coincident
with Confederate advances in Kentucky, culminated in the indecisive
battle of Sharpsburg, or Antietam, on September 17 and gave Lincoln his
opportunity to claim a Northern victory and to announce on September 22
his purpose to proclaim emancipation. McClellan followed Lee back to
Virginia, but his inertia again proved his undoing. He was supplanted by
Burnside on November 7, 1862. Burnside was effectively disposed of at
Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862, and Hooker, who succeeded Mm,
ended an energetic campaign ingloriously at Chancellorsville in May 1863,
though there the South sustained the irreparable loss of Stonewall
Jackson.

When Lee's army invaded Pennsylvania in June 1863, panic reigned
throughout the North. With Gettysburg, July 1-4, came defeat and the
Confederacy's loss of all hope that European powers might intervene.
Lee returned slowly to Virginia, followed by Meade who temporized
throughout the fall and winter, unwilling to tilt lances again with an al-
ways dangerous foe.

The last phase of the war began in March 1864. Then Grant, who had
had numerous successes in the west including Vicksburg in July 1863,
and Chattanooga in November was placed in command of all Union
armies. Under his plan Sherman began the march across the near South
to cut off supplies from Virginia, Sigel moved down the Valley of Virginia
for the same purpose, Butler advanced from Fort Monroe toward Rich-
mond, and Grant remained with Meade to oppose Lee. Butler's and Sigel's
movements came to naught. After Grant and Meade crossed the Rapidan
on May 4, 1864, the battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna
River, Totopotomoy Creek, Cold Harbor, and the assault on Petersburg
followed in rapid succession, all indecisive. General Early, whom Lee sent

68 VIRGINIA

from Cold Harbor to the Valley, advanced to Washington and Baltimore
in July, but returned to the Valley when additional troops arrived to pro-
tect the Federal capital. When Sheridan, placed in command in the Valley
in August, defeated Early at Winchester and at Fisher's Hill in September
and at Cedar Creek in October, the Valley was lost to the South. Grant
reached Petersburg in June, having suffered more than 60,000 casualties
on the way, and attempted encirclement of the city and the cutting of
rail communications. Heavy blows, failing to break Lee's lines, pushed
the Federal lines gradually westward. The Crater fiasco, six months 7 work
on the Dutch Gap Canal undertaken to permit entrance of the fleet, sev-
eral efforts to break through east of Richmond, attempts to destroy the
Virginia Central Railroad and the James River Canal, and repeated drives
against the roads south and west of Petersburg were all unsuccessful. Fed-
eral failures in Virginia, from the beginning of the war until the final
breaking of Lee's lines, repeatedly depressed Northern spirits. Sheridan's
victories in the Valley and Sherman's march through Georgia, however,
were of sufficient brilliance to re-elect Lincoln. Though heavy opera-
tions ceased, the winter proved hard for the ill-equipped and ill-fed
Southern army. On February 3, 1865, a conference in Hampton Roads
between Lincoln and Seward and Confederate commissioners effected
nothing.

With the coming of spring, Sheridan returned from the Valley, Grant
became active along his entire line, and on the morning of April 2, 1865,
Lee's lines broke southwest of the city. During the following night Rich-
mond and Petersburg were evacuated; and Lee moved westward in an
attempt to join Johnston in North Carolina. Grant sent one corps into
Richmond, left another near Petersburg, and with the remainderfour
corps and Sheridan's cavalrybegan a running fight with Lee that ter-
minated at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. With the surrender of Lee, the
struggle ceased in Virginia, and the Confederacy collapsed.

At last it was over the strange, intangible thing for which men had
fought and women had sacrificed and suffered. The privileged minority
knew perhaps that they had been protecting the wealth ancestors had ac-
cumulated at the price of black men's liberty; the small planters had
blindly followed an example they had seldom questioned; and from the
ranks of the poor whites men and boys had enlisted, or later had been
drafted. They had fought a good fight. Now it was over, and few were
sorry. Soldiers would return to the hearth and the plow. The favored
minority had lost much; the masses could continue to dig a living out of
the soil that had not failed their forefathers.

HISTORY 69

VIRGINIA ACCEPTS RECONSTRUCTION

But a different South a different Virginia lay about them. Great houses
had been burned; churches and courthouses were heaps of ashes; rare
books, valued records had been destroyed. People were filled with awe and
bewilderment planters who had once been rich, poor whites, Negroes.
Adversity had leveled the great and the small. And the conquerors had
come down to take possession of Virginia. The war was over, but days of
Reconstruction were at hand.

The State was without civil government; farms were ruined, and farm-
ers had no implements, stock, seeds, or money; factories were reduced to
ruins; merchandise was depleted and credit was gone; railways were in a
state of dilapidation, and the canal was scarcely serviceable; Negro labor
had uncertain status and white labor was scarce; West Virginia, now a new
State, had assumed no part of the ante-bellum debt, now $48,567,040 an
increase of $16,628,896 since 1860; and Virginia had $27,709,319 in un-
productive stocks. The total loss, exclusive of slaves, amounted to
$104,205,720.53.

The Federal army assumed command of the State and remained in vir-
tual control until 1870. On May 9, 1865, President Johnson recognized
the 'Restored Government' of Virginia the Government had consented
to a division of the State and on May 26 Governor F.H.Pierpont moved
from Alexandria to Richmond. On June 15 the Bureau of Refugees, Freed-
men, and Abandoned Lands set up offices in the State. On June 27 all
Virginia, except Fairfax County, became the Military Department of Vir-
ginia under command of General Alfred H. Terry.

Governor Pierpont was conservative. Through his action in securing
sanction for a revision of the Alexandria Constitution of 1864 to enfran-
chise disqualified Confederates, he incurred the animosity of the radicals,
who wished to gain control through the Negro vote. When his term ex-
pired on April 4, 1868, his successor was appointed by military order.

In the spring of 1865 there were about 500,000 Negroes in the State and
about 700,000 whites. Most cities had their Negro population doubled al-
most overnight; around rural Bureaus squalid villages arose; and the mor-
tality rate among Negroes increased appallingly. Independent courts were
instituted in which all complaints, generally against whites, were heard*
Authorized to function for one year after the declaration of peace, the
Freedmen's Bureau was extended to January i, 1869, though its educa-
tional and financial activities continued until June 20, 1872. Negroes did
not gain suffrage until late in 1869 and radicals never controlled the State.

70 VIRGINIA

The failure of legislators in Virginia and other Southern States to ratify
the Fourteenth Amendment gave a radical Congress excuse for severity.
By the Reconstruction Act, passed on March 2, 1867, and supplemented
on March 23, Virginia became Military District No.i, commanded by
General John M. Schofield.

The constitutional convention, for which the act had provided, con-
vened in Richmond on December 3, 1867. Two-thirds of its 105 members
were radicals, 25 of these Negroes. Judge John C. Underwood, who had
gained notoriety by impaneling a mixed jury and presiding at the at-
tempted trial of Jefferson Davis in May 1867, was elected president. Two
clauses of the constitution drafted by the convention effected the undoing
of the radical element: one provided for the disfranchisement of a large
number of military officers and governmental officials; the other prohib-
ited from holding public office any person who had voluntarily aided the
South during the war. General Schofield, addressing the convention on
April 17, 1868 the day the instrument was approved by that body and
failing to prevent the insertion of these clauses, refused to authorize the
expenditure of funds necessary for ratification.

President Grant having recommended to Congress that the people be
allowed to vote on the objectionable clauses separately, the election, held
on July 6, 1869, resulted in the adoption of the constitution without the
two disfranchising clauses. Gilbert C. Walker of New York, a conserva-
tive Republican, was elected governor; and the legislators were two- thirds
conservative of 181 Senators and delegates 55 were radicals of which 24
were Negroes; three Negroes were conservative. The legislature convened
on October 5 and on October 8 ratified the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments. Virginia had complied with the terms of the Reconstruction
Act On January 26, 1870, the Old Dominion ceased to be Military Dis-
trict No. i.

FROM COMMEMORATION TO ACHIEVEMENT

Then the State began its slow climb to recovery. The slave system had
produced unhealthy economic conditions, false standards, and gross in-
equalities; and the war had brought about destitution. On March 2, 1870,
a start was made toward the goal set by Thomas Jefferson almost 100
years before; a department of public education was established with
Dr. William H. Ruffner as superintendent. Though impoverishment
caused progress to be slow, by the turn of the century the State had laid
the foundations for a system of secondary education, had somewhat

HISTORY 71

strengthened its colleges for men, and had provided two normal schools,
one for women and another for Negroes. Within the three decades rail-
roads relaid their trackage, built new lines to connect remote areas with
centers of population, and established great terminals. Steamships, in-
creasing in numbers, carried commercial tonnage on inland waterways and
north and south from coastal ports. Factories began to add an industrial
economy to the almost wholly agrarian economy that had formerly char-
acterized Virginia.

The attempt to fund the State's ante-bellum debt gave rise to a powerful
political party that stirred racial hatreds, ran the gamut of political pas-
sions, dragged Virginia through State and National courts, and died with
the downfall of its principal figure, General William Mahone. An act of
the assembly in 1871 provided for funding the State debt of more than
$45,000,000 and tentatively assigned one-third to West Virginia. Mahone,
first postwar railroad magnate, entered the political field in 1873. Under
the Democratic banner he virtually nominated the successful candidate
for governor and, during the next four years, built up a small following on
the debt question. Failing, however, to secure the gubernatorial nomina-
tion in 1877, he organized the Readjuster party and built up in two years
a powerful machine composed chiefly of Negroes and disgruntled Demo-
crats. In 1879, having elected a legislature that sent him to the United
States Senate, he began to institute throughout the State a spoils system
strong enough to survive the downfall of its creator. Later Mahone allied
himself openly with the Republican party, elected a Readjuster governor
in 1 88 1, and dispensed Federal patronage in Virginia. The dispute that
had to do with the State debt became more violent and involved; fights
and riots occurred; some laws were defeated, and others that were passed
were vetoed or fought in the courts; and corruption prevailed. In 1883,
however, control was wrested from Mahone's machine. The financial diffi-
culties were adjusted in 1891-92 to the satisfaction of the State's creditors.
It was not until 1915, however, that the Supreme Court of the United
States rendered the opinion that West Virginia must assume its propor-
tion of those obligations incurred when it was a part of Virginia,

But the constitution of 1868 continued to be a thorn in the flesh of white
Virginians, It did not discourage Negroes from voting, and it had made
possible as late as 1888 the election from the Fourth Congressional Dis-
trict of a Negro to the National House of Representatives. The delegates
to the constitutional convention that assembled on June 12, 1901, wrote
into the new instrument the 'understanding clause,' which was to be
effective until 1904 and then to be superseded by an intelligence test

72 VIRGINIA

which required voters to interpret the constitution. The payment of three
years' poll tax six months before general elections was also made a pre-
requisite to voting an imposition that has decreased the size of both the
white and the Negro electorate. The constitution was not ratified by the
voters but ' proclaimed' by the convention and ' approved > by the legis-
lature.

In the constitution of 1902 special provision was made for Virginia cities
in line with the old precedent, reminiscent of England, by which they were
politically independent of counties. Despite various inducements to found
towns, Colonial Virginians had preferred to live on plantations. Each of
the four 'corporacouns 7 constituted in 1619 was to have a capital city; in
1662 an act provided for the building of five towns; acts passed in 1680
and 1691 sought to establish towns. Though a few towns came into exist-
ence, the majority of Virginians continued to live on plantations. The
political independence of the Virginia city had its origin in the act of 1705,
which authorized 16 towns and provided that a community might become
a 'free borough 7 when it had accumulated as many as 30 families, and
after the acquisition of 60 families that its constitution should 'be held
perfect ' and that it might then send a representative to the general as-
sembly. Yet during the Colonial period only three municipalities had their
own burgesses: Jamestown, the first capital; Williamsburg, the second;
and Norfolk, the only free borough. Richmond, when rechartered with
city status in 1842, became under the commonwealth the first inde-
pendent municipality. Now there are in Virginia 24 cities that admin-
ister their own affairs and bear to counties only geographic relation-
ships.

The constitution written largely to its liking, Virginia saw the end of its
commemorative era that had been characterized by mourning, monu-
ments to the illustrious dead, and nostalgia for the days that were no
more, and launched upon twentieth-century accomplishments. The State
was not crushed by the panic of 1907 ; the depression of 192 1 had no serious
State-wide consequences; and the cataclysm of the early 1030*3 was far
less devastating than in most other States. The explanation is to be found
in Virginia's small bonded indebtedness and the diversification of the in-
dustries that were established during the first third of the century. Be-
tween 1899 and 1929 the value of products manufactured in Virginia rose
from $108,644,150 to $745,910,075, and the number of industrial workers
was almost doubled. The foundation, accordingly, was laid for a solid
prosperity that made progress possible in many fields, Virginia began in
1922 to lift itself literally out of the mud with the reorganization of a high-

HISTORY 73

way department under a competent commissioner, and has achieved a
system of roads comparable to any other in the country. The more than
8,000 miles of hard-surfaced roads in the State have been brought about
without a bond issue and by means of a gasoline tax imposed in 1926. And
no i nuisance' taxes have been imposed in Virginia. The $4,000,000 annual
revenue from the sale of alcoholic beverages in State-owned stores has
been in a measure an antidote for depression.

Woodrow Wilson, another Virginia-born President, was inaugurated in
1913. His administration was marked not only by high idealism and em-
phasis upon human welfare but also by a sound fiscal and economic policy.
The Owen-Glass Federal Reserve Bank Act, credited with preventing the
old type of money panic, was the handiwork of Virginians. Robert L.
Owen of Oklahoma, chairman of the Senate Committee on Currency and
Banking, was born in Virginia; and Carter Glass, then representative from
Virginia, was serving as chairman of the House Committee on Currency
and Banking.

The old wounds of the unreconstructed rebels within the State, salved
by the Spanish American War, were completely healed during the World
War. A Democratic President, born in the Old Dominion, was at the helm;
the Nation and Virginia held common cause in what the people believed
to be an honest effort to safeguard those principles of self-government for
which the oldest one of the United States had stood since the settlers at
Jamestown demanded representative government. War brought prosper-
ity to Virginia: factories; munitions plants; Camp Lee, where 50,000 sol-
diers were trained; Camp Humphreys for engineers; Camp Stuart for em-
barkation; and Langley Field for aviators. With the signing of the Armis-
tice, cities that had come into existence or doubled their size almost over-
night found a way to recover from the postwar slump through the estab-
lishment of new industries.

Virginia's principal progress during the twentieth century, however,
has been made in relation to human welfare, particularly owing to the em-
phasis laid upon it by Governor Westmoreland Davis (1918-22). Though
the State still lags far behind in education, the May Campaign of 1905,
which had the essential characteristics of a religious revival, immediately
resulted in better rural schools and more emphasis everywhere upon sec-
ondary education. Consolidated high schools, a start toward vocational
education in cities and counties, a better State university that since 1920
has admitted women to its graduate and professional departments, the
second oldest institution of learning in America converted into a coeduca-
tional State college, an agricultural and polytechnic institute that is send-

74 VIRGINIA

ing its tentacles into many fields, a military institute that possesses tradi-
tions close to the hearts of Virginians, new buildings made possible to a
large extent through Federal aid, and public insistence upon increased ap-
propriations bear testimony to the progress made in the first four decades
of the twentieth century. In 1916 foundations were laid for a modern pub-
lic health program, which has steadily grown in the years that have fol-
lowed. The State Board of Public Welfare, modestly established in 1908
as the Board of Charities and Corrections, received its new name in 1922.
Its functions, consistently broadened, now include the administration of
the eleemosynary and penal work of the State. The prisons, the four re-
form schools, the asylums for the insane, the sanitaria for tubercular pa-
tients, aid to dependent children, old age assistance, and much else come
under its jurisdiction.

During the gubernatorial administration of Harry Flood Byrd the gov-
ernment of Virginia underwent complete reorganization. A commission on
the simplification of State government had been appointed by Governor E.
Lee Trinkle in 1924 and had recommended changes that became the basis
of the new plan. The reorganization act of 1927 provides that only three
State officers be elected by the people the governor, lieutenant governor,
and the attorney general. State government functions under 12 major de-
partments: Taxation, Finance, Highways, Education, Corporations,
Labor and Industry, Agriculture and Immigration, Conservation and De-
velopment, Health, Public Welfare, Law, and Workmen's Compensation.
The heads of all these, with the exception of the department of law, are
appointed by the governor. The governor may inspect all records and,
when the legislature is not in session, may suspend any State executive
officer except the lieutenant governor.

The constitution has been several times amended but not rewritten.
The legislature is bicameral and meets biennially. The house has a maxi-
mum membership of 100, elected for a two-year term; the senate, a maxi-
mum membership of 40 elected for a four-year term. Justice is adminis-
tered by a supreme court of appeals, circuit courts, city courts, trial jus-
tices, and justices of the peace. The general assembly elects the seven su-
preme court judges for twelve-year terms and all circuit and city judges
for eight-year terms. Citizens of the United States who have lived in the
State one year, the county or city six months, and the election precinct 30
days are entitled to vote. Though many city and county officers are still
paid out of fees collected, a board fixes the maximum compensation each
officer may receive, thus removing one objectionable feature from the sys-
tem. Governor James H. Price, inaugurated in January 1938 and now in

HISTORY 75

the midstream of his administration (1939), is emphasizing efficiency in
government and human welfare.

Between the industrial North and the still agrarian South, between po-
litical left and right wings, between extremes of poverty and wealth, be-
tween the advocates of States' rights and the proponents of centralized
government, Virginia even now stands on middle ground. Its democratic
forms are sound; and, more than ever before, Virginia is aware of the ne-
cessity to raise educational standards and to ameliorate the condition of
its vast submarginal population. Virginia still cherishes the heritage
passed down from liberty-loving first settlers, who defied British kings;
from Nathaniel Bacon and Patrick Henry, who roused the people against
autocracy; from Thomas Jefferson, who enunciated the principles of de-
mocracy; from Robert E. Lee, who could turn defeat into spiritual vic-
tory. The weary travelers who disembarked at Jamestown established not
only the first permanent English settlement in America, but a democratic
ideal that may wane but will never die.

lirillliTIIiTiIiIfiTM^^^

The ]\[egro

VIRGINIA was the Negro's first home in the British Colonies of
North America. Anthony, one of the Negroes in the shipload that
arrived in 1619, married Isabella, and the son born to them in
1624, of whom there is record, was the first native Negro of Virginia. The
infant was taken from his home in Kecoughtan to Jamestown in 1625,
and there christened William in honor of Captain William Tucker.

Another Anthony, who probably came in 1622, and his wife Mary were
bound servants in 1625; but by 1651 Anthony Johnson had secured his
freedom and accumulated enough funds to import five servants, on whose
headrights he acquired 250 acres on the eastern shore. First free Negro
and first Negro landowner of Virginia, Anthony Johnson perhaps has the
added distinction of being the first person in the colony, white or black, to
hold as a lifetime servant a Negro who had committed no crime. Johnson
petitioned the court of Northampton County in 1653 for the return of one
John Casor, a runaway Negro whom he claimed for life. Although Casor
protested that he had already been held 'seven years longer than he
should or ought,' he was returned to his master for life. As far as is known,
this was the first judicial sanction in the English colonies of life servitude
where crime was not involved.

A court decree of 1661 that runaway Negroes were 'incapable of making
satisfaction to their masters by the addition of time' to their terms of
service gave legal recognition to a system already in general application.
As an increasing supply of Africans became available, Virginians learned
to do without white indentured servants. In 1672 the Royal African Com-
pany, with the Duke of York at its head, gained exclusive rights to the
African slave trade; and in 1698 the trade was thrown open to the public.
Slavers traveled the 'middle passage' to Virginia, their holds packed with
African captives.

For the great majority of Negroes in Colonial Virginia, the * sun-up to
sun-down ' routine in the tobacco fields was a lifelong ordeal from which
there was no escape. Far more fortunate than these field hands were the
slaves who worked in and around the 'big house.' Here the Negro played
an important role. Many owners provided special uniforms for their house

THE NEGRO 77

servants, and planters vied with one another in presenting before their
guests the best appareled and most courtly butlers. In the kitchen the
Negro cook was supreme, and the slave nurse or 'Mammy' helped to rear
the children of the ' big house/

Many mansions owed much of their beauty and durability to slave
artisans, and Negroes were sometimes encouraged to develop their other
talents or unusual gifts. An advertisement in the Virginia Gazette in 1760
offers for sale ' a young healthy Negro fellow who has been used to wait on
a gentleman and plays extremely well on the French horn,' and another
solicits the return of a runaway slave who ' can play the violin and took
his fiddle with him.' Sy Gilliat, slave to Lord Botetourt in Williamsburg,
was a fiddler at official State balls. Also skilled as a violinist was Robert
Scott, free Negro of Charlottesville, who with his wife and three sons all
accomplished musicians entertained La Fayette when the Marquis vis-
ited Monticello in 1825. Thomas Fuller, 'African calculator' of Alexan-
dria, won fame for himself and bets for his master by his ability to answer
'all questions of time, distance and space.' Thomas Jefferson's servant,
Henry Martin, became in later years bell ringer at the University of
Virginia.

About 300 Negroes were in the colony in 1650, about 6,000 in 1700, and
about 30,000 in 1730. By 1776 there were 270,262 slaves and 297,352 free
persons (several thousands of whom were Negroes). From the beginning
many Virginians opposed the traffic in human beings; while others, like
Patrick Henry, were 'drawn along by ye general Inconvenience' of living
without slaves. Thomas Jefferson voiced the sentiments of both groups
when he inserted into the first draft of the Declaration of Independence a
severe indictment of the English king for having 'waged cruel war against
human nature itself, violating its most sacred right of life and liberty in
the person of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and
carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere.' This clause was struck
out, wrote Jefferson afterwards, ' in complaisance to South Carolina and
Georgia, who . . . still wished to continue [the trade]. Our Northern
brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under these censures.'

Ignoring northern and southern interests, the Virginia legislature dur-
ing the Revolution barred all slave importations into the State after 1778-
This action antedated by 30 years a similar ban imposed by the National
Government. In 1782, Jefferson prevailed upon the legislature to legalize
the manumission of slaves. Although a wave of freedom grants swept the
State, the provision that the master must continue to support the slaves
he freed was a serious deterrent to emancipation. Virginia delegates to the

78 VIRGINIA

National Constitutional Convention of 1787 fought valiantly for the im-
mediate prohibition of the slave traffic and the gradual abolition of slav-
ery. But the slave traders of New England and the cotton planters of the
Deep South forced a compromise that continued the traffic until 1808 and
failed to provide constitutional relief for the slaves.

Several mass uprisings, both before and after the Revolution, revealed
the extent to which doctrines of the rights of man had penetrated 'slave
row.' In September 1800 two frightened slaves reported to a white store-
keeper of Richmond that Gabriel Prosser, a free Negro of the city, was
plotting to capture Richmond and kill all who resisted, except the French
inhabitants/ When a slave named Scott ' astounded his master by acci-
dently pulling 10 dollars from a ragged pocket/ the conviction grew that
a conspiracy was afoot. Prosser was captured in a vessel about to sail for
Norfolk and later was hanged without having implicated a single confed-
erate.

Other slave deliverers were to come, foremost among whom was Nat
Turner. The Negro son of a mother who attempted to kill her baby rather
than have him grow up a slave, and of a father who 'never accepted'
slavery, Turner with a small band of followers cut a wide swath of death
across Southampton County in August 1831. Two months later, Gov-
ernor John Floyd recommended to the State legislature that all laws be
revised to 'preserve in due subordination, the slave population.' While
hundreds of petitioners urged that the * black menace' be dispelled,
Thomas Jefferson Randolph, grandson of Thomas Jefferson, offered the
proposal that all slave children born after a certain year be purchased by
the State and hired out until sufficient funds were accumulated to remove
them from the United States. By a vote of 65 to 58, however, the legisla-
ture declared it 'inexpedient' to attempt to abolish slavery at that time>
and laws were passed that forbade reading and writing among slaves and
that banned all Negroes, slaves or free, from preaching or holding reli-
gious meetings unattended by a licensed white minister,

Of the 517,105 Negroes in Virginia in 1830 less than 10 per cent were
free. Although the charge was made in the slavery debates of 1831-32 that
free Negroes 'incited slaves to rebel/ the records reveal that many of the
free Negro class in Virginia were industrious and law-abiding members of
the community. Most slaveholders encouraged the American Colonisa-
tion Society in its efforts to transport free Negroes to Liberia on the west
coast of Africa, and about 3,000 of Virginia's 50,000 free Negroes were
thus colonized. In Petersburg, according to DrXuther P. Jackson* in 1830
there were 503 free Negro heads of families who owned property of con-

THE NEGRO 79

siderable value, including numerous slaves. Free Negroes would purchase
their slave relatives for the nominal sum of five shillings each an amount
that was written into the deed of manumission but was seldom paid. By
holding these relatives ostensibly as slaves, free Negroes evaded the legis-
lative act of 1806, banishing from the State within 12 months all Negroes
thereafter emancipated.

After 1808, when Negroes could no longer be legally imported from
Africa, Virginia became a breeding place for slaves needed in the cotton
country. Exhausted tobacco lands and curtailed foreign markets had
made slaves a liability in Virginia. But Eli Whitney's revolutionary cotton
gin and the acquisition through the Louisiana Purchase of a vast area
suitable for cotton cultivation had created a demand for slave labor in the
Deep South and Southwest. 'Dealing in slaves has become a big business/
noted the editor of Niks' Register] while Thomas Jefferson Randolph asked
the legislature in 1832, ' How can an honorable mind, a patriot and a lover
of his country, bear to see this ancient dominion . . . converted into one
grand menagerie, where men are to be reared for market like oxen for the
shambles? '

In the decade from 1830 to 1840, when slave trading was at its height,
Virginia's Negro population dropped from 517,105 to 498,829, although
Frederic Bancroft assumes that the natural increase of slaves during the
decade must have been about 24 per cent. Bancroft places the yearly
exportation at 11,793, a figure that checks closely with Thomas Marshall's
estimate in 1830 of an exportation from Virginia of 10,800 Negroes.

'Nigger-traders' roamed the countryside and added slaves to their
coffles at every stopping place. 'Dammit, how niggers has rizP a planter
is said to have exclaimed at a Richmond slave auction, when one Negro
was ' knocked down' for $2,000. Robert Lumpkin's slave jail in Richmond
was better known to the Negroes of the city as the ' Devil's Half- Acre.'

While thousands of Virginia slaves were on their way to the Deep
South, hundreds of others were setting their course by the north star. The
Fugitive Slave Law, enacted in 1850, was first invoked in the case of a
fugitive from Norfolk, named Shadrach, who was arrested in Boston.
While prominent lawyers of that city prepared a defense, ' a crowd of
sympathizing colored persons, at broad noon day . . , surrounded the
prisoner . . . fled with him pell-mell . . . and placed him beyond reach
of his pursuers.' Boston was draped in mourning by protesting citizens
when Anthony Burns, fugitive from Alexandria, was carried back to Vir-
ginia in chains. In Richmond, crowds visited Lumpkin's slave jail to see
the 'nigger who wanted to be free.' Sold by his owner for $900, Burns was

80 VIRGINIA

later redeemed by a Virginia-born abolitionist for $1,30 and allowed to
return North. In 1856, James A. Smith, a shoe dealer of Richmond, fas-
tened Henry Brown in a box two feet eight inches deep, two feet wide,
and three feet long, containing 'a large gimlet, a bladder of water ^and a
few biscuits/ Supposedly rilled with shoes, the box was labeled 'This Side
Up With Care.' When the lid was pried off in Philadelphia and Brown
stepped out, contemporary newspapers made much of the case, and the
fugitive became famous as 'Box Brown. 7 His benefactor, caught preparing
two other Negroes for similar shipment, was imprisoned.

In 1860, when war clouds were fast gathering, there were 548,907 slaves,
53,042 free Negroes, and 1,047,299 whites in Virginia. Although Virginia
slaves knew the great hope offered by 'Marse Lincum's boys/ during the
war many continued to work faithfully at home, and to guard the women
and children of the plantation. At the front, Negro servants tended mas-
ters, eased the latter's last moments, brought sorrowful news back home,
and served in the Confederate armycooking, digging redoubts, building
fortifications, and caring for horses.

When United States troops first invaded Virginia soil at Alexandria,
Negroes of the city cheered and prayed as soldiers released 'an old man,
chained to the middle of the floor by the leg' in Kephart's slave jail, and
turned the building into a prison for captive Confederates. When Gen-
eral Benjamin F. Butler moved into Fortress Monroe and declared home-
less Negroes contraband of war, thousands of refugees flocked to *de
freedom fort 7 at Old Point Comfort. On an expedition along the North
Carolina coast, one gun carriage of the U.S.S Minnesota was manned by
contraband volunteers, and General Butler reported that no gun in the
fleet was more steadily served than theirs, and no men more composed
than they when danger was supposed to be imminent.'

Negro soldiers participated in two major battles in Virginia. During the
Battle of the Crater on July 30, 1864, after three white divisions of the
Federal forces had failed to advance through the breach in the Confed-
erate lines, a Negro division was sent in. A gallant charge, in which more
than 1,000 Negroes were killed, wounded, or captured, resulted in failure
when Federal support was not forthcoming. On September 29 of the same
"year, 3,000 of General Butler's Negro infantry marched up the slope
toward Fort Harrison at New Market Heights into a withering fire from
the Confederates. When the first line of defense was reached, the column
broke ranks and captured the fort, thus breaking Lee's line around Rich-
mond for the only time before the Confederacy's final collapse,

On a Sunday morning in April 1865, after a solemn-faced orderly had

THE NEGRO 8l

interrupted Jefferson Davis's worship at St.PauPs Church in Richmond,
the news spread like wildfire that the city had to be evacuated. Negro
soldiers marched in the next morning and, singing 'John Brown's Body,'
paraded through rows of flaming buildings. To the resounding cheers of
Richmond's Negroes, they halted without command at Lumpkin's slave
jail to pay a moment's tribute to the throng that packed the windows,
while the joyous strains of ' Slavery Chain Done Broke at Last' rang
through the bars.

After Lee's surrender, the Freedmen's Bureau began systematic efforts
to provide food, clothing, and homes for about 100,000 Negro refugees.
Efforts also were made to educate the ex-slaves. Stories are told of prayers
and 'schoolinV under ' Emancipation Oak/ a towering tree that still
stands on the pike between Hampton and Old Point Comfort. In 1866
General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, director of the eastern district of
the Freedmen's Bureau, envisaged Hampton as ( the strategic spot for a
permanent and great educational work' and suggested to the American
Missionary Association that a school for freedmen be established there as
the Hampton Normal and Industrial Institute. This later became the
scene of Booker T. Washington's early labors. Close by the spot where
Mary L. Peake, a free Negro woman, had taught the first contrabands, a
plot of land was purchased and in April 1868 classes were begun. When the
Reverend Richard Colver of Boston sought in Richmond a building in
which to start a school for Negroes, Mary Jane Lumpkin donated the use
of the slave jail that had made her husband famous.

The earning of a living was the chief concern of freedmen. Rumors of
re-enslavement caused Negroes to distrust white bosses. In Virginia,
moreover, the scale of wages was for a decade lower than in any other
Southern State except South Carolina. In 1869, when the Virginia Freed-
men's Bureau reported 'an excessive supply of laborers with a small de-
mand,' a State commission was set up to encourage foreign white labor to
migrate to Virginia.

While the masses struggled for a livelihood, their leaders were fighting
for the rights of citizenship that the Federal Government was promising.
At the State convention called in 1867 to draft a new constitution, 25 of
the 103 delegates were Negroes. The election of 1869, by the largest vote
in the State's history, placed 21 Negroes in the house of delegates and
6 in the State senate. Dr.Thomas Bayne, who had escaped from slavery
in 1858 and returned to Norfolk as a dentist in 1865, was the leader of the
Negro group. He was 'one of the shrewdest politicians of his day, whose
ready tongue enabled him easily to turn aside the ridicule that met any

82 VIRGINIA

Negro representative who rose to speak/ The Norton brothers Daniel,
a physician of Yorktown, and Robert, a merchant of Williamsburg, both
educated in New England were outstanding members of the legislature.
James Bland, reputedly the son of old Pompey Bland, gaming-house
proprietor of Farmville, displayed in the senate ' every characteristic and
mannerism of the gentlemen who in pre-war days had patronized his
father's establishment.'

Negro legislators had their greatest success in the session of 1880-82,
when their support helped to repeal the poll tax and establish a Negro
insane asylum at Petersburg. But perhaps the most important achieve-
ment was the passage of a bill establishing a college for Negroes. Spon-
sored by A.W.Harris, Negro representative from Petersburg, the act
authorized the expenditure of $100,000 for the erection of Virginia Nor-
mal and Collegiate Institute and provided $20,000 annually for its sup-
port.

The climax of the Virginia Negro's brief political career was reached in
1888 with the election of John M. Langston to Congress, from the Fourth
District. Although his opponent was seated, Langston contested the elec-
tion and was finally declared victor when only a few months of the term
remained. On September 23, 1890, he took the oath of office as Virginia's
only Negro representative in Congress. In the final decade of the century,
fraud and intimidation were rife at elections, and violence was not un-
usual. John R. Holmes, a Negro candidate for State senator in 1892, was
shot to death by a white man in Charlotte County. This act, described as
'a very extreme example of intimidation/ solved the dilemma for the
district, since no other Negro candidate presented himself.

With the turn of the century came the virtual elimination of the Negro
from Virginia politics. Delegates to the State constitutional convention of
1901 adopted a poll tax and 'understanding' requirement for prospective
voters, and wildly cheered Carter Glass when he declared: "This plan will
eliminate the darkey as a political factor in this state in less than five
years'. . . The article of suffrage . . . does not necessarily deprive a
single white man of the ballot, but will inevitably cut from the existing
electorate four-fifths of the Negro voters.' The Lynchburg News found in
1905 that of the 147,000 Negro voters qualified under the former constitu-
tion, only 21,000 were registered and of these less than half had 'paid
their poll taxes and qualified.' But, in the words of the Richmond Planet,
the Negro had 'long since abandoned the field of politics for the field of
finance and industrial endeavor.'

Fraternal insurance offered the most lucrative field for the Negro en-

THE NEGRO 83

trepreneur, and in 1890 some 200 companies were operating in this field
in Virginia. As deposits multiplied, few of the companies resisted the temp-
tation to enter fields of higher finance, particularly banking. Richmond
in 1902 had three Negro banks W.W.Browne's Savings Eank of the
True Reformers, John Mitchell's Mechanics Savings Bank, and Maggie
Walker's St.Luke's Penny Savings Bank. Of 25 Negro banks organized in
the State but three have survived: the Consolidated Bank and Trust
Company (formerly the St.Luke's Penny Savings Bank) of Richmond,
the Crown Savings Bank of Newport News, and the Savings Bank of
Danville.

Richmond at the beginning of the century was the religious, as well as
the economic and political, center of Negro Virginia. James H. Holmes,
whose First African Baptist Church had 5,000 members, held the world's
record in baptisms 847 converts in a single hour. John Jasper preached
the Sixth Mount Zion Baptist Church out of debt with TnsT famous ser-
mon, 'De Sun Do Move.' Throughout the State the church has been the
Negro's most successful institution. According to the 1926 Federal reli-
gious census, 378,742 Negroes in Virginia were members of religious bodies
in that year. Of the 2,261 Negro churches, 1,900 were in rural areas, and
70 per cent of all the church members were in rural sections. The rural
church is the common meeting ground for the Negro community, where
young and old gather to chat, to pray, and to be inspired by ' that old
time religion. 3

Although all orthodox sects exist in Virginia, with Baptists and Meth-
odists predominating, numerous 'messiahs' have large followings. The
waters of Virginia rivers have f washed the sins' from many Negroes,
whose strong belief is that baptism ' takes > best in open water. At New-
port News, Elder Lightfoot Michaux established the Church of God, with
mass baptism in the James River as an important part of its ritual.
'Daddy' Grace, dynamic Portuguese ' Bishop, 3 also has a 'mission' by the
James and conducts spectacular baptizings.

The charge that Virginia Negroes put church building ahead of home
building is dubious. Whereas only 23,9 per cent of all Negro homes in
the United States were owned by their occupants in 1930, in Virginia
43.6 per cent of the Negro homes were owned by those who lived in them.
Yet in the low-rent districts of every city thousands of Negro tenants live
in rickety tenements and squalid shacks. Near Newport News, Aberdeen
Gardens, a housing project sponsored by Hampton Institute and the
Farm Security Administration, is a notable example of the attempts to
provide for Negroes better homes in more healthful surroundings.

84 VIRGINIA

Notwithstanding extensive migration to the cities, farming is still the
principal economic activity of the Negro in Virginia. In 1935 the State had
a Negro farm population of slightly more than 269,000, and 43,211 of its
farms were being operated by 27,662 Negro owners, 37 managers, and
15,512 tenants. While the number of Negro tenant farmers increased by
only 364 from 1930 to 1935, the number of owner-operators increased by
3 , 2 1 4 in the same period .

Although various Federal, State, and private agencies have labored to
improve conditions in the rural sections, a low standard of living still pre-
vails. A recent study reveals that 50 per cent of all rural families in Vir-
ginia and 60 per cent of the Negro rural families in the State have gross
incomes of $600 or less, and 25 per cent of the Negro rural families have
gross incomes of $259 or less. Such marginal and submarginal populations,
according to William E. Garnett of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute,
represent a ' human erosion ; far more costly than the 'soil erosion which
occasions extensive programs. 7 It is among such groups that health stand-
ards are lowest and mortality rates highest. In 1930 the death rate for
Negroes in Virginia was 17.8 per thousand as compared with only 10.4 per
thousand for whites, while the infant mortality amounted to 11.5 deaths
per thousand births for Negroes, and 5.9 deaths per thousand births for
whites.

In Virginia, as throughout the South, the relatively heavy concentra-
tion of Negroes in the larger cities gives rise to many acute problems.
From 15.4 per cent of the total Negro population in 1870, the proportion
of Negroes in Virginia cities had increased to 32.8 per cent in 1930. Rich-
mond with 52,988 Negroes and Norfolk with 43,942 have the largest
Negro populations.

Life is especially hazardous for Negro youth in the cities. With public
parks, playgrounds, and athletic fields 'traditionally prohibited,' Negro
children haunt city alleys and dumps. Richmond, Lynchburg, and Nor-
folk have taken the lead in providing community centers or recreation
fields for Negro boys and girls. Since 1910, when Negro reformatories were
authorized by the State legislature, the Industrial School for Colored
Girls under Janie Porter Barrett and the Hanover Manual Labor School
for Colored Boys under S.BXayton have achieved remarkable results in
rehabilitating delinquents.

While the rate of illiteracy among Virginia Negroes has dropped in the
decade from 1920 to 1930, it is still far higher than the figure for the
State's white citizenry. In 1920, 23.5 per cent of the Negro population and
5.9 per cent of the white population 10 years of age or over were unable

THE NEGRO 8$

to read and write. By 1930 illiteracy had dropped to 19.2 per cent for
Negroes and to 4.8 per cent for whites. Of the 162,588 illiterates in Vir-
ginia in 1930, more than 50 per cent were Negroes, nearly two-thirds of
whom lived in rural sections.

In Virginia, as in the entire South, the children of unskilled workers do
not go far in school, and uneducated Negroes find only unskilled occupa-
tions. Virginia municipalities universally exclude from public positions all
Negroes except teachers. In Richmond, the largest center of Negro popu-
lation in the State, all street cleaners, garbage collectors, and elevator
operators in municipal buildings are white. The State's industry has
been traditionally open shop, although in recent years labor union affilia-
tion is growing among both Negro and white workers. Negro school
teachers, laundry employees, railway freight workers, truck drivers, mo-
tion picture operators, and station and service employees are partially
organized in various trade unions. The Hampton Roads port area has
5,000 dock workers who are enrolled in the International Longshoremen's
Association, an American Federation of Labor affiliate, with George W.
Millner, a Negro of Norfolk, as its international vice-president. The State
Federation of Labor, however, preserves segregated unions. Since 1935
thousands of Negro tobacco, fertilizer, peanut, and candy workers have
joined unions affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

While rural Negroes are migrating to the cities, lack of jobs has in
recent years prompted wholesale migration to Northern industrial centers.
Whereas the State's total population increased from 2,309,187 in 1920 to
2,421,851 in 1930, the Negro population declined from 690,017 (29.9 per
cent of the total) to 650,165 (26.8 per cent of the total). In the lo-year
period, 259,317 Negroes left Virginia, while only 72,644 Negroes born
elsewhere moved into the State. The ratio of loss of Negro population is
greater than that of any other South Atlantic State. Estimates indicate
that the decline of Negro population in Virginia will be revealed as even
greater when the census figures for 1940 are made available.

Migration has taken Virginia-born Negroes to positions of prominence
and responsibility in other States. The presidents of 21 Negro academies
and colleges, the editors of five leading Negro newspapers, many prom-
inent Negro lawyers, ministers, and scholars were born or reared in Vir-
ginia. Robert R. Moton, Carter G. Woodson, Charles Sidney Gilpin,
Leslie Pinckney Hill, William R. Valentine, Charles S. Johnson, Anne
Spencer, Eugene Kinckle Jones, Salem Tutt Whitney, and Bill (Bojan-
gles) Robinson are a few Virginia Negroes whose names are widely known.
Within the State, achievement is occasionally recognized. William M.

86 VIRGINIA

Cooper of Hampton Institute and Lutrelle F. Palmer of the Huntington
High School in Newport News were named, in 1938 and 1939 respectively,
as distinguished Virginians on the 'honor roll' of the Richmond Times-
Dispatch; and William H. Moses Jr., of Hampton Institute, submitted the
successful design in a contest for a plan of Virginia's exhibit at the New
York World's Fair of 1939.

The lure of the crowd is strong among Virginia Negroes; every city and
town has a ' street' that serves as the social and business center of Negro
life. Here Negroes from every walk of life congregate to purchase from
Negro merchants, to ply their trades, to discuss the latest developments
in Negro America, or simply to see who else is abroad. Here race pride is
triumphant; drug stores, cafes, barber shops, pool rooms, grocery stores,
theaters, beauty parlors, and garages are operated by and for Negroes. To
the uninitiated, the crowd is a group of idlers wasting time in meaningless
banter. That banter, however, is the Negro's escape from a day of labor
in the white man's world. No matter how carefree the outward appear-
ance of Negroes may be, behind their happy dispositions is the imprint of
poverty, disease, and sufferingbirthmarks of a people living precar-
iously, but of a people wholly Virginian.

Transportation

THE evolution of Virginia's economic and social life is revealed
in the story of transportation. The earliest settlers, having built
their homes beside bays, rivers, creeks, or inlets, traveled by water.
The first roads followed Indian trails and temporarily slaked the thirst of
commerce. Then iron highways suddenly shot through productive sections
and dominated the scene until the advent of the macadamized road.

During the sixteenth century several navigators cruised along the At-
lantic coast and presumably saw the Virginia shore: Verrazzano (1524),
Gomez (1525), and Thevet (1556); and Menendez (1570), who ascended
the Potomac River almost to its navigable head. Bartholomew Gosnold,
who skirted the Virginia shore in 1602, came again in 1607 bringing some
of the first settlers to Jamestown. In the next year came the exploration
and mapping of Virginia rivers and the Chesapeake Bay by Captain John
Smith; and, as the colonists pushed their shallops and pinnaces up the
navigable waterways to barter with the natives for corn, the history of
transportation in Virginia began.

In John Rolfe's tobacco garden, planted in 1612, were sown the seeds of
Virginia's economic future. By 1620 40,000 pounds of tobacco were
shipped to England. As civilization began its slow sweep up the James,
York, Rappahannock, and Potomac toward the fall line, vessels from
Glasgow, Bristol, and London became as familiar sights as the native
craft. Traffic increased, despite such obstacles as the Navigation Act
(1660), a tornado that demolished many tobacco barns about 1666, the
wanton destruction of boats in rivers by invading Dutch fleets (1667 and
1673), an( i Bacon's Rebellion (1676). At the dawn of the eighteenth cen-
tury the population, spread from Tidewater to mountains, numbered be-
tween 60,000 and 70,000 persons, including some 6,000 Negroes. On the
tobacco leaf had been built a prosperous agricultural community that
used water as its medium of transportation. The river barons reached the
full tide of success early in the eighteenth century, and the marshes in
front of their palatial homes were spanned with wharves that welcomed
ships of commerce ready to exchange the luxuries of Europe for a cargo of
golden leaf.

55 VIRGINIA

For the first century and a half of Virginia's history land transportation
in the Tidewater section existed more in theory than in fact. Horses,
brought over first in 1610 and intermittently thereafter, multiplied, fur-
nishing the only means by which land trips of any consequence could be
undertaken. Yet a few roads developed early. By 1624 Jamestown Island
had not only a cartway but two roads one, subsequently called the ' Old
Create Road/ leading from Back Street of ' New Towne' to the blockhouse
at the head of the island, and another that passed along the river side.
Communication with other settlements all on the James River or
Accomac shore was by boat or sloop. In 1633, the year the act was
passed for 'Seatinge of the Middle Plantation 7 (Williamsburg) and two
years after the first settlement was established on the York River, the
general assembly ordered highways to be laid out ' according as they might
seem convenient.' Settlements had begun to spring up in the interior,
reached first on horseback over Indian trails and then, later, by carts. As
the population increased by 1652 it was approximately 20,000 and new
counties were formed, the parish churches, courthouses, ferries, and ordi-
naries (taverns) became the focal points for roads that led from crude inter-
plantation lanes.

In 1658 surveyors of roads were appointed, and in 1662 vestries were
given the power to 'order out laborers in proportion to the tithables.'
These men worked under surveyors ordered to keep the roads 40 feet wide.
Nathaniel Bacon in 1676 doubtless used the Iron Bound Road leading
from Jamestown to Williamsburg (starting point of an old Indian trail that
traversed the peninsula to the Pamunkey River), and Governor Spots-
wood had a road built to haul crude iron from his furnaces at Germanna to
his wharf below Fredericksburg. By 1772 'most families of any note in
Williamsburg had a coach, chariot, Berlin or chaise, 3 according to Hugh
Jones, 'and every ordinary person' kept a horse. In 1738 regulations by
Alexander Spotswood establishing definite postal routes fostered perma-
nency.

An English traveler in 1746 found that the roads from York town to
Williamsburg and Hampton were 'infinitely superior 3 to most roads in
England. Still, most travelers in Tidewater from 1776 to 1782 discovered
that the roads were 'not being kept in repair.' As soon as one was in bad
order, another was made in a different direction. During wet seasons the
roads were 'hopeless seas of mucl with archipelagoes of stumps.' Private
coaches Sir William Berkeley possessed one in 1677 soon grew in num-
ber and were manufactured in Richmond by 1786, the year in which slow
stagecoaches were already lumbering southward from Portsmouth and

TRANSPORTATION 89

Alexandria to Petersburg, and from Richmond to Hampton. These vehi-
cles, covered with mud from top to wheel, rattled along, sometimes over-
turning, frequently sinking into bogs, and always uncomfortable.

From an Indian trail along the Potomac emerged the Potomac path,
along which developed Dumfries, Colchester, and Alexandria. Branching
from this road at Cameron Run on Hunting Creek was a road, known as
'the new Church road' in 1742, that extended by Falls Church to Vestal's
(now William's) Gap, and then to Winchester. The Ox Road, beginning at
Occoquan Creek, ran to Bull Run. In 1752 Lewis Elzey and others were
ordered to open a road 'from Alexandria to Rocky Runn Chappell.' Called
the Newgate Road, it became, after 1755, Braddock's Road. The Halifax
Road led from Petersburg south; and the Carolina Road was developed,
after many changes, from the Shenandoah Hunting Path (extending in the
seventeenth century from Conoy Island in the Potomac to Occaneeche Is-
land in the Roanoke), from the Monocacy Trail, and the Iroquois Trail.
Starting at Bull Run Mountains, it ran through Louisa County to Nor-
man's Ford on the Rappahannock and then into Prince William and Caro-
line Counties. Known as the Rogues' Road throughout the last part of the
eighteenth century, it finally became little more than a path.

Tobacco was responsible for the development of many of the early
roads. The leaves were packed in huge hogsheads fitted with a shaft at
each end that allowed the unwieldy container to be rolled along the ground
behind an ox or a horse. Recognition of these paths was made by the gen-
eral assembly in 1712 and 1720. Soon 'rolling roads' leading to 'public
warehouses' at markets generally located in Tidewater ports, such as
Leedstown and Falmouth, became as much a part of the landscape as the
increasing network of ferries. But, withal, water remained the preferred
carrier, and boats transported the tobacco from the warehouses at the fall
line to the down-river settlements. By the middle of the eighteenth cen-
tury, when there were some 330 ships and 3,000 sailors in the tobacco trade
between Virginia and England, transportation was quickened by pack-
horse travel. Moving in single file along the narrow trails called * tote-
roads/ 'pack-roads,' or 'horse-ways,' the horses carried traffic between
the older towns and the frontier posts that had suddenly become more nu-
merous. The numerous small agriculturists in the Tidewater area, stifled by
the large-scale production of tobacco that low-priced Negro labor had
made possible, had begun an exodus to fresher fields. Many went to the
vague mountain section that had already unveiled its charms to such ex-
plorers as Major (later Major General) Abraham Wood, between 1650
and 1671, and Governor Spotswood in 1716. Up river and over In^~- :

90 VIRGINIA

trails flowed the mass of yeomen. As the pioneers trekked westward, ex-
tending the transportation system from water across the land, the heads
of navigation at the fall line of the principal rivers became cargo transfer
points, thus creating Petersburg, Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Alex-
andria.

In the mountainous sections, trails gradually became roads. In 1760,
William Byrd III, leading an expedition against the Cherokee, cut a path
through southwestern Virginia. The 'tote-paths/ following usually a well-
defined system of primitive traces, widened into crude wagon roads to ac-
commodate the gaily caparisoned and swaying Conestoga freight wagons
that had appeared. By 1782 carriages could cross the Blue Ridge by Rock
Fish Gap. The war path of the Delaware and Catawba Indians that ran
the length of the Shenandoah Valley was known at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, when organized migration began, as the Indian Road,
a name subsequently discarded for the Wagon Road, then for the Valley
Road, and after 1840 for the Valley Turnpike. Along the foothills of the
Alleghenies ran Back Road, to the east of which, at an early date, was the
Ox Road (later called the Middle Road) that stretched from Harrisonburg
to Woodstock. The Wilderness Road, over which so many pioneers trekked
to Kentucky, began some miles northeast of Fort Chiswell, crossed the
New River at Ingles' Ferry, and continued beyond Abingdon to Block
House. Vehicles began to pass over its length only after the legislature
made it a wagon road in 1795. O n the east side of the Blue Ridge ran a
parallel road that led down the Piedmont, a section traversed by such
roads from the Tidewater as the Three Chopt (or Three Notched) Road
and the River Road, both beginning at the falls of the James and extend-
ing by different routes into Albemarle County, terminus likewise of the
Mountain Road that began just north of Richmond. From these trunk
lines diverged lateral routes, ever pushing into virgin territory and in-
creasing in importance as the land travel changed from north-south to
east-west especially after 1773 when Virginians changed the course of
empire westward through Cumberland Gap.

Ferries and bridges were necessarily an early part of Virginia transporta-
tion. From Jamestown a ferry crossed the James River at an early date.
In 1702, antedating by about 20 years many ferries on the James, York,
and Rappahannock Rivers, a ferry line was established between Ports-
mouth and Norfolk; it exists today as the Portsmouth and Norfolk County
Ferry Company. In 1748, 1760, 1764, and almost every year thereafter
until the Revolution, the general assembly passed acts authorizing new
'publick ferries * to transport pedestrians, hogsheads of tobacco, livestock,

TRANSPORTATION gi

coaches, chariots, wagons, and carts. In the mountainous sections were
such early ferries as Castleman's (1764), Snicker's (1766), and Buchanan's
(1811). When traffic became heavy, bridges were built. William Byrd
crossed bridges in southern Virginia in 1728. In 1752 the general assembly
passed an act permitting the Appomattox to be spanned for the first time,
and in 1785 Mayo's bridge cast its shadow over the route that Patrick
Coutts's ferry had long used between Manchester and Richmond. During
the turnpike era the first decades of the nineteenth century many
covered bridges were built, particularly in the mountains.

In the first half of the nineteenth century Virginia's attempts to en-
courage water transportation resulted in the construction of canals. Dur-
ing the preceding century, George Washington, recognizing the necessity
for commercial routes across the Appalachian range to connect the waters
of eastern Virginia with the Ohio River, had urged public developments of
both waterways and highways. After the general assembly had passed
acts in 1772 for opening the falls of both the James and the 'Potomack'
Rivers, the Revolution intervened. The projects, therefore, lapsed and
were not carried out until. 1784, when two canal companies the James
River and the Potomac were incorporated.

The James River Company, promoted by such men as George Washing-
ton, Edmund Randolph, and John Marshall, opened in 1790 the first com-
mercial canal in the United States, stretching from Richmond to Westham
and paralleling the James for seven miles. The Potomac Company's plan
of linking by a canal Alexandria and Georgetown to Cumberland at the
base of the Alleghenies began to materialize in 1802, when the first section
was completed past the falls of the Potomac. Soon the aqueduct, con-
structed under the supervision of Claude Crozet, spanned the Potomac
from Georgetown to the Virginia side. When the canal was finished, some
$12,000,000 had been spent by Maryland and Virginia.

After appointing commissioners in 1810 to View certain rivers within
the Commonwealth ' with the idea of developing more water transporta-
tion, the general assembly, in 1816, created the Board of Public Works to
supervise such transportation enterprises and turned over to this unit a
'Fund for Internal Improvement,' from which the State subscribed to the
stock of eight water transportation companies. The Dismal Swamp Canal,
though chartered by Virginia and North Carolina in 1787, was not com-
pleted until 1828. This canal, which connects Chesapeake Bay with Al~
bemarle Sound, fell into disuse for some time but was reopened from Deep
Creek to South Mills, North Carolina, in 1899, and in 1929 was acquired
by the Federal Government, which also owns the Albemarle and Chesa-

92 VIRGINIA

peake Canal connecting Elizabeth River with North Landing River.

Production and commerce having increased with the opening of the
canal, the James River Company was by 1808 an exceedingly profitable
enterprise. But by 1820 the lean years had come and the canal was taken
over by the State. In 1835, the canal property and rights were acquired by
the James River and Kanawha Canal Company, chartered in 1832 to
carry out the original plans and construct the canal to the Ohio waters. By
1840 this company had extended the narrow waterway to Lynchburg; and
regular lines of packet or passenger boats, pulled by horses six to eight
miles an hour, plied the 156 miles to Richmond.

In 1851 the canal was continued to Buchanan, the limit of its extension.
Here the James River and Kanawha Turnpike across the Appalachian
range provided access to the Kanawha and Ohio Rivers. Paralleling the
James and constructed at a cost of more than $8,000,000, the canal was
one of Virginia's most important early public works and the greatest
freight and passenger carrier in the State. It was mutilated, however, dur-
ing the War between the States; almost swept away by the flood of 1877;
considered financially worthless in 1879; and, having been sold in 1880 to
the Richmond and Allegheny Railroad, was acquired along with that road
in 1888 by its competitor, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway.

As the heavy traffic caused dirt roads to become all but impassable,
especially in winter, the necessity for adequate thoroughfares became evi-
dent. The result was the turnpike, created by chartered companies that
charged a toll for using it. From 1802 to 1818 eight turnpike companies
were incorporated to establish roads out of Richmond: Manchester Turn-
pike (1802) to Falling Creek; Richmond Turnpike (1804) running by the
Deep Run Coal Pits to the Three Notched Road at Short Pump; Rich-
mond and Columbia Turnpike to Goochland Courthouse; Brook Turn-
pike (1812) to Williamson's Tavern (now Solomon's Store); Westharn
Turnpike (1816) from Richmond to Leonard's Tavern near Westham;
Manchester and Petersburg Turnpike (1816) laid out by Claude Crozet;
Mechanicsville Turnpike (1817) ; and the Richmond and Qsborne's Turn-
pike (1818), running to a ferry that crossed the James to Osborne's Wharf.
By 1828 the State, from its 'Fund for Internal Improvement/ had sub-
scribed to stock in 12 turnpike companies. In mid-century many miles of
hard-surfaced roads were completed, particularly in the mountainous sec-
tion. One of the most ambitious of these enterprises, a corollary to the
James River Canal, was the turnpike constructed in 1830 from Rockfish
Gap to Scottsville. The peak of this attempt to hurry traffic over land was
reached in 1850 when the road down the Shenandoah Valley was macad-

TRANSPORTATION 93

amized from Winchester to Staunton. During this same decade appeared
many of the planked roads, such as the Jerusalem, Orange, and Boydton.
With the advent of canals and turnpikes came transformation on the
water, peacefully content up to the War of 1812 with its sloops and swift
sailing packets. Only twice had the supremacy of the sailing vessel been
questioned. In 1784 Virginia granted James Rumsey the right to construct
and navigate boats ' upon his modeP for a period of 10 years in the waters
of the State. The year that Rumsey operated successfully his ingenious de-
vice on the Potomac (1787), John Fitch obtained the privilege of operating
steamboats on Virginia waters for 14 years. These sporadic attempts soon
gave way to commercial steamboats on Chesapeake Bay and its tribu-
taries. In 1813 were launched the Washington and the Richmond, the first
running from Washington to Marlboro and the second from Washington
to Richmond. The Eagle began its round trips between Baltimore and
Richmond in 1815, and the Powhatan its regular trips between Richmond
and Norfolk in 1816. The run between Baltimore and Norfolk was appre-
ciably reduced in time by the Virginia, built in 1817, and the Norfolk, put
in service in 1819, the year the Washington extended its run to Norfolk.
During the two decades preceding the War between the States, the Union
ran between Washington and Norfolk; the Osceola plied weekly from Balti-
more to Norfolk; the Columbia, largest boat on, the river, ran regularly
after 1837 for many years on the Washington-Norf oik-Baltimore route;
and the William Selden linked Baltimore to Fredericksburg. Between
Aquia Creek and Washington ran such early vessels as the Chesapeake,
Augusta, and Washington. The boats of the Baltimore Steam Packet
Company (the Old Bay Line) organized in 1840, running between Norfolk
and Baltimore, competed with the iron ship Philadelphia, which ran be-
tween Norfolk and Seaford, Delaware. In 1852 the Merchants and Miners
Transportation Company was organized. In 1859, the Mount Vernon, of
700 tons, opened a regular service between New York and Washington.
When war came, several of the substantial Potomac ships were impressed
by the Federal Government. Between 1869 and 1873 the Plant Line oper-
ated the Lady of the Lake and the Jane Mosely between Washington and
Norfolk, In 1874 the boats of the Chesapeake Steamship Company con-
nected Baltimore with West Point, Virginia, and between 1871 and 1891
the Potomac Steamboat Company operated the George Leary and the
Excelsior between Washington and Norfolk. A continuation of this com-
pany is the Norfolk and Washington Steamboat Company, chartered in
1890. The boats of this line, the Old Bay Line, the Chesapeake Steamship
Company, and the Merchants and Miners Transportation Company still

94 VIRGINIA

plow the Bay, its tidal rivers and numerous estuaries served now, as
formerly, by an adequate system of freight boats, foremost among which
are those of the Buxton Lines, Inc., and the Eastern Steamship Lines, the
York River Line, and the Philadelphia and Norfolk Steamship Com-
pany.

Virginia's policy of subscribing to the capital stock of companies en-
gaged in public transportation had its most beneficial effect between 1828
and 1861 when the railway came to deliver traffic from the semiparalysis
of coach and canal. Because of the great need to connect hinterland with
Tidewater, these swift land carriers were built rapidly, lacing through the
productive areas -and stimulating commerce. The confirmation by the
assembly, on March 8, 1827, of the charter granted by Maryland to the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company was Virginia's first official rail-
road record, but that road did not begin 'operating in Virginia until after
1839. In 1831, when there were little more than 100 miles of railroad com-
pleted in the United States, the horse-drawn Chesterfield Railroad, char-
tered three years earlier, was opened to haul coal from mines in Chester-
field County to Richmond. The charter of this pioneer company, which
was operated throughout its existence by horsepower, antedated by only
two years the charter of the Petersburg Railroad Company, the first
steam railroad to operate in the State. Its terminus, Weldon, North Caro-
lina, became also the terminus of the Portsmouth and Roanoke Railroad,
chartered in 1832, completed in 1837, and now the oldest unit in the Sea-
board Air Line Railway Company. In 1832 a charter was granted also to
the Winchester and Potomac Railroad Company, which completed its
tracks through the fertile Shenandoah Valley to the Potomac River at
Harpers Ferry in 1836. In 1848 it was purchased by the Baltimore and
Ohio Railroad. The Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad
Company, chartered in 1834, developed its route by a series of progres-
sions and did not reach Washington until after the War between the
States. In 1837 the tracks were extended to Fredericksburg, where pas-
sengers took a coach to Marlboro Point on Potomac Creek and thence
traveled to Washington by steamboat. In 1872 the line was extended to
join the Alexandria and Washington Railroad and thus form an all-rail
route from Richmond to Washington. Among other carriers of this early
epoch were the Richmond and Petersburg Railroad Company and the
Louisa Railroad Company, both chartered in 1836. The tracks of the
Louisa Railroad (oldest unit in the present Chesapeake and Ohio Railway
system) opened the following year to Frederick Hall. The company an-
nounced in unabashed manner an * Unrivalled Line to CharlottesviUe,

TRANSPORTATION 95

Staunton and the Virginia Springs/ although the railroad stopped short
of Charlottesville by 44 miles and passengers were conveyed the rest of the
way by coach. The South Side Railroad Company, chartered in 1846, was
completed in 1854 between Petersburg and Lynchburg. Fostered by the
State, the Blue Ridge Railroad Company was chartered in 1849. Under
the direction of Claude Crozet the tracks, passing through several long
tunnels, were completed in 1858 from Blair Park to Waynesboro. The
mountainous and isolated southwest was opened up in 1856 by the Vir-
ginia and Tennessee Railroad, a company chartered in 1849; while, in the
opposite side of the State, the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad by 1858
was hurrying traffic to the sea.

In 1 86 1 Virginia's investments in 'Public Works 7 ceased. The State had
purchased a total of $48,000,000 worth of stock in turnpike, toll bridge,
canal, and water and rail transportation. During the war the railroads,
operating 1,290 miles of track, were the most sought-after prize of the
contending armies. The important Baltimore and Ohio lines, comprising
two-thirds of Virginia's mileage and controlled by Union sympathizers,
became a Federal bulwark. The military requirements of the Confederacy
fell heavily on the remaining roads, particularly on the Petersburg and
Weldon, the Richmond and Danville, and the Virginia Central so im-
portant as arteries of supply for Lee's army that about them centered
Federal offensive and Confederate defensive movements.

Following the war numerous railroads began to consolidate into the
great ( through lines' that gird the State today. In 1885 the 32 railroads
in Virginia had an aggregate length of 2,430 miles. Mileage increased .
steadily until 1915, and then dropped when 10 short systems disappeared.
The present group of railroads, owning some 7,242 miles of track, includes
1 8 separate companies ranging from the Nelson and Albemarle Railroad
with 1 8 miles of track to those with an elaborate system. The Norfolk and
Western Railway is a vast system that started with the merger in 1870 of
three railroads extending from Norfolk to Bristol. The Baltimore and
Ohio Railroad consists in Virginia of the former Valley Railroad, chartered
in 1866, and the Winchester and Potomac Railroad. The Seaboard Air
Line Railway had its beginning in 1900 with the purchase of the Virginia
and Carolina Railroad. The Southern Railway, incorporated in 1894, took
over the lines of the Richmond and Danville Railroad, and in 1899 those of
the Atlantic and Danville Railway. The Atlantic Coast Line Railroad is a
continuation of the Richmond and Petersburg Railroad, chartered in
1836. The Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad has developed since 1869 from
the Virginia Central Railroad and the unfinished Covington and Ohio

96 VIRGINIA

Railroad. The Virginian Railway is a continuation of the Tidewater
Railway, chartered in 1904. The Norfolk Southern Railroad developed
from the Elizabeth City and Norfolk Railroad, incorporated in 1875. The
tracks of the hardy Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad are
used by trains of the Seaboard Air Line Railway and the Atlantic Coast
Line Railroad.

At the beginning of the twentieth century Virginia's roads were poor.
In 1919, however, the State highway commission took over road construc-
tion, and now an excellent primary system of 9,250 miles includes 24
United States highways, which form the principal interstate traffic arter-
ies, and a secondary system of 37,000 miles, which reaches even the remot-
est parts of the State. With the improvement of the State highways since
1923 transportation by public motor vehicles has developed rapidly. The
early short lines have been extended and consolidated into great corpora-
tions. While they were started to furnish transportation in sections where
other facilities were lacking, the great preponderance of motor common
carrier operations now closely parallel the railroads and have become their
most formidable competitors. Since 1923 the State corporation commis-
sion has issued 384 certificates to freight common carriers and 1,112 certif-
icates to common carriers of passengers, chief among which are the Grey-
hound System, Peninsula Transit Corporation, Norfolk Southern Bus
Corporation, and Virginia Stage Lines, Inc.

The ports surrounding Hampton Roads, termini for eight railroads,
handle a vast tonnage of export, import, coastwise, and intercoastal freight
passing through the Virginia Capes not only on foreign ships but also on
the five regular steamship lines that use the numerous docks and coal
piers. Deep water terminal docks on the James near Richmond are in the
process of construction. Steam ferries link the cities of Hampton Roads
and extend the service to Cape Charles; other ferries connect the Potomac,
James, and Rappahannock Rivers, making 13 in the State. Across the
mouth of the James River the Newport News- James River Bridge, fin-
ished in 1928 at a cost of $5,500,000, is the ' world's longest all-over-water
bridge'; and over the Rappahannock River is the long Downing Bridge,
finished in 1927, that has opened up the isolated Northern Neck
section.

Commercial aviation, the last phase of the transportation scene, has
developed slowly in Virginia since the Eastern Air Transport, Inc. estab-
lished in 1928 a pioneer mail line from New York to Atlanta via Rich-
mond. Its passenger service was begun August 18, 1930. By 1936 the
planes of two companies, flying 3,640 air miles daily over Virginia, served

TRANSPORTATION 97

four cities in the State in addition to the Washington Airport, on the Vir-
ginia bank of the Potomac. Today, by private, municipal, and Federal
funds, 36 airports have been licensed, emergency landing fields provided,
and air mileage has been lighted.

r.lI.fiT.MfM.TiT.I^^^

Agricultui

THE predominant interests and character of Virginia have been
agricultural ever since its establishment. In 1930, of a total
population of 2,421,851, 67.6 per cent was rural and 39.3 per cent
actually resided on farms. There were in that year 170,610 farms in Vir-
ginia, comprising 64.9 per cent of the total land area of the State. The total
value of all property on these farms was $992,824,691, and the gross income
from crops and livestock combined amounted to $154,380,000. The pros-
perity and welfare of Virginia are mainly based upon the soundness of its
agricultural development.

The idea of founding an agricultural civilization in the New World did
not bulk large in the minds of the members of the London Company,
which sponsored the settlement of Virginia. The primary interest of these
promoters was to discover immediately in the virgin areas great supplies
of pitch, tar, soap ashes, resin, flax, cordage, iron, copper, glass, and tim-
ber for shipbuilding and other purposes. For many years prior to the per-
manent settlement at Jamestown, the mother country had been forced,
through its own diminishing supply, to import these commodities from
such uncertain sources as Germany, Poland, Russia, and Sweden. Al-
though the first efforts of the early colonists were devoted to finding and
delivering the needed commodities, it soon became manifest to leaders
like Captain John Smith that the labor supply in the struggling colony was
inadequate for such a task. In order to survive, the adventurers had to
concentrate their energies upon securing food and upon building houses
and forts. Thus, whether they came into the New World by way of James-
town, Virginia, or Plymouth, Massachusetts, or Charles Town, South Car-
olina, farming was their occupation.

To a much larger degree than is commonly recognized, the colonists
were beneficiaries of the Indians. Of more lasting value than the actual
supplies they obtained were the agricultural plants and practices they
adopted from the natives. Experiments enabled them eventually to accli-
mate many European plants, but at the outset they depended upon such
native crops as Indian corn, potatoes, and tobacco, the yields of which on
virgin soil were quick and certain.

AGRICXJLTTJ R 4 E 99

With the arrival of more colonists from the Old World, the farm clear-
ings increased in extent, and the red man was driven farther and farther
westward. No epic in all history is more colorful than this subduing of a
great wilderness to the purposes of civilized man. European livestock was
introduced, principally the English breeds, and in the course of a few years
the new settlers became independent as far as the necessities of life were
concerned.

Two economic characteristics stand out prominently in colonial agricul-
ture its extensive character, with a thin application of labor and capital
on a large area of land, and its self-sufficiency. While not completely iso-
lated from commercial relations with Europe, the colonists generally pro-
duced for home consumption rather than for sale. Self-sufficiency was a
most important feature of the early American farm. By and large, only
luxuries were bought and the only buyers were the well-to-do. Necessary
clothing was produced at home. The flax, the wool, and later the cotton
were carded, spun, and woven by slaves or members of the farmer's fam-
ily, and from home-grown products. Leather came from cattle on the place
and was fashioned by a shoemaker on each plantation. Homemade imple-
ments usually sufficed for tilling the fields and for carpentry. The farm
provided a bountiful food supply. Practically the only articles of diet it
did not yield were salt, molasses, rum, tea, and coffee. Salt was a necessity,
and rum a customary and popular beverage; both were important in the
internal trade of the times. Tea and coffee were little used by farmers in
the pre-Revolutionary days, though shortly after the Revolution their
use was widely extended.

The typical Virginia farmer of colonial days did not own a large mansion
and numerous slaves. Admiral Chadwick in Causes of the Civil War esti-
mates that of the 52,128 Virginia slaveholders in 1860 one- third held but
one or two slaves, half held one to four, and only 114 persons owned as
many as 100 each. TJ.Wertenbaker's study of rent rolls in a number of
Tidewater counties indicates clearly that most of the colonial farmers
were yeomen and that many of these rose from the estate of indentured
servants. Such findings have a disturbing effect upon widely current tradi-
tion, but they in no wise obscure the stability and worth of the early farm-
ing classes. Nothing can detract from the luster of the civilization achieved
by the old Virginia planter. Thomas Nelson Page, in Ms collection of
essays entitled The Old South, wrote:

It has been assumed by the outside world that our people lived a life of idleness and
ease, a kind of hammock-swing, * sherbet-sipping ' existence, fanned by slaves, and
in their pride, served on bended knees . . . Any master who had a successfully con-

100 VIRGINIA

ducted plantation was sure to have given it his personal supervision with an unre-
mitting attention which would not have failed to secure success in any other calling.
If this was true of the master, it was much more so of the mistress.

The early manor was based on the self-sufficient principle that charac-
terized all the farms of Virginia. Negroes were taught trades as black-
smiths, carpenters, masons, millers, shoemakers, weavers, and spinners.
But when the wolf of material want had been driven from the door, the
colonists looked for some agricultural product that could be exchanged for
the luxuries of the Old World, and they found it in tobacco. John Rolfe,
husband of Pocahontas, is reputed to have been the first to experiment
with the cultivation of tobacco. The plant grown by the Indians was of in-
ferior quality and could not compete with the West Indian product. By
1614, however, it is said that Rolfe had succeeded in growing a tobacco
leaf as ' strong, sweet and pleasant as any under the sun.'

In England the demand for tobacco was increasing. The London Com-
pany, disappointed in its hope of obtaining iron, naval stores, and the like
from the colony, encouraged the growth of tobacco. A first shipment was
made in 1619 singularly enough, the year in which a Dutch privateer
brought the first cargo of slaves to this country. From the outset tobacco
was the leading article of export from the New World. During the Colonial
period it constituted between one-fourth and one-half of the total export
of North America. In 1775 the tobacco sent abroad was valued at about
$4,000,000. Although this exchange crop brought much wealth and lux-
ury to Virginia planters, the methods of agriculture that it involved rap-
idly impoverished the soil, and after the middle of the eighteenth century
many farmers in the Tidewater region began to look toward the virgin
lands of the Middle West.

As late as 1830 virtually all farm work other than plowing and harrow-
ing was being done by hand; but by 1866, except in the more backward
portions of the country, most of this work was being performed by horse-
driven machinery. Thomas Jefferson contributed to the perfection of the
moldboard of the plow, and by 1834 Cyrus McCormick of Rockbridge
County, Virginia, had developed his reaping machine. Canals, steamboats,
and railroads, supplemented later by automobiles and trucks, revolution-
ized transportation and brought commercial markets closer to the farmer.
While Virginia farmers still cling to a greater extent than farmers in most
other States to a self-sufficing type of economy, their agriculture is now
chiefly commercial, varied in its total output, but with specialization of
crops or livestock in each region.

Cotton is commonly regarded as the plant that most widely absorbs the

AGRICULTURE IOI

energies of Southern farm folks. The term 'cotton economy' has become
almost synonymous with the one-crop system of the South and its numer-
ous attendant evils of high tenancy ratios, low living standards, and im-
poverished soils. ' Tobacco economy 7 closely parallels that of cotton. But
though extensive areas in Virginia today are devoted to the raising of to-
bacco and limited areas are planted to cotton, the physical factors of
climate, topography, and soils have operated to insure here such a diver-
sity of agricultural interests as prevails in few other States. As a result,
the farmers of Virginia have not all suffered in the same manner or
degree as those elsewhere during the recent years of agricultural de-
pression.

Virginia is divided into five major agricultural divisions that are not
identical with the natural divisions of the State. The soils of the Tide-
water region are mainly alluvial in nature, and this area yields the corn,
wheat, alfalfa, clover, and grasses of general farming. Proximity to the
Atlantic Ocean, with its modifying effect upon temperatures and assur-
ance of adequate rainfall, and the presence of light sandy loams make this
section suited to the efficient and economic production of truck crops on a
large scale. The eastern shore counties of Accomac and Northampton are
among the largest potato-producing counties in the United States. Be-
cause of its favorable geographical situation, Virginia is able to place its
vegetables in Northern markets after the peak season is over in the Caro-
linas and before New Jersey and Long Island produce has matured. The
Tidewater division is the principal peanut-growing region of the State, and
Virginia ranks high among the leading States in the production of this
commodity. Some cotton is grown in a few Tidewater counties.

Middle Virginia is one of the best general farming sections of the State.
Its varied soils permit of a wide diversification in crops. Corn, tobacco,
wheat, hay, and oats are the principal products; but truck crops, legumes,
and fruits also thrive here. A large part of the tobacco produced in the Old
Dominion is grown in the southern portion of middle Virginia. This divi-
sion of the State is well adapted to livestock because of a grazing season
from nine to ten months long; dairying flourishes, particularly in the
northern part, which is accessible to Washington and other eastern mar-
kets.

In Piedmont Virginia the soils are generally underlain with red clay,
and, with proper rotation of crops and appropriate fertilizers, can be
brought to a high state of productivity. There is much general farming in
this region, and both soil and climate make the Virginia Piedmont one of
the best fruit-growing sections in the world. Here the Albemarle pippin

102 VIRGINIA

has its home, and winesaps and other standard varieties of apples are ex-
tensively grown, along with peaches, pears, plums, and grapes.

The Valley of Virginia is made up of fertile limestone soils, among the
best to be found anywhere. Wheat is grown extensively in this area. So
characteristic is this crop that during the War between the States the
Shenandoah Valley was known as the Granary of the Confederacy. Blue-
grass flourishes here and provides pasturage for livestock. Here, also, con-
ditions are ideal for apple growing, and many parts of the valley are be-
coming vast apple orchards, producing fruit of exceptionally fine quality.

The altitude of Appalachia or southwest Virginia varies from 1,000 to
3,000 feet or more; the region is traversed by ranges of the Alleghenies.
Much of the soil of this section, enriched by limestone, produces bluegrass
for grazing, and cattle constitutes a leading resource of the region. General
farming and truck gardening are also important in this area. Cabbages and
late potatoes figure prominently among the products. Burley tobacco is
extensively grown in a few southwestern counties.

The estimated gross income from farm production in Virginia in 1935
(the latest year for which complete estimates are available) was $162,008,-
ooo. Of this total $84,080,000 was derived from crops of various sorts, and
$77,928,000 from livestock and livestock products. The principal crops in
terms of 'farm value' (obtained by multiplying quantities produced by
average selling prices) were: corn, $29,787,000; tobacco, $18,765,000; hay,
$12,667,000; apples, $11,686,000; wheat, $7,196,000; Irish or white po-
tatoes, $5,443,000; peanuts, $4,939,000. The products of farm gardens
were valued at $9,100,000, and the products of forests on farm land at
$6,661,000. Truck crops had a farm value of $5,550,000. Cotton and cot-
tonseed yielded only $1,950,000 less than the sweet potato yield of
$2,466,000 and the miscellaneous grain yield of $2,041,000. In the category
of livestock and livestock products, the principal items were: milk,
$28,295,000; hogs, $13,748,000; eggs, $13,494,000; and poultry, $9,073,-
ooo. In the production of tobacco Virginia ranked next to North Carolina
and Kentucky, and in apples next to Washington and New York,

In 1920 the farm population of Virginia comprised 1,064,417 persons,
or 46.1 per cent of the total population. But by 1930, as a result of the
marked urban trend all over the United States, the number had dropped
to 950,757, or 39.3 per cent of the total population in that year. The eco-
nomic depression of recent years has operated to check this downward
tendency, and in 1935 the farm population was 1,053,469- a gain of
102,712 for the five-year period.

In 1935, 17,645,000 acres, or 68.5 per cent of Virginia's total land area,

AGRICULTURE 103

consisted of land in farms. Of such farm land, about 8,000,000 acres were
available for crops and about 3,900,000 acres were under cultivation. The
total number of farms was 197,632, representing a combined value for
land and buildings of $593,855,000, an average per farm of approximately
$3,000. While the average value of land and buildings per acre was $51.16
in 1930, under the influence of the depression this figure had declined to
$33.66 by 1935.

During the 75 years from 1850 to 1925 the average acreage per farm in
Virginia decreased from 340 to 88.8. By 1930 the average had risen a little,
to 98.1 ; but a declining tendency was again manifest in the 1935 figure of
89.3. Of the 197,632 farms in 1935, 140,618 or considerably more than two-
thirds contained fewer than 100. acres each, and 52,585 contained fewer
than 20 acres each. Those containing 500 acres or more numbered only
3,306, and only 691 contained i ,000 acres or more.

Of those who in 1935 were operating Virginia's 197,632 farms, 58,386 or
29.5 per cent were tenants on the land they cultivated, and of such tenant
farmers 42,874 or 73.4 per cent were white and 15,512 or 26.6 per cent
were Negroes. The ratio of tenants to owners in 1935 was virtually the
same as in 1880, when the first census of farm tenancy was taken. Among
all the Southern States, only Florida, West Virginia, and Maryland have
a lower tenancy ratio, and all others except Florida show a substantial in-
crease in tenancy since 1880.

The lowest percentage of tenancy recorded in the State since 1880 was
in 1925, when tenant farmers were cultivating 25.2 per cent of all farms
and 19.7 per cent of all land in farms. In 1930 the corresponding percent-
ages were 28.1 and. 22.9; while by 1935 they had increased to 29.5 and 25.
The increase since 1930 has been chiefly among white tenants and in the
mountain areas. Of the Tidewater counties, where tenancy ratios are high-
est, several have recorded decreases. Nevertheless, in some counties of
Virginia half or more of all the farms were being operated by tenants in

1935-

The relative economic status of owner and tenant farmers is indicated to
some degree by the facts that, in 1930, 21.6 per cent of the owners but only
7.2 per cent of the tenants had telephones; 9.3 per cent of the owners but
only 2.7 per cent of the tenants had electric lights; and 10.8 per cent of the
owners but only 3.4 per cent of the tenants had water piped into their
dwellings.

While the total farm mortgage debt in Virginia increased from $24,000,-
ooo in 1910 to $75,128,000 in 1935, the latter sum represented only about
12.7 per cent of the total value of farm land and buildings in the State

104 VIRGINIA

$593,855,000. Of Virginia's 197,632 farms in 1935, 43,451 or 22 per cent of
the total were mortgaged. Virginia's percentage of mortgaged farms was
the lowest of any State in the Union in 1935, with the exception of West
Virginia with 16.5 per cent and New Mexico with 19.9 per cent. In that
year also Virginia had next to the lowest farm real estate tax per $100 of
true value among all the 48 states, the rate being 70^ as against a National
average of $1.14.

In common with many other States, particularly those in the South,
Virginia confronts a serious problem in the matter of soil conservation. His-
torians have shown that soil exhaustion was an important factor a century
or more ago in the extensive migration from the rural areas of Virginia to
other States in the West and farther south. The wasteful practices of a
frontier civilization, especially in the extensive and continuous growing of
tobacco, led to impoverishment of the soil over wide areas, so that one of
the major agricultural problems of the State is that of rehabilitating worn-
out lands. While the gravity of the problem has long been recognized and
measures have been advocated for its amelioration within the State, par-
ticular focus has been brought to bear on the matter in recent years by the
Soil Conservation Service of the Federal Government. A Nation-wide ero-
sion survey was made in the fall of 1934, and the situation was found to be
so serious that in 1937 more than 400,000 acres of farm lands were included
in the co-operative projects of Virginia farmers with the Soil Conservation
Service. The principal areas concerned are near Danville, Lynchburg, and
Charlottesville, and demonstrations are being made here of an eleven-
point erosion control program designed to check wasteful processes that
lead to soil devastation and to restore the fertility of depleted soil, not
only in the demonstration areas but throughout the State.

A notable force in the agricultural development of the State has been
the Virginia Polytechnic Institute at Blacksburg. Through its farm and
home demonstration work and its agricultural experiment stations, it. has
strongly influenced sound agricultural practices in Virginia. The State
Department of Agriculture and Immigration has also functioned for
many years as a regulatory and informational agency, with great benefit to
Virginia agriculture. In co-operation with the United States Department
of Agriculture, it maintains a crop reporting service, which collects and
distributes statistical material of indispensable value to farmers of the
State. Three National farm organizations, the Grange, the Farm Bureau,
and the Farmers' Union, operate helpfully in Virginia; and in addition,
there are several organizations devoted to various specialized interests,
such as horticulture and dairying.

A G R ICULTURE IOg

During more than 300 years of agriculture in Virginia, significant
changes have occurred. The outstanding single trend has been away from
a self-sufficing type of agriculture to that of a more commercial kind. The
introduction of heavy machinery into farming, together with improved
transportation, give a comparative advantage to western farmers in
wheat, corn, and hogs; and the rapid increase of population in eastern
metropolitan areas is stimulating in Virginia, as elsewhere in the East, the
production of such bulky and perishable agricultural products as milk,
vegetables, and fruits. With less than half of its available crop land actu-
ally used for crops in 1934, the State's fullest agricultural development
still lies far in the future.

Industry, Commerce, and Labor

INDUSTRY in Virginia had its beginning in 1608 with the establish-
ment of a glass factory at Jamestown. The next year settlers were pro-
ducing not only glass ornaments for the Indian trade but also nets and
seines, pitch, tar, and soap ashes. By 1609 artisans were turning out tim-
ber products of various sorts, and in 1611 the colonists began the manu-
facture of bricks. Though John Rolfe's introduction of tobacco culture in
1612 retarded industrial development, the London Company sent to Vir-
ginia in 1619 workmen skilled in many crafts and 'out of Sussex about
forty; all framed to Iron-workes.' At Falling Creek that year a foundry
was established that achieved 'a very great forwardness' before all its
workers were killed in 1622 by the Indians.

Shipbuilding, off to a creditable start soon thereafter, was interrupted
by several Navigation Acts passed by a jealous England, Salt, manufac-
tured on the eastern shore as early as 1620, was being exported to Massa-
chusetts by 1633. Silk worm culture and the making of textiles had an
early beginning; and basic necessities were soon produced in all settle-
ments. English statutes in restraint of trade, however, and the evolution
of plantation rather than community economy combined to curb indus-
trial progress in Virginia. The small farmer instituted a subsistence pro-
gram in the production of clothes, food, and implements; and the large
planter exchanged his tobacco for imported luxuries.

Nevertheless, in the later years of the seventeenth century Virginians
had established several flour and grist mills that served areas beyond their
immediate neighborhoods. In 1692, under the encouragement of Governor
Andros, weaving and fulling mills began operation.

Virginia's first industrial community sprang up around Governor Alex-
ander Spotswood's foundry, established at Germanna in 1715. Soon other
iron works were flourishing in the Tidewater and the land beyond the
mountains. During the Revolution arms and ammunition were manufac-
tured in Virginia, and in 1817 the Bellona Arsenal, which had been
founded near Richmond in 1810, began to supply ordnance for the Fed-
eral Government.

For 50 years after the Revolution, however, the industrial graph of

1 06

INDUSTRY, COMMERCE, AND LABOR 107

Virginia shows no upward trend. During this period many Virginians en-
tertained strong prejudices against factories or corporations of any kind.
They preferred the plantation and the freedom of farm life to the factory
and its ' accompanying evils. 7 Freeholder and freeman were synonymous
to the liberty-loving Virginian, and it was thought that diversion of people
to manufactures would undermine her civil institutions. Factory employ-
ees were thought to lack the economic independence, the moral fiber, and
the physical aggressiveness required to defend political liberty.

Between 1820 and 1840 the attitude in Virginia toward factories be-
came more friendly. In 1827 the legislature was asked to encourage cotton
manufacture and to ascertain whether Negro labor could be employed in
that industry. One year later the Petersburg Virginian published an essay
favoring the establishment of a cotton factory in Petersburg. In 1836 two
cotton mills, with 400 spindles, 170 looms, a machine shop, and a sizing
house, were erected at Appomattox. In encouraging the development of
cotton manufacturing in Virginia during that early period, the advocates
of factories emphasized the advantages of a cheap labor supply. Figures
exist showing that a man's wage was $2.75 per week in Virginia, while it
was $7 in Massachusetts; that a woman's wage was $1.58 per week in
Virginia, while it was $2.60 in New Hampshire. By 1839 there were three
cotton mills in the State, with numbers of spindles ranging from 5,000 to
25,000, and five having 5,000 spindles or fewer.

During the War between the States several new factories were built
hastily to meet the needs of the Confederacy. By 1863 there were 66 tan-
neries, 16 spinning mills, 14 flour mills, 5 iron works, 9 coal mines, 9 salt
works, and i paper mill operating in Virginia. Many of these factories
were destroyed before the close of the war.

After the war, Virginia, like the rest of the South, had to pass through a
period of economic reconstruction. Conditions had improved greatly,
however, by 1880, when the volume of industry in Virginia was greater
than ever before. Richmond had resumed its position as an important
flour-milling center. Iron smelting, cotton manufacture, tanning and
leather-making, tobacco processing, and other forms of manufacture were
making real progress. During this period the State was already being af-
fected by millowners' fruitful migration southward in search of cheap
labor.

Industrial development in Virginia has been pronounced since 1900.
Although the State is still classified as agricultural, a large proportion of
its people is supported by industrial wages. In 1937 its manufacturing in-
dustries employed 132,643 wage earners, as compared with 66,233 in 1899.

I08 VIRGINIA

During the same period the total annual wages paid to industrial workers
increased from $20,273,889 to $112,773,796; the annual value of manu-
factured products increased from $108,644,150 to $908,222,316. The
primary horsepower installed in Virginia manufactures increased from
136,696 in 1899 to 646,251 in 1929.

A rich supply of raw materials, adequate fuel and water-power re-
sources, a mild climate, a plentiful supply of labor, and good transporta-
tion facilities have helped to attract new industries. At present industries
are more diversified in Virginia than in any other Southern State. No sin-
gle type is predominant, and this variety promotes stability in employ-
ment and wages. The recent tendency to decentralize manufactories has
also helped Virginia, since several outstanding Northern industries have
established branches in the State.

Most of the factories in Virginia produce consumer goods, including
food products, shoes, clothing, hosiery, rayon, silk goods, cotton goods,
and tobacco products. In 1929 approximately 56 per cent of Virginia's
industrial workers were employed in the production of consumer goods, as
compared with 47 per cent for the country as a whole. According to the
Virginia Department of Labor and Industry, the increase in employment
in the State since 1932 has resulted chiefly from the development of con-
sumer-goods industries, which employed 65 per cent of Virginia's indus-
trial workers in 1937. Almost two-thirds of the wage earners added to
industrial pay rolls since 1932 have been employed in consumer-goods
industries. The predominance of light over heavy industries in Virginia is
due largely to the character of natural resources that include neither iron
ore nor types of coal suitable for smelting and to the character of the
available labor, offering a larger supply of semiskilled and unskilled
workers than of skilled.

On the basis of the value of the product, the most important industry in
Virginia is tobacco, including the manufacture of cigarettes, cigars, pipe
and plug tobacco, and snuff, with cigarettes and cigars well in the lead. In
the production of cigarettes Virginia is second only to North Carolina,
having produced about 53,000,000,000 in the year ending July 1937
more than one-fourth of the National output. This manufacture is con-
centrated in Richmond, although there are a few factories elsewhere. In
1937 this industry, with a product in Virginia valued at $279,329,749, em-
ployed nearly 5,000 workers earning an aggregate wage of $5,092,146. Of
the total output of Virginia industry in 1937, valued at $908,222,316, the
tobacco industry as a whole accounted for $303,381,676 or 33.4 per cent.
The value added by manufacture was $72,019,292 or 21.4 per cent of the

INDUSTRY, COMMERCE, AND LABOR log

value added to the product of all Virginia industry. Nearly 9,000 workers
were engaged in the tobacco industry and were paid $8,743,377 in wages
in 1937. These figures contrast sharply with those for 1909, when ^,882
workers were paid $2,162,000 by the tobacco industry in Virginia, and the
product was valued at $25,385,000. The growth of Virginia, and Rich-
mond in particular, as a center of tobacco manufacture has been due in
large part to the proximity of an ample supply of semiskilled labor to the
source of the raw material the tobacco fields. Policies of the State gov-
ernment, especially favorable to local industry in regard to taxation, have
been an important factor.

The textile industry made considerable progress during the first quarter
of the present century. While Virginia has most of the advantages for tex-
tile manufacture enjoyed by other Southern States, the industry has not
developed here too rapidly or as much out of proportion to other indus-
tries as in some other areas. The number of workers employed by this in-
dustry rose from 9 per cent of all industrial wage earners in Virginia in
1909 to 22 per cent in 1935. In 1937 there were more than 130 textile mills
in Virginia. These included 10 cotton mills, 29 knitting mills, 17 woolen
mills, 17 silk mills, 3 jute mills, and 3 dyeing and finishing plants. Employ-
ment in men's clothing factories increased 286 per cent from 1909 to 1929,
and 54 per cent more by 1935; silk and rayon manufacture, exclusive of
rayon yarn, increased 175 per cent and 69 per cent during the same peri-
ods; and knit goods 82 per cent and 29 per cent.

The manufacture of furniture has made rapid progress in Virginia in the
past 30 years. Among the Southern States the Old Dominion is now second
only to North Carolina in furniture production. Employment in this in-
dustry increased 759 per cent between 1909, when it accounted for only
i per cent of the State total, and 1937, when it accounted for nearly 7 per
cent. The United States Census of Manufactures for 1937 listed 49 furni-
ture plants in Virginia, employing 8,504 workers, paying annually wages
of $6,601,638, and turning out products valued at $30,016,087.

Though not new in Virginia, the chemical industry has recently taken
on new vitality. The manufacture of fertilizers has long been considerable
in Virginia. In recent years, however, it has increased in importance be-
cause of a greater demand. In 1937, the 49 plants listed by the United
States census employed 2,460 wage earners, paid annually wages amount-
ing to $1,474,587, and manufactured products valued at $20,495,097.
Chemical factories in Virginia produce, in addition to fertilizers, soda ash,
caustic soda, bicarbonate of soda, cellulose, rayon, fixed nitrogen, and a
number of heavy chemicals. The plant of the Solvay Process Company of

110 VIRGINIA

Hopewell, successor to the Atmospheric Nitrogen Corporation, is said to
be the largest nitrogen plant in the world.

In a brief period the manufacture of rayon yarn has become an impor-
tant factor in the State ; s industrial development. Virginia mills producing
rayon and allied products employed 10,637 workers in 1937, paid annual
wages of $12,999,444, and produced goods with a total annual value of
$55,897,047. Among the factors that have brought about the rapid expan-
sion of the rayon industry in Virginia have been a water supply with a low
dissolved iron content and a none too high priced labor supply. The fact
that one large company, when its employees struck for better working
conditions, closed its plant permanently and moved its machinery to
South America indicates the importance placed upon docile labor.

The development of transportation facilities in Virginia has been re-
sponsible for the growth here of industries producing and repairing trans-
portation equipment. In 1937 railroad repair shops in Virginia gave em-
ployment to more than 9,000 workers and paid total wages of more than
$13,500,000. Shipbuilding, another important Virginia industry, em-
ployed in 1937 about 11,000 workers, paid an annual wage bill of about
$20,000,000, and turned out products valued at almost $41,000,000. This
industry both in private hands and in the Norfolk Navy Yard is con-
centrated in the Hampton Roads area, having been attracted here largely
by the commerce and deep water facility of this great port.

Virginia has also a large number of other industries of importance. Food
products of various kinds, including both fish and vegetable canneries;
paper and printing; leather and its products; and machinery, contribute to
the State's income. In addition, much capital is invested in the mineral in-
dustries, chief among which are the mining and processing of coal, clay,
limestone, and sand and gravel Most of the titanium produced in North
America comes from Virginia; and the State is the largest producer of
soapstone. Cement manufacture is also important. The annual valuation
of the raw materials mined and quarried ranges in normal years from
$35,000,000 to $50,000,000. Between 300 and 400 different mines and
quarries are in operation from year to year.

t Virginia has maintained a happy balance between industry and agricul-
ture. Because its industries are diversified, stability of employment is fos-
tered, and workers are given some freedom in selecting a trade. Diversi-
fication, moreover, has its advantages in times of general business depres-
sion, since during such periods all industries are not affected alike.

Virginia has been more fortunate than most other Southern States,
however, in that several of the industries that have located within its

INDUSTRY, COMMERCE, AND LABOR III

boundaries have been in the high- wage class. Many lowest-wage industries
have passed over Virginia because more favorable conditions for their op-
erations could be found farther southward. Nevertheless, a considerable
number of low-wage industries have come to the State. This situation is
fostered and encouraged by the offer by many localities of free factory
sites, tax exemptions for a number of years, free rent, and other subsidies.
Many of the firms accepting these offers are marginal firms, which seek to
prolong their existence by low production costs. Most of them employ a
large proportion of women workers and seek to take advantage of the low
labor standards that can be found in Virginia. Such concerns have been
found to be an economic and social liability to the State. It is now gener-
ally recognized that permanent industrial progress in Virginia can be se-
cured only through the encouragement of industries that can offer contin-
uous employment and that can afford to pay such wages as will enable
workers to enjoy a decent standard of living.

COMMERCE

Since early Colonial times commerce has played an important part in
the economic development of Virginia. For a long time after the first set-
tlers reached Virginia, the tidal waterways arjd rivers afforded the most
satisfactory means of transportation in the eastern part of the colony.
English ships, loaded with manufactures of various kinds, visited the
wharves of the many plantations along the rivers to exchange their wares
for Virginia's chief product, tobacco.

These waters are still used by bay and river vessels, but their traffic is
small in comparison with the rail traffic in the State. Virginia's real com-
mercial development has been to a large degree the result of the railroad,
which made possible connection of Tidewater ports with the regions west
of the mountains.

Much of Virginia's foreign and domestic trade passes through the ports
of Hampton Roads. Eight trunk-line railroads have their terminals in this
area, and deliver to the docks products of the South, the Middle West, and
the North. As a shipping center and railroad terminal the Hampton Roads
area has grown to be the third-largest commercial center along the Atlan-
tic seaboard, and its facilities have played a significant part in making
Virginia an industrial center.

Most of the exports of the Hampton Roads ports are products from Vir-
ginia and the States near by. The value of exports through the customs
district of Virginia in 1935, as reported by the United States Department

112 VIRGINIA

of Commerce, was $122,580,000. Leaf tobacco and cigarettes accounted
for $102,601,000 of the total Seventy per cent of all the leaf tobacco ex-
ported from the United States in 1935 passed through Hampton Roads.
Most of the leaf tobacco sent through the Hampton Roads ports is the
bright flue-cured leaf of Virginia and North Carolina. In addition to to-
bacco exports, the records show that cotton piece goods, cotton linters,
lumber, coal, tanning extracts, iron and steel scrap, steel sheets, and chem-
icals are important items in the export trade of Hampton Roads, both in
value and in volume.

Virginia's exports greatly exceed its imports. Imports into the customs
district of Virginia in 1935 were valued at $29,188,000, or less than one-
fourth the value of exports. The most important products imported into
the State were molasses, cotton and burlap, cigarette tobacco, bananas,
ores, inedible oils, and crude gypsum.

The coastwise trade of the Hampton Roads area in 1935 totaled
16,600,000 tons, made up of 14,900,000 outbound and 1,700,000 inbound.
Coal accounted for 14,000,000 tons of the outgoing cargo. Other commod-
ities in the coastwise movement of products into and out of Virginia ports
were cotton piece goods, petroleum products, leaf and manufactured to-
bacco, peanuts, lumber, and vegetables.

Virginia's water-borne commerce constitutes only a small part of her
total trade. In 1935 there were 2,123 wholesale establishments in the
State, with a total net sales return of $502,951,000. At the same time there
were 26,757 retail stores, with net sales of $471,329,000. The annual sales
per store amounted to $22,759, an< 3 the sales per capita were $246.42.

LABOR

Notwithstanding the existence of several large cities, Virginia's labor
supply resides preponderantly in small towns and rural districts. The pop-
ulation of the State in 1930 was 2,421,851. Of this number 785,537 or
32.4 per cent lived in urban centers, and 1,636,314 or 67.6 per cent
lived in rural sections. Although between 1920 and 1930 the number of
towns and cities with populations of 2,500 or more increased from 38 to 45,
the percentage of people living in urban communities increased by only
3.2 per cent. Thus, while the industrial development of the State is stead-
ily drawing people from farms to urban centers, Virginia is still predom-
inantly rural; and there are still thousands of people in rural districts who
constitute a potential labor supply for new factories. Many of the indus-
tries recently established in Virginia are drawing upon this labor reserve.

INDUSTRY, COMMERCE, AND LABOR 113

A large rayon company chose a site with the expectation of drawing most
of its personnel from a city near by. At the end of the first year, however,
it was found that only 1 1 per cent of its workers lived in that city, while 89
per cent came from the rural area within a radius of 25 miles from the plant.

According to the census of 1930, only 23,820 people less than i per
cent of Virginia's population were foreign born. Industrial expansion in
Virginia began just as the great era of immigration into America was
coming to an end, and the bulk of it has taken place since the World War,
when immigration practically ceased. The rural reserve of native labor has
further discouraged immigration into the State.

In 1930 nearly one-fourth, or 650,165, of the total population of the
State was Negro. In 1935 there were 37,568 Negro workers employed in
manufacturing plants in Virginia. There is no evidence, however, that
Negro workers have come into competition with white workers except in
the unskilled trades. For instance, in the tobacco industry, Negro labor is
employed almost entirely in rehandling tobacco. In this branch of the to-
bacco industry 4, 130 Negro females and 2,892 Negro males were employed
in 1935, while only 182 white males and no white females were similarly
occupied. On the other hand, in the manufacture of cigarettes 2,655 white
females and 1,439 white males were employed, as compared with 809 Ne-
gro females and 965 Negro males. A large number of Negro male and
female workers were employed in the manufacture of food and kindred
products, and almost 6,000 Negro males were employed in the wood prod-
ucts industries.

Most of the consumer-goods industries give employment to a large num-
ber of women workers. These and other light industries with modern ma-
chines have attracted women tenders into many industries formerly closed
to them. The Virginia State Planning Board found that from 1909 to 1929
the total number of persons employed by Virginia industries increased
13.4 per cent, but that the gains in the number of women employed ac-
counted for 90 per cent of the total. Employment of males during the same
period did not keep pace with the growth of population, while female em-
ployment increased more than five times as fast as did the number of
people in the State. The lower wage scale prevailing for women has con-
tributed to this increase. The annual report of the Virginia Department of
Labor and Industry in 1935 showed 43,365 female workers employed by
industries in Virginia. Of these, 12,256 were Negroes. Ninety-five per cent
of nearly 50,000 female industrial workers in Virginia in 1937 were en-
gaged in the production of consumer goods, particularly in the manufac-
ture of tobacco, food products, and textiles.

114 VIRGINIA

Studies made by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the United States
Department of Labor show that, while the wages paid by employers in
Virginia are higher on the whole than those paid in other Southern States,
they are only about two-thirds as high as those paid in the North. In 1930
the average full-time weekly wage of employees in the cotton goods indus-
try in Virginia was $15.43, for a work week of 54.7 hours, as compared
with $20.92 for an average work week of 51 hours in six Northern States.
In 1932 Virginia workers in the hosiery industry received an average full-
time weekly wage of $14.04 for 54.6 hours, as compared with $22.94 in
Massachusetts for 48.2 hours, $23.52 in New Jersey for 47.7 hours, and
$24.92 in New York for 48.1 hours. In the manufacture of underwear Vir-
ginia workers received $12.43 for an average work week of 49.7 hours, as
compared with $19.39 in Massachusetts for 48 hours, and $18.89 * n
Pennsylvania for 52.9 hours. In the furniture industry the difference in
wages was even greater. In 1931 workers in furniture plants in Virginia re-
ceived an averate full-time wage of $12.98 for a work week of 55 hours; in
Illinois similar workers were paid $24.45 f r S 1 hours, in Massachusetts
$28 for 48.4 hours, and in New York $24.01 for 51,4 hours.

No authoritative study has been made of the relative efficiency of
workers in the North and those in Virginia and other Southern States. It
is certainly true, however, that Virginia workers generally reflect the in-
fluence of a predominantly rural rather than urban environment. Not only
do they come from folk, especially in the mountain sections, that have
been inclined to be satisfied with standards lower than obtain in more ma-
ture industrial areas, but also they have yet to develop fully the traditions
of craftsmanship and skill characteristic of an older and more instinctively
urban, industrial society.

Slow to organize in Virginia and still far behind the National average,
labor unions, nevertheless, have helped to protect Virginia workers, to
offset the disadvantage of a labor supply in excess of the demand, and to
lessen exploitation of rather docile unskilled and semiskilled industrial
employees. Although the present labor movement had its real beginning
in Virginia in the period 1885-90, the first local union in the State was or-
ganized four years before the War between the States. Early in the ante-
bellum period there had been loose associations of workmen, embryonic
trade unions, and even unsuccessful strikes at intervals, as when the
white puddlers and rollers at the Tredegar rolling mill in Richmond struck
on a Sunday in May almost 100 years ago. The first organization was a
local of the Typographical Union, chartered in Petersburg in 1857. This
local, with a membership of 16 in 1858, was disbanded two years later, but

INDUSTRY, COMMERCE, AND LABOR 115

two other local unions, in Richmond and Alexandria, were chartered in
1865, as the union idea slowly gathered force in Virginia.

In 1886, when the Knights of Labor held their National convention in
Richmond, there were 20 local unions in the State, with a membership
estimated at more than 1,367. The Knights of Labor, having just experi-
enced a phenomenal growth, had swelled from 100,000 members to
700,000 throughout the country during the previous year and was then the
largest labor organization on American soil. In Virginia whites and Ne-
groes had entirely separate local and district assemblies. When a group of
non-Southern delegates to the convention made an issue of racial segrega-
tion, a storm of reaction was aroused in Richmond and the South gener-
ally. This controversy became the most widely advertised aspect of the
convention and, by hurting the Knights of Labor, which then symbolized
the labor movement, acted as a severe setback for labor organization in
Virginia.

Unionization went forward, however, and at the turn of the century the
need for better organization led to the establishment of the Virginia Fed-
eration of Labor as well as of central labor unions in most Virginia cities.
Most active during the war years, the latter have dwindled since then.
By 1914, when there were 102,820 industrial workers in Virginia, there
were 244 active local unions with a membership estimated at 14,367. The
peak of unionization was reached in 1920, when there were 46,796 workers
in 446 locals about 40 per cent of the industrial wage earners in Virginia.
Seven years later the figures had dropped to 334 locals and 21,413 mem-
bers about 19 per cent of all those employed in Virginia industry but
had risen again by 1930 to 370 locals and 29,543 members. Organized
strikes occurred with irregular frequency and only partial success. In 1918
there were 37, while in 1922, the year of the great railroad strike, there
were only five. The three strikes of 1930 included the unsuccessful strike
of the workers in the textile mills of Danville. The failure of this union
effort, the most outstanding in the history of the labor movement in Vir-
ginia, retarded further organization of textile workers in the South gen-
erally.

The labor union scene was altered sharply in 1937, when the American
Federation of Labor, with which the great majority of locals were affil-
iated, was split by the emergence of the Congress of (then Committee for)
Industrial Organization. The A.F. of L., having had a membership that
year of about 30,000 or about 24 per cent of all industrial workers in the
State, lost nearly 15,000 upon the withdrawal of the mine workers, who
formed the backbone of the C.I.O. Added to the secessionists were about

Il6 VIRGINIA

5,000 workers, especially in the tobacco and textile industries, newly or-
ganized by C.I.O. forces. By May 1938 the C.I.O. had reached a member-
ship in Virginia of nearly 29,000.

The effect of the activities of this new and more militant labor organiza-
tion, along industrial rather than craft lines, was to stimulate unionization
of labor throughout Virginia. The C.I.O. welcomed into its membership
women and Negroes, who have been organized as never before, although
they still women particularly form an extreme minority in Virginia's
labor movement as a whole. Most unions now admit Negroes on an equal
footing with whites, but there are few mixed locals. Particularly, a wave
of strikes 18 in all in 1938 dramatized the labor situation and led to a
substantial growth of both labor groups. In May 1939 the C.I.O. could
report a membership above 31,000, and the A.F. of L. one above 35,000.

Today, unionization in Virginia lags behind the National average but is
about equal to the Southern norm. Considering the primarily agricultural
economy of the State and the opposition with which attempts at organ-
ization have been met, the size of the movement is truly remarkable.

One of the most important problems connected with the industrial
growth in Virginia has been the protection of the health, welfare, and life
of workers in manufacturing establishments. The experience of older in-
dustrialized States has shown that adequately to protect such workers it
is desirable that social legislation keep pace with industrial progress. More
has been done for the protection of workers in Virginia than in many other
Southern States.

Almost from the beginning of her industrial growth, Virginia has had a
law for the protection of children against hazards of the factory system.
A law enacted in 1889 for the protection of women and children in indus-
try provided that no child under 12 years of age should be employed in
manufacturing industries and prohibited night work for children under 14
in manufacturing, mechanical, and mining operations. The law also lim-
ited the hours of work to 10 in 24. This early law has been amended from
time to time, and at present Virginia's child labor law provides that no
child under 14 years of age may work in a factory, and none less than 16
may work without a school certificate showing physical fitness and evi-
dence of age. Children under 16 are not permitted to work more than
6 days or more than 44 hours weekly or more than 8 hours a day. Night
work for children is prohibited.

One phase of Virginia's labor problem relates to the protection of
women in industry. Virginia's hours law for women was not changed to any
important extent in 37 years. In 1938, however, the legislature amended

INDUSTRY, COMMERCE, AND LABOR Iiy

the law and reduced the maximum daily hours of women from 10 to 9 and
added a weekly limit of 48 with a number of exemptions. The Federal
Wages and Hours Law, applicable to both men and women in those indus-
tries defined as interstate, has focused thought upon the need of a State
law giving protection to men as well as to women. A few other laws that
have been enacted for the regulation of working conditions and for the
protection of the health of women workers are below the average standard
of similar laws in more highly industrialized States.

Virginia has a good workmen's compensation law. Under its provisions
the responsibility of employers is definitely fixed and compensation is pro-
vided for workers injured in the course of industrial employment. The law
applies to all concerns within the State employing u or more workers.
Such employers must insure the payment of compensation in a company
approved by the State Corporation Commission, or must insure them-
selves in such manner as to satisfy the Industrial Commission of their abil-
ity to fulfil such obligations.

Education

VIRGINIA was the first English colony in America to lay plans for
establishing a university, the first to found a free school, and the
first to propose a system of public education. Yet today, in every
comparative rating of the public schools of the United States, Virginia is
near the bottom.

A carefully compiled table of statistics, published in the Virginia Jour-
nal of Education in February 1938, discloses the high rank that Virginia
takes in its ability to pay for a public school system and the low place it
occupies at present in actual expenditures. Virginia ranks seventh in Fed-
eral taxes in millions and fourteenth in total taxes collected; but it drops
to forty-second in the percentage of income spent on education, to forty-
first in the value of school property per pupil enrolled, and to forty-third
with respect to teachers' salaries; in literacy the State is forty-second; in
power to hold pupils between the ages of 14 and 17 years, Virginia drops to
the forty-second place.

Dr. Sidney B. Hall, superintendent of public instruction, in his report
for 1936-37, states that Virginia still falls below the minimum of five
books to a pupil. The Virginia State Library is doing heroic missionary
work in the field of extension libraries. On a parsimonious allowance, it
sends traveling units to rural schools and clubs to furnish an indispensable
instrument of twentieth-century education.

On the other hand, Virginia's revised curriculum, developed under the
direction of Dr.Hall, has attracted wide attention. It has been called,
however, an excellent machine without the motive power of adequate ap-
propriation. Conditions in the rural schools of the State, where this cur-
riculum should be functioning most efficiently, have been characterized by
authorities in the Virginia Journal of Education as ' deplorable/ In an ad-
dress delivered on April 12, 1939, before the State Chamber of Commerce,
the superintendent of public instruction again called attention to the
State's failure to support her public schools: * Virginia is adding it mil-
lions this year [1937-38] to the value of school property, without making
adequate financial provision for its operation and use/ In regard to
teachers' salaries, he said that, i because of the decrease in the purchasing

1x8

EDUCATION 119

value of the dollar, teachers are paid less today on the basis of the work
done than they have been for more than a generation/

RISE OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM

Free education in Virginia had its beginnings soon after the founding of
the colony. In addition to the Syms Free School, founded in 1634, and the
Eaton Free School, established a few years later, there were seven other
very early institutions generally known as parisli schools. In 1646 the Vir-
ginia assembly passed its first apprenticeship law (confirmed in 1672,
1705, and 1748), which prescribed that poor orphans, neglected children
of indigent parents, and all apprentices should be taught the elements of
an education, given religious instruction, and trained in a good calling or
trade. There is even some evidence of attempts in the seventeenth century
to establish trade schools in the Virginia workhouses. The schools for ' all
the children within the bounds ' or for poor orphans and apprentices were
supported by private philanthropy. Unfortunately, association of free
primary education with the poor orphan produced what has been called an
' orphan fixation,' which for more than 200 years proved an obstacle to the
development and general acceptance of a public school system and even
after 1869 prevented a wholehearted support of free education for all
classes.

The idea that education is a State function evolved slowly in Virginia,
as elsewhere. Its first great American champion, Thomas Jefferson, was
100 years in advance of his time. Within a few days after his election in
1779 as governor of Virginia, he submitted to the assembly his plan for
education: i A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge.' Its aim
was to safeguard democracy by educating the people. Jefferson hoped to
end the old horizontal system of schools for the rich and schools for the
poor, and sought to remove the blight of pauperism from free education.

The plan proposed three years of free elementary education for all chil-
dren regardless of class or condition, free secondary education for those
who had the ability to profit by it, and free college and university educa-
tion for those with still greater endowments. The weakness of the plan
came from its author's fear of centralization. He proposed to finance the
schools mainly by a direct tax locally imposed. The bill, which would have
given primary education to boys and girls alike, did not go through at the
time, but some of its provisions were enacted into law in 1796.

In 1818 Jefferson led another assault on the indifference to popular edu-
cation. The assembly of 1810, prompted by Governor John Tyler,Sr., had

120 VIRGINIA

passed a law establishing the Literary Fund, a form of school support in-
tended to take the place of a local tax. This law, still functioning in Vir-
ginia, provides that all fines, escheats, and confiscations accruing to the
State shall be used for the founding of a university, for the education of
poor children, and for the encouragement of learning. Jefferson's amended
education bill of 1818 was intended to establish a pyramidal system of
education, a system of primary and secondary schools and district col-
leges, with the university the capstone of the structure. As only the pri-
mary schools and the university were founded, the result was a feeble sub-
structure, a vigorous top, and nothing between by which free-school chil-
dren could climb upward. Such as it was, however, the system functioned
until about 1860. Amendments and re-enactments did not change its
inherent weakness, which lay in the permissive nature of the provisions.
The bill left the matter of setting up primary schools in a locality to the
men of substance, who naturally did not hasten to tax themselves to edu-
cate the children of their poor neighbors. Before 1860 not more than half a
dozen counties had established district free schools.

A growing sentiment in favor of extending educational opportunity was
reflected in the educational conventions of 1841, 1845, 1856, and 1857. In
the western counties a rising middle class was founding schools and col-
leges and demanding a State-supported system of free schools. The de-
scendants of Scotch and Scotch-Irish settlers were the most powerful fac-
tors in this movement. Official recognition of free education actually came
in 1851. Then through revision of the constitution it was provided that
one-half of the capitation tax might be applied to free primary schools.

Even before the educational revivals of the i84o's and i85o's, Virginia
had experimented with two other forms of free popular education, both
originating in England. The first, the secular Sunday school, was wel-
comed here with enthusiasm, reached its crest of favor in the 1830% and
then rapidly waned in popularity. As initiated by Robert Raikes, the plan
provided instruction for the poor in reading, writing, and religion, using
the Bible and the catechism as the basis of teaching. The classes, in which
all ages and all social strata were mingled, were held on Sunday, some-
times continuing all day. The aristocratic lion in some sections fed with
the proletariat lamb, Jefferson's democratic ideal seemed on the eve of
realization. The teachers were volunteers, and the cost was so low that
prophets hailed this innovation as a solution of the problem of popular
education. It proved a false dawn. The glow faded, but the democratic
leveling had helped to inoculate the public with the idea of free schools
disassociated from charity.

E DUG ATION 121

Almost at the same time the Lancasterian plan for popular education
invaded Virginia. This monitorial system, invented by Joseph Lancaster,
employed older pupils to teach the younger under the supervision of an
adult teacher. The schools were supported by private contributions and
municipal appropriations. Norfolk had a Lancastrian Academy in 1815,
and the Lancastrian, or Lancasterian, School at Richmond, founded in
1816, functioned successfully until the establishment of the public school
system in 1869.

In spite of all obstacles, the State was moving toward a genuine system
of public education under the stimulus of the educational conventions and
the efforts of such advocates as Dr.Henry Ruffner, Governor James Mc-
Dowell and Governor Henry Alexander Wise, when the conflict over slav-
ery and states' rights drew into its vortex the best energies of a generation.
After the war, Virginia faced a new social order and founded her system of
State-supported public schools for both white and Negro children. Ac-
cording to the mandate of the Federal Government, a constitutional con-
vention was summoned to meet in Richmond on December 3, 1867, to
frame a new State constitution. Firmness and patience helped the minor-
ity of native sons to shape the educational provisions in accordance with
the spirit of Virginia.

These provisions required that public schools for both races should be
set up and functioning by 1876. The general assembly met in March 1870
and elected Dr.William Henry Ruffner the first State superintendent of
public instruction, requiring him to frame within 30 days a plan for a uni-
form system of public schools. In July 1870 this plan became a law. Illit-
eracy among both races had gained noticeably during the war. With
this burden and financially impoverished, Virginia started on a new
course.

By 1871 the public schools, had an enrollment of 150,000, but ship-
wreck threatened just ahead. In the lean years of 1877-79 the public
school system found itself almost without funds. The Literary Fund had
been diverted to other channels. Though Dr.Ruffner and other stalwart
friends of education saved the system from complete disaster, the next two
decades show a downward curve on the educational graph the result of
an alliance between school administration and politics. But the new State
constitution of 1902 in large measure divorced the schools from political
influence. The power of the State board was increased, appropriations
were cut off from schools not under exclusive control of the State, and it
was provided that the superintendent of public instruction should be an
experienced educator elected by the people for a term of four years.

122 VIRGINIA

A series of educational conferences promoted by Robert C. Ogden of
New York was held at various centers in the South in the opening years of
the twentieth century. In Virginia they resulted in the May campaign of
1905. State officials were bombarded with appeals for improvement of the
public school system. Better school laws were enacted, high schools and
normal schools were established, and facilities for industrial and
agricultural education were set up. In 1884 the State had founded a
normal school for women at Farmville, and between 1908 and 1912
three more such schools were opened at Harrisonburg, Fredericksburg,
and East Radford. These schools have since evolved into teachers'
colleges.

In 1937-38 Virginia's expenditures for educational purposes amounted
to $29,140,234.86, a sum which, according to careful estimates, was
$10,000,000 less than the amount needed. In 1937-38 the expenditure per
pupil in average daily public school attendance was $45.56, as against a
National average of $74.30. The largest sum spent for a single specialized
purpose in 1937-38 was $907,777 for vocational education; but, according
to the superintendent of public instruction, this sum fell far short of what
was needed. In 1937-38 the State employed 17,249 teachers, white and
Negro, whose average annual salary (exclusive of supervisors and super-
vising principals) was $792. The average annual salary, including all types
of instruction, was $886. Of the 735,198 children of school age in the State,
583,556 were enrolled in the public schools, with an average daily attend-
ance of only 493,266.

Virginia's revised curriculum proves, however, that those who planned
it were intent on changing the gears of the educational machine to meet
the demands for twentieth-century efficiency. It proves also that Vir-
ginia's low educational rating is not the fault of her educators but of those
who dispense the public funds.

THE ACADEMY MOVEMENT

Before the widespread establishment of private schools, wealthy plant-
ers engaged tutors and invited the children of neighboring plantations to
share the instruction and the expense; girls attended with their brothers
or were taught by governesses. The enrollment lists of Eton, Cambridge,
and Oxford show that many sons of wealthy Virginia families went over-
seas for their education. Frequently small planters or successful mer-
chants set up community schools known as Old Field schools, sometimes
patronized for convenience by the upper class. Here the instruction varied

Architecture fl

'< Photograph by courtesy of the Virginia Conservation

4fft| CAPITOL (1785-92, 1904-05), RICHMOND

Photograph by courtesy of the Virginia Conservation Commission

ARLINGTON (1 802-20), NEAR ALEXANDRIA

WHITE HOUSE OF THE CONFEDERACY {1818, 1844). RICHMOND

Photograph by courtesy of the Virginia Conservation Commission

Photograph by courtesy of the Virginkj Conservation CommKsw?i
PARISH CHUICH (t710-l& WILUAMSIUIG

Photograph by courtesy of the Virginia State Chamber of Commerce

GOVERNOR'S PALACE {1705-20, RECONSTRUCTED 1930), WILLIAMS&UftG

WREN BUILDING (1695-99, RESTORED 1928), COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY. WILLIAMSBURG

Photograph by courtesy of the Virginia Conservation Commission

Photograph by courtesy ot the Virginia Conservation Commission
STRATFORD HALL (1729), WESTMORELAND COUNTY

POHtCK CHURCH (1774), FAIRFAX COUNTY

Photograph by W, Lincoln Highton

Photograph by W. Lincoln Highton

HANOVER COURTHOUSE (1733), HANOVER COUNTY

ST. LUKE'S CHURCH (17th CENTURY, RESTORED 1887), NEAR SMITHFIEID

Photograph by courtesy of the Virginia Conservation Cornmission

OF BAftlOURSVILli (cl 820), ORANGE COUNTY

Photograph by W, Lincoln HgHton

EDUCATION 123

from the rudiments of knowledge to mathematics and the classics, under
an educated master.

The academy movement, which started in mid-eighteenth century,
carried Virginia to pre-eminence through the number and quality of sec-
ondary schools and the high cost of board and tuition. From 1776 to 1870,
when the academy gave way to the public high school, 218 such institu-
tions were chartered: 127 for boys, 71 for girls, and 20 that were coeduca-
tional. The academy responded quickly to the conditions of a changing
economic life. It included in its curricula practical subjects needed in a
new country navigation, surveying, engineering, sciences, and modern
languages. In Scientific Interests in the Old South, Dr.T. C.Johnson reveals
through minute documentation the extent to which the sciences were
taught in these academies, seminaries, or institutes, as they were variously
known. Often the scientific instruction was strengthened by lectures from
a professor at a neighboring college. When the academy movement waned,
some of these institutions survived to form the nuclei of future colleges
and universities.

An educational chart of Virginia, designed to display the scope and
quality of the instruction given in girls' schools between 1790 and 1860,
would show surprising variations. While the catalogue of one Virginia
seminary was promising to 'temper the severities of arithmetic to the
delicacy of the female mind,' another was publishing in its prospectus the
stern requirement that the young ladies were ' expected to study philos-
ophy from the original text of the master and use no easy compendiums ' ;
and at Llangollen in Spotsylvania, the Lewis School for both sexes, in sep-
arate classes, was putting the ' delicate female mind' through the same
severe intellectual discipline as was given the boys. This was in 1815, and
the advertisement of other schools for girls, then and later, list Latin and
Greek, with emphasis on Euclid ' to strengthen the mind, ' and a surpris-
ing array of the sciences. Between 1835 and 1838, according to Dr. John-
son, nearly all the 100 advertisements of girls' schools in Virginia listed
some natural sciences in the course of study. But few of these schools
omitted the teaching of shell work, bead work, and the making of wax
flowers, or neglected the ' captivating accomplishments' of music, French,
and dancing. Intelligent Virginians Thomas Ritchie, editor of the Rich-
mond Enquirer , among them grew more and more critical of the trivial
and superficial education given to girls and argued for 'more masculine
breadth and substance.' In response to this demand and as part of a Nation-
wide educational awakening, schools were founded to provide girls in Vir-
ginia with the same educational opportunities as were offered young men.

124 VIRGINIA

COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES

Higher education has always been Virginia's favorite child, while the
free or public school has been left like Ishmael to sojourn in the desfert.
Before the Jamestown settlement was ten years old, ambitious schemes
were afoot both in Virginia and in England to found a college or university
at Henricopolis in the corporation of Henrico, with an endowment of
$45,000 and a domain of 10,000 acres. The Massacre of 1622, however, dis-
couraged all efforts toward higher education, and not until 1693 was the
College of William and Mary founded by royal charter at Williams-
burg.

Now Virginia has 24 senior colleges and universities, 10 of which are
controlled by the State. The University of Virginia was founded at Char-
lottesville by Thomas Jefferson in 1819. The College of William and Mary-
passed into State control in 1906. Virginia's two military colleges, the Vir-
ginia Military Institute at Lexington (founded 1839) an( i the Virginia
Polytechnic Institute at Blacksburg (founded 1872), combine military and
technical training with courses in the liberal arts. The four teachers' col-
leges, to which men are admitted only in the summer sessions, now confer
the degree of bachelor of arts. Since William and Mary passed into State
control, Hampden-Sydney College (opened January i, 1776 as Prince Ed-
ward Academy) has become the senior private institution for higher edu-
cation in Virginia. Hampden-Sydney was the progenitor of Union Theo-
logical Seminary, now in Richmond, and of the Medical College of Vir-
ginia, organized in 1838 as Hampden-Sydney medical department. This
medical college, also in Richmond and now a State-controlled coeduca-
tional institution, is the largest medical center south of Baltimore. Scotch-
Irish zeal for education is responsible for the beginnings of Washington
and Lee University, chartered in 1782 as Liberty Hall Academy. During
the third decade of the nineteenth century several other colleges were
established the University of Richmond, Randolph-Macon College at
Ashland, and Emory and Henry College at Emory. In addition to the
senior colleges and universities, Virginia has 12 institutions of junior col-
lege standing. Of these, nine are for women and three are coeducational,
including the Eastern Mennonite School at Harrisonburg, the only one of
this sect in the State.

State-controlled higher education in Virginia has been predominantly
for men. Until 1918 no State-supported college admitted women. In that
year the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and the College of WilHam and
Mary became coeducational In 1920 the University of Virginia opened to

EDUCATION 125

women its graduate and professional schools. Women are still virtually
excluded from the winter sessions of the university's school of liberal arts,
though they may receive the degree of bachelor of arts by attending
courses in the summer.

While Virginia has no college for women that ranks with the so-called
'Big Seven/ she can offer a list of several distinctive institutions, the old-
est dating from the educational revival of the 1 840*3, and all except
Randolph-Macon Woman's College and Sweet Briar College developing
from a female seminary or institute. Hollins College near Roanoke,
founded in 1842 as a coeducational institute, stands foremost among the
pioneers. The Mary Baldwin Seminary in Staunton was opened, also in
1842, as the Augusta Female Seminary. Patterned after those in the men's
colleges, the early courses at these two schools were exacting. Westhamp-
ton College, opened in 1915 as co-ordinate college for women at the Uni-
versity of Richmond, had as its first students c co-eds/ who for several
years had been tolerated on a masculine campus.

Randolph-Macon Woman's College at Lynchburg, founded by Meth-
odists in 1893, has the distinction of being the first fully accredited wo-
man's college in Virginia. Sweet Briar College, one of the youngest of Vir-
ginia's colleges for women, was opened near Amherst in 1906 as a strictly
liberal-arts institution.

NEGRO EDUCATION

The apprenticeship act of 1646 required masters to instruct and cate-
chize their Negroes, as well as their white apprentices and indentured ser-
vants. In the eighteenth century occasional efforts were made in Virginia
to give the Negro an elementary education and to train him in some craft
or industry. At Bremo, the old Cocke homestead on the upper James, is
still preserved the eighteenth-century slave schoolroom. Before 1764 the
editor of the Virginia Gazette had established a school for Negroes in Wil-
Hamsburg, as an entry against his estate, 'To paid Ann wages for teach-
ing the Negro school/ furnishes evidence. In December 1827 The Rich-
mond Whig advertised a school for 'free Negro boys' taught by a Joseph
Sheppard, who sought to ' elevate them from mental thralldom and degra-
dation. 7 When the foreign slave trade was abolished in 1808, Virginia be-
came, in the words of President Dew of the College of William and Mary,
' a Negro-raising state for other states.' Her slaves were in demand because
of their excellent training. House-servants were often taught to read and
write, to increase their economic value. But steadily mounting unrest

126 VIRGINIA

among the slaves, the increase of abolitionist propaganda, and fear of an-
other Nat Turner insurrection produced a reaction against educating the
Negro. Stringent laws were passed in 1849 penalizing Negro instruction or
' assemblages.'

At the close of the War between the States, Virginia was too impover-
ished to educate even her white children. It was then that the Freedmen's
Bureau and the Peabody Fund, both Northern philanthropies, gave money
and moral support for Negro education. They were aided in their efforts
by the almost 60,000 free Virginia Negroes, many of them literate and
property owners. In 1868 the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Insti-
tute was established by the American Missionary Association of New
York, which had conducted schools for Negroes on Hampton River since
1861.

Not until 40 years after the establishment of Virginia's public school
system was the vocational training of the old apprenticeship system re-
stored to both whites and Negroes. Virginia Randolph, a Negro teacher in
a rural school of Henrico County, started a movement in 1906 for the
return of vocational and industrial training. Her plan so transformed the
rural Negro schools of the county that it was successfully adopted else-
where in Virginia and North Carolina. She was the first supervisor to
be aided by the Jeanes Fund.

Negro education in the South has been vitally assisted by four funds
established by Northern philanthropists. The Slater Fund, the earliest,
provided $1,000,000 for Negro rural schools and the training of Negro
teachers. It was founded in 1882 by a Connecticut merchant, J.P.Slater.
The Jeanes Fund, endowed in 1905 by a Philadelphia Quaker, Miss Anna
Jeanes, finances supervisors for the rural schools. The Phelps-Stokes
Fund, founded by Miss Caroline Phelps-Stokes in 1909, aids the public
rural schools of both races. The Rosenwald Fund for rural Negro educa-
tion, with a munificent endowment of $22,000,000, was founded in 191 2 by
Julius Rosenwald of Chicago. In 1930, near the old Syms School in Eliz-
abeth City County, the Rosenwald Fund erected the five thousandth of
the school buildings it has distributed throughout the rural South. The
Slater Fund and the Jeanes Fund were merged in 1937 as the Southern
Education Foundation, Incorporated.

In 1928, Dr.Michael Vincent O'Shea of the University of Wisconsin
made an exhaustive report on public education in Virginia to the Virginia
commission of education. He found the Negro rural schools seriously handi-
capped by short terms, poor physical equipment, inefficient teachers,
low salaries, and lack of effective supervision. Dr.SIdney B. Hall, Vir-

EDUCATION 127

ginia's present superintendent of public instruction, lists as needs of
the Negro schools more and better buildings, increased and improved
transportation facilities, better teachers, higher salaries, and consoli-
dation.

In addition to Hampton Institute, Virginia has three other Negro col-
leges. One of these, Virginia State College at Petersburg, is supported by
State funds. Another, Virginia Union University, had its lowly origin in a
building known as Lumpkin's jail, or slave pen, in Richmond. Virginia
Theological Seminary and College was founded in 1888; its alumni serve
many of the churches of the State.

Other Negro institutions in the State, however, give some college
courses. In the heart of the 'black belt' in Brunswick County, the Rev-
erend James S. Russell, an Episcopal minister, started in 1888 the St.Paul
Normal and Industrial School, now a coeducational junior college and
teacher-training institution. The northern branch of the Presbyterian
Church controls the Ingleside-Fee Memorial Institute at Burkeville, which
gives an accredited high school course and two years of college work; and
the Roman Catholic Church maintains the St.Emma Industrial Institute
for Negroes at Rock Castle on the James River. The Bishop Payne Divin-
ity School at Petersburg trains Negroes for the ministry.

The editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch on May 19, 1937, com-
mended the award of the Roosevelt Memorial Association to Dr. James
Hardy Dillard, in recognition of half a century of wise and devoted work
on behalf of the Negro, and said: ' School superintendents find it easier
now in the South to give Negro pupils new schools than they did 20 or
30 years ago . . . Some of these superintendents are growing bold
enough to discuss the disparity between the salaries of the white and the
colored public teachers.' But for all advances that have been made in re-
cent years, many inequalities with respect to Negro and white education
still exist in the public school system of Virginia.

In 1937-38 there were 27 counties without public schools for Negroes
and 26 counties and two cities without Negro high schools. The total num-
ber of accredited, qualified, and certified Negro high schools in the State is
63. In 1937-38 the expenditure for each Negro pupil in average daily
attendance was $26,08 in city schools and $12.19 m mra ^ schools, as
against corresponding expenditures of $47.62 and $24.01 for the white
pupil. In 1937-38 the average annual salary paid Negro elementary
teachers was $518, while white elementary teachers received $773- The
average salary paid Negro high school teachers was $848, while white
high school teachers received $1190.

128 VIRGINIA

THE FUTURE PROGRAM

Although the Virginia legislature at its 1938 session adopted only a part
of the program advanced by educators for lifting standards in the schools
of the State, public opinion has been so aroused that necessary appropria-
tions cannot be indefinitely withheld. The following three-point unified
program was adopted in January 1938 by the Virginia Educational Asso-
ciation: a minimum school term of nine months with a minimum average
salary for teachers of not less than $720 per school year; an actuarially
sound retirement law for teachers; textbooks furnished pupils in the pub-
lic schools at the expense of the State. Although this program has not yet
been achieved, public attention has been focused on the need, and addi-
tional appropriations constitute a step in the right direction.

The comptroller's report for 1938 lists Federal aid for education in Vir-
ginia to the amount of $1,244,267, distributed among the funds for re-
habilitation, for vocational education, for home economics courses given
in 71 per cent of the accredited high schools, and in the College of William
and Mary, the Medical College of Virginia, the Virginia Polytechnic Insti-
tute, and the Virginia State College for Negroes.

In 1938 the general assembly of Virginia made appropriations to help
the local school boards develop already existing programs for adult educa-
tion. These local programs are to be set up in community centers, unifying
all phases of the education of adults.

Delinquents, formally committed by the courts, are placed in private
homes or sent to four industrial schools maintained by the State. A State
institution cares for white epileptics and feeble-minded persons, and one
for Negroes is now being built (1939). The State supports white and Negro
institutions for the deaf and blind. The Virginia Commission for the
Blind maintains workshops in three cities and, gives effective aid in con-
serving sight. In 1936 the general assembly established an annual appro-
priation of $950,000 for the support of these institutions.

Besides these State institutions, there are a number of schools and
homes for normal and subnormal youth supported by private philan-
thropy Masonic and sectarian.

Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1795: I do most anxiously wish to see the
highest degrees of education given to the highest degrees of genius, and to
all degrees of it, so much as may enable them to read and understand what
is going on in the world, and to keep their part of it going on right; for
nothing can keep it right but their own vigilant and distrustful super-
intendence.' And in 1820 he noted hopefully: * Surely Governor Clinton's

EDUCATION I2Q

display of the gigantic efforts of New York towards the education of their
citizens will stimulate the pride as well as the patriotism of our Legisla-
ture, to look to the reputation and safety of their country, to rescue it
from the degradation of becoming the Barbary of the Union.'

Today in the education field, courageous and versatile leaders are
pushing toward the goal set by Thomas Jefferson. With the fourth decade
of the twentieth century at the threshold, there is already good hope that
in the early 1 940*5 Virginia will recapture her traditional prestige in edu-
cation and link her present with her past.

ers

BUT I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing and I hope
we shall not have, these hundred years, for learning has brought
disobedience, and freresy, and sects into the world, and printing has
divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from
both.' Thus wrote Governor William Berkeley, reporting to the Commis-
sioners of Plantations in 1671. Within little more than a decade thereafter,
William Nuthead sponsored by John Buckner, set up in Gloucester County
a press (the second to be established in America) and in 1682 printed two
sheets of the Acts of the Virginia Assembly. Though Berkeley had been re-
called to England, a spirit of intolerance toward 'liberty of presses' per-
sisted. Buckner was summoned for this printing of the Laws, and Charles II
ordered in 1683 that no person use any press in the colony, Massachu-
setts had set up a printing press in 1639, but it was 1704 before any news-
paper was regularly published in the colonies and 1763 before a daily paper
appeared regularly.

More liberal views prevailed in Virginia in 1730, for in that year William
Parks of Annapolis, Maryland, was appointed public printer by Governor
Gooch and set up a press in Williamsburg. This was the first permanent
printing press in Virginia. Three years later, Parks printed a collection of
all the acts of assembly then in force, one of the typographical monuments
of Colonial America. In 1736 he founded the Virginia Gazette with a subsidy
from the governor and the house of burgesses. A tablet commemorating
this pioneer printer was presented to Williamsburg by the Virginia Press
Association in 1930.

Three newspapers, or gazettes as they were commonly called, were pub-
lished in Williamsburg before and during the Revolutionary period. The
original Virginia Gazette was edited successively by William Hunter and
Joseph Royle and then by Alexander Purdie, with John Dixon as associate.
On December 29, 1774, Purdie dissolved the partnership with Dixon and
launched a paper of his own; while Dixon, with William Hunter, Jr., as co-
editor, continued to edit the Virginia Gazette. Being a Tory, Hunter later
found it wise to disappear, and Thomas Nicolson became Dixon's partner,
After Alexander Purdie's death in April 1779, the gazette that he had

130

NEWSPAPERS 131

founded some four years previously was published until December 9, 1780,
by John Clarkson and Augustine Davis.

In the troubled years preceding the Revolution, the first gazette was too
subservient to the British Crown to be acceptable to the liberals. So in 1766,
encouraged by Thomas Jefferson, William Rind came down from Maryland
and founded a paper, first called Rind's Virginia Gazette but later dropping
the name of its editor. Rind died on April 19, 1773, an d Clementina Rind,
his widow, published the paper until her own death on September 25, 1774.
Immediately thereafter John Pinkney became the publisher 'for the bene-
fit of Clementina Rind's Estate' and continued the paper until Febru-
ary 3, 1776.

Thus it will be seen that the Virginia Gazette revived in 1930 has a rather
complicated ancestry. Similarly in other cities, rival gazettes had their day
and ceased to be. The controversies before, during, and following the Rev-
olution caused this multiplication of newspapers. Each shade of opinion
strove to find expression in an organ of its own. A free press was born of
this rivalry, and monopoly of news and ownership was ended. Before the
eighteenth-century gazette was generally abandoned, Richmond had sup-
ported nine, Winchester three, and Norfolk two including one issue by
the British navy during the Revolution.

Thomas Jefferson, however, was in part responsible for this liberation.
Rind's Virginia Gazette, virtually Jefferson's official organ, published Ben-
jamin Franklin's views on the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766. Fourteen
years later, during the high tide of the Revolution, the general assembly de-
clared that ' a good printing press is indispensable for the right information
of the people and for the public service,' a concise definition of the true
mission of journalism. Governor Jefferson then invited John Dunlap and
James Hayes, skilled printers of Baltimore, to settle in Virginia. Setting up
their press in Charlottesville, they made that town the fourth center of
printing in Virginia, following Williamsburg, Richmond, and Norfolk. By
1781 Dunlap and Hayes had moved to Richmond, leaving Charlottesville
without a paper until 1820, when the Central Gazette was established.

Other communities responded to the stirring spirit of the Revolutionary
era. In 1774 the Norfolk Intelligencer was founded in what was then Vir-
ginia's most populous town; the Alexandria Gazette began publication in
1784; later came the Petersburg Gazette, which changed its title in 1800 to
The Intelligencer] and the Virginia Herald was founded at Fredericksburg
in 1787 by Timothy Green. The Herald began as either a weekly or a semi-
weekly, and continued for nearly 100 years. The Alexandria Gazette, the
oldest daily in the United States published continuously, was owned

132 VIRGINIA

and edited by various members of the Snowden family from 1800 to
1900.

Lynchburg and Staunton had newspapers by 1793, and Leesburg fol-
lowed in 1798 with the True American. The farthest outpost captured by
the press in the eighteenth century was Fincastle in Botetourt County,
where the Herald of Virginia appeared in 1800. The Shenandoah Valley
was distinguished by a German weekly newspaper issued in 1807 as Der
Virginische Volkberichter und Neumarketer Wochenschrift.

The Scotch, Scotch-Irish, and German pioneers of southwest Virginia,
with their keen interest in education, were not long in founding newspa-
pers, although isolated by mountain barriers and served by poor roads. The
first newspaper published west of the mountains was the Holston Intelli-
gencer and Abingdon Advertiser i which appeared in 1806. TheAbingdon Vir-
ginian flourished from 1839 to 1917, bearing at its masthead this no-
tice: ' Established as the People's Friend. Devoted to farm, education,
good habits, news, politics, morals, religion, and amusement in the
home/

In format and content these early journals had little in common with the
modern newspaper. The front page was usually cloaked in lucrative adver-
tisements and in stodgy philosophy expressed in either verse or prose. The
Virginia Gazette on April 24, 1751, tediously applauds in labored verse 'In-
fidelity, or Atheism Disproved, by a Gentleman of Virginia/ Then follow a
quotation from Horace, unwisely in the original, and a pompous essay on
the importance of acquiring wisdom in youth. Mind in the mid-eighteenth
century was definitely superior to matter on the front page* Nor had rad-
ical innovations arrived even as late as 1816. On September 20 of that year,
page i of the Richmond Compiler, the city's first daily paper, is heavy-laden
with advertisements; page 2 has a meager slice of foreign news more than
two months old, engulfed by accounts of domestic events; while page 3
naively chronicles a bee-swarming on one of Richmond's streetsa Vir-
gilian episode somewhat dwarfed by notices of slave sales and rewards for
runaways.

For more than 100 years newspaper headlines were models of restraint.
Five days after one of Richmond's greatest disasters, the burning on De-
cember 26, 18x1, of the theater on Academy Square, the Richmond En~
quirer headed an account of the tragedy with the one word * Narrative ' in
type scarcely larger than the text. And in its issue of January 30, 1830, the
same paper assigned to an obscure paragraph, without fanfare or headlines,
news of an 'atrocious attempt to rob the Early Union Stage Line between
Richmond and Baltimore/ Nor did the death of George IV in 1830 create a

NEWSPAPERS 133

ripple in the journalistic calm; the insignificant paragraph devoted to the
king's undramatic demise had all the earmarks of lese-majeste.

Yet as far as human nature is concerned, the old papers prove the truth
of the French proverb, Plus qa change, plus c'est la m&me chose. A poem en-
titled 'The Lady's Complaint/ published in the Virginia Gazette of Octo-
ber 15-22, 1736, might have been written by a plaintive feminist of 2oc
years later:

Custom, alas! doth partial prove
Nor give us equal measure.
A pain it is for us to love,
But it is to men a pleasure.

They plainly can their thoughts disclose,
Whilst ours must burn within,
We have got tongues and eyes in vain,
And truth from us is sin.

Men to new joys and conquests fly,
And yet no hazard run.
Poor we are left if we deny,
And if we yield undone.

Then equal laws let custom find,
And neither sex oppress.
More freedom give to womankind,
Or give to mankind less.

A twentieth-century chamber of commerce might have sponsored this
appeal to industrialists in the Richmond Compiler of May 16, 1816 : ' Capi-
talist! We invite you to settle among us. Here is a field for the employment
of your capital. Richmond is destined to be great.'

Changes in methods of transportation are duly reflected in these early
papers. The Richmond Compiler for August 5, 1816, proudly announces a
new stage line, leaving f Columbian Hotel on Main Street at 8 a.m.' and ar-
riving at Trench's Tavern in Petersburg at 2 p.m.,' some 20 miles incredi-
bly accomplished in five hours 1 But 14 years later the development of steam
travel on land and water inspired the following prophetic lines, published
in the Richmond Enquirer of January 2, 1830:

Tell John to set the kettle on,

I mean to take a drive;
I only want to go to Rome,

And shall be back by five.

Tell cook to dress those hummingbirds

I shot in Mexico;
They've now been killed at least two days,

They'll be un peu trop kaut.

134 VIRGINIA

As travel by rail gained popularity, a bard (although no prophet), writ-
ing in elegiac mood for the Richmond Dispatch of February 19, 1852, la-
mented the passing of the turnpike:

For the Steam-King rules the travelled world
And the old Pike's left to die.

For the dust lies still upon the road
And the bright-eyed children play
Where once the clattering hoof and wheel
Rattled along the way.

We have circled the earth with an iron rail
And the Steam-King rules us now.

The spirit of liberalism, lusty at the turn of the century, had begun to as-
sume a bilious complexion by the iSso's. Stimulated by the ever-mounting
temperature of political and economic controversy, many new journals en-
tered the field in the years between 1824 and 1861. The industrial and com-
mercial North was arrayed against the agrarian South in a clash over the
tariff, and the admission of new States into the Union brought the question
of Negro slavery to the front. The Virginia press both reflected and directed
the sectional controversy in a community that represented the widest range
of opinion and feeling. The Whig press, supported mainly by the conserva-
tive planters and merchants of Tidewater Virginia, advocated greater con-
trol by the National Government and a greater centralization of power.
The Democratic party, faithful to Jefferson'sprinciples, championed states'
rights. The dominant organ of Jeffersonian Democracy was the Richmond
Enquirer, founded by Thomas Ritchie in 1804; that of the Whigs was the
Richmond Whig, founded in 1827 by John Hampden Pleasants. The Pied-
mont section, Jefferson's own, remained loyal to his brand of democracy,
but the Whigs controlled the Lynchburg Virginian and the Leesburg Wash-
ingtonian. The Scotch and Irish in the Shenandoah Valley, keener about
internal improvements than about political theories and having few slaves
or none, were chiefly represented by the Lexington Gazette and the Staunton
Spectator.

Vital statistics of Virginia newspapers reflected the accelerated
tempo of the day both birthrate and deathrate mounted. Editors were
propounding the question, 'Can the Union be peacefully dissolved? 7
Papers ceased to be impartial dispensers of news and became guides to
public opinion. Intensified partisan passions caused one noted duel
John Hampden Pleasants, founder and editor of the Richmond Whig, chal-
lenged Thomas Ritchiejr,, editorof ft&Enquirer duringhisfather'sabsence
in Washington, and fell on the field of honor, John Moncure Daniel, ex-

NEWSPAPERS 135

treme secessionist and dynamic editor, started the Richmond Examiner -a,
paper patterned to compete with the Richmond Dispatch, which made its
appearance in 1 850 as a nonpartisan journal. The Virginia Sentinel of Alex-
andria, founded to combat the growing power of the Federal Government,
exerted a profound influence on the trend of public opinion. John Brown's
Raid in 1859 caused such a fusing of these disparate elements that when the
war broke out in 1861 the South had virtually a united press east of the
Alleghenies. The newspapers discriminated between ' the Cause ' and the
Confederate Government, criticizing the first at times but upholding the
second throughout the conflict.

From the days of the first newspaper in Williamsburg to the War be-
tween the States, the methods of news-gathering hobbled through a slow
evolution. The masthead of the Virginia Gazette carried the boast, ' Con-
taining the freshest Advices, Foreign and Domestick.' But in its issue of
March 21, 1744 the 'freshest Advices/ dealing with the seizure of the Aus-
trian Silesian provinces by Frederick the Great, were more than two months
old and had doubtless been brought by the 'good Ship, Virginia' reported
'safe in York river 10 weeks after leaving Bristol , England/ By May 9 news
of chaotic Europe had given way to matters of more local interest, among
these being Bishop Berkeley's treatise on the virtues of Tar Water a med-
icine before the onslaught of which such dreaded diseases as scourge, small-
pox, consumption, and asthma fled in truly miraculous fashion.

In pretelegraph days, news was commonly carried by pony express,
a laborious method partially improved upon by the American Beacon of
Norfolk, which sent relays of riders through Washington to New York and
then had the dispatches collected en route brought down to Hampton
Roads by boat. Along with the Mexican War came the telegraph and a new
journalistic era. Richmond had a telegraphic service by 1847; but it was
expensive, As an economy measure the city's newspapers copied press dis-
patches from New York and relayed them to other Virginia cities by pony
express. In 1861 the newspapers of Richmond combined to secure a joint
telegraphic news service, and the Associated Press of the Confederacy
was organized.

Mortality among Virginia newspapers was high during the war. By Jan-
uary 1863 nine- tenths of the papers had perished, leaving but 13 survivors.
Of the 1 6 pro-Southern papers founded during the conflict, only three were
alive in 1865. The Federal forces started 20 newspapers during their occu-
pation of various sections in the South, but all ceased publication upon
Lee's surrender. The press, along with all else in the State, felt the pinch of
privation. Because of the scarcity of newsprint, some publications used

136 VIRGINIA

wallpaper and wrapping paper for their issues. The tone of the following
notice that appeared in Abingdon during the war demonstrates the acute-
ness of the need: 'We call upon everybody who has rags, rich or poor,
young or old, learned or unlearned, to send them to us and get 4 cents a
pound or more if demanded. We are obliged to have them or stop printing.
So send them along for humanity's sake and help us keep the machine in
motion.'

Since the appearance in 1865 of the first Negro newspaper in Virginia,
more than 40 papers, most of them weeklies, have been launched and edited
by Negroes. The True Southerner, the pioneer of this field, was founded in
Hampton by a white man, Colonel D.B. White. In 1866 the paper, with
Joseph T. Wilson as editor, was moved to Norfolk, where a political con-
test with Mayor Lamb ended its career. Thereupon Wilson started the
short-lived American Sentinel in Petersburg. In 1888 he founded The In-
dfUstrial Day in Richmond, a monthly concerned mainly with the interests
of labor. Another Negro paper devoted to the same subject was started at
about the same time in Lynchburg by a prominent young journalist, I. Gar-
land Penn, author of The Afro-American Press. The Leader, a Republican
Negro weekly, was begun in Washington in 1888; two years later the
founder and editor, Magnus L. Robinson, moved the paper to Alexandria,
where it underwent various mutations of title that ended in its present
designation.

The foremost Negro newspapers of today in Virginia are the Richmond
Planet, the Newport News Star, and the Norfolk Journal and Guide. The
first named, a Republican weekly, was founded in 1883 by E.A.Randolph;
but it was a later editor, John Mitchell, who gave it National distinction as
a champion of Negro rights. As founded by M.N.Lewis in 1901, the News
Star succeeded the Evening Recorder, which began publication in 1897 as
the Recorder the first Negro daily in Virginia ; since Lewis's death in 1926,
Thomas Newsome has edited the News Star. The Journal and Guide, an in-
dependent weekly, was founded in 1901 by P.B.Young,Sr.

In the decade following the close of the War between the States, Vir-
ginia's newspapers increased in number from 40 to 80, and 180 were being
issued by 1896. A marked recession followed, owing to various causes. Not
only Virginia, but the entire country, felt its impact. The major factor in
this recession was the increased cost of operating a newspaper plant, Com-
peting newspapers found it necessary to merge in order to meet the com-
plex demands of modern journalism. Swifter means of transportation en-
abled the metropolitan newspapers to serve the rural areas, thus tending to
eliminate the rural press. Combined circulation greatly increased, while

NEWSPAPERS 137

the number of individual papers declined. Today no competition exists be-
tween the dailies of any Virginia city except Richmond. In all others both
morning and evening papers are owned and controlled by one company.

The merger trend had important effects for several Richmond newspa-
pers. The State, founded in 1876 by John H. Chamberlayne, united in 1896
with the Star, established in 1893. In January 1903 a double wedding re-
duced the number of Richmond's leading papers from four to two, when
James A. Cow&xdm's Dispatch, da ting from 1850, united with Joseph Bryan's
Times, established in 1886, to form a morning daily, the Times-Dispatch,
and the News and the Evening Leader combined to form an afternoon daily.
The News was founded in 1899, the Leader in 1888. In Norfolk a series of
consolidations brought about the Virginian-Pilot and the Ledger-Dispatch,
which in 1.933 came under the ownership of Norfolk Newspapers Incorpo-
rated but continued publication without change of names.

The excellence of Virginia newspapers has been recognized in awards
made by both State and National agencies. The Richmond Times-Dispatch
received the highest honor in 1933 from the Virginia Press Association for
front-page make-up and advertising display, and in 1936 this paper stood
near the top among contestants for the National N.W.Ayer Award. The
Lynchburg News, founded in 1866 by R.E. Withers, won top honors for ty-
pographical excellence among American papers with a circulation of 10,000
or less in 1938, when it was selected among 935 contestants to receive the
Ayer Award. The Roanoke World News, an afternoon daily, captured three
first awards from the Virginia Press Association in 1937 for excellence of
general make-up. In 1929 Louis Isaac Jaffe, editor of the Norfolk Virginian
Pilot, received the Pulitzer award for the best editorial of the year.

Governor William Berkeley's prayer has not been answered. The State
now (1939) supports 32 daily newspapers, 6 semiweeklies, and 120 week-
lies. Learning has brought about many things feared by the autocratic old
governor, 'and printing has divulged them/

Folklore and Music

PIONEERS and restless settlers moving from the more populated set-
tlements of New England and Pennsylvania drifted down the Valley
of Virginia into western North Carolina. Later, they migrated back
into the Cumberlands, into pockets of the Blue Ridge and a vast hinter-
land between Virginia and West Virginia.This was a region of deep hollows,
swift streams, verdant forests, and hard living the haunt of game and
legends, overhung with blue mists and smoke from stillhouses and
cabins perched precariously on mountain slopes.

A proud people, not vain or impeccably attired as were the lowland
planters, the mountain folk retained all the mannerisms of isolated and
nonconformist sects, whose beliefs were largely formed by a wilderness en-
vironment and strict adherence to Biblical laws. Although the kinship be-
tween lowlander and mountain whites was close, mountain folkways re-
mained earthy and rough; their speech and manners hardened; the minuet
became a jig; and sentimental arias were replaced by original story-ballads
dealing with a regional legend, a feud, or an individual feat. Divided by
geographical and cultural barriers, the people developed customs, games,
songs, and patterns of speech, art, and work that indicated the culture of a
particular time and place.

The industrial revolution, bringing with it a challenge to old methods of
manufacture and agriculture, spread its influence into outlying villages
and towns, until the structure of rural life showed the effects of an expand-
ing civilization. In the hills, this change marked the end of pioneering. It
marked the end, to a large extent, of the independence and isolation that
were so much a part of the hill people. 'Furriners' came and went in in-
creasing numbers, leaving behind them their own restlessness, a desire-
usually confined to the younger generation to escape a rather monoto-
nous and impoverished life and join kinsmen or friends outside. Machinery
planted the food and machinery prepared the food for use. Patches of sor-
ghum and tobacco disappeared; the spinning wheel and flax gave way to
'sto' bough ten ' goods; snuff came in cans, and a plug or twist of factory-
made tobacco supplied the stains on the filling-station stove; squirrel-path
roads were straddled by Model T's; magazines of the confession type re-

138

FOLKLORE AND MUSIC 139

placed almanacs; and stragglers from the mills brought visions of Judg-
ment Day to God-fearing hill men and women. But new ways did not en-
tirely destroy the old as the mountaineer went to the city, he carried
deep-rooted convictions and beliefs, a code of morals and a way of living
that defied both the machine and Old Scratch.

Midwives and yarb doctors took up their abode in the shacks of factory
towns. Doorways were hung with open-end horseshoes to ward off bad
luck. Men and women entered mill and factory gates with the left hind
foot of a graveyard rabbit in their pocket or hung asafetida about their
necks as protection against sickness. It was bad luck to have to return to
the house when something was forgotten or to go in one door and out
another. Many a lovesick youth sat on the porch and recited:

Starlight, starbright,
First star I've seen tonight,
Wish I may wish I might,
Dream of my true love tonight.

Children repeated the verses their parents and grandparents sang. Lord
Darnell, one of the oldest ballads in the State, tells of a young farmer lad
who met his death when led astray by Lord Darnell's wife:

She placed her eyes on little Matthew Groves,

And these words to him did say:
'You must go home with me this night;

This live-long night to stay/

'I can't go home with you this night,

I cannot for my life,
For by the ring on your finger

You are Lord Darnell's wife.'

Ring games, of both local and Old Country origin, are built around
rhymes. 'Lady Fair/ a choosing game, is gay and fast moving:

In this ring is a lady fair,

Dark brown eyes and curly hair,

Rosy cheeks and dimpled chin,

Take someone and choose them in. (Choose a boy)

Now you've married and married for life,
La, la, la, what a pretty little wife.
Pretty little wife and husband too,
Kiss him twice if once won't do.

' Cumberland Gap/ a banjo piece and ditty song of the days of the War
between the States, passed out of the hills and into nearly every State:

Fve got a gal

In Cumberland Gap.
She's got a baby

That calls me pap.

I4O VIRGINIA

Another version derided the haughty mien of local damsels, asserting that:

Cumberland gals,

Are getting so gran'
Won't go to meeting

With an hones' man.

A more serious story-ballad, composed about 1864, tells of 'The Glade-
ville Skirmish/ beginning:

The Yankees from Sandy
Upon us did run,
They captured our boys
And broke up our guns.

Primitive religious sects (Pentecostal), with a membership drawn
largely from lower-income groups, frequently compose their own songs, as
stark as the economic life of the congregation. One song creates a realistic
and gruesome picture of Death:

Oh, Death, please let me see,

If Christ has turned his back on me.
When you were called and asked to bow,

You would not heed, ' You're too late now.'

I'll fix your feet so you can't walk;

I'll lock your jaws so you can't talk,
I'll close your eyes so you can't see,

This very hour come and go with me.

As civilization closed in and changes took place in the speech, dress, and
behavior of hill folk, the old ballads found their counterparts in more mod-
ern songs, such as 'The Lick Branch Explosion/ l Wreck of Old 97,' varia-
tions of ' Birmingham Jail/ and the Tin Pan Alley 'feudin '-piece/ 'The
Martins and McCoys.' Facing a losing fight, the hills still protected their
own. Scientific predictions for crops and weather fell upon cleaf ears. When
katydids chirped, it was only 40 days until frost; if a cat turned its back to
the fire, there would be bad weather; if hornets built their nest high, it
signified a mild winter; if drops of water or ice hung to the timber on
St. Valentine's Day, it was a sure sign that there would be plenty of fruit;
and even kids in a new brick school ' over yonder to town ' knew the verse:

Evening red and morning gray
Sets the traveler on his way.
Evening gray and morning red
Brings down rain upon his head.

In time of sickness some store-bought patent medicine might be resorted
to, but with money scarce and stores distant, cures were most commonly
taken from the fields and woods. Pipsissewa, of fragrant blossom and ever-

FOLKLORE AND MUSIC 14!

green leaf, was used for dropsy; snakeroot for headache; sarsaparilla and
sassafras teas were used as spring tonics; smoke-dried Jimson leaves, for
asthma; cabbage or poke weed leaves, as a poultice for boils and sores. A
mixture of mullein leaves, ratsbane, wild-cherry bark and molasses made
a cough syrup; a liberal dose of whiskey or brandy was a cure for snake
bite; peppermint tea was an aid for indigestion. A posthumous child is be-
lieved to be able to cure digestive disorders of children by blowing down
their throats, and the seventh child of a seventh child is said to possess ex-
traordinary healing powers.

The salt marshes, bays, and riverland of Tidewater Virginia supported a
social life entirely different from that of the rugged wilderness farther
westward. Large plantations, the method of appointment to office, and the
use of indentured or slave labor developed a landed aristocracy retaining
the domestic, social, and religious customs of Britain. Except in the gentle
art of political oratory and the craft activities of the skilled artisans and
tradesmen employed by the estates, their social pattern was not conducive
to an indigenous artistic expression. As freed servants became landholders
and, after Bacon's Rebellion, factors in government, the folkways and be-
liefs of peasants and prisoners captured in the Scotch and Irish wars were
partly absorbed into middle-class society. The general use of Negro slaves
about the middle of the eighteenth century created an impoverished class
of poor whites and was responsible for the migration or escape of thou-
sands of white indentured servants to join the Scotch-Irish and Germans
in mountain pockets of the back country. As a consequence, such folklore
as remained was confined to isolated groups along the coast and on islands
a few miles off the mainland.

Masters of large estates held constant open house, where hard drinking
was the order of the day, with persimmon beer, apple cider, cherry bounce,
brandies, corn whiskey, wines, and juleps made of rum, water, and sugar.
Gambling was common, and young people indulged in such games as
'cross and pile,' 'putt,' ' buttons, to get pawns for redemption,' ' grind the
bottle,' 'fox in the warner,' and 'break the Pope's neck.' Negroes and
whites attended the races, cock fights, and boxing matches, and talented
servants supplied music for the dances. Life was not entirely devoted to
entertaining, however, for there was work to be done, and the forces of
nature were rough in a region swept by winds and tide and storm.

In an area swept by winds and tides and constantly threatened, not only
by the forces of nature, but also by pirates who infested the coast, it is not
strange that people gave credence to stories of haunts, dints, and witches.
Lynnhaven Bay was a hiding place of Blackbeard, the Pirate. When con-

142 VIRGINIA

ditions are right, his gun is still heard on certain nights. Blackbeard's
skull, tradition says, was made into a cup and still remains in Tidewater.
Taylor's Bridge was guarded for some years by a headless man, who ex-
acted a toll of fourpence-half -penny of all who passed, and dealt harshly
with those who refused to pay. The method of determining murder by the
'ordeal of touch/ practiced in Tidewater during the seventeenth century,
was based on an old English and Scotch superstition that a murderer
brought into the presence of his victim would cause the victim's wounds to
bleed anew. Harder to get rid of is the bogy of Craddock's Creek, who
leaves peculiar foot-marks and eludes capture with a weird cry of 'Yahoo!
Yahoo!'

Pecatone, an estate between the Yeocomico River and Machodoc
Creek, dates from 1650 and is responsible for the legend of a mistress who
was a petty tyrant among her overseers and Negroes. In her last days
she, her coach, and her coachman * were borne aloft in a terrible hurricane
and lost to sight. 7 From that time until destruction in 1888, the home was
haunted by lights, groans, and shrieks at night.

In Princess Anne County, during the early days, Grace Sherwood was
accused of being a witch and of having blighted Jane Gisburne's crop of
cotton. According to Elizabeth Barnes, she assumed the appearance of a
black cat, visited the Barnes's home, jumped over the accuser's bed,
drove and whipped her, and left by a keyhole or crack in the door. Hailed
into court as a witch, Grace Sherwood was found guilty and condemned to
a ducking from what has since been known as Witch Duck Point, The
Cape Henry area supplies several Grace Sherwood legends, and in Glou-
cester County two witches are said to have practiced their dark profession.

Portobago on the Rappahannock was the home of Sir Thomas Luns-
ford, a professional soldier who fled to Virginia from the British Round-
heads. Known as the 'childeater,' he was ridiculed in verse by Royalist
Cleveland:

The Post that came from Banbury,
Riding on a red rocket,
Did tidings tell how Lunsford fell,
A child's hand in his pocket.

At the eastern point of Gloucester County live a people, known as
Guineamen, whose backgrounds are lost to history. These fisherfolk and
truckers speak with a Middle English accent, but there is nothing in dress
or mannerism to indicate their origin. The women wear sunbonnets and
put shoes on only when they attend the Church of God, a Holy Roller sect.
The men are usually clad in blue denim and either go barefooted or use

FOLKLORE AND MUSIC 143

hip boots to reach boats anchored in the shallows. Typical of their attitude
and manner of living is the story about a Guineaman who shipped a load
of potatoes to Baltimore. The merchantman sold them, subtracted the
freight charges and his commission, and sent the farmer a bill for 50^. The
Guineaman remarked: 'Oi don't mind feeding dem poor hungry people in
Baltimore, but Oi'll be damned if Oi'll pay em to eat my victuals.'

Customs retaining the flavor of ante-bellum days have survived among
the Negroes in rural areas and small towns and even in the Negro districts
of cities. Group participation in plantation labor meant social participa-
tion in play-party games, dances, molasses boilings, tobacco strippings,
and corn huskings. A pseudo-spiritual of slavery days evidently refers to
secret religious meetings in a secluded spot. The title, 'Lie Low, Lizzie,
Lie Low/ implies, as much as the song, a message between the lines:

Lie low, Lizzie, lie low,

Cause dey ain't gwine be no meeting here tonight.

Meat selling nine pence a pound,

And coan five dollars a barrel.

So lie low, Lizzie, lie low.

Cause dey ain't gwine be no meeting here tonight.

Ain't gwine be no meeting here tonight,

Don' you know, don' you know?

Creek's all muddy, and de pond all dry.

Warn't fo' de tadpole, de fish all die.

So lie low, Lizzie, lie low.

Cause dey ain't gwine be no meeting here tonight.

Another Gloucester Point song was probably used in a festive dance when
the beer was ripe and includes the following verse:

Juba boys, Juba, Juba up, Juba down,
Juba round Simmon town.
Juba dis, en Juba dat,
Juba round de simmon vat.

A cakewalk song from the same region reflects an even more abandoned
spirit of gayety:

When er fellah come a knocking

De holler, 'Oh shoo.'

Hop high ladies,

Oh, Miss Loo.

Oh, swing dat yaller gal,

Do boys, do.

Hop light yallers,

Oh, Miss Loo.

Stories of the Uncle Remus type were a source of entertainment, espe-
cially brief ' hoodie-tales,' such as ' Why the Frog Lives in the Water,' * In

144 VIRGINIA

the Bee-tree,' 'The Ugliest Animal, 7 and 'Buzzard Makes Terrapin His
Riding Horse.' Slightly humorous, the tales frequently contained a moral
and were directed at both animals and human beings.

More universal are the work-gang or track-lining songs found wherever
a railroad lays its track. Like sea chanteys and the ribaldries of urban
laborers, many of the gang songs are too rough for the printed page, but
two innocuous rhymes are:

Little red rooster ain't got no comb,
Just like a rounder ain't got no home.
Hey boys! Get right again.

Jack de rabbit,
Jack de bear.
Shake it back, boys,
Just a hair!

The natural musical talents of the Negro were noticed by Thomas Jef-
ferson in his Notes on Virginia: 'In music they are more generally gifted
than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time, and they have been
found capable of imagining a small catch.' But general recognition of the
artistic value of Negro songs and music and interest in their preservation
are comparatively modern, and no successful attempt to collect them was
made before 1830. William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and
Lucy McKim Garrison published their collection of Slave Songs of the
United States in 1867. Cabin and Plantation Songs as Sung by the Hampton
Students was compiled in 1874 by Thomas P. Fenner, and Religious Folk-
Songs of the Negroes as Sung on the Plantation was arranged from this work
by the musical director of Hampton Institute in 1909. In 191 8 Hampton In-
stitute published Negro Folk Songs collected and edited by Natalie Curtis
Burlin. Songs of the Negroes of some of the counties of Mississippi,
Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee were gathered by Howard W.
Odum and Guy B. Johnson of the University of North Carolina and com-
piled in their book The Negro and His Songs , published in 1925. Since
many Negroes in these States spring from slaves originally bought in
Virginia, their songs partly represent the Old Dominion. Dorothy Scarbor-
ough of Columbia University made a collection of songs from several
Southern States, including Virginia, for her book, On the Trail of the Negro
Folk-Songs, also published in 1925. Negro workers on the Federal Writers'
Project have recorded many Negro songs, hymns, and spirituals that
otherwise would have died with the last of the ex-slaves.

Negro singing, first made known to the general public by singers from
Fisk University in Tennessee, was then popularized by singers from

FOLKLORE AND MUSIC 145

Hampton Institute, and later by those from other Virginia Negro schools.
Thomas P. Fenner came from Providence, Rhode Island, to Hampton In-
stitute in 1872 to establish a department of music. The Hampton singers
at first numbered 17, and the first concert to raise money for Virginia Hall
was given in Lincoln Hall, Washington,D.C., February 15, 1873. Hamp-
ton now has a regular choir that tours America. Each year the Virginia
State College Choral Society from Petersburg gives a concert in honor of
the governor of Virginia.

Negro spirituals are strangely haunting. Those current among the Vir-
ginia Negroes today differ little from those sung several decades ago.
' Swing Low, Sweet Chariot' was noted in Fisk Jubilee Songs, 1871. The
Hampton version is a variant. This theme, or one similar to it, occurs in
the first movement of Dvorak's New World Symphony, and the same
theme also occurs in John Powell's ' Negro Rhapsody.' 'My Lord Deliv-
ered Daniel' was noted in Slave Songs of the United States, Jubilee Songs
(1872), and Hampton Plantation Songs. 'The Old Ship of Zion,' a spiritual
widely current in Virginia, has many variants. ' Go Down Moses, 3 a song
of slavery, is an interpretation of Hebrew history. 'Deep River' is a spir-
itual highly prized in Virginia. 'Steal Away to Jesus' was first sung as a
notice to the other slaves on the plantation that a secret religious meeting
would be held that night.

The spiritual or religious songs of the 'fasola' singers are an important
aspect of Southern folk music. Singing schools utilizing the rural shape-
note method were established in the Shenandoah Valley by Yankee sing-
ing masters and spread south, southeast, and west along with the shape-
note hymn books of Ananias Davisson and James P. Carrell of Harrison-
burg. The former's The Kentucky Harmony, was published about 1817,
and The Supplement to the Kentucky Harmony appeared in 1821. The lat-
ter 's Songs of Zion and The Virginia Harmony appeared in 1820 and 1831,
respectively.

In the eighteenth century Joseph Funk and his father settled in Singer's
Glen, near Harrisonburg. Here, more than a century ago, Jo'seph Funk be-
gan to teach vocal music and to publish song books. His Choral Music, a
collection of German songs, was published in 1816; and he continued in
this work until just before the War between the States. The shop fell into
disrepair, but was set up later by Funk's grandson, Aldine Kieffer, who
founded Musical Millions, a monthly publication devoted to rural music
and singing schools. Kieffer's 'Twilight Is Falling,' set to music by
B.C.Unseld, is popular throughout the rural South.

John Powell has made numerous settings for ballads, folk-songs, hymns,

146 VIRGINIA

and dances. Twelve Folk Hymns, from the old shape-note hymnbooks and
oral tradition which Mr .Powell edited, and for which he, Annabel Morris
Buchanan, and Hilton Rufty wrote musical settings, was published in
1934. A collection of such folk-music was included in Mrs.Buchanan's
publication, Folk Hymns of America, Mr.Rufty has done the musical set-
tings for the American Anthology of Old World Ballads, compiled and
edited by Dr.Reed Smith of the University of South Carolina and pub-
lished in 1937.

Although individual collectors and composers have rendered valuable
assistance in the appreciation, use, and preservation of old ballads, songs,
and stories, unless there is active community interest in the folkways and
music of various regions and peoples, the work of academicians is no insur-
ance against the ultimate disappearance of certain examples of American
speech, anecdote, rhyme, and handicraft. Arthur Kyle Davis Jr., editor of
The Traditional Ballads of Virginia, has completed the work begun by the
late Professor C.Alphonso Smith, former archivist of the Virginia Folklore
Society. The White Top Festival, first held in 1931 on the summit of
White Top Mountain in southwest Virginia, has developed out of in-
creased interest on the part of musicians and laymen alike in the contribu-
tions of folk artists in the hinterland. This festival is the meeting place
each August for folklorists and music makers of the South and neighbor-
ing States. Equally important is the annual summer get-together held at
Galax, where the atmosphere is less academic and participants are free of
the inhibitions common to most public performances of this nature.

As hard-surface roads reach inward to the hollows and settlements,
bringing or following radios, gas stations, movies, and dine-and-dance
halls, the old customs undergo a gradual change. Some compromise with
urban ways of living is necessary when the last frontier may be only a few
hundred yards from an express highway, sandwiched between a billboard
and a mountain. On fence lines, telephone poles, and barn sides, from
mining towns in southwestern Virginia to farm lanes in the Shenandoah
Valley, posters proclaim the union of hinterland and city and advertise
the virtues of f EFFIE, the Hillbilly Striptease Dancer. 3 This type of artist,
born of crossroad and urban music hall, appears at local theaters with a
noisy hoedown band that probably had its origin in the woods of Man-
hattan and borrowed its folk-songs from Tin Pan Alley. But it is by such
blending that a people will find themselves and create a native art and
culture a culture that ranges from symphonic compositions of the city
to Negro spirituals of the lowlands and from story-ballads of the hills to
trade rhymes of heavy industries. It is Virginia and America.

TliTiTiriHTiTiITliriTIiTl^^

Art

FOR one brief moment in the late sixteenth century, European art
flared faintly on the shores of the Virginia colony. Among the stal-
warts of Raleigh's 'Second ColomV that clutched for a foothold on
the new continent in 1585 was John White (Johannes Wyth), later to be-
come Virginia's second governor (1587-90) and the grandfather of Vir-
ginia Dare. The water-color drawings made in 1585-86 by this 'English
paynter . . . sent into the countrye by the queenes Maiestye, onlye to
draw the description of the place ' and ' to describe the shapes of the In-
habitants their Apparell, manners of Livinge, and fashions . , .' were
'cutt in copper' and issued by Theodore de Bry in 1590 to illustrate John
Hariot's Narrative. From the 18 drawings still in existence it is evident
that White attempted to produce a full pictorial account of the life of the
aborigines.

Handicrafts were the only native art of seventeenth-century Virginia.
Hardly a year after the founding of Jamestown, Sir Christopher Newport
brought to the colony a number of Dutch and Polish glassmakers. The in-
dustry continued to the 'Starving Time/ when it languished and finally
became extinct. In 1621 Captain William Norton and four skilled Italians,
in a second attempt at glassmaking, produced chiefly beads for Indian
trade until the enterprise was wiped out by the massacre of 1622. During
the next decades such crafts as cobbling, tanning, weaving, and pottery
making were carried on.

The ' Artickles of Agreemt' between Dennis Whit and Morgan Jones in
1667 probably contain the earliest reference to Virginia pottery: 'a condi-
con or agreemt for to be copartners for ye term of five years in making and
selling of Earthen warre . . .' With the growth of population toward the
turn of the century from some 40,000 in 1670 to about 70,000 in 1700
handicrafts increased.

The fine arts developed more slowly. Though art was appreciated from
the beginning, as indicated by the early importation of British paintings
and objets d'art, a number of factors hindered local creation. Prosperous
Virginians remained, as a rule, intensely loyal to the British Crown, re-
garding the mother country as their real home; even the gentlemen who

147

148 VIRGINIA

flocked to Virginia after the fall of Charles I in 1649 endeavored to trans-
mit the English tradition to their children and frequently sent their sons
'home' to be educated. Nor was social life on the widely scattered planta-
tions with an occasional trip to fashionable Williamsburg of the kind to
stimulate native artistic activity.

During the eighteenth century, however, visiting artists were attracted
to the colony. Charles Bridges, who arrived in Williamsburg in May 1734
is the first known professional painter in Tidewater Virginia. Having done
portraits of the Byrd children 'and several others in the neighborhood, 7
the artist in 1735 received from William Byrd II a letter of introduction to
Governor Spotswood that resulted in several important commissions.
Bridges flourished in the colony until about 1750 and, like most of his con-
temporaries, did various types of decoration in addition to portrait paint-
ing, In 1740, i, 600 pounds of tobacco were sold by Caroline County to pay
Bridges 'for drawing the King's Arms for the use of the County Court/
In 1743 Alexander Gordon (1692-1754) came from England to Virginia,
where he combined painting with the professions of musician and teacher
of languages.

The Swedish painter Gustavus Hesselius (1682-1755), one of America's
most noted art pioneers, had settled in Delaware and traveled through
coastal Virginia, painting portraits rich in character and individuality.
His son John (1728-78) also did portraits for prominent Virginia families.
Between the years 1758 and 1767 an Englishman, John Wollastonjr., ex-
ecuted in Virginia many portraits in a style suggestive of Kneller, though
he gave his sitters rather puffy hands and eyes with so peculiar a slant to-
ward the nose that critics dubbed him 'The Almond Eyed Artist.' Henry
Warren, another 'limner/ is known only by an advertisement in the Vir-
ginia Gazette in 1768 that announced his establishment in Williamsburg
and his readiness to paint 'night pieces 3 and 'family pieces. 5

The many portraits painted in Virginia between 1764 and 1775 by the
Huguenot, John Durand, another of the group that traveled from town to
town earning a precarious livelihood, are hard and dry, though of pleasing
color and, as Robert Sully reflected, ' with less vulgarity of style than art-
ists of his calibre generally possess.' Henry Benbridge (1744-1812), a
Philadelphian with European training, settled in South Carolina upon
his return from London in 1770 and radiated over the Southern field, ex-
ecuting many portraits, family groups, and an occasional deft miniature.
In 1799 youthful Thomas Sully discovered Benbridge hard at work in
Norfolk. In order to acquire a knowledge of oil painting, Sully sat for his
portrait and profited by Benbridge's i useful and kind instruction/

ART 149

To this group of eighteenth-century portraitists belong also Robert
Edge Pine (1730-88), an Englishman who painted Washington at Mount
Vernon in 1785, and William Williams (1759-1823), a New York portrait-
ist who toured the South working in oil, pastel, and miniature. In 1793,
the Masonic Lodge in Alexandria, having received President Washington
into the order, commissioned Williams, then living in Philadelphia, to
1 paint him as he is/ and the result was a somewhat inartistic pastel por-
trait (now in Alexandria) that is, perhaps, a good likeness. Williams also
executed a portrait of 'Light Horse Harry' Lee. Of 'Manley, Taylor,
Frazier, and Caine/ mentioned by William Dunlap as painters who
worked in Virginia during this time, nothing is known except that
Frazier's works kindled in Charles Willson Peale the ambition to paint.

During the early Republican period, roughly from 1783 to 1820, Colo-
nial portraiture gave way before the influence of the classicist Benjamin
West (1738-1820), whose school in London was attended by many post-
Revolutionary American artists. Foremost among West's pupils was ver-
satile Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827), who had worked as a saddler
and at many other trades. On a trip to Norfolk to buy leather, he was so
much impressed by the paintings of 'a certain Frazier 7 that on his return
to Maryland he took up the study of art with John Hesselius at Annapolis.
In 1766 he entered West's studio, While living in London, he obtained
through his friends in Maryland the commission to paint the full length
portrait of Lord Chatham that Edmond Jennings sent to Virginia as a gift
to the i Gentlemen of Westmoreland County.' Returning to America in
1769, Peale executed many portraits, group compositions, miniatures, and
silhouettes of Virginians and in 1772 painted at Mount Vernon his most
notable portrait that of George Washington in the costume of a colonel
in the Virginia militia.

Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828), foremost painter of the young republic and
renowned for his many portraits of Washington, established himself at the
new National capital from 1803 to 1805 ; among his sitters were John Ran-
dolph of Roanoke, James and Dolly Madison, and Colonel John Tayloe
and his wife, of Mount Airy and the Octagon House.

Among the later group of West's pupils who worked in Virginia were
William Dunlap (1766-1839) and Thomas Sully (1783-1872). Dunlap,
author of the History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the
United States, painted many portraits in Virginia during the winters of
1819-21. At 16 Sully, who was born in England but brought up in Charles-
ton,S.C, joined his brother Lawrence, who was painting miniatures in
Norfolk. Later, he obtained instruction from Fraser, the miniaturist, and

150 VIRGINIA

from Benbridge and West. His numerous portraits of Virginians, particu-
larly residents of Petersburg and Richmond, were done during the period
stretching from 1804 to about 1855 and are representative of his fluent,
easy style.

The surge of classicism that produced so many historical and allegorical
canvases during the early Republican period received in Virginia a power-
ful stimulus through Thomas Jefferson's architectural designs and his en-
thusiasm for the study of the arts. The 'intellectual collaboration 3 (to
quote Bernard Fay) between France and America that marked this epoch
was further exemplified by the founding in Richmond in 1786 of the Acad-
emy of Science and Fine Arts of the United States of America the first
institution of its kind in the new country by the visionary Chevalier
Quesnay de Beaurepaire. With funds subscribed in Virginia and elsewhere,
Beaurepaire erected a building near Capitol Square. The project, however,
came to naught the building was burned, and the Chevalier himself was
swept into the vortex of the French Revolution. In 1785 the French sculp-
tor Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741-1828), commissioned by the legislature to
execute a statue of Washington, arrived at Mount Vernon; he made a life
mask and painstaking measurements of Washington. At the end of the
year he returned to France and began work on the magnificent marble
statue probably the most celebrated in the United States which was
placed in the rotunda of the State capitol in 1796.

Between 1808 and 1811, Felix Sharpies, son of the English pastel painter
James Sharpies, executed pastels in Norfolk, Suffolk, and many of the
Tidewater counties. As security for money borrowed, he left in the State a
large collection of pastels by himself and other members of his family,
which formed the nucleus of the Sharpies Collection in Independence Hall.
The French emigre, Julien Feviret de Saint-Memin (1770-1852), came to
Richmond during the Aaron Burr trial in 1807, when the town was
crowded with important personages. He remained not quite a year, pro-
ducing with the aid of a machine called a physionotrace profile draw-
ings in crayon and white chalk; Saint-Memin's delicate miniature engrav-
ings were made by reducing these drawings on copper plates with a panto-
graph. John Wesley Jarvis (1780-1839), Anglo-American portrait and
miniature painter, made seasonal trips to the cities and estates south of
Baltimore during the early decades of the nineteenth century.

Local artists of Richmond at this time were Philip A. Peticolas (1760-
1843), copyist and painter of miniatures, and James Warrell, an English-
man, who in 1812 was offering his services to the citizens 'as a Portrait
Painter in Oil.' Among Warrell's canvases was the Sena Soma, or the

ART 151

Sword Swallower, now at the Valentine Museum. In 1814 he designed Peter
Francisco's Gallant Action . . . in Amelia County, Virginia, later en-
graved by D.Edwin. In 1816 Warrell, with Richard Lorton, a Petersburg
artist, aided in establishing in Richmond a museum of art and natural
science known as the Virginia Museum. Music and displays of fireworks
were used to entice the public to the museum, where paintings were exhib-
ited among a miscellaneous collection of objets d'art. Here were shown a
group of Gilbert Stuart's portraits and John Vanderlyn's Ariadne, the first
study of a nude unveiled publicly in Richmond.

Between the War of 1812 and the middle of the century the English
tradition in portraiture survived in the work of English-born William J.
Hubard (1807-62), Edward F. Peticolas, and Robert M. Sully (1803-55),
nephew of Thomas Sully. In 1829, Chester Harding (1792-1866) exhib-
ited in Richmond his 'portraits of many distinguished men, 7 to which he
added those of several Richmonders.

With the expansion of commerce and the growth of National sentiment,
American landscapes and scenes from everyday life found their way into
local painting. Foremost among the genre painters was George Caleb
Bingham (181 1-79), who was born in Augusta County but worked mainly
in Missouri. Bingham 7 s paintings constitute a record of the domestic and
political life of the frontier. His later work shows the influence of the anec-
dotal school of Diisseldorf in Germany, to which American painters had
begun to turn for instruction.

The name Hudson River School has been applied to a loosely defined in-
digenous movement in landscape painting. In this tradition worked
William Louis Sontag (1822-1900), a Pennsylvanian, whose Morning in
the Alleghanies is representative of his many landscapes of western Vir-
ginia. Views of Mount Vernon, a popular subject, were painted by William
Henry Bartlett (1809-94).

The paintings inspired by the War between the States are linked artis-
tically with the impulse to record local scenes and events. John A. Elder
(1833-95), who had studied at Diisseldorf under Emmanuel Leutze, set-
tled in Richmond, where he painted battle scenes and portraits of
Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Conrad Wise Chapman (1842-1910),
born in Washington,D.C. and brought up in Rome, came to the South
during the war, entered the army, and, while attached to General Beaure-
gard's forces at Charleston, S.C., was detailed to make paintings of the
city's fortifications. He produced 31 canvases (now at the Confederate
Museum, Richmond), 'of which Sunset Gun, Fort Sumter is the most beau-
tiful. EX.Henry (1841-1919), James Hope (1818-92), Sandford R. Gif-

152 VIRGINIA

ford (1823-80), and David Blythe (1815-65) depicted military operations
in the region of the Potomac.

The Hudson River School broadened under the influence of the French
Barbizon group with its subjective poetic interpretations of landscape.
Robert Loftin Newman (1827-1912), born at Louisa, exemplifies this later
phase of nineteenth-century American painting. After studying in Paris
under Couture, and absorbing the Barbizon style, he returned to America
to paint landscapes distinguished for their color harmonies. Benjamin
West Clinedinst (1859-1931) was born near Woodstock and after a period
of study in Paris executed many portraits and genre paintings. Elliott
Daingerfield (1859-1932), born at Harpers Ferry, came early under the
Barbizon influence and achieved wide recognition as a landscapist and fig-
ure painter. Prince Pierre Troubetzkoy, society painter, was a resident of
Albemarle County and died in Charlottesville in 1936.

A number of native Virginia painters have done most of their work out-
side the State. Carle John Blenner (b.i864) whose work is primarily in por-
traiture, was born in Richmond, studied in Germany and France, and now
lives in New York. F.Graham Cootes (b.iBjg), New York painter and
illustrator, was born in Staunton. A native of Petersburg, Jerome Myers
(b.iSdy) is among the leaders of modern realism in American painting; he
works in a variety of media, specializing in New York street scenes. Hugh
Henry Breckenridge (b.i8yo), whose paintings are to be seen in many
prominent institutions throughout the country, was born in Leesburg and
trained in Paris. He has been an instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy
of Fine Arts since 1894.

On the other hand, several artists from other sections have incorporated
themselves into Virginia life. Gari Melchers (1860-1932), outstanding
Detroit-born artist, settled at Falmouth after working in Diisseldorf,
Paris, and Holland, where he did many admirable studies of Dutch peas-
ants. While on a visit to America to execute murals, he was attracted by
the color and local types of the Virginia mountains and made his home in
the State until his death, taking part in the establishment of the Virginia
Museum of Fine Arts and in other art activities. Born in New York,
W.Sergeant Kendall (1x1869), a pupil of Thomas Eakins, has contributed
outstanding landscapes of the Virginia scene.

The development of sculpture in Virginia began in the nineteenth cen-
tury, chiefly under the domination of the Italian School. One of Virginia's
first sculptors was Alexander Gait (1827-63), a native of Norfolk who
studied in Florence; he died before he reached artistic maturity, and many
of his best works were burned during the evacuation of Richmond in 1865.

ART 153

Edward V. Valentine (1838-1930), of Richmond, who studied in France,
Italy, and Germany, returned to his native city in 1865 and became a
leading artistic influence there. His works in the State include statues of
Jefferson Davis and Thomas Jefferson, a recumbent marble statue of Lee,
and the figure studies, Andromache and Astyanax and The Blind Girl.
Among the few examples of his work that Sir Moses Ezekiel (1844-1917),
who studied in Germany, sent to his native State from his studio in the
Baths of Diocletian were two statues of Jefferson, a bust of General Edward
W. Nichols, and the Confederate Memorial at Arlington. After service in
the War between the States and study in Paris, William Ludwell Sheppard
(1833-1912), best known for his genre painting and studies of the soldiers
of the Army of Northern Virginia, executed many notable statues and a
bronze haut-relief , The Color Bearer. Master of a variety of media, Paris-
trained Augustus Lukeman (1872-1935), a native of Richmond, settled in
New York, where he executed bas-reliefs, monuments, and portrait busts,
including the Jefferson Davis in the Federal capitol. William Couper, whq
was born in Norfolk in 1853, returned from the studios of Munich and
Florence and established himself in New York in 1897 as a portraitist
and sculptor of busts in the modern Italian manner; he is represented in
Virginia by a heroic bronze statue of Dr. Hunter Holmes McGuire and a
statue of Captain John Smith.

Sculptors from outside the State have contributed important monu-
ments memorializing Virginia personalities and events. In Richmond,
grouped around Houdon's busts of Washington and Lafayette in the capi-
tol rotunda, are seven statues of Virginia-born presidents, by Charles
Keck, Charles Beach, Harriet Frishmuth, Attilio Piccirilli, and F.William
Sievers, a native of Indiana but long a resident of Richmond. Other sculp-
tors with representative works in Richmond are John Frazee (1790-1852),
pioneer American-born sculptor, Thomas Crawford (.1813-57), and Ran-
dolph Rogers, all of New York; Joel Hart (1810-77), of Kentucky; and
Frederick Volck. In Charlottesville is statuary by Robert I. Aitken,
Charles Keck, Karl Bitter, and Gutzon Borglum, while Williamsburg pre-
serves Richard Hayward's eighteenth-century memorial statue of Nor-
borne Berkeley.

Among the beginnings of graphic art in Virginia were Saint-Memin's
profile engravings and his etched view of Richmond's water front a
scene also depicted in line and mezzotint by Peter Maverick (1780-1831).
To this early period belong, too, Joseph Wood (1798-1852), aquatintist,
and the French engraver Blouet, both of whom did views of the State peni-
tentiary in Richmond. Thomas Sully was not above occasional commer-

154 VIRGINIA

cial lithography, and John Gadsby Chapman executed some 1,400 draw-
ings, resembling steel engravings, that served as illustrations; Benjamin
West Clinedinst in the 1890*3 and William Ludwell Sheppard also made
contributions in this field. Among etchers associated with Virginia were
William Louis Sontag, Elliott Daingerfield, and James D. Smillie. The
drawings and book illustrations of Dugald Stewart Walker (1884-1937), a
native of Richmond who received instruction in Virginia and New York,
are lavish in detail, and distinguished by an oriental richness of design.
Jerome Myers captures realistically the types of New York's east side in
his admirable lithographs.

The problems of readjustment that followed the War between the
States impeded public activity in the arts until 1892 when the Valentine
Museum was founded in Richmond to house collections in art, archeology,
and anthropology. Native art was fostered by the Art Club of Richmond,
organized in 1895 by two Richmond artists, Adele Clark and Nora Hous-
ton; and in later years, by the Virginia League of Fine Arts and Handi-
crafts formed in 1917; and by the Academy of Sciences and Fine Arts of
the United States, revived in 1930, which encourages creative work
through lectures, classes, and frequent exhibitions. In Richmond, Confed-
erate relics are housed in the Confederate Museum; a representative group
of eighteenth-century portraits in the home of the Virginia Historical So-
ciety; and a large collection of contemporary paintings, statuary, and
objets d'art in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, founded in 1934. The
Norfolk Museum and the Bayly Museum of Fine Arts at the University
of Virginia are important contributors to local art appreciation; while the
specialized Mariners' Museum near Newport News contains interesting
carved figureheads and a great variety of exhibits relating to maritime life.
The Conservation Commission of Virginia established in 1937 the Vir-
ginia Art Index, directed by Julia Sully, for the purpose of recording all
historic portraits in the State.

Today, many native artists are producing portraits, landscapes, and
studies of local types and of characteristic Virginia scenes; realistic genre
painting seems to be the dominant influence among the younger artists.
The Negro wood-carver, Leslie Boiling 0.1898), has produced admirable
statuettes of racial types. Among those active in the graphic arts are
Lois Wilcox, engraver and lithographer, and the wood engravers Charles
W. Smith ^.1893) and Julius J. Lankes (1x1884). An attempt has also
been made in recent years to revive the handicrafts. In the mountains,
mission groups started in 1923 to teach weaving, rug making, needlecraft,
bookbinding, cabinet making, wood carving, and allied crafts; and this

ART 155

work has been taken up by various schools and guilds, and by the Handi-
craft Projects of the Works Progress Administration. Among the flourish-
ing potteries now in the State is the interesting James Towne Collony
Pottery, which duplicates old pieces discovered during the Williamsburg
and Jamestown excavations.

Interest in art seems to be growing throughout the State. Art festivals
are held in many Virginia centers, and a series of exchange exhibitions
has been conducted followed in 1938 by the first All- Virginia Exhibi-
tion of paintings sent to New York City, and the inauguration of a Bien-
nial Exhibition of Contemporary Painting by the Virginia Museum of
Fine Arts. Federal Art Galleries located at Big Stone Gap, Lynchburg,.
Fairfax, and Richmond are contributing to the artistic education of Vir-
ginians through classes, exhibitions, and lectures. In 1938 the Negro Art
Center was established in Richmond, offering, under a Negro instructor,
classes in painting, wood carving, modeling, and other branches of the arts
and crafts. Art departments in various colleges and flourishing summer
art schools are promoting art appreciation and training Virginia's artists
of tomorrow.

Literature

VIRGINIA is producing at last a literature both indigenous to its
soil and imbued with a realism that may be said to capture the ma-
jor portion of the truth about its people and its civilization. This
contemporary flowering has saved the State from cults of extremists that
had their day before the clatter of Virginia typewriters was heard through-
out the land.

Late in the nineteenth century Virginians seriously took up writing as a
profession. In the early Colonial period the struggle forexistenceprecluded
authorship as a conscious art and brought forth a pragmatic literature that
described the new country for a curious English people, chronicled the
daily life of the colonists, catalogued laws, and finally evolved into formal
history. In the late Colonial days emphasis was placed on statesmanship
and forensics to the exclusion of imaginative writing. Following the estab-
lishment of the republic, to which the Virginia intelligentsia gave its best
thought, the sectional strife of the Fiery Epoch produced statesmen and
orators rather than creative writers. When slavery flourished, wealth was
confined to a few large planters, on the whole uninterested in professions;
and the masses of tenants and small landowners were too busy digging a
living out of the soil to cultivate the arts.

The War between the States left Virginians in dire poverty. 'Literature
on a large scale,' says Dr.Alphonso Smith, 'implies authorship as a profes-
sion, and authorship as a profession has never flowered among a poor
people . . . Literary productiveness, in other words, is vitally related to
industrial productiveness, both being correlative manifestations of the"
creative spirit/

The birth year of the new industrialism in the South, 1875, was also the
birth year of a new Southern literature. It was then that Lanier attained
National fame. Immediately thereafter other writers Virginians among
them loomed upon the horizon, where before only the lonely figures of
Poe, Timrod, Hayne, Simms, and Father Ryan had been silhouetted. The
Reconstruction literature of Virginia, however, which endured well into
the twentieth century, was characterized by a nostalgia for the past and a
romantic idealism that evaded facts. However, many voices are at last

156

LITERATURE 157

being lifted against those artificial traditions that were memorialized by
Virginians who wrote during the four decades after the War between the
States.

The chroniclers of pioneer experiences wrote with spicy frankness.
George Percy, who was governor of Virginia from 1609 to 1610, and Ralph
Hamor, secretary of the colony, who arrived in 1609, took chronological
lead with their 'true discourses/ 'true relations/ and 'observations' con-
cerning Virginia and Virginians. Captain John Smith spun yarns that are
still merry reading whether they deal with New England, the Summer Isles,
or the story of Virginia. Two writers of this early period wandered along
the pleasant bypaths of poetry and metrical translation. Richard Rich in-
vites passing notice as the first of Virginia's versifiers. In 1610 he wrote A
Ballad of Virginia, describing his voyage from England and his experi-
ences in the new colony. A much more notable poet was the Oxford-bred
George Sandys, who was treasurer of the colony for seven years and com-
pleted at Jamestown his metrical translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses
(1626).

Then for 50 years there were neither chroniclers nor romancers. The
drama of Bacon's Rebellion, however, inspired the anonymous Burwell
Papers, which recounted the abortive effort of the people to overthrow en-
trenched autocracy, and eulogized the young rebel leaders. The chronicles
of William Byrd II, appearing after 1741, when Virginia was about to set-
tle down to an era of tobacco prosperity, are written in amusing and expan-
sive vein. 'A Journey to the Land of Eden' (in Westover Manuscripts} ,
which describes the pilgrimage of commissioners sent to fix the State's
southern boundary, not only makes the early eighteenth century live again
but still causes Virginians to chuckle over the strange ways of North Caro-
linians. Byrd's account of the Dismal Swamp area, of the beginnings of the
iron industry, and of manners and morals in general has become increas-
ingly valuable with the passing years. Hugh Jones, a clergyman and law-
yer, rounded out the social and economic picture with the publication in
1724 of The Present State of Virginia, though his book is rather more for
study than for entertainment. But perhaps the most delightful bits of writ-
ing that have emerged from the Colonial period are the diaries of Philip
Vickers Fithian, tutor at Nomini Hall, who dealt with the goings on of
belles and beaux, family dinners and neighborhood parties, work and
games, foods and clothes, flirtations and stolen kisses.

The writing of formal history was initiated by Robert Beverley, whose
History of the Present State of Virginia was published in London in 1705
and subsequently translated into French. Soon thereafter William Stith,

I$8 VIRGINIA

using the notes he inherited from Sir John Randolph, compiled The History
of Virginia from the First Settlement to the Dissolution of the London Com-
pany, which was published in 1747. As authoritative source for students of
the early Colonial era, Stith's history is second only to the far different and
more comprehensive work of W.W.Hening, which accurately records the
statutes of Virginia from 1619 to 1792.

The era preceding and immediately following the Revolution is marked
by a literature forceful, lucid, and as definitely creative as fiction, drama,
or poetry. The Virginia prose of that period not only brought forth a Na-
tion but stands today among the permanent models of expository writing.
In a Letter to the Clergy on the Two-Penny Act (1760), Richard Bland enun-
ciated the principles actuating those colonists who had wearied of support-
ing the privileged few; and his pamphlet entitled A n Inquiry into the Rights
of the British Colonies (1766), declaring Virginia no part of the Kingdom of
England and united with the Mother Country only by the Crown, was
amazingly prophetic of a philosophy much later to be translated into stat-
ute. The Leedstown Resolutions, which were written by Richard Henry Lee
and adopted by 115 patriots in 1766 and which set forth the doctrine later
incorporated into the Declaration of Independence; the speeches of Pat-
rick Henry and of George Washington; James Madison's notes and con-
tributions to the Federalist Papers', many speeches and pamphlets by other
authors; and everything penned by Thomas Jefferson rank in clarity,
force, and purity of English among the literary monuments of America.

In Revolutionary Virginia the leading contributors to belles lettres as
distinct from political treatises were lawyers, physicians, and clergymen.
The same breadth of culture that had emanated from the pulpit oratory of
Samuel Davies characterized the preaching of the blind James Waddell.
The political satires of St.George Tucker are less noteworthy than two of
his lyrical compositions, 'Resignation' and 'Days of My Youth,' which,
despite defects of style, have found places in most American anthologies.
Dr. James McClurg, the delegate from Virginia to the Federal Constitu-
tional Convention of 1787, who out-Hamlltoned Hamilton in his advo-
cacy of monarchical forms for America, found escape from medicine and
forensics in a pleasing bit of society verse, 'The Belles of Williamsburg, 1 a
tribute to the pretty girls of the Colonial capital; and much fugitive verse,
some of no mean quality, appeared in issues of the Virginia Gazette, Litera-
ture sustained a loss in 1808 when John Daly Burk, a gallant young Irish-
man, was killed in a duel ten years after his coming to Virginia. His trage-
dies, Bunker-Hill (1797) and Bethlem Gabor (1807), contain interesting
local allusions, and his History of Virginia (i8o4"-i6) is of lasting value.

LITERATURE 159

Deliberate biography of National heroes an art unknown in England
until Izaak Walton published his Life of Donne in 1640, and practiced lit-
tle for many years thereafter was introduced into American letters by a
Virginian who chose a Virginian as his subject. Mason Locke Weems, bet-
ter known as ' Parson' Weems, published in 1800 his highly imaginative
Life of Washington, which put the cherry tree and dollar-throwing myths
into permanent circulation and a set fashion in anecdotal writing that has
endured even to this day. The quixotic parson followed his first success
with biographies of Francis Marion, Benjamin Franklin, and William
Penn all so entertaining as to make their historical inaccuracies some-
what pardonable. The five volume study of Washington published between
1804 and 1807 by John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States Su-
preme Court and author of epoch-making decisions, is a scholarly work
vastly different from Weems's fairy tale. But William Wirt, highly suc-
cessful in his Letters of a British Spy (1803) and in a series of essays pub-
lished as The Old Bachelor (1810-13), made a dismal contribution to bio-
graphy in his Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry (1817).

Though other Virginians wrote during the first half of the nineteenth
century, only one deserves more than passing comment. Anne Royall, who
spent 15 years of her childhood as a captive of the Indians, first recounted
her experiences among the red men and then wrote readable travel books.
Letters to a Young Relative by John Randolph, the poems of William Mun-
ford, Swallow Barn (1832), a novel of the Tidewater, and Memoirs of the
Life of William Wirt (1849) by John Pendleton Kennedy of Maryland are
not altogether forgotten. Yet no writer foreshadowed Virginia's greatest
literary genius, Edgar Allan Poe.

'I am a Virginian/ Poe declared on one occasion to a friend. ' At least I
call myself one.' Bora in Boston, he was adopted less than three years later
by the Allans of Richmond and educated in Richmond, in England, at the
University of Virginia, and briefly at West Point. Though his earliest
poems were published in the North and though he set out upon his career
as man of letters in Baltimore, Poe achieved recognition through the
Southern Literary Messenger, which published his first short stories and of
which he became editor in 1835.

As poet, essayist, and creator of the modern short story, Poe holds in
American literature a pre-eminence accentuated by the passing years. Dis-
cerning a new esthetic, he was among the first to catch in both prose and
poetry the dark spirit of individuality that fascinated Baudelaire, through
whose translations Poe became one of the chief progenitors of the Sym-
bolist Movement and took his place as a real force in the development of

l6o VIRGINIA

Western literature. There is a close relationship between Poe's genius and
the atmosphere of Virginia, with its 'mists and mellow fruitfulness/ its
classical background, and its drowsing mansions.

One of Poe's contemporaries who escaped oblivion through a recent re-
printing of his remarkably prophetic book, The Partisan Leader, secretly
published in Washington in 1836 and subsequently suppressed, was Judge
N.Beverley Tucker, author also of a novel, George Bakombe (1836). Philip
Pendleton Cooke, a contributor to the Southern Literary Messenger from
Martinsburg (now in West Virginia), wrote at 17 'The Song of the Sioux
Lover, 3 but his best-known poem is the memorial lyric, 'Florence Vane/
which has been translated into several languages. John Reuben Thomp-
son, who succeeded Poe as editor of the Messenger , later composed stirring
war lyrics that have found places in anthologies. George Bagby, whose
editorship of the Messenger assumed in 1860 was interrupted by his
service in the Confederate army and ended by the death of the magazine
in 1864, was a popular essayist and humorist.

From the death of Poe to the War between the States, though Virginia
produced no other genius of the first rank, the years were not barren of all
literary production. Into this period falls the work of Bishop William
Meade, whose Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia, published
in 1857, is the authoritative source of early parish history in Virginia. Gen-
eral Winfield Scott wrote clearly of infantry tactics and army regulations;
and Sarah Barclay Johnson illustrated The City of the Great King by her
father, James Turner Barclay published in 1857 and the next year
brought out her own book, The Hadji of Syria. Disguised as a Moham-
medan woman, she entered the tomb of David and sketched the first pic-
ture of it ever made public.

The literature produced in Virginia immediately after the War between
the States was diverted into channels of thought deepened by the conflict.
John Esten Cooke was the outstanding historical novelist and biographer of
the period. After serving on Stonewall Jackson's staff, he wrote biographies
of both Jackson and Lee. His three best-known novels, still greatly loved
throughout the South, are The Virginia Comedians (1854), Surry of
Eagle's Nest (1866), and Mohun (1869), which has recently been re-
published.

The spirit that characterized Virginia at the close of the war is revealed
in such books as Women: or Chronicles of the Late War (1871) by Mary
Tucker Magill; The End of an Era (1902)* and The Lion's Skin (1905) by
John Sergeant Wise; The Birth of the Nation (1907) by Sarah Agnes Pryor;
the excellent dialect stories of La Salle Corbeil Pickett, whose husband

LITERATURE l6l

General George Edward Pickett was made famous by his gallant charge at
Gettysburg; Diary of a Southern Refugee during the War (1867) by Judith
Brockenbrough McGuire; and A Girl of Virginia (1902) by Lucy Meecham
Thruston. Mrs, S.A.Weiss, however, who began writing prose as a war
prisoner at Fort McHenry, sought escape through such books as The
Crime of Abigail Tempest and The Last Days ofPoe, and through the writ-
ing of poetry. Her books had a wide circulation in England and were
translated into both French and German.

In the poetry of the immediate postwar period, John Reuben Thompson
was perhaps the most studied artist; but Father Abram Joseph Ryan, lau-
reate of the South, was the most beloved poet. Under the pen name Moina,
he wrote ringing war lyrics that were recited by all literate Southerners.
The moods induced by the war are vividly expressed also in the devotional
verse of Margaret Junkin Preston, the clarion battle songs of James Bar-
ron Hope, and the sharply pointed lines of Father John Banister Tabb. A
place among the poets should be given also to Christopher P. Cranch, who
published in 1875 what is probably the best American translation of Vir-
gil'sAeneid.

But the war's aftermath distorted the creative spirit in curious ways.
Writers, glorifying the days that were no more, sought to crystallize in
memory a past that had never existed as they portrayed it. Possessing no
iconoclasm and much conservatism, Southern literature was for 30 years
an inaccurate picture of the times it professed to reproduce, but it was
pleasingly written and provided a narcotic that the South welcomed. The
singing optimism of Thomas Nelson Page offered an escape from depress-
ing realities. Page's first published work appeared in Scribner's Monthly in
1877, but his recognition as a writer dates from the publication of Marse
Chan ten years later. His novels, following in quick succession, are still
among the sentimental classics of the South. In another kind of reaction
Thomas Dixon of North Carolina, who lived for a time in Virginia, wrote
novels of Southern life The Leopard's Spots (1902) and The Clansman
(1905) as special pleas for hatred. Later The Trail of the Lonesome Pine
(1908) and other fiction of John Fox, Jr., beatified the mountain whites
with unlikely virtues and started the spurious lore of the 'hill billy/ which
is now being amplified by radio.

Neither Virginia nor the South can be held wholly accountable for this
trend. When Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote Little Lord Fauntleroy
(1886), inspired, it is said, by the little son of a friend with whom she was
staying in Norfolk, the book was devoured by sentimental readers
throughout the English-speaking world. Two continents shed tears during

l62 VIRGINIA

this era over 'Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt/ which Thomas Dunn English wrote
while visiting a friend in Tazewell County, Virginia. The immense success
in Victorian England of Du Maurier's Trilby (1894) absolves Virginia
from full responsibility for the sentimentalism of an era that cherished
Thomas Nelson Page's Two Little Confederates (1888) and the self-effacing
Southern mammy of fiction.

Marion Harland responded to the same influence. Born Virginia Hawes,
in Amelia County, she married Edward Payson Terhune, a Presbyterian
minister, and is the mother of Albert Payson Terhune and Virginia Ter-
hune Van de Water. Her novels were immensely successful, though she
won wider renown as the author of a cookbook and as a writer on domestic
economy.

The twentieth century was well on its way when the new Southern lit-
erature came into being. In the forefront of the novelists it has produced
stand three Virginians: Mary Johnston, Ellen Glasgow, and James Branch
Cabell; and Virginia may claim also Willa Gather, who was bom in Win-
chester.

Mary Johnston wrote through one era and into another. Beginning as a
romanticist, she evolved into realism and finally into mysticism. Even in
her earliest historical novels, however, where she was at her romantic best,
Miss Johnston's genius for truthful detail is apparent. From the landing of
the women in 1620 through the stirring i86o's, her story of Virginia is writ-
ten with keen feeling for dramatic values and historic verity. Though she
made no effort to debunk, she has not surrounded her heroes with tradi-
tional glamour. Her Stonewall Jackson in The Long Roll (1911), the mad
general threatened with the mutiny of his soldiers, was disturbing to the
hero-worshipers who demanded that greatness and perfection be con-
sidered synonymous. Yet students have been unable to prove that the por-
trayal was not in accord with the records. In Ilagar (1913) Miss Johnston
brought her chronicle up to the present day and then set out with the mys-
tics to discover the fourth dimension, writing such books as Michael Forth
and The Exile. Sympathetically and yet unsparingly, she treated of a way
of life that had to give place to modernity. While arguing in behalf of social
reform, she gave with remarkable fairness the case of both plaintiff and de-
fendant, and truthfully presented Virginia caught in transition,

The novelist who presents the most nearly complete picture of the
South is undoubtedly Ellen Glasgow. In order that her literary achieve-
ment may be correctly evaluated, Miss Glasgow's work must be viewed in
its entirety. Among the 20 books she has written in 41 years, there are no
failures. At the beginning of her career, the local color novel had not yet

LITERATURE 163

run its course in America. It had, according to Carl Van Doren, invented
few memorable plots, devised no new styles, added few notable characters
to fiction, but had contented itself with the creation of types and puppets.
Sentimentality was its dominant characteristic. Therefore, when she be-
gan writing of the Virginia she knew so well, Miss Glasgow must have con-
sciously resisted the sentimentalism of her contemporaries. Her strongly
ironical vein probably saved her. Sometimes laughing at Virginia, loving it
but knowing it, she has given to the world a realism touched with what-
ever there is of romance that rings true. With the pen of a realist, this
novelist of changing manners has dared to fight sentimentality and has de-
fied a public she knew to be demanding what she has called 'an evasive
idealism, a sham optimism, and a sugary philosophy.'

Miss Glasgow is the most significant novelist writing of the South to-
day, because her canvas is the broadest. In depicting the reconstructed
South, she deals not only with the aristocracy that gave her birth, but
with the common people whom she has learned to understand so well. The
best known of her books are perhaps Barren Ground (1925), The Romantic
Comedians (1926), and They Stooped to Folly (1929).

James Branch Cabell belongs also to the literature of protest against
Philistia. Having fled to Poictesme, Cabell sends his iconoclastic shafts
against spiritual conservatism and by means of a new romance pierces the
old with the cool steel of his inimitable irony. The South furnished the
background for his emergence into a realm of his own making. Lichfield or
Richmond offers too narrow an horizon for the sort of genius that is Ca-
belPs. In Poictesme there is freedom for the mind that would wander un-
fettered by the limitations actuality imposes. Here Cabell, the imaginative
genius, is able to reveal truth higher than that to be found in realism.
Here it is that Manuel, the Redeemer, can study 'the secret of preserving
that dissatisfaction which is divine where all else falls away with age into
the acquiescence of beasts'; and here Jurgen, the pawnbroker, can wage
his halfhearted, though ineffectual, fight to escape the rule of Koschei, the
deathless.

With the perspective Poictesme provides, Cabell ridicules the sentimen-
tality, the orthodoxy, and the unreality of the Philistia in which his pred-
ecessorsand, alas, many of his contemporaries dwell in inane but
scarcely blissful ignorance. Since his mixture of symbolism and factual
writing sometimes baffles the constituency rightfully his, it is no wonder
that the literal-minded ones are left either perplexed or aghast. Yet in the
literature of disillusionment James Branch Cabell holds high rank, ID
1929 at the age of 50 he completed the 20 books he chose to call his 'biog'

164 VIRGINIA

raphy/ dropped James from his name, and as Branch Cabell started upon
a new literary career.

Among Virginia-born novelists, however, Willa Cather is perhaps best
assured of lasting favor. Though she does not use Virginia scenes, her ma-
tured and careful art reflects the State in its sense of background and its
leisured grace of style. Something similar may be said of the Far-Eastern
novels of Pearl Buck, who is a Virginian by descent and a graduate of
Randolph-Macon Woman's College. For many years the stories, essays,
and novels of Margaret Prescott Montague, who spends her winters in
Richmond, have delighted literary esthetes. Closed Doors; Studies of Deaf
and Blind Children, published in 1915; and the articles that were appear-
ing at that time in the Atlantic Monthly assured Miss Montague of an im-
portant place in literature. Henry Sydnor Harrison presented in Queed
(1911), V.V.'s Eyes (1913), and Angela's Business (1915) a truthful pic-
ture of life in the South, though his method was somewhat reminiscent of
the Victorians. His Angela, seated behind the steering wheel of her little
Fordette, constantly about her business of pursuing men, was drawn with
a scathing irony of which Southern men had formerly not been guilty.
Amelie Rives, in private life the Princess Troubetzkoy, published her first
book in 1888 and has subsequently written drama, fiction, and poetry of
high literary quality.

Other Virginia novelists of the twentieth century whose work has
brought far-flung recognition are Kate Langley Bosher, author of Mary
Gary (1910) and other best sellers; Sally Nelson Robins, whose books were
founded upon experiences shared by many of her neighbors in Virginia;
Helena Lef roy Caperton, whose versatile pen has recreated the Richmond
of other days and sketched humorously the present-day Richmond she
knows so well; Emma Speed Sampson, whose 'Miss Minerva' books are
quoted by old and young; Roy Flannagan, whose realistic typewriter is
hammering out tales of a South that romanticists have striven to hide;
and Clifford Dowdy, whose war story Bugles Blow No More achieved im-
mediate popularity.

Blair Niles, author of Black Haiti (1926) and Condemned to Devil's Is-
land (1928), is a Virginian. Sherwood Anderson bought two newspapers in
Marion, Virginia, lived there awhile, and still gives Marion as his perma-
nent address. Frances Parkinson Keyes, novelist and associate editor of
Good Housekeeping, was born in Charlottesville. Agnes Rothery (Mrs. Harry
Rogers Pratt) has achieved recognition in America and abroad as
the author of travel books. Her New Roads in Old Virginia appeared in
1929 and has been followed by authoritative books on foreign countries.

LITERATURE 165

Virginius Dabney, editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, has written
with detached eloquence of Liberalism in the South (1932).

In biography and history Virginians have done the scholarly work that
was to be expected from their tradition. Especially distinguished are the
names of Alexander Brown, author of The Genesis of the United States
(1890) and The First Republic in America (1898) ; Philip A. Bruce, author
of Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century (1895), Social
Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century (1907), and Institutional History
of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century (1910) ; Lyon Gardiner Tyler, former
president of the College of William and Mary, who wrote The Cradle of the
Republic (1900) and many other historical books, and founded the William
and Mary Quarterly, William G. Stanard, editor of the Virginia Magazine
of History and Biography, and Mary Newton Stanard, who wrote The
Story of Virginia's First Century (1928) and furnished the first accurate ac-
count of Bacon's Rebellion and its real significance; E.G.Swem, editor of
the William and Mary Quarterly and compiler of Swem's Index; William
Henry Squires, author of many historical works dealing with Virginia;
Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, who stands at the forefront of contem-
porary American historians; William E. Dodd, former ambassador to Ger-
many, historian, and author of biographies of Jefferson Davis, Woodrow
Wilson, and Nathaniel Macon; James Southall Wilson, editor of The Vir-
ginia Quarterly Review (1925-30) and of several authoritative works on
Edgar Allan Poe; Carter G. Woodson and Luther P. Jackson, Negro his-
torians and scholars ; Eudora Ramsay Richardson, author of Little A leek; A
Life of Alexander H. Stephens (1932), The Influence of Men Incurable
(1936), The Woman Speaker (1936), and short stories and essays; Hamil-
ton James Eckenrode, author of biographies of Jefferson Davis, Nathan
Bedford Forrest, Rutherford B. Hayes, and James Longstreet, and of a
novel, Bottom Rail on Top (1935), conceived in the modern vein of candor;
and William Cabell Bruce, whose biography of Benjamin Franklin won the
Pulitzer award in 1918.

Foremost among Virginia biographers is Douglas Southall Freeman,
whose monumental R.E.Lee won the Pulitzer award in 1935. Dr.Free-
man's great book is more than a biography; it is a military history of the
War between the States.

The turn of the century brought popular recognition to the Virginia
poets James Lindsay Gordon, W.Gordon McCabe, Charles W. Coleman,
B.B.Valentine, and Henry Aylett Sampson. In modern verse Edwin
Quarles, Carlton Drewry, Virginia Moore, Aline Kilmer, Virginia Mc-
Cormick, Josephine Johnson, Emma Gray Trigg, Francis Mason, Anne

l66 VIRGINIA

Spencer, Nancy Byrd Turner, Leigh Hanes, John Richard Moreland, Julia
Johnson Davis, Marion Sartorious Ott, Marjory Howell, Mary Willis
Shelburne, Virginia Stait, Elkanah East Taylor, and Florence Dickinson
Stearnes have done interesting work. Lawrence Lee, Virginia Tuns tall,
Caroline Giltinan, and Henry E. Baker are adopted Virginians. George
Dillon, winnef in 1932 of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, claims Richmond
as his home, though he is now editor of Poetry ', published in Chicago. Some
of the best current verse in Virginia appears in The Lyric, Lyric Virginia
Today j an anthology edited by the gifted lyricist, Mary Sinton Leitch, and
in the Virginia Quarterly Review. The Lyric was founded in 1920 by the
distinguished poet, John Richard Moreland. During his editorship and
that of his successor, Virginia McCormick, the magazine was published in
Norfolk. Now, however, it emanates from Roanoke, the home of Leigh
Hanes, the present editor. John Moreland is the author of many books of
verse and appears in many important anthologies. Leigh Hanes, whose
collected work is published in two volumes, is best known for his 'Song of
the New Hercules.'

The Reviewer, a little monthly magazine, appeared in Richmond in 1921
and during the four years of its existence promised to rival the prestige of
the Southern Literary Messenger. Its founder and editor, Emily Clark, has
written in Innocence Abroad (1931) a vivid account of the writers con-
nected with the publication. The Reviewer published the first work of
Julia Peterkin, Frances Newman, and Gerald Johnson; the first prose of
DuBose Heyward; and some of Paul Green's earliest writings. James
Branch Cabell edited the monthly for three issues, and its brief but bril-
liant course was an eloquent reply to H.L.Mencken's designation of the
South as the 'Sahara of the Bozart.' The Southern Literary Messenger was
reborn in 1939 under the editorship of F. Meredith Dietz.

In time not too far distant Virginia may unite the channels that have
hitherto separated the literary trends of North and South. The birthplace
of the Nation is as probable a place of origin as any other for a National
literature that will combine romance, the social graces, and a coherent
culture with dramatic vitality and spiritual vision.

riTiTT.TIirfTTiTlIiIiTifiTIIlW

The Theater

VIRGINIA has always cherished the drama. The pleasure-loving
Cavaliers were not sympathetic with the dour denials of enjoy-
ment that prevailed in some of the other colonies. Fragmentary
records of Virginia's first century reveal the not infrequent appearance of
amateur plays and strolling players. Just what the plays were and where
they were produced are unknown, except for a court record of Accomac
County, dated 1655, which sets forth a charge made by a pious gentleman
against several persons for presenting a play entitled Ye Bear and Ye Cub.
The court adjudged the play harmless, and charged the complainant with
costs.

In 1716 the first playhouse in America was erected at Williamsburg.
Built by William Levingston, who entered into contract with Charles and
Mary Stagg, dancing teachers, the theater was designated for the acting of
'Comedies, Drolls, and other kind of stage plays ... as shall be thought
fitt to be acted there.' Though Levingston's theater was used for both am-
ateur and professional performances, it was frequently in financial difficul-
ties. Governor Spotswood, in a letter written June 24, 1718, tells of having
been slighted by eight committeemen who failed to accept his invitation to
a celebration of the king's birthday or to 'go to the play that was acted on
the occasion.' Other references are found to presentations, by students of
the College of William and Mary, of Cato, The Busybody, The Beaux' Strat-
agem) and The Recruiting Officer by 'the^company.'

In 1745 the theater was presented to the city for use as a town hall. But
in the fall of 1751 another playhouse was built, 'by way of subscription/
just back of the capitol. This was opened on the night of October 21, with
a performance of Richard III by Thomas Kean, Walter Murray, and
Charles Somerset Woodham of New York. After a few performances the
company moved on to Petersburg but returned to Williamsburg in the fol-
lowing spring. In May it played at Hobbs' Hole (Tappahannock), and at
Fredericksburg during the June fair.

The playhouse in Williamsburg housed the first well-rounded and well-
trained dramatic company to arrive in the New World from England. Iu
June 1752, the Hallams Lewis, senior, his wife, and two children with a

167

l68 VIRGINIA

supporting company disembarked from the Charming Sally at Yorktown
and made their way to Williamsburg. ' A select company of Commedians,'
they were styled by the Virginia Gazette. 'The Scenes, Cloaths, and Deco-
rations are entirely new, extremely rich and finished in the highest taste
. . . so that Ladies and Gentlemen may depend on being entertained in as
polite a manner as at the Theatre in London.'

The barnlike playhouse was al tered ' at great expense . . . into a regu-
lar Theatre fitt for the reception of Ladies and Gentlemen and the execu-
tion of their own performance/ In September the Hallam company opened
with the first performance in America of The Merchant of Venice, and re-
mained in Williamsburg for n months. Reference to later performances
occurs in a letter mentioning that Othello and a pantomime were played on
October 9, with * the Emperor of the Cherokee Nation, his Empress and
their Son, the Prince, attended by several of his warriors, the Great Men
and their Ladies, present at the play/

On February 6, 1768, a group of players known as the Virginia Com-
pany of Comedians appeared in Norfolk. In Williamsburg on April 4 of
the same year this group presented a tragedy called Douglas, and later con-
tinued its season with a repertory that included The Drummer, The Beg-
gar's Opera, Miss in Her Teens, The Harlequin Skeleton, Venice Preserved,
and The Constant Couple.

In the winter of 1770 the * American Company/ as the Hallams and
their group were then called, played a short season in Williamsburg. In
1771 another company presented King Lear. In 1772 the American Com-
pany was back in Williamsburg, appearing before large and brilliant
audiences.

The theaters of this early day were crude and flimsy structures built en-
tirely of wood, with benches in ' the pit } for common folk and boxes for the
gentry. They were heated in winter by a stove in the foyer, around which
the half-frozen audience would gather between the acts. Posters in the
lobbies ' respectfully requested ' the audience 'not to spit on the stove,' and
notices on the house bills or programs suggested that ' Ladies and Gentle-
men bring their own foot warmers.'

Candles were used for illumination. In the midst of a performance it was
not uncommon for a stagehand to .snuff a smoking candle in the footlights.
Performances usually began at six o'clock, and for hours before the rise of
the curtain Negro servants solemnly held seats for their masters and mis-
tresses. The evening's entertainment generally consisted of a prologue, a
complete drama, a farcical afterpiece, and often singing or dancing.

A system of benefit performances, prevalent in this period and lasting

THE THEATER 169

for many years thereafter, provided the actor with a substantial part of his
income. According to this custom, actors ' who were of good talents, indus-
trious habits and of fair character . . . were allowed the privilege, toward
the close of the season, of a benefit night. 7 The cards of actors and the
playbills solicited the patronage of the Ladies and Gentlemen' of the
community; and if the actor was well esteemed, his receipts were usually
substantial.

For a decade or two before the Revolution, the theater at Williamsburg
was the scene of some of the gayest and most brilliant gatherings in the
colony. When the Virginia general assembly was in session, the town
overflowed with visitors, the inns were filled to capacity, and every house
in town entertained guests. Theaters elsewhere in thfe colony also did a
thriving business. Washington from his youth was fond of the theater. His
ledger contains many entries for 'play tickets/ and often his diary records
that he ' went to the play. ; But the Provincial Congress, meeting on Octo-
ber 24, 1774, issued a warning against extravagance and dissipation, nam-
ing among other things ' gaming, cock-fighting, exhibition of shows, plays
and other expensive diversions and entertainments/ Theaters were closed;
many actors departed for the English West Indies; and the first period of
Virginia's theatrical history ended.

After the Revolution, however, interest in the theater revived. In 1779
the capital of Virginia was moved to Richmond. Though many plays had
been staged in the old Market House there, the first theater in the new
capital was built in 1786, on Shockoe Hill at Twelfth and Broad Streets.
The Virginia Gazette and Advertiser announces a performance of The Re-
cruiting Officer ' at the new theatre on Shockoe Hill on Saturday Evening
next, November i7th, 1787,' with Lethe, or Aesop in the Shades as the after-
piece. Among subsequent announcements are those of 'the tragedy of
Romeo and Juliet to which will be added a farce called The Citizen, to be
presented November 3oth, 1787 ' ; and a benefit for Mr.Bissett on Decem-
ber 7,1787, presenting The Beggar's Opera 'to which will be added (partic-
ular desire) Macklin's celebrated farce of Love d la Mode ... the whole
to conclude with the comic song of Four and Twenty Fiddlers A II in a Row
by Mr.Bissett.' Edgar Allan Poe's mother appeared many times on the
stage of the Shockoe Hill Theater, closing her professional career there in
1811, in December of which year she died.

The burning of this theater, in i Six, was one of the most tragic episodes
in Richmond's history. Before a holiday audience on the night of Decem-
ber 26, a benefit was being held for two players, Alexander Placide and his
daughter. The curtain had been rung down on the feature, The Father, or

170 VIRGINIA

Family Feuds. During the afterpiece, Raymond and Agnes, or The Bleeding
Nun, a lamp drawn up into the scenery started a blaze, which soon became
a seething inferno. The governor of the State and 72 others lost their lives.
After this tragedy, people hesitated to congregate in large buildings, and
theaters all over the country were affected.

It was seven years before Richmond ventured to build another play-
house. The list of subscribers who in 1818 made possible the new building
at Seventh and Broad Streets included many well-known Richmonders,
among them Chief Justice John Marshall, for whom the theater was
named. It was a much longer time, however, before the theater came into
fullest use. According to the Southern Literary Messenger of February
1835, 'the commodious theatre which succeeded the old one . . . which is
placed in a far more eligible situation and is of much safer construction, is
only occasionally patronized when the appearance of some attractive star
or celebrated performer is advertised.' Among the most famous of these
celebrated performers was Junius Brutus Booth, who on July 13, 1821,
made his first appearance in America on the stage of the Marshall Theater
in Richard III.

Richmond's 'golden age of the theater' began toward the middle of the
nineteenth century. Great plays were then given, with great actors who
remained throughout the season. The names of . William Charles Mac-
ready, Edwin Forrest, the Booths, and James W. Wallack appeared in the
playbills; and William Rufus Blake, Joseph Jefferson, and John Wilkes
Booth served at various times as stage managers at the Marshall.

A collection of old playbills of this theater, covering the years from
1848 through 1852, is owned by the Poe Shrine at Richmond. It is
mounted in yellow ledgers, with marginal notations and records of re-
ceipts in code written by the managers. Beside a handbill advertising
Romeo and Juliet on January 14, 1850, is written: 'Clear night but very
wet walking. Mr. Wise's speech at the capitol on the slavery question and
the people fools enough to listen to a dishonest politician.' On April i of
the same year is this terse statement. 'Mr. Booth was Drunk and Did Not
Appear.'

The great Jenny Lind sang in Richmond at the Marshall Theater in
1850. Another outstanding local event was the appearance in 1854 of Ole
Bull, immortal Norwegian violinist, in the old Exchange Hall and in the
African Church. Adelina Patti sang to delighted audiences from the ros-
trum of the same church.

By the middle iS^o's Richmond had become one of the four or five most
important dramatic centers in the United States, and for years every no-

THE THEATER 171

table actor of the American stage played in this city more or less regularly.
Richmond's verdict in matters dramatic became authoritative, and there
were times when plays were tried out in Richmond before presentation in
New York.

The Marshall Theater burned during the night of January 2, 1862. Al-
most before the bricks were cold, Mrs.Elizabeth McGill, its owner, began
the building of a new theater on the same site; and in 1863 this new play-
house, the Richmond, was opened with As You Like It, presenting Ida
Vernon and D'Orsay Ogden in the leading roles. Though the War between,
the States was now at its height, the theater in Virginia suffered less than
it had during the Revolution. As Mrs.McGill (later Mrs.Powell) wrote,
' Everyone seemed to need relaxation and the house was full every night.
President Davis used to come often with his cabinet/ Sally Partington, a
favorite among the soldiers, played opposite most of the celebrated male
actors of the day. Strangely enough, the soldiers seemed to prefer tragedy
to comedy, and during the war many of America's great tragedians were
seen in Virginia's capital.

A memorable performance of the postwar years in Richmond was that
of Edwin Booth and Lawrence Barrett, who in 1888 appeared together in
Othello. Among other actors who thrilled and charmed Richmond audi-
ences in the early postwar decades were Charlotte Cushman, the elder
Salvini, John McCullough, Francis S. Chanfrau, Laura Keene, Adelaide
Histori, Fanny Janauscheck, Sarah Bernhardt, Helena Modjeska, Fanny
Davenport, Adelaide Neilson, Mary Anderson, George L. Fox, Edward A.
So them, Richard Mansfield, and Robert B. MantelL

Other theaters were erected in Virginia during these years among
them the Theatre of Varieties in Richmond, introducing vaudeville. The
most prominent of Richmond's later playhouses, the Academy of Music,
was opened in 1886 with a presentation of Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado.
Here, in the last decade of the century, came Signor Salvini in Othello,
Henry Irving and Ellen Terry in The Merchant of Venice, Frederick Warde
in King Lear, and Creston Clarke in his role of Edgar Allan Poe, In mem-
orable performances of Rip Van Winkle and The Rivals at the Academy in
1902, Joseph Jefferson bade farewell to a city that he had loved through-
out his professional career.

Among outstanding Virginians in the theater toward the end of the
nineteenth century were Wilton Lackaye (1862-1932), born in Loudoun
County, a character actor, and George Fawcett (1861-1939), a native of
Fairfax County, also a character actor, first on the stage, then the screen,
A pioneer in motion pictures is Francis Xavier Bushman born in Norfolk

172 VIRGINIA

in 1884, who had the lead in 402 early films. Jack Holt (b.i88i), a native
of Winchester, began his screen career in 1913. Acting both on the stage
and screen are James Harlee Bell, born in Suffolk, in 1894, and Margaret
Sullavan (b.i9ii), a native of Norfolk. The career of Randolph Scott,
born in Orange County in 1903, has been wholly in motion pictures. The
outstanding success of the Negro actor, Charles Sidney Gilpin (1878-
1930), born in Richmond, was the role of Brutus Jones in Eugene O'Neill's
Emperor Jones. Equally at home on stage or screen is the Negro tap
dancer, Bill (Bojangles) Robinson, who was born in Richmond in 1878.
The role of Amos in radio's ceaseless skit Amos 'n Andy belongs exclu-
sively to Freeman Gosden, a native of Richmond.

In Virginia, as elsewhere, developments and trends that were radically
to alter the theater's destiny began to gather headway late in the nine-
teenth century and to gain greatly intensified momentum early in the
twentieth. Some of these were a reflection of changes in the general pat-
tern of American economic and social life; others had their origin within
the theater itself. Abuses of the star system; the rise of the great theatrical
syndicates; the increasing domination of Broadway and the decline of ' the
road'; the competition at first of vaudeville and then of motion pictures
these were some of the factors that accounted for the rapid recession of the
theater's golden age and (outside a few of the largest metropolitan cen-
ters) reduced the legitimate stage from opulence to poverty.

Hunger for the legitimate drama brought about a renaissance of stock
companies during the early part of the present century. For several years
the Academy was the home of a stock company known as the Giffen Play-
ers, some of whose members (including Richard Bennett, Margaret Illing-
ton, Lucille LaVerne, and Ralph Morgan) later became nationally promi-
nent on stage or screen. The little theater movement, which started later,
had its genesis in small groups of idealists eager to experiment with new
methods and new media.

Little theaters have been organized and are actively functioning in most
of Virginia's larger communities, including Richmond, Lynchburg,
Staunton, Danville, Norfolk, and Petersburg. The Lynchburg Little
Theatre has a building of its own. The Richmond Theatre Guild is not
only the largest nonprofessional theater organization in the State, but also
one of the largest in the country. Spiritual successor to many earlier acting
societies and dramatic clubs in Richmond, the Guild is a direct descendant
of the Little Theatre League, organized in 1918.

Within the past few years, colleges and universities have placed greatly
increased emphasis upon dramatic instruction and presentations. The dra-

THE THEATER 173

matic departments and the players of the College of William and Mary,
the University of Richmond, and the University of Virginia are outstand-
ing in this field.

Both little theater and college groups are ambitious in their undertak-
ings. Their repertoires range from miracle and morality plays, through the
works of Elizabethan and Restoration dramatists and the foreign play-
wrights of all eras, down to recent Broadway successes. In their work-
shops they are producing plays, training actors, designing scenery, and de-
veloping an enthusiasm for the drama that is not likely to be extinguished.
The next chapter in the history of the Virginia theater, it seems safe to
predict, will be written chiefly by the little theaters and the dramatic de-
partments of colleges and universities.

Architecture

ACHITECTURE in Virginia started with ' two f aire rows ' of houses
built between 1611 and 1615 at Jamestown and three 'streets' at
the city of Henrico, for the first settlers built merely shacks or
huts.

According to Ralph Hamer, secretary of the colony at the time, the
Jamestown houses were 'all of framed Timber, two stories and an upper
Garrett, or Corne loft, high.' More particular description there is none;
but mention is made of 'three large and substantial Store Howses joyned
togeather/ of the defenses, 'newly and strongly impaled/ and of 'some
very pleasant and beautiful howses . . . without the towns.'

We have a hint of the outward aspect of Virginia's two most consider-
able communities when the colony was less than ten years old and learn,
incidentally, that already the Virginians were building 'pleasantly and
beautifully ' in the open country. So they have preferred to do ever since.

Sir Thomas Dale and Sir Thomas Gates seem to have been responsible
for this construction. Gates brought with him from England not only
smiths and carpenters but also bricklayers and brickmakers. Though the
brick church at Jamestown, of which only the ruined tower now survives,
was not begun until 1639, ^ * s possible that a brick church was built at
Henrico as some reports have it before the Indian massacre of 1622. If
so, nothing is left of it. The Indian onslaught completely wiped out the
settlement below the falls of the James and narrowly missed extinguishing
the colony.

The log cabin was unknown in Virginia, as in England, at this date, and
for many years afterwards. The roofed pen of logs was a contrivance of
Scandinavian origin and did not establish itself on this continent until the
Swedes brought it over to Delaware. Once it was introduced, diffusion of
the type was inevitable, peculiarly adapted as it was to rough-and-ready
shelter in a rude country of forests.

In any case, the earliest Virginia construction for lodging purposes that
can be dignified with the name is the frame house of the rows at James-
town. The most familiar aspect of Virginia villages, even today, is such
rows of frame houses. No Virginia frame house of the first half of the

174

ARCHITECTURE 175

seventeenth century has survived, and very few are left that can be au-
thenticated as belonging to the latter half. But the fashion of building
these houses, adapted from contemporary English models, persisted all
through the eighteenth and well into the nineteenth century.

The prototype essentially was the English timber cottage, with wooden
weatherboarding applied to the frame over all, although in the old coun-
try the common practice was to let plaster or other filling serve as outer
covering. Since the older surviving frame houses in Virginia are filled In
with plaster or brick nogging and the weatherboard is an added protection
(as the name itself implies), it is reasonable to suppose that the first Vir-
ginia builders, having an abundance of wood, which was very scarce in
England, used this method in the beginning, and that the frame house,
covered only with boards, was a later development.

The typical form of the Virginia frame house, examples of which are still
scattered over the Tidewater and Piedmont sections, is a house one room
deep and two rooms wide, or two rooms and a passage wide. This house
has a gable roof of steep pitch, which nowadays usually has dormers to
light the upper half-story. But in the primitive form, the dormers were
probably lacking. The roof may still (perhaps under a modern sheathing of
tin) be covered with shingles, which presently usurped the place of the
thatch commonly used in England.

If the house has two rooms, separated by a 'passage' passage is the
correct word and hall ' a pretentious intrusion, involving the misuse of a
word correct in its proper place we find, as a rule, massive chimneys at
each end with the chimney stacks standing free of the building above the
half-story fireplace. As the family increased, another unit of the same pat-
tern was often set L-fashion at the back with another outside chimney. Or
the original unit was extended lengthwise beyond the chimney at one end
or both, often with roofs of lower pitch on the additions, omitting the dor-
mers, which by that time had become standard.

Much less often there are two stories under the steep roof, in which case
lower dormered wings may extend from both ends. That, however, came
later. It suggests the influence of the Georgian principle of symmetrical
arrangement a main block with flanking pavilions which reached the
colony early in the eighteenth century. This is characteristically expressed
in the brick houses of that century, such as Westover (1730).

Not essentially different in design from the typical frame house and still
Gothic is the simplest type of seventeenth-century brick house. This is il-
lustrated in a number of houses still, or until recently, extant. The Thor-
oughgood House in Princess Anne County and Winona in Northampton

176 VIRGINIA

County, both probably built before 1650, follow the one-room deep plan
with steep gabled roof and dormers (added later to the Thoroughgood
House). More elaborate were Bacon's Castle or Allen's Brick House in
Surry County and Fairfield, the Burwell seat in Gloucester County, the
latter fortunately photographed before its destruction in 1900. Each pre-
sents an unmistakable Tudor aspect, with clustered chimney stacks; and
the first has curved and stepped gables on the main section and a closed
porch on one long side and a stair tower on the other.

Nothing is left today but the foundations of the colony's manor house,
Green Spring, where Sir William Berkeley maintained a gaol still stand-
ing for political offenders and common malefactors alike. Before it was
pulled down after the Revolution sketches of the house were made by
William Ludwell Lee of the Stratford family. It is known, therefore, that
Green Spring likewise revealed Tudor or Gothic elements, including a
steeply pitched roof with dormers.

Both Green Spring and Bacon's Castle were certainly built before
Bacon's Rebellion of 1676, for the hot-headed young Nathaniel Bacon,
leader of the rebels, used the governor's country house as his headquarters
for his siege of Jamestown, and Allen's Brick House sheltered some of his
followers.

It is broadly true, as Fiske Kimball pointed out many years ago, that
American Colonial architecture was chiefly dependent upon the architec-
tural development in England. Our seventeenth-century expression in
wood was primarily an adaptation to local materials and conditions, and
it produced an unmistakable American type, both in Virginia and in New
England. Variations in the type up and down the Atlantic Coast, creating
a recognizable Virginia architecture and an equally recognizable New
England architecture, were owing largely to differences in climatic condi-
tions and habits of living.

The style of building that was brought over by the first settlers, both in
Virginia and in New England, was already old-fashioned in the old coun-
try. The changes made in it over here, while the type held, did not reflect
changes going on across the water. They were made in America to suit con-
ditions in various regions, while the general way of building persisted in
the heads of workmen transplanted from England along with the original
model. Not until the eighteenth century was well into its second quarter
were the English architects' books (rising in flood tide at home) brought
to America where the new English fashion in architecture captured the
imagination of the colonists.

These folios spread abroad the elegant Renaissance mode that began

ARCHITECTURE 177

with Inigo Jones, before Charles I walked out of Jones's own White Hall
to the scaffold. This mode received magnificent illustration in churches
and public buildings at the hands of Christopher Wren, right on from the
second Charles's time to that of the dull Hanoverian Georges. Curiously,
however, it does not seem to have been in general use for gentlemen's pri-
vate houses, even in England, until the reign of William and Mary, or
thereabouts.

Most of Virginia's extant English Renaissance, or so-called Georgian,
houses were built after 1720, and it is difficult not to assume that the way
they were built was much affected by the public buildings in Williams-
burg, which rose up under William and Mary, Anne, and the first George.

Middle Plantation (now Williamsburg) had taken the place of James-
town as the capital of the colony only in 1699. It had been appointed as the
site for the College of William and Mary in 1693. From a wayside village,
boasting a church and a few houses, Middle Plantation, between the
James and the York Rivers, had to be made over into a seat of govern-
ment and of learning. The latest fashions in polite urban buildings were
available for an entire setup. This elegant new mode was used and thus
was handsomely advertised throughout His Britannic Majesty's Old
Dominion.

Every person of condition in the colony attended upon the general
court or the house of burgesses and saw what Governor Alexander Spots-
wood and his associates had wrought. Not until the Williamsburg public
buildings were restored in the image of the originals was it possible for this
generation to measure their influence in their own time and on the genera-
tion that saw them built. Without the restoration that influence might
have gone almost unsuspected. With the restoration the evidence is in
plain view. The Wren Building at the College of William and Mary and
the reconstructed Governor's Palace and the capitol exhibit the special
characteristics of English Renaissance architecture that became the hall
mark of Virginia's Georgian style.

Westover, its builder a member of the council while Spotswood was gov-
ernor, is obviously like the Governor's Palace, the construction of which
had been begun in 1705 and completed under Spotswood's supervision.
Colonel William Byrd's seat, to be sure, is larger it is a country house,
not a town lodging. It may well be that Byrd, an accomplished and
traveled person, used as his principal guide in designing his mansion an-
other architect's book and gathered hints, besides, from fashionable
houses he had seen and admired in England. But the essential pattern is
the same.

178 VIRGINIA

Built about the same time as Westover, Christ Church in Lancaster
County, near Robert Carter's vanished seat Coro toman, employs all the
characteristic Williamsburg elements. So does Colonel Thomas Lee's
Stratford Hall (1727-30) in Westmoreland County, though a pair of quad-
ruple chimneys, linked with arches into the semblance of towers, furnishes
the dominant accent of the Lee house.

Ampthill, in Chesterfield County, was the seat of Archibald Gary,
whose father and grandfather were both directly and practically con-
cerned in the construction of the Williamsburg public buildings. It seems
to have started life (completed in 1732) as a long house, a single room deep
on each side of a passage after the seventeenth-century fashion. But as it
stands, transplanted to the other side of the James, it has grown into the
newer foursquare style, two rooms deep, with the passage sweeping
through from back to front in the manner already noted as a Virginia
specialty one not borrowed from common practice in England, but cli-
matically acquired.

Carter's Grove, in James City County, built in 1751 by Carter Burwell,
resembled, before its roof was lifted a few years ago, Ampthill rather than
Westover. It gave less effect of height than either Westover or any Wil-
liamsburg model a few miles away including BrafFerton Hall (1723) and
the President's House (1732) at the college.

But the characteristic elements are there, and the basic pattern holds
both for main house and dependencies, which in all these cases were lower
flanking buildings, originally unconnected with the main mass but later
usually joined on by what the Marylanders call ' hyphens.' The interior of
the first floor was usually paneled to the ceiling with pine, painted white.
Stratford, however, which has a true 'hall/ uses the paneling there only.
Often, as at Carter's Grove and at Brandon, a Harrison seat on the James,
the paneling is elaborated with pilasters in the classic order.

Rosewell, in Gloucester County, through the building of which two
generations of Pages beggared themselves, is now a fire-gutted shell. It
outdid the Governor's Palace, not only in ground extent and the number
of stories, but in count of cupolas, for it had two. But it followed the
palace fashion, in the manner of the brickwork Flemish bond and ran-
dom-glazed headers (neither used at Ampthill) with Cubbed brick for trim
and in the orderly arrangment of dependencies.

At Rosewell, as in Christ Church and at Westover, stone and brick are
combined in the decoration but used sparingly. Houses built wholly of
stone are unusual, since the Tidewater lacked that material, and are of
later date. Outstanding examples are Mount Airy in Richmond County,

ARCHITECTURE 179

built by Colonel John Tayloe in 1758, and Prestwould in Mecklenburg,
built by Sir William Skipwith about the same time.

As the typical Virginia plantation house of the eighteenth century sat in
the midst of broad acres of plowed field, pasture, and woodland, remote
from neighbors, so the typical Virginia church of that century was the
crossroads church, set by itself in a field or a wood, at a point convenient
to a group of plantations that covered a great stretch of country. The dif-
ference was that the big' house was revealed among gardens, lawns, and
groves, and framed in outlying buildings set in order to right and left, or
flanking a curved forecourt, as at Mount Vernon, or defining a court at
the back, as at Shirley on the James. But the sunlight, which dappled the
mellow red brick walls and the gray shingled roof with the shadows of the
trees in the churchyard, fell only on the church and the tombstones, parad-
ing their coats of arms and the names and titles of dead parishioners.
There was not even a rectory in sight. The rector of the parish was pro-
vided with a glebe a lesser plantation and with indentured servants
and slaves.

The Brick Church in Isle of Wight County (named St.Luke's after the
Revolution), probably the oldest extant church building in the original
thirteen colonies, comprises a rude square tower at the west end and a
nave with Gothic buttresses and brick-mullioned windows, including a
great window lighting the chancel at the east end. It has suffered damage
and restoration, but these features seem to have belonged to the original
structure. The tower at Jamestown all that is left of the fourth church,
begun in 1639 is likewise of brick and unmistakably Gothic.

St.Peter's, New Kent County, the main part of which was built in 1701-
03, is a quadrangular, high-gabled block, with a square tower (1740) and
crude corner finials, set on a Norman arched porch. Bruton Parish Church
in Williamsburg, called the 'Court' Church, was the first Virginia church
to be built under the influence of the new fashions. It was erected in 1710-
15 under Governor Spotswood's supervision. The handsome square tower,
however, was not set in front of the original cruciform structure until a
generation later.

* Christ Church, Alexandria, where Washington had a pew and where the
Mount Vernon coach, all green and gold with four horses, used to set
down the general and his lady of a Sunday morning, was begun in 1767
and completed in 1772. It has a tower topped by Wrenish pepperpots that
was added as late as 1818. St. John's, Richmond, where Patrick Henry
cried out for liberty or death, is one of the few surviving wooden churches
of the regular Anglican establishment. It goes back to 1741, or not long

l8o VIRGINIA

after Colonel Byrd founded the city at the falls of the James. St. John's
wooden tower (1827), also crowned with Wrenish pepperpots, did not
exist when Patrick Henry poured out his burning eloquence upon the Vir-
ginia Convention in 1775. The characteristic Virginia church was the
crossroads church as it continues to be even today, to a very consider-
able extent.

Virginia's Colonial churches, of which about 50 survive, fall into six
general groups: (i) those with small naves and huge towers (1630-1700);
(2) middle-colonial type with rectangular plan and steeply pitched gabled
roof (1690-1740); (3) T-shaped buildings with three sharp end-gables
(1700-60); (4) regular cruciform type with gabled roof (1710-50); (5)
Greek-cruciform type with all four transepts equal (1730-70); and (6)
late-colonial Wren quadrangular type with hipped roof (1760-76).

Requirements of the interior chiefly determined the shape of the build-
ing, the main object being to have the communicants close to the pulpit.
This problem was solved finally with the creation of the late, nearly square
Wren block, when the pulpit was placed at the center against a side
wall.

Among churches of each group are minor variations. Two buildings of
the first period, St. Luke's and Jamestown, differ from their fellows by
reason of their Gothic buttresses. The earliest of the second period, repre-
sented by Merchant's Hope in Prince George County, had a swag roof.
Characteristics of this the largest group, of which Old Church in King and
Queen County is also a representative, are compass windows and the door
in the south wall near the east end. Churches of all groups except the first
have galleries, and the groups after the second generally have pedimented
doors of rubbed and carved brick. In a few instances the pediments are of
stone. The oldest T-church, Yeocomico (1706) in Westmoreland County,
has irregularly spaced windows and had originally a swag roof. Among
later representatives are Vauter J s in Essex County, St. John's in King Wil-
liam, and Blandford in Petersburg. The regular crucif orms, except Bruton
Parish Church, had no tower during the Colonial period, whether in rural
or urban areas. St. John's in Hampton and Mattapony in King and Queen
County belong to this group. Greek-cruciform buildings, with a door in
north, west, and south ends and all-round cornice, divide themselves into
two subtypes (a) those with gabled roof and single tier of windows, such
as North Farnham in Richmond County and Abingdon in Gloucester, and
(b) those with hipped roof and two tiers of windows, represented by Christ
Church in Lancaster County and StPauPs in King George. Aquia Church
in Stafford, a member of the latter subgroup, differs from others of its type

ARCHITECTURE l8l

because of the tower above its front transept. Here again is an instance of
a tower in a strictly rural section. The late Wren blocks with hipped roofs
fall into two subgroups (a) with single tier of tall compass windows, rep-
resented by Lamb's Creek in King George County and Payne's Church
(now destroyed) in Fairfax, and (b) with two tiers, square-headed below
and round-arched above, as shown in Pohick in Fairfax County. This type,
except in the case of Christ Church in Alexandria, has a door at the center
of the south wall, with the main entrance at the west end. Every Colonial
church stands due east and west.

Even before the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown ended for practi-
cal purposes the War for Independence, Thomas Jefferson had started to
make over the architecture of Virginia. He did not like what is known as
' Georgian ' architecture. He was bored by it, as was Sir Christopher Wren
in his time by the Gothic. When the master of Monticello followed
Patrick Henry as governor, he drew a plan (which was never executed) for
remodeling the Governor's Palace in Williamsburg in the semblance of a
classic temple with a portico. The new capitol in Richmond he modeled
after the Roman temple at Nimes known as the Maison Carree. And the
style of architecture called Early Republican, distinguished to the com-
mon eye by tall columns and pedimented porticos, though it derives
through the sixteenth-century Italian Palladio from its original Greco-
Roman sources, is principally, as an American expression, the child of
Jefferson's ardent fancy.

The architects, professional and amateur, native and foreign, whom he
proselyted and with whom he collaborated, included Stephen Hallet (' The
first approved professional among us ? ), Benjamin Latrobe, Charles Bui-
finch, William Thornton all of whom worked on the Capitol in Washing-
ton and Robert Mills, who had two years under the master's own eye as
student and draftsman at Monticello. All these spread the new gospel over
the country in the form of buildings in classic style. In Virginia, it was
Jefferson who built all the houses with stately porticos that crown the
river bluffs and the hilltops from the Chesapeake to the Blue Ridge Moun-
tains and beyond. Even if somebody else drew the plans, still Jefferson was
the real builder. Monticello, the University of Virginia, Bremo, and his
home of refuge, Poplar Forest these, to be sure, are directly the works of
the master's hand and attest authentically his title as Virginia's architect
paramount. But all those other houses in Virginia that were built new with
porticos and pediments or had their Georgian fronts 'lifted' by means of
porticos and pediments from Jefferson's time almost up to the War be-
tween the States also stand as witnesses to clinch the title.

182 VIRGINIA

A house of dignity in the Old Dominion was Jeffersonian or nothing.
The change came about the more easily because the deep Tidewater
where the statelier family seats of eighteenth-century vintage clustered,
and where they still linger as patches of orange-brickcolor among their
trees and overgrown gardens was left aside by the movement of popula-
tion westward to the hills. That movement Jefferson himself had led. He
had pegged it down by shifting the seat of government from Williamsburg
to Richmond and by building the University of Virginia the crowning
achievement of his old age.

Much more might be written about Jeffersonian architecture in its rural
setting; for example, of the Greek Revival stage that owed its primary
local impulse to that capitol of his on its acropolis above the James not-
withstanding that the model temple itself is classed as Roman. This was
the phase that produced Berry Hill (see Tour nJ), with the Parthenon for
inspiration, and encouraged the practice of covering clean red brick with
stucco in imitation of stone.

Much might be written also about Virginia architecture as it developed
in the cities, when cities began to grow to a size that gave them mrban
character. In all the older towns are distinctly urban and urbane types of
red brick houses with Georgian fronts and cornices, with a lurking seven-
teenth-century suggestion in the steeply-pitched roofs and gables. Espe-
cially there are the houses that Robert Mills built, in which the red brick
is usually covered with stucco.

Monumental Church, standing with its dome in Broad Street, Rich-
mond, solemnly commemorates the great theater fire of 1811 that cost the
lives of the governor of the commonwealth and yo-odd besides. That
church is the monument, as well, of Robert Mills, who is best known as the
architect of the great colonnade of the Treasury in Washington and of the
Washington monuments in Washington and Baltimore.

Best of all Mills's works in Virginia are the stuccoed houses of the 1820'$
and i83o 3 s that faced upon the streets of Richmond with plain fronts, ex-
cept for modest Doric or Ionic framed doorways or small entrance porches
in the same styles. Very sober town houses they looked. But, at the back,
where the land sloped toward the river and the walled garden dropped its
terraces, was the tall columned portico, with hanging balconies clinging to
the backs of the columns to leave clean the upward sweep of the shafts to
the roof. Thus, as one walked through the hall (no longer a mere passage)
from the front door to the back door, the city house of formal dignity
turned into a country house with a large gracious air and a sense of com-
fortable seclusion.

ARCHITECTURE 183

The house of John Wickham, who defended Aaron Burr, survives as tie
Valentine Museum in Richmond and is little changed. It serves as a re-
minder of how proficient Mills was in this manner, though he was content,
in this instance, to use a one-story portico across the side-bayed garden
front, which today looks out on the same walled garden. The White House
of the Confederacy, so called, or the Jefferson Davis Mansion, not far
away also survives. This house, which Mills built for Dr. John Brocken-
brough, retains both the sedate and urban front on the street and the
lofty portico at the back. But an attic story has been piled on top, and the
garden is so crammed that much of the original effect is lost.

It is not too much to say that the architecture of Virginia, as a distinc-
tive thing, perished with Virginia's own great builder and at that builder's
own hands. For Jefferson made his PaUadian architecture not Virginian,
only, but National. Houses in this manner, generally speaking, sprang up
all over the country, bigger, if not better, than the Virginia houses. This
was true, especially in the new States west of the Alleghenies, whither men
from the seaboard States moved with their families and gear and set up on
a grand scale on large tracts of land, received often as public grants in rec-
ognition of services in the Revolution.

Building in Virginia has tended since the middle of the nineteenth cen-
tury or earlier to follow the current American fashion in building and to
match very closely in any given period the run of the mill in the rest of the
country.

Virginia felt as early as the iSao's the first wave of the Gothic Revival
from England exemplified in General John Hartwell Cocke's lodge, Re-
cess, close to and almost contemporaneous with his classic seat, Bremo in
Fluvanna County, mainly planned by Jefferson himself. Virginia caught
the subsequent fever engendered by Sir Walter Scott's romances, suffered
the irruption of mock medieval designs, dressed up in jigsaw scrollwork
and jimcrackery, which we identify as the Victorian Gothic. It fell a victim
to the jerry-building plague that swept in from the railroad shack towns of
the fast-moving West. It did not escape the rage for the Second French
Empire baroque, which in the late i86o's and iSyo's possessed the land in
the vulgarized and brutalized version now called the General Grant Style.
It succumbed to the fad of patchwork quilt polychromy trailing after the
introduction by Richardson of the Romanesque style into American ar-
chitecture. Sham fronts faced with a checkerwork of roughhewn green
and brown stones insulted with their presence the proudest of the dim-
shaded streets in the larger towns. Poverty, which the War between the
States left in its wake, saved the smaller towns and villages from a like

184 VIRGINIA

desecration, and enabled them to escape that architectural plague only to
be devastated later by the universal bungalow blight.

Even when people were not seduced by the new idols and tried to build
in the old tradition, the quality was almost certain to be lost. For the fine
art of brickwork had fallen into neglect, and the sturdy craft of carpentry
was being crowded out by mill work. Proportions perished; design was for-
gotten. Flattened tin roofs reduced to vulgar insignificance the once gra-
cious, if small and simple, Virginia home, set back from the high road in the
grove of trees in the country or tucked in its white-fenced yard along the
village street.

Better times brought better buildings. They brought also the eclectic
taste, the hodgepodge of styles that the American Beaux Arts architects,
fresh from Paris, dumped upon their defenseless stay-at-home fellow citi-
zens. Virginia built like the rest of the country, and the fashionable new
suburbs of her cities became, as everywhere else, samplers of the past
styles of every country but our own.

The range was from Richardsonian Romanesque derivatives, with mas-
sive rough walls, heavy arches, and round excrescences like stone tents,
through the regular Italian palace and French chateau effects to Eliza-
bethan manors, some of which were copied, others imported like Virginia
House in Richmond, formerly Sulgrave Manor.

Tobacco built the houses of the eighteenth-century Virginia nabobs.
Tobacco likewise built most of these new mansions in assorted exotic
styles, and some of them were and are very handsome, even if they
have nothing to do with Virginia architecture as such. ' A refreshing, if en-
tirely alien, note arrived in Richmond in the iSgo's with the Jefferson
Hotel, a vision of old Seville conjured up by Carrere and Hastings, just
back from setting up Spanish scenery for the Florida winter-resort stage.
With terrace, arches, fountain court, and towers, and a dress o cream-
colored brick and terracotta, it looks across Franklin Street at the classic
portico of Peter Mayo's big square gray house and is not one whit
abashed.

Another building fashion swept the whole Nation, indirectly starting
the movement that within the last two decades has restored Virginia's own
architecture to favor with Virginians and awakened pride in the local tra-
dition. This pride, in turn has created the current very active revival of
building consciously, and even determinedly, in the old manner. The re-
turn tidal wave of the classic that swept the country after the Chicago
World's Fair of 1893 had, with its dramatic Roman-holiday scenery, fired
the imagination of an American people peculiarly susceptible at the mo-

ARCHITECTURE 185

ment to expressions of magnificence and illusions of grandeur. Virginia
went in enthusiastically for the architectural stuff of which the White City
beside Lake Michigan was made. A new crop of porticos and pediments
grew up.

Meantime, however, Stanford White had come down to the University
of Virginia to restore Jefferson's Rotunda, which had been wrecked by fire
in 1895. From this building, an adaptation of the Pantheon in Rome, the
inspiration came to White and his partner, Charles F. McKim (who had
already started an American Colonial revival, based on a study of old
houses in New England), to create after the same Pantheon model the li-
braries of Columbia and New York Universities.

Thus the dazzling light of the new White City, or fin de si&cle fashion,
caused the rediscovery of the forgotten man, Thomas Jefferson, the Archi-
tect for 50 years among his own people completely lost in the magnitude
of the political fame of Jefferson, Father of Democracy. Those red brick
buildings with their white columns framing the Lawn at Jefferson's uni-
versity, those old porticoed houses scattered about the countryside and en-
tangled in local traditions as tenacious as the ivy that mantled their walls
these buildings were, it appeared, not merely venerable relics of an old
time and an extinct fashion. In them was embodied a Virginia achieve-
ment as distinguished as any other of her contributions to the sound be-
ginnings of the American union of States. Very soon the new porticoed and
pedimented houses began to look more like the native old houses and less
like the latest imported models advertised in Chicago. The red brick of a
country based on one of the reddest of red clay beds in the world gained
favor over the alien pale stone of the new classic fashion.

It was rather blind groping at first, so completely had knowledge of the
older architectural traditions faded out in a half century sliced off from its
past by the sword of a destructive war. Actually the distinction had been
lost between the true Colonial the so-called American Georgian or
adapted English Renaissance of the eighteenth century and the Palla-
dian-Jeffersonian, which Fiske Kimball named Early Republican.

Indeed, the Virginians, like the rest of the country a generation ago,
habitually called the revived Jeffersonian style Colonial when they did
not call it Southern.

Since the outstanding monuments of the Jeffersonian vintage were still
In active use as the capitol and university buildings and since many of
the upcountry plantation mansions, including Monticello itself, have es-
caped serious damage, the volunteer salvage corps concentrated their at-
tention on the neglected Tidewater and thus rediscovered the true Co-

l86 VIRGINIA

lonial, almost by accident. In this field, the process of pious restoration by
private hands and through patriotic organizations in which the women
have taken the lead has set going surveys and investigations by archi-
tects and antiquarians, the sum of which has created for the first time a
body of dependable knowledge covering Virginia's building methods and
styles as far back as the last quarter of the seventeenth century.

The return of Virginia to its own version of the architecture that came
from England has been encouraged as it has been made possible on a
solid basis of authenticity by the recreation of the Colonial capital at
Williamsburg, financed by John D. Rockefeller Jr. and carried out with
extraordinary care and completeness. As we have seen, the originals
launched the fashion in which the finest and most distinctive Virginia
houses and churches were built at least, before Mr. Jefferson came along.
So that it is only reasonable that the restoration should have potent effect
on today's revival of that style.

The vertical fashion of skyscrapers, which America invented and de-
veloped as its principal contribution to the most compendious of the arts,
has not missed the larger Virginia cities. But it expresses itself here, as
everywhere, in standard skyscraper patterns. The rival horizontal fashion,
which exploits shining metal and glass, the professedly international style,
has made little headway in Virginia.

The Valley of the Shenandoah the river called Euphrates by Colonel
Spotswood's Knights of the Golden Horseshoe was settled by two main
streams of migration. One went over the mountain from the Piedmont
and the Tidewater and took with it its accustomed manner of living and
building the Virginia manner of the period of migration. The other
stream much the more important numerically and made up largely of
Ulstermen (usually called Scotch-Irish in Virginia) and of Germans
came down into the Valley from the North, chiefly through Pennsylvania.
They brought with them the architecture that is distinguished as the
Pennsylvania-Dutch type, with its solid foursquare houses of stone the
natural building material of a mountainous country.

The two types (west and east) are essentially the same in stylistic deri-
vation, according to date. Either they show characteristics of the Medie-
val or Gothic like the steep-roofed, narrow-gabled house of Virginia's
architectural beginnings or they follow Renaissance block patterns and
are adapted to the local material of which they are built, the use to which
they are put, and the climatic and other conditions of living that they
serve.

An example is Augusta Church, built between 1740 and 1750, a solid

ARCHITECTURE 187

foursquare structure with walls laid in stones of odd shapes after a manner
characteristic of Pennsylvania stone houses and churches of the first half
of the eighteenth century. Topping it is a steep roof, having the gables
clipped off diagonally half-way the so-called jerkin-head roof, although,
as a matter of fact, the same style of roof is used in the deep Tidewater in
houses built before 1750.

The original Valley counties, Augusta and Frederick, were not created
until 1738 and not organized until some years later. Augusta Church is
therefore not merely a characteristic piece of Valley of Virginia architec-
ture but probably the oldest surviving example of the type of architec-
ture that may be said to be peculiarly the Valley's own.

In general, the architecture that is Virginia's own, in right of happy
adaptation to her countryside and the manners, custom, and genius of
her people, is of two types.

First is the Colonial, derived directly from English models: Early
Colonial, built on the still lingering Medieval pattern of the seventeenth-
century common usage in the homeland; and Late Colonial following the
Renaissance mode as interpreted by English architects of that century and
made the new fashion of building for persons of distinction through most
of the century succeeding.

Second is the Jeffersonian, which was artfully taken from Palladio's bag
of tricks but which received a stamp that makes it both distinctive and
distinguished. Houses in Virginia have still an unmistakable Virginia char-
acter, no matter how obvious the derivation. They carry the conviction of
belonging to the country as surely as the clay and wood of which they are
composed and the field and forest in which they are framed.

PART II
Cities

Alexandria

Railroad Station: Union Station, W. end of King St, for Richmond, Fredericksburg &

Potomac R.R., Chesapeake & Ohio Ry., Seaboard Air Line Ry., and Southern Ry.

Bus Station: NW. corner Washington and King Sts., for Greyhound Lines.

Airport: Washington Airport, 4 m. N. on US i, for Eastern Air Lines, American Airlines,

and Pennsylvania-Central Airlines; taxi $1.25.

Taxis: Fare 20 j within city limits, $1.50 to Washington.

Local Busses: SE. corner Pitt and Cameron Sts. for busses to Washington, fare 15^,

8 tokens f or $i ; to Mount Vernan, fare 25^; to Episcopal Theological Seminary, fare iofL

Pier: Norfolk and Washington Steamboat Co., E. end of Pririce St., for boat to Old

Point Comfort and Norfolk, 7 p.m. daily except when river is frozen.

Traffic Regulations: No U-turns in business district, one hour parking limit on King St.

Accommodations : 4 hotels ; tourist homes, trailer camp.
Information Service: Chamber of Commerce, 103 N.Alfred St.

Radio Station: WJSV (1460 kc.).

Motion Picture Houses : 5, including i for Negroes.

Swimming: Alexandria Municipal Pool, NE. corner Cameron and Harvard Sjts., fee 20^,

children iojf, suits 25^, open 9 a.m.-io p.m. weekdays, 2-6 Sun., from May 30 to Labor

Day.

Boating: Rowboats for rent at E. end of Prince and Duke Sts., fee 50^ for ist hour, 35^

each additional hour.

Annual Events: Tour of historic houses and gardens, sponsored by St.Paul's Church and
the Alexandria Association, one Sat. in May and one Sat. in June, $i for full day and af-
ternoon tea.

ALEXANDRIA (52 alt., 24,149 pop.), hugging the western bank of the
Potomac River, stretches south from the sinuous Four Mile Run to the

191

IQ2 VIRGINIA

marshes of Hunting Creek. West of the sweeping curve made through
the city by the tracks of the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac
Railroad, scattered suburbs cover a succession of ridges. Caught in
the wedge made by vast Potomac Yards, where seven railroads meet to
exchange freight, and the industrial section along the river front, lies old
Alexandria, a ragged pentagon neatly laid out in squares, and divided al-
most equally by King Street. This crowded business thoroughfare, flanked
by ill-assorted faces of commercial buildings, extends westward from the
water's edge toward the George Washington Masonic Memorial Temple.

Within view of the glistening white belfry of Christ Church and the
spire of City Hall are scores of Georgian Colonial and early Federal houses
of mellow red brick, gray stucco, or white weatherboarding. Here and
there are long narrow houses resembling halves of gabled houses, called
locally ' flounder ' houses. With sloping shed-roofs and their tallest side
walls windowless, they are said to owe their unusual architectural style to
owners' attempts to evade taxation by reporting construction unfinished.
Flounder houses are common in the older sections of Philadelphia, and in-
asmuch as many early residents of Alexandria were Pennsylvania Quakers
it is thought that this type of house may have originated there. The fa-
fades of most houses in Alexandria are even with the sidewalk, the door-
ways with shining brass knockers often painted in bright colors to match
the shutters. Front or side yards are few; most old residences have narrow
terraces or courtyards in back that enclose boxwood, mimosa, and an ar-
bor of dangling wistaria within old brick walls.

Among the streets running east to the river, Prince Street in its final
block is probably the most interesting. Its cobbled bed slopes down be-
tween Lombardy poplars and two rows of odd small houses with doors and
shutters painted bright green, red, blue, or yellow. Along the riverfront,
where the prevailing odor is of fish and fertilizer, are wooden wharves and
vacant shabby warehouses that recall the days when Alexandria was an
important port. Boat clubs occupy two old buildings on the river bank,
where speedboats, launches, and sailboats tie up beside weather-beaten
craft of local fishermen. In a few small eating places there is still a sem-
blance of the old barroom and tavern atmosphere.

Alexandria's diurnal noises give way at night to a silence broken by puf-
fing trains, the occasional whistling of steamers, and the drone of airplanes
flying low for a landing or taking off at Washington Airport. On Saturday
night the shops of King Street glitter and swarm with people, for Alex-
andria is still a country town; while down Washington Street passes a
queue of automobiles. On Sunday a lethargy descends on Alexandria. In
the principal Negro quarter, a section of nondescript row houses just north
of King Street and west of Washington Street, groups sit chatting in door-
ways, on stoops, or in rocking chairs on the sidewalks, as they watch chil-
dren at play and couples en promenade displaying their Sunday best. Ne-
groes live in every section of Alexandria and the professional group and
government workers have substantial residences.

Old Alexandrians and newcomers constitute two distinct groups. The
' Foreign Legion/ as recently acquired citizens are called, discovered Alex-

ALEXANDRIA 193

andria just after the World War, restored old houses, moved in, and since
1932 has gained many recruits from Washington's officialdom. Streets
were lengthened to accommodate new houses, fashioned after eighteenth-
century models. People who once could recite the genealogy of every
neighbor worth knowing find their refurbished city a bit perplexing, grate-
ful as they are for the prosperity the ' Foreign Legion ' has brought.

Although Captain John Smith ascended the Potomac to the falls in
1608, the west shore of the river was the last of Virginia's Tidewater fringe
to be settled. In 1669 Governor Berkeley granted Robert Howsing 'six
thousand acres of land situate . . . upon the freshes of Potomac River on
the west side.' Captain John Alexander, who surveyed this tract, including
the site of Alexandria, bought the Howsing grant the year following, and
sporadic settlement began.

The section suffered in 1675 because of the Susquehannock War, when
the Indians crossed the Potomac to attack new settlers. Colonel John
Washington with a Virginia force joined Major John Truman's Maryland
troops in a campaign against the Indians on Piscataway Creek (Mary-
land). During a truce, Maryland soldiers killed the Indian conferees. The
Susquehannock, bent on revenge, advanced southward and aroused other
Indians, thus bringing about conditions that led to Bacon's Rebellion. The
century had ended before the Indians were driven out and permanent set-
tlements established.

Plantations flourished after 1713, when Queen Anne's War ended and
tobacco trade expanded. Indian trails then became ' rolling roads,' along
which hogsheads of tobacco were drawn or ' rolled ' by oxen or horses to
public warehouses. The first warehouse in this vicinity was authorized in
1730 on the south side of Hunting Creek 'upon Broadwater's land.' The
site was found unsuitable, and establishment of a warehouse ' upon Simon
Pearson's land upon the upper side of Great Hunting Creek' was con-
firmed in 1732 by the general assembly. In 1740 a public ferry was estab-
lished 'from Hunting Creek warehouse, on land of Hugh West ... to
Frazier's point in Maryland,' and from ' the plantation of John Hareford
in Doeg's Neck ... to Prince George County in Maryland.' A tavern
was erected here, on the main thoroughfare between New England and the
South, and the community was called Belhaven. By 1742, when fees of to-
bacco inspectors were fixed, Hunting Creek Warehouse and that ' on the
land of the Honourable Thomas Lee, Esquire, at the Falls of Patowmack,'
were important shipping points.

In that year Fairfax County was cut from Prince William, and in 1748
the general assembly authorized the establishment of a town for Fairfax
County 'at Hunting Creek warehouse,' to be named Alexandria for the
family that had once owned the site. The following year the county sur-
veyor, John West, Jr., assisted by young George Washington, laid off the
town in streets and 84 half-acre lots. Among the purchasers were Law-
rence Washington of Mount Vernon and his brother Augustine. Soon a
busy port and an important stage stop, Alexandria grew quickly to com-
mercial prominence. In 1752 it was made the county seat.

The export of wheat became in time even more important to Alexandria

194 VIRGINIA

than that of tobacco. Grain growing increased as settlement pushed west-
ward, making the colony self -sufficient in flour and meeting the demands
of an espaading market in England and the West Indies. By 1776 cara-
vans of ' flour waggons ' were coming from as far as Winchester and return-
ing ladea with merchandise from England. In 1781 Alexandria was first on
Virginia's flour inspection list.

Taverns such as the City Tavern, the Bunch of Grapes, and the Indian
Queen opened for the accommodation of travelers and for the entertain-
ment of the ' gentry' Washingtons, Fairfaxes, Masons, and other planta-
tion owners with fine mansions in or near town. Scottish merchant-ship-
pers, like the partners Carlyle and Dalton, built handsome town houses,
and George Washington had a house in town. Parties and balls were fre-
quent, while the populace sought amusement in fairs, political rallies, and
other gatherings held in Market Square. Washington, who raced his own
horses, was a steward of the Alexandria Jockey Club.

Washington's first command troops recruited in Alexandria was
drilled in Market Square before proceeding against the French in 1754.
Alexandria was the mobilization point for Maryland troops and for one
New York company in preparation for the second campaign in 1755. Here
they joined Virginia troops and British regiments under the command of
General Edward Braddock. Before starting, the general held a conference
in Alexandria with the governors of four colonies. Washington set out as
an aide to Braddock but assumed command after Braddock's death.

In July 1774 Washington presided in the courthouse here at a meeting
to elect delegates to the first Virginia convention and to protest against
the Boston Port Bill. If Boston is forced to submit, we will not,' the citi-
zens declared. The Fairfax Resolves, drawn by George Mason, stated Vir-
ginia's position on taxation, Parliament, and the Crown, suggested a com-
mon platform, and affirmed that ' every little jarring interest and dispute
which hath ever happened between these Colonies should be buried in
eternal oblivion.'

When the town was incorporated in 1779, Alexandria acquired a seal
picturing * a ship in full sail with a balance equally poised above the ship.'
Some of the streets were paved by Hessian prisoners, labor procured
through Dr. William Brown, one of the first surgeons general of the Rev-
olutionary army and compiler during the war of the first American Phar-
macopoeia/or the "Use of Army Hospitals. A lodge of Masons was organized
in 1783. The next year a daily newspaper was established, now the oldest
in America, and in 1785 an academy was founded to which Washington
contributed annual gifts. He also endowed a short-lived charity school,
the first free school in northern Virginia.

In that same year representatives from Virginia and Maryland met in
Alexandria to discuss boundaries and commercial relations between the
two States. This meeting, continued at Mount Vernon, led to the Annapo-
lis Convention of 1786 and to the Constitutional Convention at Philadel-
phia in 1787.

In 1789 Virginia gave Alexandria away. Along with a generous slice of
Fairfax County, the city then became a part of the District of Columbia,

ALEXANDRIA 195

laid out in 1791, and the stone marking the southern corner, still in place
at Jones Point, was planted with a Masonic ceremony. The presiding of-
ficial was Dr.Elisha Cullen Dick, who executed two oil paintings of Wash-
ington and was consulting physician during Washington's last illness.

Alexandria's exile had its highlights. The Bank of Alexandria, first in
the present area of Virginia, was organized in 1792. Two years later the
Library Company of Alexandria was founded; many sea captains sub-
scribed, and carried its books on long voyages. A brick building (1767-73)
had been erected to replace the wooden parish church, and the Presby-
terian Meeting House, completed in 1790, was followed in 1795 by
St.Mary's, the first permanent Roman Catholic church in Virginia. When
the British sacked the city of Washington in 1814 and jeopardized Alexan-
dria, town officials surrendered to the invaders, who burned a ship at anchor
and loaded their vessels liberally with supplies. Alexandria's most serious
fire occurred in 1824. An event of quite another sort took place in 1836: the
tweaking of President Jackson's nose by Lieutenant Robert Randolph,
U.S.N., aboard the steamboat Sydney. Randolph, whom Jackson had dis-
missed for defaulting with Government funds, was knocked down, then
hustled ashore and placed under arrest; he was not punished for the as-
sault.

In 1846 homesick Virginians asked Congress to give them back to the
Old Dominion. Their petition was granted. In 1847 the general assembly
created Alexandria County with Alexandria its seat. In 1898 Clarendon
became the county seat, and in 1920 the name of the county was changed
to Arlington.

But good fortune was mixed with alloy. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad
reached Winchester and the Cumberland coal fields, and in the i84o's it
diverted trade to Baltimore. Though Alexandria achieved city status in
1852, it was soon outstripped by Baltimore and its new fleets of clipper
ships.

The War between the States brought about another period of exile. Af-
ter sending four companies, including a battalion of artillery, to Harpers
Ferry in 1859 to suppress John Brown's raid, Alexandria at the beginning
of the war was severed from the rest of Virginia. In April 1861, when Rob-
ert E. Lee assumed command of Virginia's armed forces, he was followed
by many Alexandrians. The next month Federal troops took possession of
the city. In August 1863, two months after West Virginia had been ad-
mitted to the Union, Governor Francis Pierpont proclaimed Alexandria
capital of the ' reorganized government 5 of Virginia, and it remained so to
the end of the war.

Safe behind Federal lines Alexandria escaped the havoc that obliterated
evidences of the past in other Virginia cities, but it continued to fall be-
hind newer commercial centers. The city passed through several decades
of sluggish economic development before its recent rejuvenation. Today,
however, it has the second largest freight classification yards in America
and numerous industries: two large fertilizer plants; a plant for the con-
struction and repair of refrigerator cars; chemical works; an automobile
assembling plant; iron works; foundries; a shirt factory; a brick kiln; and

196 VIRGINIA

a pottery. Its industrial pay roll of some $6,000,000 is distributed annu-
ally among approximately 3,600 employees.

POINTS OF INTEREST

i. The CITY HALL AND MARKET HOUSE (open daily], Cameron
St. between Royal and Fairfax Sts., a red brick building with corner pavil-
ions and a lofty spire upon a clock tower, is a highly stylized version of late
eighteenth-century architecture. The massive central motif on the Cam-
eron Street facade, crowned with a mansard roof, aggravates the eclectic
style of the building. Erected in 1817 and burned in 1871, it was rebuilt
and enlarged in 1873.

A courthouse for Fairfax County was erected on Market Square in 1754.
A school, apparently the first in Alexandria, occupied the ground floor. In
1782 a larger brick structure over a massive arcade was built on the north-
west corner of the square. This was incorporated in the building erected in
1817. Until 1789 the seat of Fairfax County was on this site. For n years
after the area comprising Alexandria was ceded to the Federal Govern-
ment, county business continued to be conducted here. From 1847 to 1898
Alexandria was the seat of Alexandria County.

In the courthouse is a SET or STANDARD WEIGHTS AND MEASURES
stamped 'The County of Fairfax 1744,' said to be the only complete set in
the United States of early standards authorized by England.

The ALEXANDRIA-WASHINGTON LODGE or MASONS is in the central part
of the Cameron Street side of the building. Chartered in 1783 under the
Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, it transferred to the Grand Lodge of Vir-
ginia in 1788, when Alexandria Lodge No.22 was chartered and George
Washington was named its first Worshipful Master. In 1 805 l Washington '
was added to 'Alexandria/ the only instance in the history of Masonry of
a lodge altering its name without a new charter.

The MASONIC MUSEUM (open 9-5 weekdays; adm. lof) contains two por-
traits of Washington, an oil by C.P.Polk and a pastel done by William
Williams in 1794; the high leather-covered library chair Washington pre-
sented and used as Master; his personal Masonic relics; and his bedcham-
ber clock with its hands, stopped by Dr.Dick, still pointing to ten minutes
past ten, the moment of Washington's death. Among other portraits are
one of La Fayette at 27 by Charles Willson Peale, and one of Thomas,
sixth Lord Fairfax, painted in London by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

2. GADSBY'S TAVERN (open 9-5 weekdays, 2-5 Sun.; adm. 25$, 132
Royal St., is a two-story brick structure with a taller brick addition next

KEY TO ALEXANDRIA MAP

i. City Hall and Market House 2.Gadsby's Tavern s.Carlyle House 4.Ramsay
House 5.Alexandria Gazette Building 6.Stabler-Leadbetter's Drug Store y.Old
Presbyterian Meeting House S.Craik House Q.Coryell House lo.La Fayette House
i i.Old Lyceum Hall rs.Lord Fairfax House i3.Robert K Lee House i4.Hallowdl
' School i5.PMlip Fendall House i6.Lloyd House ly.Christ Church iS.Friendship
Fire Engine House ip.George Washington Masonic National Memorial Temple

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198 VIRGINIA

door. The older building is topped by a gabled roof above a modillioned
cornice with fretwork along the lowest molding. The roof is pierced by
three dormers, large keystones accentuating the flat arches above the
window openings. Fluted pilasters flank the central entrance and support
a broken pediment that rises through a stringcourse above a round-arched
transom with a tall keystone. The portal, the winged flat arches, and large
key-blocks of stone over the windows are typical of late eighteenth-cen-
tury Georgian Colonial design. In the restored courtyard stands an eight-
eenth-century coach, as if waiting for the hostler's slothful boy to bring
out the horses. From this structure, built in 1752 and long known as the
City Tavern, Washington recruited for his first command in 1754, and
he used it several times as headquarters during the French and Indian
War.

John Wise, who bought the City Tavern in 1792 and built the addition,
was succeeded as host two years later by Jonn Gadsby, an Englishman. An
inventory in 1802 showed ten buildings, including stables, kitchens, and
laundry, grouped about a courtyard. John Davis, an English traveler,
said 'that Gadsby keeps the best house of entertainment in America.'
Washington attended two celebrations of his birthday here, one in 1789
and his last in 1799. When he reviewed Alexandria troops from these tav-
ern steps in November 1799, ^ e ended his military career where he had be-
gun it 45 years before. The townspeople gave General La Fayette a bril-
liant reception here in 1824.

Both buildings of the tavern are restored. Although the splendid panel-
ing of the ballroom in the corner structure has been acquired by the Metro-
politan Museum of Art, both interiors are still notable for the quality and
extent of their carved woodwork. The basement kitchen contains a collec-
tion of Colonial utensils.

. 3. The CARLYLE HOUSE (open 9-5 weekdays; adm. i$f), 123 N.
Fairfax St. (entrance through Wagar Building), is a large, two-story stuc-
coed brick building in Georgian Colonial style. The hip roof is pierced by
dormers and a chimney at each end of the ridge. Along the garden side
spreads a wide terrace. On the west front a long flight of stone steps leads
to the double door with an elliptical fanlight and stone arch, on the key-
stone of which is carved Humilitate, motto of the Carlyle family. Porches
and other modifications have not improved a once handsome exterior, but
the interior is still distinguished by fine paneled woodwork. From the
transverse hall, the stairway ascends gracefully in one continuous curve.
Decorative features of the outstanding Blue Room include pediments
broken into sweeping scrolls over both doors, an elegant fireplace with pale
blue marble facing, a shallow mantel supported by pilasters, a low dado
with Greek key molding, and a deep cornice with modillions and rosettes.
A museum since 1914, the house contains an extensive collection of early
American furniture.

The house was built in 1752 by John Carlyle, a Scottish merchant, who
came to America in 1740. In April 1755 Carlyle, then commissary of the
Virginia forces, offered his house to General Braddock, Commodore Kep-
pell, and the governors of four colonies, who met in the Blue Room to plan a

ALEXANDRIA 199

concerted campaign against the French and Indians. Colonel George
Washington was present and received his commission as an aide on the
general's staff.

4. The RAMSAY HOUSE (open daily), NE. corner King and Fairfax
Sts., a two-and-a-half-story building of brick covered partly with clap-
board and partly with flush boarding, is the oldest house in Alexandria. It
has three pedimented dormer windows on the front, and the roof slopes
away in a broad half -gable toward the rear. This rather odd structure was
built in 1749-51 by William Ramsay, a Scottish merchant who was one
of the founders of Alexandria and its first postmaster.

5. The ALEXANDRIA GAZETTE BUILDING, 317 King St., a mod-
ern stone structure, houses the oldest daily newspaper in the United
States. First issued on February 5, 1784, by George Richard & Company
as the Virginia Journal and Alexandria Advertiser, it has undergone
changes of name and ownership, but the Gazette of today is a continuation
of the original paper. The office file lacks only a few of the earliest issues
and those of 1861, when the Gazette was suppressed by Federal authorities
for its strong secessionist sentiment, and its building was burned by Fed-
eral soldiers. Publication was continued surreptitiously during the war in
a little sheet called Local News.

6. STABLER-LEADBETTER'S DRUG STORE (open 10-4:30; adm.
free), 107 S.Fairfax St., one of the oldest drug stores in America, operated
until 1933 on the ground floor of this three-story brick building. It was re-
stored by the Landmarks Society of Alexandria, sponsored by the Ameri-
can Pharmaceutical Association, and opened to the public in 1939. Flint
glass bottles, mortars with pestles, old thermometers, scales, weights, and
measures are part of the shop's authentic equipment.

Founded in 1792 by Edward Stabler, a Quaker from Petersburg, the
store was patronized by Drs. Craik, Dick, and Brown. The account books
and prescription files show drugs sold to Henry Clay, John Calhoun, Dan-
iel Webster, and the Washington, Lee, Custis, and Fairfax families. A note
in Martha Washington's hand is preserved: ' Mrs. Washington desires
Mr.Stabler to send by bearer a quart bottle of his best Castor Oil and a
bill for it, Mt.Vernon, 1802.' In 1852 John Leadbetter of Philadelphia,
who had married the granddaughter of the founder, took over the store.
Robert E. Lee was making a purchase here when Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart
delivered orders to him to suppress John Brown's Raid in 1859.

7. The OLD PRESBYTERIAN MEETING HOUSE (open 9:30-5
daily, Apr. to Oct.; adm. lof), 321 S.Fairfax St., is a large, rather austere,
red brick hall with a broad gabled roof and two tiers of regularly spaced
windows. A tall square tower at the west end is crowned by a latticed bal-
ustrade and a handsome square wood cupola with pilasters. The white-
painted interior, with box pews, open gallery, and a semidomed recess in
the end wall behind the centered pulpit, has a severity more common to-
New England than to the South.

The first Meeting House, attended by Scottish colonists and their de-
scendants, was begun in 1774 but finished only after an act of 1790 al-
lowed the trustees 'to raise by one or more lotteries' money enough for

200 VIRGINIA

'completing the building. 7 Struck by lightning in 1835 and burned, it was
succeeded the following year by the present building erected on the
same lot. In 1886 the meeting house was abandoned as a place of wor-
ship.

The white marble table tomb of an Unknown Soldier of the Revolution
stands in the treeless yard among the graves of many Revolutionists of
Scottish ancestry, including Dr.Craik, Major John Carlyle, and Colonel
Dennis Ramsay.

8. The CRAIK HOUSE (private), 210 Duke St., is a dilapidated three-
and-a-half-story red brick building with brick stringcourses marking the
floor levels and a large dentil cornice along the facade. The gabled roof is
pierced by two round-arched dormer windows.

The house, built about 1790, was the home and office of Dr. James Craik
(1730-1814), a Scottish surgeon, who accompanied Washington on his
campaigns in the French and Indian War and was with him in every bat-
tle from Great Meadows to Yorktown. He was appointed assistant direc-
tor-general of hospitals in the Continental Army in 1779. Dr. Craik, in at-
tendance at Mount Vernon when Washington died, is mentioned in his
will as My old and intimate friend, Dr. Craik.'

9. The CORYELL HOUSE (private), 208 Duke St., of 'flounder 7 type,
built in 1790, is an unpainted frame building leaning against the Craik
House. George Coryell, who lived here, and his father Cornelius Coryell of
New Jersey ferried Washington across the Delaware River on Christmas
Eve 1776.

10. The LA FAYETTE HOUSE (private), SW. corner Duke and St.
Asaph Sts., is a large red brick house with white stone arches above each
window and a balustrade along the front parapet of the gable roof. A wide,
round-arched entrance portal, with delicately traced fan- and sidelights, is
the most notable exterior feature. Attractive interior woodwork is well
preserved. The house is one of the best examples of Federal or post- Colo-
nial architecture in the city. Built by Thomas Lawrason in 1795, it was lent
by his widow in 1825 to La Fayette, who stayed here during his last visit
to America.

n. The OLD LYCEUM HALL (private), SW. corner Washington and
Prince Sts., erected in 1839, * s a two-story stuccoed brick building painted
yellow and lined to simulate stone blocks. A tall Doric portico, with four
fluted columns and a continuous triglyphed entablature, gives this Greek
Revival building an air of serenity.

In 1834 gentlemen of the town, led by Benjamin Hallowell, the Quaker
schoolmaster, formed a society devoted to literature, science, and history.
Hallowell, elected president, delivered the first lecture, on vegetable physi-
ology. This building was erected five years later. During the War between
the States it was used as a hospital Today (1939) the Little Theater pre-
sents occasional productions here.

12. The LORD FAIRFAX HOUSE (private), 607 Cameron St., is a
three-story town house with a long two-story ell at the rear. Two white
stringcourses cut across the tall red brick facade. Above a recessed vesti-
bule, within which delicately carved pilasters and small columns flank the

ALEXANDRIA 2OI

portal, a stuccoed surface arch rises from the first stringcourse and em-
braces the central windows of the two upper stories. The interior retains
much of its fine original woodwork. In the hall a graceful stairway with
mahogany banisters winds above an oval well. The house was built in
1816, and bought in 1830 by Thomas, Lord Fairfax, ninth Baron of Cam-
eron.

13. The ROBERT E. LEE HOUSE (private), 607 Oronoco St., is a two-
and-one-half-story building of pink brick with white trim. A dormer win-
dow pierces the long gabled roof on each side of a small eave pediment,
the latter rising above a slightly projecting central pavilion. The Georgian
Colonial doorway and windows, with keystoned flat arches of white stone,
are widely spaced. The interior is notable for original mantels and a grace-
ful staircase. An acre of garden at the rear remains almost as it was a cen-
tury ago.

The house was owned in 1795 by John Potts and purchased in 1799 by
William Fitzhugh. In 1818 when Robert E. Lee was n years old, Ms
mother, Ann Hill Carter Lee, moved here from another house in Alex-
andria where the family had lived since 1811. Here General La Fayette
paid his respects to Mrs. Lee in 1824, and met her son, who had been as-
sistant marshal of the welcoming parade.

14. The HALLO WELL SCHOOL (private), 609 Oronoco St., shares a
common chimney with the Lee House next door. Built about 1793, this
house accommodated the school opened in 1825 by Benjamin Hallowell
(1799-1877), a Pennsylvania Quaker, and was attended by sons of prom-
inent families in the community and by students from Canada and Latin
America. Robert E. Lee was prepared here for entrance to the United
States Military Academy.

15. The PHILIP FEND ALL HOUSE (private), 429 N.Washington St.,
is a frame-covered brick structure in early Federal style with a Victorian
front porch. It rises two stories to an attic with latticed windows under
plain eaves, and has a long gabled wing at the rear.

Built shortly after the Revolution, it was the home of Philip R. Fendall,
attorney, whose first wife was Elizabeth Steptoe, widow of Philip Ludwell
Lee, and whose second wife was Mary Lee, sister of 'Light Horse Harry'
Lee. The house came into possession of Richard Bland Lee, brother of
' Light Horse Harry/ in 1792 and for the next half-century the house
was a home of the Lee family. On December 15, 1799, friends assembled
here to make arrangements for Washington's funeral.

16. The LLOYD HOUSE (private), 220 N.Washington St., perhaps the
finest example of formal domestic architecture in Alexandria, is a large,
square, red brick house of post-Colonial design. The broad gabled roof has
three dormer windows with slender pilasters supporting a diminutive
gable pediment. The modest but beautifully designed doorway is framed
by Corinthian pilasters and a broken pediment over the round-arched fan-
light. Two tiers of windows with flat-arched lintels complete a dignified
facade. Fine brickwork is matched by the interior woodwork in modified
Adam style. The house was built in 1793 by John Hooe and acquired by
the Lloyd family in 1 83 2 ,

202 VIRGINIA

17. CHRIST CHURCH (open 9-5 weekdays; adm. 10^; services
SE. corner Cameron and Columbia Sts., is a late Georgian Colonial build-
ing of dark red brick laid in Flemish bond. Centered on the west facade is
a square tower supporting an octagonal belfry in three stages, and^a
domed cupola. White stone quoining emphasizes the corners ^of the main
structure, and white keystones accent the flat-arched brick lintels of the
first tier of windows and the arched brick headings of those above. The
broad hip roof rises above a continuous denticulated cornice to a short
ridge. The east wall is pierced in the center by a fine Palladian window
with four square pilasters and a broken pediment. A balcony extends
around three sides of the chaste white interior beneath an aquamarine
ceiling. The canopied pulpit, originally against the north wall, is centered
before the Palladian window.

Preceded by a frame building and known until early in the nineteenth
century as Alexandria or Lower Church, the present structure was built in
1767-73. xhe tower and cupola and probably the balcony were added in
1818, the year in which the small graceful wrought-brass and crystal
chandelier was brought from England, where it was purchased for $140 at
George Washington's expense. Two of the white box pews are marked by
silver plates: the one owned by Washington, a vestryman of the parish for
three months in 1 765 ; the other of Robert E. Lee. " "

18. FRIENDSHIP FIRE ENGINE HOUSE (open occasionally, adm.
iof)l 107 S.Alfred St., is a small red brick building with classical trim
painted white, castiron acanthus leaves topping stone pilasters and iron
ornaments upon the projecting lintels of two tall windows. The figures
1774 (the year the fire company was formally organized) fill the low pedi-
ment above the wide door and are inscribed again on the square wooden
base of the tall octagonal cupola.

The building was erected perhaps as early as 1775 and housed the local
fire company of which Washington was a member and honorary captain
shortly before his death. Among exhibited memorabilia of early fire fight-
ing is a copy of the fire engine, now preserved in Baltimore, Maryland,
that Washington brought from Philadelphia in 1774 and presented to the
Friendship Fire Company.

19. The GEORGE WASHINGTON MASONIC NATIONAL ME-
MORIAL TEMPLE (open 9-5 daily), on Shooter's Hill, King St. and Rus-
sell Rd., a gray stone monument in neo-Classic style, occupies the site first
proposed for the National capitol. On a massive square base structure,
from the center of which juts a Doric portico, a vast tower rises through
three colossal stages to a stepped pyramid reaching more than 400 feet
above the summit of the terraced hill

The idea of a monument to George Washington, the Mason, originated
with Charles H. Callahan of Alexandria. The movement got under way at
a meeting of the Alexandria- Washington Lodge in 1910, and the corner-
stone was laid on November i, 1923. Designed by Harvey Wiley Corbett
of New York and costing $5,000,000 contributed by 3,000,000 Masons,
the temple will eventually house the portraits and relics in possession of
the Alexandria- Washington Lodge of Masons.

ALEXANDRIA 203

POINTS OF INTEREST IN ENVIRONS

Mount Eagle (Lord Fairfax Country Club), 1.5 m.; Woodlawn, 8.8 m.; Mount
Vernon, 9.4 w.; Fort Belvoir, 9 m. (see Tour 10). Arlington National Cemetery, Ar-
lington, Fort Myer, 7.5 m. (see Tour 12). Episcopal High School, 3 m.", Protestant
Episcopal Theological Seminary, 3.2 m. (see Tour 13). Falls Church, 8.8 m. (see
Tours 40, and 1 3).

Ckarlottcsvilli

Railroad Stations: Union Station, Main and 7th Sts. for Southern Ry. and Chesapeake

and Ohio Ry.; Water St. atMonticello Rd. for Chesapeake and Ohio Ry.

Bus Stations: Water and $th Sts. and at University Book Store, The Corner, Main St.

and University Ave, for Virginia Stage Lines, and Scottsville Bus Line.

Taxis: Fare 25^ within city limits.

Local Busses : Fare 5 i.

Traffic Regulations: Numbered cross streets are one-way thoroughfares, alternately N.

andS.

Accommodations: 3 hotels; tourist homes in city and university; country inns near by.

Information Service: Chamber of Commerce, Monticello Hotel, Courthouse Square;
Monticello Hotel Office.

Motion Picture Houses: Four.

Golf: Mclntire Municipal Park, Rugby Ave. between Park St. and Rugby Rd., 9 holes,
greens fee 25^ per hour, 50^ per day; Farmington Country Club, 3 m. W. on US 250,
1 8 holes, adm. by arrangement, greens fee $1.50; University of Virginia Golf Club,
7 holes, greens fee 25

Swimming: Fry's Springs, W. end of Fry's Springs Rd. 3 fee 25^, children 15$$; Farming-
ton Country Club, 3 m. W. on US 250, adm. by arrangement, fee 25^; Seminole Club,
7 m. W. on US 29 (L), fee 25^; Blue Ridge Pool, 7 m. W. of university on County 678
(R) off US 250, fee 25^, children 15 ji.

Tennis: Mclntire Municipal Park, Rugby Ave. between Park St. and Rugby Rd., 13
courts, free; university courts, adm. free by arrangement; Washington Park, NE. corner
Preston Ave. and loth St. for Negroes, 3 courts, free.

Annual Events: Founder's Day (Jefferson's birthday) Apr. 13 (State holiday); Jefferson
Day, July 4; Institute of Public Affairs, two weeks early in July; horse shows at inter-
vals; fox and drag hunting with packs near by, early Sept. to late Mar.

CHARLOTTESVILLE (480 alt., 15,245 pop.), Thomas Jefferson's city
and home of the University of Virginia, is situated among the red clay
foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains near the Rivanna River. As the seat
of Albemarle County, it has been an important crossroads since late Colo-
nial times. Its Main Street follows Three Chopt Road, one of the first
trails from Tidewater to the West. Roads approaching the city roll and
wind between wooded hills and fertile pastures, orchards and tilled land.
In spring the hillsides are bright with apple trees in bloom, for the county
surrounding Charlottesville rivals the Shenandoah Valley in fruit growing
and is the home of the luscious Albemarle pippin, Queen Victoria's favor-
ite apple. The best view of the city is from the crest of Pantops, the last
and steepest hill on the new road coming from the east. Thickly planted
with trees, Charlottesville in its natural bowl appears as an immense
many-pavilioned garden.

' Downtown,' the compact business district around the east end of

204

CHARLOTTESVILLE 205

Main Street, is filled with unhurried shoppers, local housewives doing the
day's marketing between gossiping pauses in street or store, and country
folk 'in for the day.' On court days and on Saturdays, 'downtown' is
crowded until late evening, for the city is market and convivial gathering
place for much of the county. Here, close by a hodgepodge of brick store
fronts, are a few old buildings that were in the center of eighteenth-
century Charlottesville. At the western end of Main Street, which has
reached out to the once-distant university, hatless students predominate.

In spite of several small factories, Charlottesville is primarily a uni-
versity and residential city. Most of its streets, lined with small, attrac-
tive houses and thickly shaded by trees, remain undisturbed by the bustle
of commerce. The number of fine statues in squares and parks is remark-
able for a city of this size. Along the railroad tracks, however, and at the
edges of the city are slum sections, where most of the Negroes and folk
from the surrounding mountains live. The majority of Charlottesville
Negroes are employed as domestic servants.

In 1 73 5 , following the first patents for land hereabout in 1 7 2 7 , Abraham
Lewis received 800 acres that embraced the present grounds of the univer-
sity, and Nicholas Meriwether, 1,020 acres including land on which the
eastern part of Charlottesville stands. Two years later^ William Taylor
patented 1,200 acres between the Meriwether and Lewis grants, owned
later by Richard Randolph. Meanwhile, Peter Jefferson acquired the
estates of Shadwell and Monticello. Few patentees, hjowever, settled upon
their estates. Thomas Jefferson said that his father 'was the third or
fourth settler, about the year 1737, of the part of the county in which I
live. 7 In 1761 the county purchased a i,ooo-acre tract from Richard Ran-
dolph, built a new courthouse, and laid out 50 acres in streets and lots
adjacent to the courthouse square. In 1762, when it was ' represented' that
*a town for the reception of traders . . . would be of great advantage to
the inhabitants' of the county, the general assembly "established a town,'
which was named for Queen Charlotte, wife of George III. The county
sold the town lots, and taverns and stores sprang up around the court-
house. Other acres of public grounds were sold as ' outlets/ for agricul-
tural use by town residents. Until well into the nineteenth century the
Rivanna River was Charlottesville's chief avenue for commercial traffic.

The tumult of war has never seriously disturbed Charlottesville, al-
though the Revolution touched it immediately on two occasions. The es-
tablishment of The Barracks ' near by for the ' Convention Troops/ about
4,000 prisoners taken when Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga in 177 7,
aroused no bitter feeling. These troops English officers and soldiers and
a large number of Hessian mercenariesarrived in January 1779 and re-
mained until October 1780, but many of the Germans escaped into the
. mountains, where their names survive among mountain folk today. Colo-
nel Banastre Tarleton's raid in 1781 was a more serious business. Cora-
wallis hoped to capture the most important Revolutionary leaders and
send them to England. Ex-governor Jefferson, Acting Governor Fleming,
and members of the general assembly, warned in the nick of time by Jack
Jouett, hastily fled to Staunton. Tarleton and his men destroyed military

206 VIRGINIA

stores, clothing, and tobacco, raided the county courthouse, and destroyed
all the public records, which dated from 1 748.

In its youth Charlottesville and the county of which it was social and
commercial center produced several men, besides Thomas Jefferson, whose
lives coixtributed -richly to the Nation. In order to be near Jefferson, James
Monroe came to Charlottesville in 1789 and later moved to Ashlawn (see
Tour 2$A] close by Monticello. James Madison was a frequent visitor
here. Two men whose expeditions identify Charlottesville with the open-
ing of the great West were George Rogers Clark, born at Buena Vista, two
mies east, and Meriwether Lewis, born near Ivy, about seven miles west.

Though situated on one of the main east-west roads, Charlottesville re-
mained a small social center until after the first quarter of the nineteenth
century. Thomas Jefferson said in 1822: 'In our village . . . there is a
good degree of religion, with a small spice of fanaticism. We have four
sects, but without either church or meeting house. The courthouse is the
common temple, one Sunday in the month to each. Here Episcopalian and
Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist meet together, . . , listen with
attention and devotion to each others preachers, and ail mix in society in
perfect harmony.' Construction of the first church in the town was begun
in 1824. When the university was opened a year later Charlottesville con-
tained 'a courthouse, a half finished church, and three or four taverns,
which constitute the whole of its public buildings/ and its inhabitants
numbered about 600.

The War between the States only brushed Charlottesville. Most of the
university buildings were turned into hospitals, and temporary structures
were erected, in which university doctors looked after the wounded. Dur-
ing the last year of the war Union forces under Sheridan occupied the
town, but did little damage.

After the Virginia Central Railroad, now the Chesapeake and Ohio,
reached Charlottesville in 1848, putting an end to river traffic, industries
were established on a modest scale. One of these, the Charlottesville
Woolen Mills, reorganized in 1868, still survives. In 1801 Charlottesville
was chartered as a town. In 1888 it was chartered as a city, its population
then being 4,200. Charlottesville now has several factories, employing
about 2,000 workers, with a $1,500,000 annual pay roll. The large woolen
mill produces ' cadet gray/ the material used for uniforms by the United
States Military Academy at West Point and other military institutions.
Smaller textile mills produce underwear and artificial silk goods.

The university and the lively influence of the ' Sage of Monticello/ who
is still called 'Mr. Jefferson/ have made Charlottesville and the surround-
ing section a cultural center. With its hospitality and peaceful beauty the
community has attracted visitors who never leave people who enjoy con-
templation or working, not too hard, or simply good living.

POINTS OF INTEREST

. i. ALBEMARLE COUNTY COURTHOUSE (open 9-5 Mon.-Fri. 9

9-1 Sat.)j NW. corner Jefferson and Park Sts., is a large red brick building

CHARLOTTESVILLE 207

with a tall white portico in Ionic style. Half of the structure was built in
1803, the front part was erected in 1860, and the portico was added in the
early '705. The archives contain some of Jefferson's correspondence. The
north wing was used at first as a church, 'the common temple' to which
Jefferson referred. Madison, Monroe, and Jefferson worshiped here. Old
red brick* buildings, in which judges and lawyers of Charlottesville still
have offices, once crowded more completely around the square and the
streets leading out from it on the south side.

Albemarle County was cut from Goochland in 1744 and embraced a
wide area on both sides of the James River. Its first seat, established near
Scottsville to the south, served until 1761, when the present site was
chosen. The legislature met in the first courthouse in 1781. Pillory, stocks,
and a whipping post stood in the square when it was enclosed in 1792.

2. The OLD SWAN TAVERN (private), NE. corner Jefferson and
Park Sts., now occupied by the Red Land Club, is a small red brick struc-
ture built about 1773 by John Jouett, father of Jack, whose warning saved
Thomas Jefferson and the assembly. Later Jack Jouett himself was pro-
prietor of the tavern.

3. JACKSON MONUMENT, NE. corner Jefferson and E.4th Sts., is
an exceptionally vigorous figure of Stonewall Jackson on Little Sorrel,
bending forward in his saddle, his strong chin thrust forward. The work of
Charles Keck, it was unveiled in 1921.

4. The McINTIRE PUBLIC LIBRARY (open 9-6 Mon.-Fri.; 9-5
Sat., 7-9 p.m. Mon. and Fri.), SE. corner Jefferson and E.snd Sts., is a
small, well-proportioned pink brick building with a semicircular portico in
free classical style. Designed by Walter Dabney Blair and built in 1920, it
was given to the city by Paul Goodloe Mclntire. The library contains
about 8,000 volumes.

5. LEE MONUMENT, Jefferson St. between ist and E.2nd Sts., be-
gun by H.M.Schrady and finished after his death by Leo Lentelli, was
dedicated in 1924. This figure on Traveller convincingly portrays Lee's
calm serenity and patient wisdom.

6. The OLD ARMORY OF THE MONTICELLO GUARDS (open
daylight hours), Market St. between E-sth and E.yth Sts., is a large brick
hall built in 1895. The Monticello Guard is successor to the Albemarle
County Militia, organized in 1745 with Peter Jefferson as lieutenant colo-
nel, and has taken part in many battles. In 1824, when La Fayette visited
Monticello, the organization was rechristened the La Fayette Guard. On
ceremonial occasions the guard turns out in its Colonial uniform with
cocked hats, knee breeches, and leggings. The old armory has been super-
seded by a new building two blocks eastward.

7. THE FARM (private), E. end of Jefferson St., erected in 1825, is a
square brick house with a flat-roofed, one-story portico. Close by is a small
stucco-covered house with large end chimneys, built before the Revolution
on the Nicholas Meriwether estate. The older house was the home of Meri-
wether's heir and grandson, Colonel Nicholas Lewis.

Tarleton, dashing up from the ford where the woolen mill now stands,
greeted Mrs.Lewis with, ' Madam, you dwell in a little paradise.' He estab-

208 VIRGINIA

lished headquarters here for the single night he spent in Charlottesville,
sleeping wrapped in his cloak on the parlor floor.

8. The LEWIS AND CLARK MEMORIAL, Ridge and Main Sts.,
unveiled in 1919, is a group in bronze by Charles Keck. The two explorers
are gazing into the distance, while behind them crouches Sacajawea, the
Indian woman who guided them in the Northwest. Pending negotiation of
the Louisiana Purchase (1803), Jefferson sent his secretary, Meriwether
Lewis, and the latter's close friend, William Clark, to explore the vast new
territory beyond the Mississippi.

9. The GEORGE ROGERS CLARK MEMORIAL, Main St. and
Fry's Springs Rd., is a bronze group by Robert Aitken, unveiled in 1921,
commemorating the conquest of the Northwest Territory. George Rogers
Clark, astride his horse, is shown among scouts and Indians.

The UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, W. end of Main St., founded by
Thomas Jefferson in 1819, occupies a large, roughly triangular tract of
rising ground between the convergence of Fry's Springs and Ivy Roads.
Most of its fine buildings are designed in a classical style peculiarly Amer-
ican. In spite of quantities of ancient trees shading the grounds, every
white portico of nearly 100 red brick structures is framed at some angle by
a vista. In the center on the highest ground are Jefferson's buildings set in
four parallel lines separated by lawns and gardens. A rotunda joining the
northern end of the terraced central rectangle serves as focal point. Jeffer-
son's 'quadrangle' was closed by the erection of Stanford White's group at
the south end of the Lawn in 1898.

In 1814 Jefferson, then retired from public life at Monticello and able to
give most of his time to educational interests, was elected a trustee of the
Albemarle Academy, a school for boys incorporated in 1803. As early as
1779 he had sponsored a bill to establish a university. Under the pressure
of his friend, Joseph Carrington Cabell, the general assembly authorized
in 1816 the establishment of Central College at a point just west of Char-
lottesville. The cornerstone of the first building, now Pavilion VII on West
Lawn, was laid on October 6, 1817. In 1818 Jefferson's bill to provide a
university, though much mutilated, passed the general assembly, and a
commission was named to select the site. Under Jefferson's influence, the
commission recommended Central College as the place for the university
and the legislature in 1819 confirmed the decision-. The official corporate
name of the university, chosen then, remains ' The Rector and Visitors of
the University of Virginia.' Jefferson, rector of the board of visitors until
his death, was the builder, administrator, and dominating power of the in-
stitution. When the first session opened in March 1825 there were 40 stu-
dents and 7 faculty members. Before Jefferson's death on July 4, 1826, the
number of students had increased to more than 140, the two lawns and
two ranges were complete, and the rotunda was nearly finished.

^ Jefferson introduced several innovations. For the first time in America
higher education was independent of a church. ( The institution will be
based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not
afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead or to tolerate any error so
long as reason is left free to combat it.' He replaced the customarily pre-

CHARLOTTESVILLE 2OQ

scribed curriculum with the elective system, giving the widest choice of
subjects or ' schools 7 taught in any American university at that time. The
university was one of the first to include music and the liberal arts among
its curricula. The conventional grouping of students into classes was disre-
garded. Discipline was reduced to a minimum, though before his death
Jefferson found it necessary to modify this principle. Instead of a presi-
dent, there was a rotating chairman of the faculty, and final authority was
vested in a board of seven visitors.

Jefferson expected students from all social strata to take their places on
equal terms and to obtain a degree of cultivated intelligence in harmony
with the architectural environment. In accordance with his prohibitions,
the university has never conferred an honorary degree. He counseled:
' Enlighten the people generally and tyranny and oppressions of body and
mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day/

Aided by the honor system, introduced in 1842, university students out-
grew their early taste for violence and insubordination. The honor com-
mittee, composed of the presidents of the five principal schools, still ad-
ministers the code; any student proved guilty of violating his pledged
word or of knowing and failing to report such violation is dismissed. This
system frees the student body from strict surveillance and keeps individ-
ual liberty from degenerating into license. Its operation extends to student
relations with residents of Charlottesville.

The university became almost at once the most important in the South
and grew steadily until the War between the States, during which it was
kept open for a few students. It suffered the crushing effects of Recon-
struction, but by 1904 renewed growth led the board of visitors to discard
Jefferson's executive pattern and choose, as first president, Edwin Ander-
son Alderman, who was succeeded after his death in 1931 by John Lloyd
Newcomb. The plant has been enlarged since 1904 by nearly two dozen
principal buildings. Women were admitted to the winter session in 1920, as
a result of efforts led by Mary Cooke Branch Munford (1865-1938), who
in 1926 was appointed a member of the board of visitors. With an enroll-
ment (1938-39) of 2,920, including less than 200 women, the university is

KEY FOR CHARLOTTESVILLE MAP

i.Albemarle County Courthouse 2.01d Swan Tavern 3-Jackson Monument 4-Mc-
Intire Public Library 5. Lee Monument 6.01d Armory of the Monticello Guards
y.The Farm S.Lewis and Clark Memorial g.George Rogers Clark Memorial

KEY FOR UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA MAP

lo.Entrance Gate n.Medical School and University Hospital i2.Brooks Museum
i3.East Range i4.Serpentine Walls i^.The Lawn i6.Rotunda 17. Statue of Jef-
ferson iS.Statue of George Washington ig.Cabell Hall, Rouss Physical Laboratory,
and Mechanical Laboratory ao.Statue of Homer 21. University Commons 2 2. West
Range 23.Alderman Memorial Library 24.McConnell Statue 2 5. University Chapel
26.President J s House 27.Fayerweather Hall 2 S.Bayly Art Museum 29. Madison
Hall 3o.Monroe House 31. Clark Memorial Hall 32.Dawson's Row 33.McCor-
mick Observatory

2IO

211

212 VIRGINIA

coeducational in only the graduate and professional schools. The summer
session is wholly coeducational

UNIVERSITY TOUR

(Points of interest' are numbered to correspond with the city and university map, Buildings
are open during school hours unless otherwise indicated.)

10. The brick ENTRANCE GATE, Main St. and University Ave., un-
pretentious but dignified, was designed by Henry Bacon, architect of the
Lincoln Memorial in Washington, and was given to the university by
Mrs.Charles Senff of New York.

11. The MEDICAL SCHOOL and UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL are
housed in a group of large modern brick buildings, construction of which
was begun in 1900. The department of medicine has a long and distin-
guished list of alumni, including Henry Rose Carter, father of modern
quarantine; Walter Reed, investigator of yellow fever; and John Ander-
son, who discovered the cause of typhus fever.

12. BROOKS MUSEUM (open 8:30-5 Mon-Fri.,&:y>-i Sat.}, built in
1877-78, is the one architectural tragedy on the university grounds. To
excuse its yellow-trimmed, red brick presence, a tradition has grown up
that it was put here by mistake. Besides mineralogical and geological col-
lections and part of the university's zoological collection, it contains the
School of Geology and the State Geological Survey, the first in America,
founded in 1836.

13. EAST RANGE (private) is a line of students' single rooms in five
low red brick structures facing east across a tree-shaded terrace from be-
hind an arcade. Backing on a series of gardens that separate it from East
Lawn, it parallels West Range, which lies similarly beyond West Lawn. In
the garden the MERTON PINNACLE, a weather-beaten, eight-foot piece of
stone carved in Gothic style, has stood since 1928. Erected in 1451 on
Merton College, Oxford, it was removed during restoration and presented
to the university.

14. SERPENTINE WALLS of native red brick surround nearly all the
gardens between lawns and ranges. Averaging about six feet in height, the
walls are one brick thick, to economize on material, and built on a serpen-
tine plan to give them added strength. They were designed and built by
Jefferson, following a practice he had seen in France.

15. THE LAWN, heart of the university, is a large terraced and tree-
bordered rectangle. Five two-story, templelike pavilions in a variety of
classical styles, most of them with porticoes, are spaced down each of the
two long sides and linked by one-story blocks behind Tuscan colonnades.
Although these buildings were erected between 1817 and 1826, when the
Greek Revival was well under way, Jefferson remained faithful to Palladio
and designed them in Academic Roman style. Stucco-on-brick painted
white, they were intended to illustrate the classical orders.

Jefferson envisioned students and their preceptors living together in
* academic villages' with a familylike unity productive of intellectual co-

CHARLOTTESVILLE 213

operation. Originally ten unmarried professors, as specified, lived in the
upper stories of the pavilions and held their classes in the rooms below.
Students lived in the rows of rooms between. Most of the rooms are still
occupied by students in their final years; but now professors, with families,
live in only six of the pavilions.

16. The ROTUNDA, which, with its encircling balustraded terrace,
closes the north end of the Lawn, is an adaptation on one-half the diam-
eter of the Pantheon in Rome. Begun as the library in 1822, it was not
completed until 1826, after Jefferson's death. A shallow portico six col-
umns wide on its north face balances the immense portico, six columns
wide and three deep, facing the Lawn. Fine Corinthian capitals replace
and duplicate those of Carrara marble commissioned in Italy by Jefferson
and destroyed by fire in 1895. A few of the least damaged original capitals
have been placed in the gardens between lawns and ranges. Broad flights
of steps lead down from the porticoes. On the north a second flight drops to
a paved and buttressed lower terrace. A huge annex, added in 1851-53,
covered this space and obscured the Rotunda until the fire providentially
destroyed it. The terraces were arranged in 1898 when the rotunda was
restored by Stanford White. The LIBERTY BELL STATUE or THOMAS JEF-
FERSON by Sir Moses Ezekiel, a replica of the monument in Louisville,
Kentucky, a bronze figure placed upon a pedestal in the shape of the Lib-
erty Bell, has stoo4 in the center since 1907. Inside, where the main library
was housed until 1938, stands a life-size white marble figure of Jefferson
by Alexander Gait of Norfolk, set up in 1868.

17. At the south end of West Lawn is a small formal garden with a fine
seated STATUE OF JEFFERSON in its center. Unveiled in 1915, it is a
copy of the figure made by Karl Bitter to commemorate the Louisiana
Purchase.

1 8. Facing it and terminating East Lawn is a similar garden around a
bronze STATUE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON, cast from Jean An-
toine Houdon's study in the capitol at Richmond.

19. The south end of the rectangle, an open field in Jefferson's day, is
occupied by three buildings erected in 1898 and designed by Stanford
White, who once exclaimed that the Lawn ' embodies everything that mat-
ters most to me: Perfect harmony, perfect symmetry.' CABELL HALL,
named for Joseph Carrington Cabell, who, next to Jefferson, did most to
create the university, faces the rotunda and is flanked by the ROUSS
PHYSICAL LABORATORY on the east and the MECHANICAL LAB-
ORATORY on the west. The shallow portico has six Ionic columns and a
pediment filled with symbolic figures by G. J.Zolnay. The semicircular rear
of the structure contains the university auditorium. The large painting that
forms the background for the platform is a reproduction of Raphael's
The School of Athens, copied by George W. Breck in 1900. The auditorium
is used for concerts, by the University Players, and for sessions of the
Institute of Public Affairs, which, since 1927, has brought to the univer-
sity for two weeks early in July men and women qualified to speak on na-
tional and international affair >.

20. In the center of this group a bronze STATUE OF HOMER by

214 VIRGINIA

Sir Moses Ezekiel rests on a stone pedestal. A boy with a lyre is seated
against the poet's knee.

21. The UNIVERSITY COMMONS, a^dining hall for students and
facility members, is a rectangular brick building with a shallow Tuscan
portico. It was designed by McKim, Mead, and White, and completed in
1908.

22. Occupying a hall in the middle section of WEST RANGE (' Rowdy
Row') is the JEFFERSON SOCIETY ROOM, a literary and debating society
formed in 1825. Jefferson refused honorary membership because of his
connection with the university as rector, but Madison, Monroe, and
La Fayette accepted. Poe was a member and read a paper to the society in
1826. Here hangs a portrait of Jefferson by John Trumbull. The WILSON
ROOM (open summer, on application winter), No.3i, was occupied by
Woodrow Wilson in 1879-80 and is marked by a tablet. POE'S ROOM (open
on application). No. 13, is maintained by the Raven Society, founded in
1904. POE ALLEY, the drive nearest Poe's room southward, is marked at
the east end by a vague, circular design in the pavement. The head of Pallas,
whereon the raven perched, half obscures the ominous bird in bluish stone.

23. The ALDERMAN MEMORIAL LIBRARY (open 8:30 a.m.-
10:30 p.m. weekdays, 2-10:30 Sun.), on the crest of a steep declivity, is a
wide brick building with engaged Tuscan columns along its tall one-
storied southern facade. The library has nearly 300,000 books and more
than 500,000 manuscripts. The most important collections are the Vir-
giniana, especially rich in manuscripts, the James collection on the Negro,
the Tunstall collection of Southern poetry, the Lomb optics collection,
the Hertz classical collection, and the John Bassett Moore collection on
international law. The material available here on Jefferson, Poe, and the
Lees is of National importance.

24. The McCONNELL STATUE by Gutzon Borglum is a memorial
unveiled in 1919 to James R. McConnell, member of the Lafayette Esca-
drille and the first student of the university killed in the World War. The
bronze figure of a youth, wearing an aviator's helmet, and with pinions on
his outstretched arms, is poised on a globe as if for flight.

25. The UNIVERSITY CHAPEL (open by arrangement] was finished
in 1890 and was a gift of alumni and the Ladies' Chapel Society. The ivy-
clad little Neo-Gothic building with its gargoyles seems out of place
among the more grandiose structures in classical style. It is now used only
for weddings and funerals of students and instructors.

26. The PRESIDENT'S HOUSE (private), on Carr's Hill, occupying
the highest site in the university grounds, is a large brick house with a tall
classic portico of Greek Doric style. Apparently the last building designed
by Stanford White, it was completed in 1908 after the architect's death.

^27. FAYERWEATHER HALL is a long rectangular brick structure
with a particularly fine Corinthian portico at the south end, designed by
Carpenter and Peebles and erected in 1893. The eight columns are the
only ones at the university so true to their Roman prototypes as to have
fluted shafts. Formerly the gymnasium, the building is occupied by the
School of Art and Architecture, which was established in 1918-19 by Paul

CHARLOTTES VI LLE 215

Goodloe Mclntire with its chair first occupied by Sydney Fiske KimbalL
A basement entrance leads to the FINE ARTS LIBRARY (open 9-6, 7:30-
9:30 Mon.-Fri.; 9-1 Sat.; summer 9-4 Mon.-Fri.).

28. The BAYLY ART MUSEUM (open 12-4:30 Tues-SaL; 1:30-4:30
Sun.; June i$-Sept. 15, 10-12, 4-6 daily except holidays), completed in
1935 as a memorial to Thomas H. Bayly, was designed by Edmund S.
Campbell in the Palladian style. The museum contains a Thomas Sully
portrait of Jefferson once owned by Madison, a fine portrait of Washing-
ton by Rembrandt Peale, and numerous busts and other portraits, includ-
ing a portrait of Chief Justice John Marshall by John B. Martin y George
Julian Zolnay's bust of Poe, cast in 1899, and a portrait by E.H.Foster of
Professor William H. McGuffey, widely known for his school readers.

29. MADISON HALL, designed by Parish and Schroeder of New
York, was completed in 1907. The center section has a Roman-Ionic por-
tico on the front and small Roman-Doric porticoes terminating two side
wings. The building is the home of the Student Union, organized in 1932,
to which all students belong. It was the gift of Miss Grace Dodge of
New York in 1905 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the found-
ing at the university of the first college Y.M.C.A. in the world, an event
celebrated two years later. Most of the porticoed buildings behind it,
stretching down Madison Lane and Rugby Road, are FRATERNITY
HOUSES, some of them very good architecturally.

30. MONROE HOUSE (private), on the crest of Monroe Hill, is a brick
residence painted white. James Monroe purchased this property and built
or remodeled the house when he first came to Albemarle County in 1790
and lived here until he moved to Ashlawn. He had law offices in one of the
arcaded outbuildings. The house is now a part of the university.

31. CLARK MEMORIAL HALL, the law building, erected in 1932, is
a large brick structure with a curious pyramidal roof over the central por-
tion, supported by six Corinthian columns set between anta walls. The
building was given by W.Andrew Clark. In the main hall are murals by
Allyn Cox, illustrating the origins of Mosaic and Roman law.

32. Stretching down the hill beside Clark Hall is DAWSON'S ROW,
erected in 1859, the only student quarters built between Jefferson's day
and 1929, when the eight NEW DORMITORIES, facing west toward the
mountains from behind Monroe Hill, were completed.

33. The McCORMICK OBSERVATORY (open by arrangement),
about i m. W. of Clark Hall on a hilltop, was given to the university by
Leander J. McCormick. Its original 2(5-inch refracting telescope, the
larger of two now in use, was the largest in the world when the observatory
was opened in 1884. This observatory replaced one established by Jeffer-
son among the first in America and housed in a building on this site in
1828.

POINTS OF INTEREST IN ENVIRONS

Bentivar, 7.1 m, (see Tour 4^). Buena Vista, 2.7 m. (see Tour 10). Shadwell,
4.4 m.\ Edgehill, 5.4 m. (see Tour 170). Farmington, 4.1 m.\ Ivy (Locust Hill),
7.4 m. (see Tour ijb). Michie Tavern, 2 m.', Monticello, 2.5 m.', Ashlawn, 4.9 m.
(see Tour 23 A).

IiHITTITiTiIHIiHillIHIHIITIlTilHlT

Fredericksfcurg

Railroad Station: Lafayette Blvd. between Caroline and Princess Anne Sts. for Rich-
mond, Fredericksburg and Potomac R.R.

Bus Station: Princess Anne and Wolfe Sts. for Greyhound Bus Line, Great Eastern Line,
and Virginia Stage Lines.
Taxis: Fare 25 i within city, ioj each additional passenger.

Accommodations: 7 hotels, including 2 for Negroes; tourist homes.

Information Service: Chamber of Commerce, City Hall, Princess Anne St. between Wil-
liam and George Sts.

Motion Picttire Houses: 3.

Golf: Mannsfield Hall, 3.9 m. S. on US i7~State 2, 9 holes, greens fee 75^, weekends and

holidays $i.

Swimming : Mannsfield Hall, 3 .9 m. S . on US 1 7~S tate 2,25^.

Tennis: Mannsfield Hall, 3.9 m. S. on US 1 7-State 2, free.

Annual Events: Local horse shows, Apr. and Oct. ; Dog Mart, Oct.

FREDERICKSBURG (50 alt,, 6,819 pop.), where George Washington at-
tended school for four months and his mother spent her last years, where
Monroe practiced law, John Paul Jones had his only home, and the armies
of the i86o's fought their bloodiest battles, is at the head of navigation on
the Rappahannock River.

The city's eastern boundary is the river, crossed by a railroad bridge and
by Free Bridge, which passes over a tiny island. Northward is the old town
of Falmouth, and southward and westward residential areas rise toward
pleasant fields on rolling land. Old Fredericksburg is a rectangular plot from
the river to the higher level of Princess Anne Street. Straight streets, under
arching trees, crisscross at right angles. Commerce follows William Street
from the center of the city to Caroline Street, where grocery stores, meat
markets, hardware stores, motion picture houses, and restaurants are in
full possession. Negroes and factory workers live in small old houses hud-
dled together beside the river and in several outlying areas.

Houses, cemeteries, and monuments tell of two centuries of distinguished
people and stirring events. Tourist conscious now, the city presents an al-
most universal gleam of fresh paint, applied to white clapboards, green
shutters, and to the trim of red brick Colonial buildings.

Fredericksburg has long been the urban center of a fertile agricultural
region. Its people still trade with country folk who market and buy here.
The city's industrial plants, with an annual pay roll of $2,500,000, manu-
facture flour, clothing, textiles, shoes, crates, and boxes. But Fredericks-
burg is primarily an old residential community that cherishes the profit-
able aura of its past.

216

FREDERICKS BURG 217

The dog mart, held in the city park each October, perpetuates an old
custom. It is preceded by a bench show, street parade, and hornblowing
contest, and is followed by a ball. The story goes that first settlers brought
fine hunting dogs with them, of which the Indians were so covetous that a
day was set each year when settlers traded dogs for furs and other articles.
The barter was begun in 1698 and continued until interrupted by the Rev-
olutionary War. In 1927 it was revived.

Fredericksburg's authenticated record begins in 1608 with a visit by
Captain John Smith. In 1671 John Buckner, Robert Bryan, and Thomas
Roys ton patented here a tract called later the Lease-land. In 1 7 2 2 there was
a public ferry across the river 'from Mrs. Fitzhugh's plantation . . . to the
wharf on the leased land of Thomas Buckner and John Royston.' About
1723 William Levingston moved here and built 'a dwelling and kitchen. 7
In 1727 the general assembly directed that 50 acres of the Lease-land be
laid out, and established a town for Spotsylvania County by the name of
Fredericksburg for Frederick, Prince of Wales and father of George III.
Colonel William Byrd II, visiting the sparsely settled town five years later,
was impressed by the stone prison, ( strong enough to hold Jack Shepherd, 7
and by the versatility of ' Mrs.Levistone,' who was a ' Doctress and Coffee
Woman/ and ' qualify 'd to exercise 2 other callings/ He noted that 'the
Court-house and the Church are going to be built here, and then both Re-
ligion and Justice will help to enlarge the Place.'

The town grew as a port. Ships lay 'close to the Wharf, within 30 Yards
of the Public Warehouses, which are built in the figure of a Cross.' Wagons
jolted in from the countryside with wheat and tobacco for export. Rows of
buildings, many of brick, began to rise on Sophia and Caroline Streets, and
mansions were built on the 'hill.' In 1734 a new ferry was authorized ( on
Rappahannock river, from the warehouse landing, at the town of Freder-
icksburg ... to the land of William Thornton.' A French traveler wrote
in 1765: 'Back settlements send down to Fredericksburg great quantities
of butter, cheese, flax, hemp, flower and some tobacco.' Soon wheat and
flour led the exports.

During the Revolution the town furnished leaders for the Continental
army and arms from its ' gunnery.' In an old order book, dated September
18, 1783, is an entry ' to Mary Driskell, a nurse in the Continental Hospital
at Fredericksburg, from January 9, '79, to May '82, by .which appears to
be due the amount certified, 266 : 19.'

In 1781 Fredericksburg was incorporated as a town. After the Revolu-
tion it prospered steadily. In 1807, however, during the obsequies of William
Stanard, an overturned candle started a fire that reduced half the town to
ashes. But Fredericksburg recovered. As center for a large number of slave-
holding landed proprietors, some of whom lived in town, it entered a period
of luxury, when racecourses, wine cellars, and balls reached their apogee.
Great canvas-covered wagons, some as high as 12 feet, lumbered in from
'up country' with loads of grain, tobacco, and other produce, drawn by
four to eight horses with bells jangling on their collars.They returned laden
with groceries, wines, housefurnishings, and other imported supplies. Two
hundred of these huge conveyances were often in Fredericksburg at one

2l8 VIRGINIA

time, { bringing business for the many vessels, some of them large three-
masted schooners, which came from all parts of the globe to anchor at the
wharves.' In 1822 Fredericksburg was made a central point for the distri-
bution of mail to five States, and the mails became so heavy that surreys
were used instead of postriders. During this era of prosperity even funerals
were occasions for entertaining, refreshments being served in dark wrap-
pings and wine drunk from glasses festooned with long black ribbons. In
1840 there were 73 stores, 4 semiweekly newspapers, 3,974 inhabitants, and
exports amounted to about $4,000,000 yearly.

Fredericksburg's distinguished men were not all of the Revolutionary
period. Matthew Fontaine Maury, the great marine cartographer, spent
part of his life here. Another native was Maury's brother-in-law, William
Lewis Herndon, who worked with him for a time at the National Observa-
tory and, in 1851, was apparently the first to explore the Amazon to its
headwaters.

The War between the States struck Fredericksburg down. Situated half-
way between Washington and Richmond and on main roads and a rail
route, it was a major objective of both armies. It changed hands seven
times during the conflict and achieved, with its immediate neighborhood,
the unhappy distinction of being one of the bloodiest battlegrounds of his-
tory.

In 1879 the general assembly created 'the city of Fredericksburg . . .
one body politic, in fact and in name.' By the beginning of the twentieth
century the scars of battle and Reconstruction were fairly smoothed out,
and since then improvements have changed a sleepy community into a
modern little city. In 191 2 Fredericksburg exchanged its councilmanic form
of government for the city manager plan.

POINTS OF INTEREST

(Buildings to which the public is admitted are usually open unofficially earlier and later than
hours stated. Guide service at $i per hour can be arranged at the chamber of commerce.)

1. CITY HALL (open 9-5 weekdays). Princess Anne St. between William
and George Sts., is a gray-painted two-story brick building, with one-story
wings. Narrow steps lead to three entrance stoops. Built in 1813, it houses
city offices and the chamber of commerce. Council records preserved here
date from 1782. In 1824 La Fayette was given a public reception in the as-
sembly room. The hall housed soldiers of General Whittle's Confederate
brigade in 1862, and later was used as Union barracks and hospital.

2, ST. GEORGE'S CHURCH (open daily), NE. corner Princess Anne
and George Sts., is a gray brick edifice of Victorian design, with tower and
spire centered on the front. Built in 1849, it is the third on this site. The
first was erected in 1732 by Colonel Henry Willis, 'top man of the place. 7
The first rector of St. George's Parish to officiate in this building was the
Reverend Patrick Henry, uncle of the orator; Charles Washington and
James Monroe were vestrymen ; the bell was given in 1 7 5 1 by Colonel John
Spotswood, son of the Colonial governor.

A^riA\% Jteg**w

Vffl^^HANJV

fcl jTi^w^

i. City Hall a.St.George's Church 3. Presbyterian Church 4,Wallace Library
5. Courthouse 6.Masonic Lodge y.Masonic Cemetery S.James Monroe Law Office
9-Slave Block lo.Hugh Mercer's Apothecary Shop n. Rising Sun Tavern i2.Horse
Chestnut Tree 13. Mary Washington's House 14. George Rogers Clark Memorial
iS.Kenmore i6.Mercer Monument ly.Mary Washington Monument 18. Confed-
erate Cemetery ig.Federal Hill House 20 John Paul Jones House 21. Sentry Box
22. Gunnery Springs 23-National Park Service Headquarters and Museum 24.Mary
Washington College

219

220 VIRGINIA

Among the graves in the churchyard are those of William Paul and of
John Dandridge, Washington's father-in-law. Colonel Fielding Lewis and
two of his children are buried beneath the steps of the church.

3. The PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH (open daily), SW. corner Princess
Anne and George Sts., built in 1833, is a red brick building with a recessed
portico having two Tuscan columns between anta walls, a plain pediment,
and a square white cupola. Clara Barton, founder of the American Red
Cross, attended the wounded here when the church was used as a Federal
hospital. Two cannon balls have been built into the left column of the por-
tico, where balls struck during the bombardment of Fredericksburg.

Presbyterianism was established in Fredericksburg in 1806 by Dr.Sam-
uel B. Wilson. Annoyed at the Rising Sun Tavern by men 'drinking, curs-
ing, and gambling, 3 he believed the town needed regeneration and started
his church.

4. The WALLACE LIBRARY (open 3-6 weekdays), SE. corner Princess
Anne and George Sts., a small tan brick building containing more than
6,000 volumes, was opened in 1911.

5. The COURTHOUSE (open 9-5 Mon.-Fri., g~i Sat), Princess Anne
St. between George a$d Hanover Sts., built in 1852, is a two-story but-
tressed gray stucco structure in Victorian Gothic style. The bell, in a cen-
tral domed tower, was made in the Paul Revere Foundry at Boston.

This site has been the court green since 1732, when Fredericksburg be-
came the seat of Spotsylvania County. Before and during the Revolution
it was the rendezvous of patriots and soldiers. Among the debtors confined
to the green on their honor was 'Light Horse Harry ' Lee. During the bat-
tle of Fredericksburg in 1862, Federal General D.N.Couch had headquar-
ters in the courthouse, and the tower was his signal station. Records in the
vault include the will of Mary Washington, Augustine Washington's com-
mission (1742) as a trustee of Fredericksburg, and the official bill of ex-
penses for the entertainment of La Fayette in 1825.

6. The MASONIC LODGE (open 8:30-5 weekdays, 1:30-5 Sun.; adm.
2 5 ji, large groups 15$, NE. corner Princess Anne and Hanover S ts. , is a plain
two-story building of brick painted gray, with twin end chimneys, erected
in 1815. Having functioned under a dispensation after 1752, when George
Washington ' entered apprentice,' Lodge No.4 was chartered in 1 758 by the
Provincial Grand Lodge of Massachusetts under the Grand Lodge of Scot-
land and accepted a charter from the newly organized Grand Lodge of Vir-
ginia in 1778. The Scottish charter is still displayed. An interior doorway
and two canopies from the old building on Caroline Street are preserved
here, as well as the Bible on which Washington was sworn, the minute book
with a record of three degrees conferred on Washington, and a Gilbert
Stuart portrait of Washington.

7. MASONIC CEMETERY, NW. corner Charles and George Sts., a
half acre of turf dotted with mossy tombstones and enclosed by a stone
wall, is one of the oldest Masonic burial grounds in America. The land was
bought in 1784 by Fredericksburg Lodge No.4. Here is an impressive array
of chiseled names, virtue-claiming epitaphs, and coats of arms. Basil Gor-
don (1768-1817), one of the first millionaires in North America, Robert

PREDERICKSBURG 221

Lewis, private secretary to his uncle, George Washington, and twice mayor
of Fredericksburg, and officers of three wars are buried here.

Covered with wild vines in a far corner is the grave of Lewis Littlepage,
born in Hanover County in 1762 but a resident of Fredericksburg during
his early years. As a boy of 18, after writing poetry at the College of William
and Mary, he went to Madrid as protege of John Jay, American minister
to Spain, with whom he later quarreled. He joined the Due de Crillon, dis-
tinguished himself in the storming of Gibraltar, and met La Fayette. He
visited Poland, was knighted by King Stanislaus, made minister in the Pol-
ish cabinet, and sent to conclude a treaty with Catherine of Russia. The
Empress i borrowed' him and sent him against the Turks in the Black Sea,
where his fellow townsman, John Paul Jones, was an admiral in the Rus-
sian fleet. He served against Russia during the Polish revolution of 1791
and joined Kosciusko in storming Prague in 1794. After an unfortunate
love affair with a princess of North Poland and the capture of King Stanis-
laus by the Russians, Littlepage retired to Fredericksburg, where he died
in 1802.

8. The JAMES MONROE LAW OFFICE (open 9-6 daily; adm. 25^,
large groups 15^), Charles St. between George and William Sts., is a long,
story-and-a-half red brick building with small, green-shuttered windows,
two simple doorways, three chimneys, and three dormers along the low
gabled roof. The whitewashed rear wall faces a little old-fashioned gar-
den. Built in 1758, the building is little altered since the days of Mon-
roe, who practiced law here from 1786 to 1790. The house contains original
Monroe furniture of the Louis XVI period, purchased when he was min-
ister to France in 1794, and later used in the White House when Monroe
entered it as President in 1817, following its burning by the British in 1814.
The Monroe Room in the White House is furnished with reproductions of
these original Monroe pieces, copied by craftsmen under the direction of
Mrs.Herbert Hoover.

In the building are the desk on which Monroe wrote his message to Con-
gress in 1823 enunciating the principles of American foreign policy known
as the Monroe Doctrine; his Revolutionary gun, dueling pistols, and sword;
a portrait of him by Rembrandt Peale, a portrait by John Trumbull (painted
on a wooden panel), a miniature by Seme, a bronze bust of La Fayette pre-
sented by him to Monroe ; letters from La Fayette, Adams, Madison, Jeffer-
son, and others; the dispatch box Monroe carried while negotiating the
Louisiana Purchase; the court dress he wore at the court of Napoleon; and
many other belongings. The collection also includes Mrs.Monroe's court
dresses, jewelry, wedding slippers, dressing table, and other possessions.

9. The SLAVE BLOCK, NW. corner Charles and William Sts., is a cir-
cular block of sandstone three feet high, but taller before the street level
was raised. One side is hewn to form a step to the top, from which, in ante-
bellum days when the Planters Hotel stood behind it, ladies mounted their
horses and slaves were auctioned.

10. HUGH MERCER'S APOTHECARY SHOP (open 9-6 weekdays;
adm. 25$, SW. corner Amelia and Caroline Sts., is assumed to have been
in this small story-and-a-half clapboarded structure. The southern portion

222 VIRGINIA

of the building, older than the shop, was built in the mid-eighteenth cen-
tury. Washington kept a desk here for transacting business when in Fred-
ericksburg*

Dr.Hugh Mercer, a Scottish Jacobite, met disaster at Culloden as an
army surgeon with Bonnie Prince Charlie, emigrated to America, fought in
the French and Indian War, became a close friend of Washington, and on
his advice settled in Fredericksburg. Here he practiced medicine and con-
ducted his apothecary shop. He entered the Revolution as a colonel of mi-
litia but was a brigadier general when he was killed at the Battle of Prince-
ton.

During restoration, the removal of lath and plaster revealed the shelves,
drawers, and pigeonholes of an old shop, some of the drawer fronts bearing
labels apparently in Dr.Mercer's handwriting. The interior is completely
furnished with a large collection of apothecary bottles and implements,
some found on the place, others belonging to Mercer's descendants. A little
garden is maintained as it used to be, with lavender, thyme, and other
herbs.

11. The RISING SUN TAVERN (open 9-5 weekdays, adm. 25$), Caro-
line St. between Fauquier and Hawke Sts., a one-and-a-half-story frame
building covered with broad hand-beveled clapboards, is approached by a
small stone porch, recently restored. Its gabled roof is pierced by three tiny
dormers and built r in end chimneys. The banquet room includes a paneled
corner fireplace and a handsome built-in cupboard.

The building was owned and, traditionally, built about 1760 by Charles
Washington. Situated on the main north-south highway, it was a stage stop
and post office. In the hands of i Mine Host ' Weedon it was a social and po-
litical center, where the fiery patriot served sedition as well as wine. Wee-
don has been identified, apparently, as Gerhard von der Wieden, a German
officer from Hamburg, who fought in the French and Indian campaigns and
settled in Fredericksburg. Here George Mason, George Wythe, Edmund
Pendleton, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Ludwell Lee met on January
13, 1777, and outlined the bill that Jefferson later phrased and Madison
presented to the Virginia assembly in 1785, when it passed as the Statute
of Virginia for Religious Liberty. The Peace Ball, attended by Washington
and his mother, his officers, La Fayette, Rochambeau, de Grasse, and others,
in celebration of victory at Yorktown, was held in 1781 in the assembly
room, long since burned.

12. The HORSE-CHESTNUT TREE, Fauquier St. between Charles
and Edward Sts., a large old tree standing close to the walk, is the only
survivor of 13 planted by George Washington to symbolize the 13 original
States.

13. MARY WASHINGTON'S HOUSE (open 9-12, 1-6 weekdays; 1-6
Sun. only in summer; adm. 2$), NW. corner Lewis and Charles Sts., is the
simple white frame structure in which Washington's mother lived from
1772 to 1789. The middle section, built by Washington in 1772, rises two
stories from a simple doorway to a plain gable roof. The south wing, part of
the original house, has a gabled garret with dormers above the main floor;
the north wing, added after Mary Washington's death, has a steep gam-

FREDERICKSBURG 223

brel roof with shallow ' Dutch' dormers. The interior is restored and fur-
nished as it might have been when Mary Washington occupied it,

Beyond wide porches at the rear is the old-fashioned garden with the
original sundial and part of the box-bordered brick walk along which
Mrs.Washington went each day to her daughter's home near by. The box-
wood she planted still flourish. Here also is the old stone kitchen with the
equipment Colonial cooks used along with 'conjur' perhaps to pre-
pare the food that helped to create Virginia's reputation for hospitality.
Preceding the Revolution Washington persuaded his mother to move
from Ferry Farm on the river to the comparative safety of a town
house.

Mary Washington, it seems, never visited her son at Mount Vernon. In
making clear his wish that she remain away from his house, which resem-
bled a 'well resorted tavern,' Washington wrote, 'This would, were you to
be an inhabitant of it, oblige you to do one of 3 things: ist to be always
dressing to appear in company; 2 A, to come ... in a dishabille, or 3d to
be as a prisoner in your bedchamber. The first you'ld not like, . . . the
second I should not like, . . . And the 3d, . . . would not be pleasing to
either of us.' So the old lady stayed in Fredericksburg. Her complaint that
she had ' never lived so poore ' caused a movement in the general assembly
for granting her a pension. Washington besought a friend to stop the pro-
ceedings, but Mary Washington continued to talk of her poverty and to
borrow from neighbors. George Washington, to end the gossip, ceased to
rent his mother's ' quarter' a few miles below Ferry Farm, explaining,
'What I shall then give, I shall have credit for,' and avoid being 'viewed
as unjust and undutiful son.' Washington frequently visited his mother at
Fredericksburg, and on March n, 1789, he came to say goodby before
starting for New York and his inauguration as first President. Mary Wash-
ington died the following August.

14, The GEORGE ROGERS CLARK MEMORIAL, Lewis St. and
Washington Ave., is a small granite block in a circular grass plot, erected
in 1929 ' in grateful acknowledgment of the valor and the strategic victory ?
that acquired the Northwest Territory for Virginia. Clark spent part of his
childhood about 15 miles south of Fredericksburg.

15. KENMORE (open 9-6 daily, adm. 50$, Washington Ave. between
Lewis and Fauquier Sts., was the home of George Washington's sister,
Betty Washington Lewis. Set among tall trees in a walled yard, the two-
story red brick house with its low water table of molded brick stands be-
tween a pair of detached wings. The gabled roof is pierced by two square
built-in end chimneys. The simply framed entrance doors are surmounted
by rectangular transoms. Over the rear door a modest portico with four
Tuscan columns faces the garden, which has been restored with the box-
bordered walk that led to Mary Washington's house.

The fine mahogany stairway in the entrance hall is adorned with a carved
lotus motif, and the tall clock standing here belonged to Mary Washington.
The reassembled gun over the door at the left is the only firearm extant
known to have come from the Fielding Lewis Gunnery, where it was made
in 1781. Through this door is the dining room with ceiling, mantel, and

224 VIRGINIA

cornice elaborately ornamented in putty stucco. Portraits by John Wollas-
ton of Colonel Fielding Lewis and of his wife, Betty Washington, hang in
this room. The end of the hall opens into the parlor or ' great room. 7 The
rich plaster ornament of the ceiling, from which a fine Waterford crystal
chandelier is suspended, includes four horns of plenty. Above the handsome
carved mantel, which is supported on classic consoles, is a panel framed
with Georgian c dog-ear ' trim and embellished with a delicate plaster bas-
relief representing Aesop's fable of the fox and crow. The subject of this
decoration is said to have been suggested by Washington, and the work
seems authentically to have been that of Hessian prisoners. The ceilings
were executed by a man whom Washington called ' that Frenchman. 5 The
house is filled with furniture and relics, many of which belonged to the
Washington or Lewis family; some are gifts or loans from the Metropolitan
Museum.

The four panels of the ceiling in the library represent the four seasons
with palm, grape, acorn, and mistletoe. The over-mantel panel frames a
decorative basket of flowers and festoon in plaster relief. The bedrooms up-
stairs are furnished chiefly with heirlooms.

On a plantation of 86 1 acres purchased from Richard Wyat Royston,
Fielding Lewis began to build in 1752 for his second bride, 1 9-year-old
Betty Washington, the only sister of George to reach maturity; but the
house was not complete in detail until after "1777. Before that, Millbank,
as it was then called, had become a center of political and social life. Wash-
ington frequently recorded visits here.

Colonel Lewis was an earnest patriot. He wrote resolutions, endorsed by
a large gathering in Fredericksburg, commending Patrick Henry's resist-
ance to Governor Dunmore. He fitted out three regiments at his own ex-
pense and built a ship, the Dragon, for the ' Virginia Navy.' As chief com-
missioner for the manufacturing of small arms in Fredericksburg, he used
his own money when public funds ran out. When he died in 1782, he left a
debt of 7,000 and a mortgage on Millbank.

Mrs.Lewis continued to live here until she sold the house in 1796. Early
in the nineteenth century it was bought by the Gordon family, who changed
its name to Kenmore. It served as a hospital and military headquarters
during the War between the States, when it was considerably damaged,
and later it housed a boys' academy.

In 1922 a band of women formed the Kenmore Association to save the
house from being pulled down, and raised the money for its purchase and
restoration. Woodwork, ceilings, nearly all hardware, and floors are original.
The dependencies were completely reconstructed upon excavated founda-
tions. In the kitchen a Negro ' mammy' serves tea and gingerbread to
visitors.

16. The MERCER MONUMENT, center of Washington Ave. at Fau-
quier St., is a bronze figure of General Hugh Mercer by Edward V. Valen-
tine, erected by Congress in 1906.

^ 1 7. The MARY WASHINGTON MONUMENT, Washington Ave. and
Pitt St., a 5o-foot granite obelisk near the grave of Mary Washington, was
erected by the women of the National Mary Washington Monument As-

1REDERICKSBURG 225

sociation and dedicated in 1894 with President Grover Cleveland as the
speaker. A monument was begun here in 1833, but it stood incomplete un-
til battered to ruins during the War between the States.

18. The CONFEDERATE CEMETERY (open 9-5 daily), entrance
Washington Ave. and Amelia St., a large rectangular tract with scattered
trees and mossy tombstones behind a four-foot brick wall, was established
in 1865 by the Fredericksburg Ladies' Memorial Association. On May 10
of that year the association held a Memorial Bay service here, possibly the
first in the South. Here are buried 1,470 Confederate soldiers and officers
1,140 of them unidentified who fell on battlefields near by.

19. FEDERAL HILL HOUSE (open by arrangement), behind church on
SW. corner of Hanover and Prince Edward Sts., is a plain two-and-a-half-
story residence, its thick brick walls covered with white clapboards. The
interior is handsomely ornamented. A paneled transverse hall contains a
fine staircase and leads through an elegantly arched doorway to a drawing-
room that runs the full length of the house.

The builder and the date of construction are unknown. After the Revo-
lution Robert Brooke, governor of Virginia (1794-96) and a founder of the
Federal party, bought the house and renamed it Federal Hill. During the
war, it was used as a Federal hospital.

20. The JOHN PAUL JONES HOUSE (private), NE. corner Lafayette
Blvd. and Caroline St., a small half -brick, half -frame structure, is the only
house in America the naval hero could call home. It was owned by his older
brother, William Paul, who conducted a tailoring business here after mi-
grating from Scotland in 1758.

^ John Paul (1747-92) was born in Scotland. He first visited Virginia as a
Ifad of 12, apprenticed to a shipmaster. During the next nine years he was
'acting midshipman, third and first mate on slavers, shipmaster, and finally
master of his own boat. When his crew mutinied, he killed the ringleader
and fled to his brother in Fredericksburg. In 1775, a f ter seven years of ob-
scurity, he appeared in Philadelphia, calling himself John Paul Jones and
bearing a commission as senior lieutenant in the Continental navy. Then
began his incredible career as a naval officer. He successfully attacked New
Providence in the Bahamas and for a time convoyed supply ships into New
York harbor ; in a seven-week free-lance cruise between Bermuda andNova
Scotia he captured six brigantines, one sloop, and one ship and destroyed
six schooners, one ship, and one brigantine; he cut his way through ice to
save Americans on Isle Royale, burned a warehouse on the Acadian coast,
took four transports, and on his way home captured another transport and
a sixteen-gun privateer. Sailing to France with dispatches, he picked up
two prizes and forced a British sloop to strike her colors. With the clumsily
remodeled Bonhomme Richard, obtained for him by Benjamin Franklin, he
entered upon a series of successful engagements and, in one of the great sea-
fights of history, caused the Serapis to ask for quarter. He often paid o&f
cers and sailors out of his own pocket and was not reimbursed until after
the war. In 1787 Congress awarded him a gold medal. The next year, on
Thomas Jefferson's advice, he accepted Empress Catherine's invitation to
reorganize the Russian Navy. Though made an admiral and sent to the

226 VIRGINIA

Black Sea against the Turks, he was never given the superior command and
lost Catherine's good will through the intrigue of rivals.

After the Revolution Jefferson spoke of him as a man of ' disinterested
spirit 7 and the ' principal hope of our future efforts on the ocean . . .' He
died in Paris at the age of 45 and was buried there in StXouis Cemetery
for Protestants. In 1813 his body was removed to the Naval Academy
Chapel at Annapolis.

21. The SENTRY BOX (private), Caroline St. near E. end Dixon St., is
a long frame house with gray weatherboarding, end chimneys, and a slen-
der-columned front porch. It is somewhat remodeled, but the central por-
tion remains much as it was. Overlooking the river, it was used during the
Revolution, the War of 1812, and the War between the States as a lookout
for enemy ships. In the garden to the left are the remains of an underground
passage. The house was owned by the Revolutionary generals, George Wee-
don and Hugh Mercer.

22. GUNNERY SPRINGS, off Gunnery Lane, an extension of Ferdinand
St., flow in a meadowy field below a steep hill. A concrete and brick cover-
ing over the springs was erected by the Daughters of the American Revolu-
tion in commemoration of early women patriots. The Virginia Convention
of 1775 ordered the establishment here of a manufactory of small arms and
ammunition, of which Charles Dick and Colonel Fielding Lewis were ac-
tive commissioners. A hundred stands of arms a month ' was the estimated
output, besides repair to damaged guns. In 1781 Dick wrote Governor Jef-
ferson that the Gentlemen of this town and even the Ladys have very
spiritedly attended at the Gunnery and assisted to make up already above
20,000 Cartridges with Bullets ... as also above 100 Good Guns from
this Factory.'

23. NATIONAL PARK SERVICE HEADQUARTERS AND MU-
SEUM (open 9-5 daily), NE. corner Lafayette Blvd. and Sunken Road, a
two-story red brick structure in late Georgian Colonial style, exhibits mili-
tary relics, a diorama of shell-torn Fredericksburg, and a model in relief of
the battlefield. Slide lectures are given to explain battles in the neighboring
area.

24. MARY WASHINGTON COLLEGE, entrance off Sunken Road at
Monroe St., a group of 14 buildings on an 8o-acre campus, overlooks the
city from above the wooded slope of Marye's Heights. Established in 1908
as the State Normal and Industrial School for Women in Fredericksburg,
it became the Fredericksburg State Teachers College in 1924 and was re-
named Mary Washington College in 1938. Bachelor degrees have been con-
ferred since 1935. The 1937-38 enrollment in the college was 1,428, in the
training school 1,097, and the faculty numbered 48.

POINTS OF INTEREST IN ENVIRONS

Brpmpton, 1.3 w.; Fredericksburg Battlefield Park, 1.7 m. (see Tour ib). Chancel-
lorsville Battlefield, 10 m.\ Spotsylvania Courthouse Battlefield, 11.1 m.; Wilder-
ness Battlefield, 14.4 m. (see Tour 10). Chatham, 0.5 m.; Ferry Farm, 1.6 m. (see
Touri6a).

Hampton

Railroad Station: Washington St. and Depot Ave. for Chesapeake and Ohio Ry.

Bus Station : King and Queen Sts. for Greyhound and Peninsula Transit Lines.

Taxis: Fare 25 within city limits.

Streetcars: Local and interurban, fare $ within city and 5^ for each zone outside.

Traffic Relations: is-minute and i-hour parking limits in business district; 3 public

parking lots.

Accommodations: 2 hotels; inns and tourist homes.

Information Service: Tidewater Auto. Ass'n., Langley Hotel, 1 1 1 Queen St.

Motion Picture Houses: 2.

Golf: Chamberlin Golf and Country Club, i m. E. on US 60, 18 holes, greens fee $i.

Swimming: Chamberlin Golf and Country Club, i m. E. on US 60, by arrangement. Sea

bathing at Buckroe Beach, 4 m. E. on State 169 off US 60.

Tennis: Chamberlin Golf and Country Club, i m. E. on US 60, i court, fee 75^; for other

courts, inquire at information service.

Annual Events: Hampton Horse Show, May; Hampton Yacht Club Regatta, including
Gold Cup event, ist week in July.

HAMPTON (3 alt., 6,382 pop.), where settlers came in 1610 and scene of
the first free school in the colonies, is the oldest English community in
.America.

The little city on Hampton Roads is cut by jagged arms of Hampton
Creek. Its early bow-and-arrow street pattern is still explained by old-
timers: Queen Street, shooting through the center of the city, is the arrow;
Hope and Court Streets curve to form the bow; taut between them,
stretches King Street the string. From this tiny area streets extend in a
fairly symmetrical pattern to Bright, Sunset, and Hampton creeks and
northward into the narrow peninsula. Along the water fronts mounds of
oyster shells and odors of fish and marshland are reminders that the sea
is close by.

Large packing plants are centered on Hampton Creek in the north-
eastern section of the city. On the shore line farther north are several im-
posing homes of fishing magnates and southward are the cottages of tong-
ers and small fisherf oik. The rest of the city is given over to late Victorian
houses and bungalows. Of the 200 boats that operate in surrounding
creeks, at least two-thirds are used for fishing and about 40 of these are
trawlers that fish off the capes. In 1938 100,000 barrels of crabs, 50,000
gallons of oysters, and 30,000 bushels of unshucked oysters were shipped
from Hampton.

Everywhere in Hampton are soldiers, enlisted men, and officers from

227

228 VIRGINIA

the Coast Artillery post at Fort Monroe and from Langley Field. Crowds,
far out of proportion to the size of the city, move in leisurely fashion, and
army cars pass continually along Queen Street. From May through Sep-
tember holiday throngs go through Hampton to and from Buckroe Beach.

Among the Negro population, 44 per cent of the whole, are many edu-
cated men and women. The Peoples Building and Loan Association of
Hampton has more shareholders and a larger cash revenue than any sim-
ilar Negro association. Along the waterfront, however, and in several
other slum districts live many illiterate and economically distressed Negro
families.

Originally Hampton was called Kecoughtan (pronounced Kick-o-tan).
Sir Christopher Newport's band of adventurers paused here in 1607 to
exchange greetings with the Kecoughtan Indians, named the point to the
eastward Point Comfort, then continued to Jamestown. Fort Algernourne
was built at Point Comfort in 1609. After the Kecoughtans ceased to be
friendly, Sir Thomas Gates drove them away and in 1610 built two stock-
ades on Hampton's rivulet, which Lord Delaware had named Southamp-
ton (Hampton) River for the Earl of Southampton, leading spirit of the
London Company. The stockades were named Fort Henry and Fort
Charles for the sons of James I, and in 1613 each had 15 soldiers. In the
vicinity of the stockades were a few planters, and Hamor, secretary of the
colony, said there were 'goodly seats and much corn about them, abound-
ing with the commodities of fish, fowle, Deere, and fruits, whereby the
men liued there with halfe that maintenaunce out of the Store which in
other places is allowed.'

When in 1619 the colony was divided into four 'incorporations 7 with a
proposed chief city for each division, a wide territory on both sides of the
James was named Elizabeth City. When the ' incorporations ' were di-
vided into counties in 1634, the territory embracing Kecoughtan became
Elizabeth City County. In 1620 the land between the creek and Chesa-
peake Bay was appropriated for public uses, and the portion on the bay
called Buck Roe was assigned to the growing of grapes and mulberry
trees.

Hampton's first business man, William Claiborne, arrived in 1630 with
authorization from the governor's council 'to make discoveries in the
Chesapeake Bay and to trade with the Indians/ He established a profit-
able post on Kent Island, then thought to be a part of Virginia, and set
up a storehouse and a trading base on his i5o-acre grant at Kecoughtan.
Here he lived during the tumultuous years after 1634 when Lord Balti-
more's colonists, with a map that showed Kent Island within their do-
main, found him and his underlings most mutinous subjects. When the
system of inspecting and storing tobacco was inaugurated in 1633, one of
the first seven warehouses was established at ' Southampton river in Eliza-
beth Citty.' The town of Hampton was formally established and named in
1680.

The community knew too well the pirates that infested the Virginia
coast in the late seventeenth century. Hampton citizens continually pro-
tested the drunkenness and inefficiency of Captain Aldred, who com-

HAMPTON 229

manded the Essex-Prize, a pirate-chaser that always lay up for repairs
when its services were needed. When the man-of-war Shoreham replaced
the Essex-Prize in 1700, Peter Heyman, collector of customs for the James
River, was among the Virginians killed in a ten-hour battle that resulted
in defeat of the pirates. Governor Nicholson, who had risked his life
aboard the Shoreham to watch the engagement, reported that ' Peter Hey-
man had behaved himself very well in the fight.' Heyman was appointed
postmaster in 1692 for all the plantations in Virginia and Maryland, and
endeavored to set up an efficient Colonial postal system. In 1718 Captain
Henry Maynard, a citizen of Hampton, killed Edward Teach, alias Black-
beard, the most notorious of all the Colonial brigands of the sea, and
helped bring piracy to an end.

More than 1,100 Acadians came to Hampton in 1755, and while their
ships lay at anchor in Hampton Roads, Governor Dinwiddie and the
council engaged in lengthy conferences and much letter writing. The poor
exiles were greatly feared, for, said the governor, Virginia had been 'much
harassed by that perfidous nation in our back country. 3 ' It was unkind of
the Governor of Nova Scotia,' he continued, 'to send such a number of
people here without the least previous notice. 7 Nevertheless, the Acadians
were allowed to land and were cared for until the following spring when
Virginia appropriated money for their deportation.

Among the prominent citizens or natives of Hampton were George
Wythe (see Williamsburg) ; James Barron, commodore of the American
Navy during the Revolution; Commodore Samuel Barron, commander of
a United States squadron in the Tripolitan War; another Commodore
James Barron (see Norfolk) ; and Commodore Lewis Warrington, com-
mander of an American squadron during the War of 1812.

This seaport town also has a military history. Though the British sev-
eral times skirted Hampton during the Revolution, and though Hampton
furnished its share of soldiers, no fighting took place in the immediate
vicinity. During the War of 1812, however, the British, exasperated by
their failure to take Portsmouth, attacked Hampton in June 1813. Mo-
mentarily repulsed by Virginia militia under Major Stapleton Crutchfield,
the British rallied and entered Hampton as the Virginians retreated west-
ward. Hampton was incorporated as a town in 1849, though it was au-
thorized by the 'Act of Cohabitation' in 1680. In August 1861 Hampton
suffered its greatest loss when the town was burned by its own inhabitants
to prevent occupation by the Federals ; only five houses remained standing.

At the end of the war ragged soldiers came home to rebuild the city.
Hampton Institute became an important center of Negro education. In
1882 a rail line was completed from Richmond to the mouth of the James.
Another fire in 1884 wiped out 33 of the newly built residences and stores
on Queen Street. Fishermen and oystermen began to bring in their wares
for shipping; sea-food plants were started on a small scale and flourished.
The establishment of important industries in the Norfolk area helped to
bring about Hampton's revival, and in 1908 it was chartered as a city.
Langley Field near by, opened in 1917 as a training field, became an im-
portant army air base. Hampton carries on today in a manner that is

230 VIRGINIA

neither aggressive nor wholly complacent. It remains a little city not
straining to be large.

POINTS OF INTEREST

ELIZABETH CITY COUNTY COURTHOUSE (open 9-5 Mon~Fri.,
9-1 Sat.), NW. corner King and Court Sts., is a plain red brick building
with a low white wooden dome and a portico with four modified Doric
columns. The main block was erected in 1876. The first courthouse on this
site was erected in 1715 when the county seat was moved to 'Hampton
town.' In 1781 the general assembly granted justices permission to hold
court elsewhere 'while the court house in Hampton is occupied by troops
of our allies as a hospital 7

ST JOHN'S CHURCH (open daily), NW. corner Court and Queen Sts.,
is a church of Elizabeth City Parish, which was first called Kecoughtan
and established in 1610. Compact and cruciform, its sturdy walls belong
to the original structure built in 1728. This replaced the second church
erected in 1667 on Pembroke Farm. St John's was ill-attended in the re-
action following the Revolution, and was ransacked during the War of
1812. The vigorous challenge in 1825 of Mrs Jane Barron Hope, daughter
of Commodore James Barron' If I were a man I would have those walls
built up' brought about restoration of the church in 1827-28, when it
was named St John's. Though partly burned in 1861, the 'old walls hon-
estly built' by Colonial workmen stood firm. The church was restored
again in 1869.

A Breeches Bible dated 1599 and a vestry book dated 1751 are pre-
served here, in addition to a plain silver chalice and paten, hall-marked
1619, sent by Mary Robinson from England. In the churchyard lie many
of the city's founders.

BRADDOCK MONUMENT, E. end of Victoria Ave., is a large fat
cannon mounted on a stuccoed pedestal, overlooking Hampton Creek.
It was erected in 1916 to mark the spot at which General Braddock and
his British troops landed in February 1755, preparatory to the tragic ex-
pedition against Fort Duquesne.

LITTLE ENGLAND, S. of E. and Victoria Ave., is the flat area lying
behind Capps' Point along Sunset Creek. Now occupied by car barns and
a power station, it was originally an estate of 500 acres patented by Wil-
liam Capps. The Battle of Hampton was fought here in 1813, following
the repulse of the British in their attempt to take Portsmouth.

BLACKBEARD'S POINT, SE. from E. end Victoria Ave., is a triangle
occupied by sea food industries. Here in 1718 Captain Henry Maynard set
on a pole the head of ' Blackbeard/ brought back when he returned with
nine prisoners from the battle that practically ended organized piracy.
The prisoners, tried at Williamsburg, were later hanged.

SYMS-EATON ACADEMY, E. end Gary St., in a brick building
erected in 1902, is an amalgamation of two of the earliest schools in Amer-
ica. Syms is the oldest free school and the first endowed educational insti-
tution in the United States. In 1634 Benjamin Syms left 200 acres and 8

HAMPTON 231

cows to provide a free school for children of the parish. In 1659 Thomas
Eaton, a 'cururgeon,' left 500 acres including buildings, livestock, and
two Negro slaves for a school to serve Elizabeth City County. The schools
were so popular that in 1759 an act was necessary to provide for the at-
tendance of only poor children at Eaton School. In 1805 the schools were
merged by act of the general assembly, and called Hampton Academy. In
1852 the academy became part of the public school system. Its building
was burned in 1861 and rebuilt after the war.

SITE OF THE FIRST ELIZABETH CITY PARISH CHURCH,
Tyler St. near College Place, is in an ancient graveyard identified by an
iron fence and marker. Cobblestone foundations have been uncovered, and
it is known that a log church stood here in 1624.

HAMPTON INSTITUTE (open 9-4:30 daily, guide service), E. end of
Queen St., one of the foremost Negro educational centers in the world,
covers 74 acres on the east bank of Hampton Creek. Its 139 buildings,
nearly all of red brick, are scattered over immaculate grounds shaded by
rine old trees. Hampton Institute grew out of temporary measures taken
when former slaves came to Fort Monroe to satisfy their desire for 'book
larnin. 3 Gathered under the trees, one of which is still called ' Emancipa-
tion Oak, 3 illiterate Negroes of all ages shouted out the letters of the al-
phabet. At the suggestion of General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, then
chief of the Freedmen's Bureau, the American Missionary Association in
1867 purchased the farm where Hampton Hospital had been maintained
by the Federal Government during the war. The school opened in the old
hospital barracks in April 1868, with Armstrong as principal, two assisting
teachers, and 15 pupils. It was chartered as the Hampton Normal and
Industrial Institute in 1870. One-third of the $285,000 accruing to the
State, after Virginia accepted the provisions of the Morrill Land-Grant
Act of Congress that year, was allotted to the institution. Depending
largely, however, on contributions from friends of Negro education, espe-
cially in the North, it grew rapidly. In 1878, 17 young Indian prisoners of
war were sent here from Florida by the Federal Government to be edu-
cated. Indians were enrolled until 1923. In the winter session of 1936-37
there were about 200 instructors and 1,024 students. Between 600 and
700 teachers attend the summer school each year. Hampton, now a pri-
vate corporation, confers the degrees of bachelor of arts, bachelor of
science and, in the summer school, a master of science degree in education.
The school publishes the Southern Workman, a monthly magazine on
general education.

Under General Armstrong's program, the boys were put to ' planting
and digging potatoes, while the girls were taught to make and mend
clothes, and were instructed in the rudiments of plain English Education.'
The students are still trained in hand, as well as mind, and taught primar-
ily how to make a living. There are two main divisions: the trade school
teaching everything from bricklaying to tailoring; and the collegiate
schools, teaching agriculture, business, education, home economics, library
science, and nursing.

The ADMINISTRATION BUILDING, facing the central plaza in the middle

232 VIRGINIA

of the campus, houses the offices of the president and other school execu-
tives. The MUSEUM (open 9-5 weekdays) on its upper floor contains ex-
hibits collected by friends and students of Hampton in Africa, Hawaii,
and the Philippines. The African exhibits include musical instruments and
fetishes from tie upper Congo. The Indian collection, contributed mainly
by ex-students, Includes a variety of rare items from various American
Indian tribes.

OGDEN HALL, E. of the Administration Building, is the main assembly
hal, with a stage for the presentation of debates and plays; it seats 2,000.
Students gather here each Sunday evening at 7:30 to sing spirituals. This
service is open to the public.

Hie COLLIS P. HUNTINGTON MEMORIAL LIBRARY (open 9-5 weekdays,
3-7:30 Sun.) seats 300 in its main reference room and has special seminar
rooms. Among its 55,000 volumes is a special collection of books and
pamphlets dealing with the Negro and slavery.

VIRGINIA HALL, facing Ogden Hall, was 'sung up' by Hampton singers
shortly after the institute was founded. In 1870 General Armstrong led a
group of Hampton singers on a tour of New England and Canada. This
and successive tours netted most of the total cost of $98,000. The building
contains dining rooms and the girls 5 dormitory.

DUPONT HALL houses the departments of biology, chemistry, physics,
and mathematics, and an auditorium used for seminars and the showing
of educational motion pictures.

The SLATER MEMORIAL TRADE SCHOOL includes the 13 trade depart-
ments where 200 students work at their respective trades, paying their
way by construction and repair work. In 1932 the BEMIS LABORATORIES
were erected entirely by student builders as an addition to the trade
school. Many buildings on the campus were designed in the Bemis Labo-
ratories and constructed under the direction of students.

The GEORGE P. PHENIX ELEMENTARY HIGH SCHOOL, just S. of campus
gate, was erected in 1931. Six hundred pupils from the community attend
the school, which serves as a laboratory for education students.

The ARMSTRONG MEMORIAL CHURCH, of Italian Romanesque architec-
ture, is a gift of Frederick Marquand. Most of the construction work was
done by trade school students.

WHIPPLE FARM, 80 acres adjoining the campus to the east, and SHELL-
BANKS FARM, 800 acres on Back River adjoining Langley Field, provide
agricultural training. Among Hampton's distinguished graduates are
Booker T. Washington, Dr.Robert Moton, and Mrs. Janie Porter Barrett,
head of the Virginia Industrial School

POINTS OF INTEREST IN ENVIRONS

Old Point Comfort and Fort Monroe, 3.3 m, ; Langley Field, 3 m. ; Buckroe Beach
4m. (see Tour So).

Hampton Heads Port

Commercial Airport: Norfolk; Municipal Airport, 7 m. E. on Cape Henry Blvd. (US 40),
for Pennsylvania Central Airlines.

Government Airports: Naval Air Station, Norfolk, Hampton Blvd. and 99th St.; Army
Air Station, Langley Field, 3 m. N. of Hampton on State 27.

Piers: Norfolk: Front St. (continuation of W.York St.) for Norfolk and Washington
Steamboat Co.; W. end Brooke Ave. for Rappahannock River and Mob jack Bay
Lines; W. end W.Main St. for Baltimore Steam Packet Co. and Merchants and Miners
Transportation Co.; W. end Water St. for Buxton Lines to Richmond; S. end Jackson
St. for Chesapeake Steamship Co.; W. end Boissevain Ave. for Eastern Steamship Lines
(Old Dominion). Portsmouth: E. end High St. for tug to Norfolk connecting with boat
to Baltimore, 6p.m. daily, no fare.

Ferries: Norfolk: S. end Commercial Place, to Portsmouth, fare 5^, automobile and
driver, 25^; Pine Beach, W. end ggth St., to Newport News, fare 20^, automobile and
driver, $i and $1.25; W. end Ocean View Ave., to Old Point Comfort and Fort Monroe,
fare 20^, automobile and driver, 75^ and $i ; Little Creek, Shore Drive, to Cape Charles,
fare 50^, automobile $2. 50 and $3; W. end Brooke Ave. to Old Point Comfort, fare 25^,
automobile $i and $1.25, to Cape Charles, fare 70^, automobile $2.50 and $3, and to
Newport News, fare 35^. Portsmouth: E. end High St. to Norfolk, fare 5^, automobile,
25^, passengers additional to driver, 5^ each, to Berkley, fare same as to Norfolk; Sea-
board Air Line Wharf, E. end High St. for boat to Newport News, fare 30^, no automo-
biles. Newport News: 23rd St. and River Rd., to Norfolk, fare 30^; E. end Jefferson Ave.
to Norfolk (Pine Beach), fare 20^ 2-passenger car and driver, $i, 4-passenger car and
driver, $1.25, round trip $1.50, extra passenger, aojL

Canals: Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal; Dismal Swamp Canal; both are sections of
Atlantic Coastal Waterways, no tolls.

Toll Bridges: Norfolk-Portsmouth Bridge, US 460, car and driver, 25^, pedestrians, 5^;
James River Bridge, US 1 7, car, $1.25.

Government Establishments: Immigration Offices, Norfolk, Post Office Bldg., Granby and

Charlotte Sts.; Newport News, Post Office, West Ave. and 25 th St.

Naval Operating Base, Norfolk, Hampton Blvd. and 99th St.

Naval Hospital, Portsmouth, N. end Green St.

Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, S. end First and Fourth Sts.

Customhouses, Norfolk, Main and Granby Sts.; Newport News, Post Office Bldg., West

Ave., and 25th St.

Coast Guard Headquarters, Norfolk, Post Office Bldg., Granby and Charlotte Sts.

Quarantine Stations, Old Point Comfort and Craney Island.

Fort Monroe, Old Point Comfort.

State Rifle Range, Virginia Beach.

HAMPTON ROADS is the channel through which the waters of the con-
verging James, Nansemond, and Elizabeth Rivers flow into Chesapeake
Bay. This four-mile roadstead, 40 feet deep and navigable throughout the
year, is bounded on the north by the shore line from Newport News to
Old Point Comfort, on the east by the Rip Raps and Willoughby Spit, on
the south by Willoughby Bay and Sewall Point, and on the west by a line
from Newport News to Sewall Point. Because of its central location on the

2 33

HAMPTON ROADS
AREA

236 VIRGINIA

Atlantic seaboard and Its many railroad facilities, Hampton Roads is one
of the most important harbors in the country and the east-coast rendez-
vous of the United States navy. There is a combined water frontage of
about 50 miles, of which some 22 miles have been improved or developed.

Spacious Hampton Roads seems never crowded. The pattern of boats
on its ample surface changes as constantly as the color of the water, the
spots of oily bilge, the seaweed, and the circling gulls. Freighters parade
in and out the Capes, followed by a black plume of smoke. Some set their
course to or from the upper Chesapeake Bay, but most steam straight in
or out from the open sea. Trim steam ferries shuttle back and forth, and
tugs tow barges filled with freight cars, lumber, or brick. Scattered about
are tramp steamers, anchored and swinging in the tide or nosing toward
the black skeletons of coal piers. Warships and cruisers, gray and lean
against the horizon, thread their way toward dry docks. Sporadically, gov-
ernment boats tow large red targets into the glittering distance and hur-
riedly move away as Fort guns boom in target practice. Occasionally, the
Virginia pilot boat that lies in wait for incoming vessels off the Capes
weighs anchor and comes in for supplies and fuel. Trawlers and oyster
boats chug toward hidden fishing banks, while elegant yachts and cabin
cruisers glide toward less trammeled waters. Along the shore bob dories,
bateaux, and rowboats, filled with fishermen. At dusk the white-painted
Bay and coastwise passenger steamers sidle up to Old Point's dock, then
steam away into the gathering darkness. The lights of Buckroe Beach, the
Fort, and Newport News blink at those of Ocean View, the Naval Base,
and feeble farmhouse lights to the west. Precise and intermittent gleams
from lighthouses cut arcs across the water, and channels are marked by
swaying light buoys and doleful bell buoys. Bridges arch across river
mouths, their concrete length festooned with yellow lights broken at the
draw by green and red.

Newport News, at the mouth of the James, and Norfolk and Ports-
mouth, along the Elizabeth River and its several branches, with their har-
bors, anchorage, customs, and other facilities, constitute the Port of
Hampton Roads. Federal services and regulations of port activity consist
of quarantine, under the Public Health and Customs services, Treasury
Department; Immigration Service, under the Department of Labor; and
the improvement of rivers, harbors, and other waterways under direction
of the Secretary of War and the Chief of Engineers of the United States
Army. Local jurisdiction over the port is vested in the State Port Author-
ity of Virginia, created in 1926, which is charged with development of the
port and promotion of its commercial and maritime interests. It regulates
such services as fire protection, pilotage, dockage, towage, and handling of
cargoes.

The total tonnage of water-borne commerce handled through the port
in 1938 was 24,083,019, of which 826,739 tons were imports and 1,992,564
were exports. Wood pulp and ore were the largest items of import; coal
and scrap iron the largest items of export, the latter reflecting the current
trend toward international rearmament. Petroleum products, sugar,
gypsum, and paper manufactures were other important items of import.

HAMPTON ROADS PORT 237

Exports include grain, tobacco and tobacco products, lumber and logs ?
cotton and textiles.

The Norfolk Navy Yard, on the Portsmouth side, and the United States
Naval Operating Base in Norfolk consume a great volume of coal and have
created many industries deriving power from the same source. These gov-
ernment properties themselves, worth about 50,000,000, add to the
port's commercial stature. Within Norfolk are the United States Public
Health Service Hospital, a branch of the United States Hydrographic
Office, the Navy's principal fuel reserve depot, a naval air station, a sub-
marine base, and the St.Helena Reservation, now used as a naval air base.

From 1607, when Sir Christopher Newport brought his band of pioneers
to effect the first permanent English settlement in America, throughout
the Colonial period, Hampton Roads was a point of entry to the seat of
government in Virginia. Ships bringing other settlers and supplies sailed
through its broad waters into the James. Later it was the hunting place of
pirates and hostile British ships, and, during the War between the States,
the scene of important naval conflicts.

On June 22, 1807, occurred a naval engagement rising from the presence
of four alleged British deserters on the American vessel, Chesapeake. The
British frigate Leopard pursued the Chesapeake through the Capes, then
fired a broadside into the American vessel, which surrendered without
firing a shot. The Chesapeake was boarded and the deserters were taken.
Commodore James Barron (1769-1851), commander of the Chesapeake,
was afterwards court-martialed 'for neglecting in the probability of an
engagement, to clear his ship for battle/ and deprived of rank and pay for
five years. On his return to duty, he was refused an active command
through the influence of Commodore Stephen Decatur, Jr. This resulted
in a duel between Barron and Decatur in 1820, and Decatur was killed.
Barron was later commandant of the Gosport Navy Yard in Portsmouth.

On the afternoon of March 8, 1862, occurred the battle that changed
naval warfare. The Virginia, formerly the Merrimac, a wooden ship which
had been sunk, raised by the Confederates, and converted into an iron-
clad, attacked the Federal fleet, which was armed with 204 guns and aided
by land batteries. By six o'clock the Virginia had sunk the Cumberland,
burned the Congress, driven the Minnesota ashore, and compelled the St.
Lawrence and the Roanoke to seek shelter under the guns of Fort Monroe.
On March 9 the Virginia encountered the Monitor, an ironclad more
heavily armored and more efficient by reason of her light draught and re-
volving gun turret. For four hours the two ironclads battered each other,
until at last a shell from the Virginia exploded on the eyeslit of the Mon-
itor's pilot house, blinding her commander, Captain John L. Worden.
'Tactically/ said R.S.Henry in The Story of the Confederacy, c it was a
drawn fight, in its results a victory for the Monitor.'

FORT WOOL, mid-channel on the ferry course, is on a man-made is-
land, constructed of rocks sunk on a shoal called Rip Raps from the rip-
pling of the water. Begun after 1830 and called Fort Calhoun, the fortifica-
tion was not complete when war broke out in 1861. Hurriedly mounted
guns, however, aided in silencing Confederate batteries on Sewall Point

238 VIRGINIA

and Willoughby Spit on May 9, 1862, when Union forces crossed these
waters to take Norfolk. The fort was renamed for General John E. Wool,
Union commander of the department of Virginia. During the World War
defense nets were spread from Its foundations to trap submarines.

Norfolk

Railroad Stations: Union Depot, Lake Ave. and Main St., for Norfolk and Western Ry.,
Norfolk Southern R.R., and Virginian Ry.; femes, foot of Brooke Ave. y to Chesapeake
and Ohio Ry. and Pennsylvania R.R.; ferry, W. end of York St., to Atlantic Coast line
R.R.; ferry, foot of Jackson St., S. of W.Main St., to Southern Ry.; ferry, foot of Com-
mercial PL, to foot of High St. (Portsmouth), for Seaboard Air Line Ry., Virginian Ry.
Bus Stations: Union Bus Terminal, NE. corner Monticello Ave. and Tazewell St., for
Greyhound Lines, Norfolk Southern Bus Corp., Carolina Coach Co., Peninsula Transit
Corp., and Virginia Coach Lines.

Taxis: Fare 25^ first half mile, 10^ each additional half mile, $2 per hour for 5 passengers
or less.

Streetcars and Blisses: Fare 10^, 3 tokens 25^; weekly pass $i.

Traffic Regulations: Limited free parking on many downtown streets; parking meters on
some streets, 5^ for one hour; a few one-way streets east and west.

Accommodations: 14 hotels; tourist homes.

Information Service: Chamber of Commerce, 107 W.Main St.; Tidewater A. A. A,, Mon-
ticello Hotel, City Hall Ave. and Granby St.

Radio Station: WTAR (780 kc.).

Theaters and Motion Picture Homes: Colonial Theater, Tazewell St., occasional road
shows; Little Theater, W.York and Duke Sts., local productions; 17 motion picture
houses, including 3 for Negroes.

Golf: Ocean View Municipal Golf Course, N. end Granby St., 18 holes, greens fee 60^,
weekends and holidays 75^; Norfolk Golf Club, Sewall Point Rd. W. of Granby St., 18
holes, open by arrangement, greens fee $i, weekends and holidays $1.50; Army Base
Golf Course, E. side Hampton Blvd. opposite U.S. Supply Base, 9 holes, greens fee 25^;
Municipal Golf Course, Memorial Park, between Corprew and Highland Aves., 9 holes,
greens fee 2 5

Baseball : Bain Field, Monticello Ave. and 2 ist St., Norfolk ( Tars, ' Piedmont League.
Football : Bain Field, Monticello Ave. and 2 ist St.

Swimming: Navy Y.M.C.A., NE. corner Brooke Ave. and Boush St., adm. 25^; Fore-
man Field gymnasium, Hampton Blvd. and Boiling Ave., open 9-4, adm. 25^; surf bath-
ing, Willoughby Beach, Ocean View, Chesapeake Beach, Virginia Beach, and Ocean
Breeze Beach (Negro), adm. lojf, children 5^, and Norfolk Municipal Bathing Beach
(Negro), free, on Shore Drive.

Tennis: Lafayette Park, Granby St. and La Vallette Ave., 1 1 courts, open sunrise to sun-
set, free; Fergus Reid Tennis Club, Orapack St. between Colley and Westover Aves.,
open by arrangement 9-6 daily, 50^ for 3 sets.

Riding: Restmere Riding Academy, Sewall Point Rd. W. of Granby St., $1.50 per hour;
Pinewell Saddle Club, Ocean View, $z per hour; Norfolk Saddle Club, Sewall Point Rd.
0.4 m. W. of Granby St., open by arrangement.

Annual Events: Negro Emancipation Day Parade, Jan. i; Cape Henry Pilgrimage,
Apr. 26; Hampton Roads Kennel Club Show, Apr.; Norfolk Fair, early Sept.; Navy
Day, Norfolk Navy Yard and U.S. Naval Operating Base keep ' open house/ Oct. 27.

NORFOLK (7 alt., 129,710 pop.) is a fusion of land and sea, of boats and
brick houses, of civilians and sailors. Pressed between a ragged western

239

240 VIRGINIA

shore line and a zigzag eastern boundary, it stretches north from the east-
ern branch of the Elizabeth River to a curving sand beach on Chesapeake
Bay. Into its fiat surface, partly wrested from the river, reach the salty
multiple fingers of three estuaries: Mason's Creek, its mouth well guarded
by the Naval Base; wide Lafayette River (Tanner's Creek), lined with the
mansions of the commercial and professional aristocracy; and the eastern
branch of the Elizabeth River, its muddy shore a jumble of boats,
wharves, warehouses, and industries extracting life from the sea. On the
western shore, constantly washed by the swift tides of the Elizabeth River
and Hampton Roads, numerous docks, railroad piers, grain elevators, and
other developments make a dense fringe of geometric design.

Linked with Portsmouth by ferries and a bridge, old Norfolk, a maze
of rectangles that form narrow, somber streets, hides behind its bulwark
of river-front buildings except for occasional tall structures that look out
over dark funnels and graceful masts. Plowing through the oily surface of
the harbor are powerful little tugs with barges in tow, gleaming white
coastal and Bay passenger steamers, rusty-hull coastal freighters, tramp
steamers, battleships, trawlers and oyster boats, and less frequently trans-
atlantic steamships. In narrow, tree-lined streets are old brick houses,
some in large yards kept green and damp by sheltering boxwood, mag-
nolia, and crape myrtle, and others shoulder to shoulder, flush with side-
walks. Between drab low buildings in tawdry neighborhoods cobbled al-
leys twist like arteries too cramped for the life that pulses through them.
The dense traffic of commercial Granby Street, a narrow canyon of busi-
ness establishments, motion picture houses, restaurants, and hotels, is
duplicated in Church and Bank Streets, both teeming with people and
filled with shops, and the streets surrounding the large brick Municipal
Market and the Municipal Armory, circled by an open-air flower market.
Some six blocks along Brewer and Market Streets are daily lined with
trucks and stalls, where produce is sold by white and Negro farmers and
hucksters, among them thick-bearded Mennonites dressed in traditional
costume. From the Confederate Monument to the sharp rise of Berkeley
Bridge, East Main Street, its elegant old brick houses of the Colonial elite
now in decay, unrolls its wares in curio shops, wienie bars, tattoo clinics,
shooting galleries, beer gardens, and cheap rooming houses. Nightly this
quarter is patrolled by paired M.P.'s, whose brassards and billies come
most into play when Saturday shore leave spills recruits from the naval
base, sailors from ships, and a goodly number of marines into downtown
Norfolk. Most of the enlisted men, however, find their distractions in the
motion picture houses, beer bars, the large Navy Y.M.C.A., and numer-
ous dance halls that give them an equal chance with civilian swains for
reducing Norfolk's list of eligible spinsters.

Beginning with tree-shaded Ghent which is pierced by the Hague, a
horseshoe-shaped yacht harbor, Norfolk's numerous white suburbs stretch
northward and spread east and west where inlets and marshes allow.
Without perceptible lines of demarcation, swank sections merge into those
of people on limited budgets. In the sandy and pine-covered region near
the Bay are many houses with a perpetual holiday air, for in the distance

NORFOLK 241

are the green-and-white-striped roof tops of Ocean View's tousled casino
and numerous seasonal concessions. Here within city limits proletarian
Norfolk swims, picnics, dances, and plays during the sultry summer^ the
scene always enlivened by white- jacketed gobs from the naval base and
the faraway procession of ships to and from the Capes.

A good portion of Norfolk's 40,000 Negroes live along dingy Charlotte
and East Freemason Streets and in scattered suburban settlements. Hunt-
ersville, Lindenwood, Broad Creek Boulevard, and in thrifty Titustown,
which supplies the city with many domestics. In contrast, extending north
from Brambleton Avenue to Princess Anne Road are slums where Negroes
live in dreary lines of shell-like hovels that pass for dwellings, fronting on
unpaved and often muddy streets.

The stable population of Norfolk consists of a few millionaires, families
in moderate affluence whose daughters make their debut at the Christmas
german, and the rank and file at work in Norfolk's 275 industries. A mu-
seum of fine arts, the Hermitage Foundation that fosters public art ex-
hibitions, lectures, and publications, a symphony orchestra some 20 years
old, and a generous sprinkling of poets supply Norfolk's local culture,
while a country club tops the list of numerous places of diversion suitable
to every purse and taste. Under the stimulus of civic pride Norfolk is be-
ing beautified (1939) by the planting of thousands of azaleas. In future
springs the public parks and incoming roads will be banked with blossoms.

As a maritime town, Norfolk was thwarted by a curious series of re-
verses until development of railroads made it the outlet of an immense
back country, including the Virginia and West Virginia coal fields. Today
factories produce fertilizers, agricultural implements, lumber, cotton and
silk goods, roasted peanuts, and other materials with an annual value of
about $100,000,000. The Norfolk area supplies eastern markets with oys-
ters, fish, and crabs. The city is a distributing center for sea food, fresh
and frozen, to several Southern States. During the winter months it han-
dles large shipments of fish from sources as far distant as the Great Lakes
and Alaska. Large quantities of inedible fish from local fisheries are used
for fertilizer.

But in the eyes of nearly a million yearly visitors, the main lure of Nor-
folk is the access it offers to an all-year playground. Twenty-five miles of
beach near by attract surf bathers from May till November. Myriads of
waterfowl find haven in the Back Bay section, a favorite resort of hunters.
Most of the coastal inlets abound in snipe, sora, wild ducks, and geese.
The weird natural wonderland of the Dismal Swamp, a few miles south,
is a haunt of fur-bearing game, including black bear. Several lakes near
Norfolk invite fresh-water fishermen, and there is good sea fishing off
Ocean View. The vicinity of Cape Henry and Seashore State Park offer
hiking and riding among sunny dunes.

Norfolk's site on the Elizabeth River embraces a grant made to Captain
Thomas Willoughby in 1636. Development began here in 1680, when, in
the 'Act of Cohabitation 1 providing for a town for each county, the gen-
eral Assembly directed that, 'in Lower Norfolk county ... on the East-
erne Branch on Elizabeth river at the entrance of the branch,' 50 acres be

242 VIRGINIA

' measured about, layd out and appointed for a towne, 1 Though Charles II
in 1681 suspended the Act of 1680, * the ffeoffees 7 proceeded with the pur-
chase of the site, *on Nicholas Wise his land,' effecting the transaction in
1682 for *tenn thousand pounds of tobacco and caske.' When in 1691 the
statute of 1680 was re-enacted to provide for "ports of en try, J the town
was described as *the land appointed . . . and accordingly laid out and
paid for and severall dwelling houses and ware houses already built.' In
1705 the house of burgesses named it Norfolk for Norfolk County, Eng-
land.

Trade with the mother country and the West Indies made this the
largest municipality in Colonial Virginia. The first wharves were built of
pine logs fastened together by cross beams and extending from the shore
to the channel. Here t twenty brigs and smaller vessels rode constantly/
Norfolk ships carried tobacco, meat, flour, and lumber to the West Indies
and returned with cargoes of sugar and molasses. Trade with the Caro-
linas, however, was hindered by pirates until Governor Alexander Spots-
wood took determined measures against the sea robbers (see Hampton).

In 1 736 the town of Norfolk ' was ' erected into a borough, by the name
of The borough of Norfolk ... a body corporate, consisting of a maior,
recorder, eight aldermen, and sixteen common council men . . . with
power to elect and send one burgess to sit in the house of burgesses.' Of
1 6 towns authorized in 1705 to acquire borough status a unit politically
separate from the county Norfolk was the only one that became a bor-
ough.

Samuel Boush was the first mayor, and Sir John Randolph served as
recorder. Male citizens took turns at patrolling the streets to restrain the
exuberance of transient sailors. Early streets were improved and new ones
were formed by filling in creeks and marshes.

The town had to reclaim ground from tidal sloughs as the population
grew. Church Street led across the neck of a peninsula to the mainland.
Main (then Front) Street, bordering the waterfront, was crowded with
warehouses, residences, shops, sailors' boarding houses, and ordinaries.
Most of the early citizens quenched their thirst at taverns, the only source
of drinking water being a public spring near the corner of Main and
Church Streets. Water for other uses came from the river and, in case of
fire, was passed along from hand to hand by bucket brigades.

Norfolk by 1740 had a population of about 1,000, composed of English
and Scottish residents and some Irish. The merchants were mainly anti-
Jacobite Scots, Importing most of their luxuries from Great Britain and
conducting a lucrative trade with the mother country, the well-to-do mer-
chants leaned toward Tory conservatism. In recognition of their loyalty,
Governor Robert Dinwiddie in 1 7 53 presented the corporation with a mace.

Though Norfolk protested boldly against the Stamp Act and later con-
tributed its share of minutemen, it became early in the Revolution a rally-
ing point for Tories. Lord Dunmore, the royal governor, chose Norfolk
and Portsmouth as bases for his ships. Landing at Norfolk, he dismantled
the printing office of John Holt and seized two printers publishing revolu-
tionary literature. He was finally forced to retire (see Portsmouth).

NORFOLK 243

The Virginia regiments under Colonel William Woodford occupied Nor-
folk, and Dunmore attempted to drive them out by bombarding the bor-
ough, January i, 1776. When firing ceased, the riflemen continued to plun-
der and burn buildings without the interference of officers. Finally Colonel
Woodford forbade the burning of houses under severe penalty, but two-
thirds of Norfolk was in ashes. In February the rest of the town was
burned, by order of the Colonial government, to rid it of Tories and to de-
prive Dunmore of shelter. Only the borough church (St.PauFs) was
spared. After assisting 'poor people' ia. finding shelter elsewhere, troops
abandoned the area.

After peace was signed in 1783, the Tories returned to Norfolk and be-
gan restoring the borough's former commercial prestige. In 1794 Norfolk
was overrun with several thousand French refugees from the Negro insur-
rection in Santo Domingo. It had then, said Moreau de St.Mery, a popu-
lation of 3,000, a brick theater, a hospital, an academy, two gazettes, and
a Catholic chapel where 'a zealous Irishman with a red face has come to
preach to the wretched French refugees.' The women l are pretty in Nor-
folk/ noted Moreau de St.Mery, 'but their complexion is sallow and . . .
the length of their feet is also somewhat disagreeable.'

Norfolk soon became the port for water-borne trade from the inknd
country. The town suffered from a disastrous fire in 1799. During the
Napoleonic wars Norfolk's commerce increased only to be lost to the
French, Spanish, and British privateers. The anger of Norfolk shipowners
reached a peak in 1807, when the Chesapeake was fired upon by the British
frigate Leopard.

During the War of 1812 men of Norfolk, Portsmouth, and other towns,
with a reinforcement of marines from the frigate Constellation, joined to
form defenses. On June 22,1813, Fort Norfolk and Fort Nelson repulsed a
British attack on Portsmouth by land and afterwards, aided by batteries
on Craney Island, routed an assault by barges.

Peace in 1815 promised to restore Norfolk's prosperity, though New
York was a strong trade rival. In 1822 the first steam ferry made a trial
trip between Norfolk and Portsmouth. In 1845 the general assembly made
Norfolk a city. With a population of 14,000 in 1854, it began to regain,
some of its earlier prestige. In 1855, however, it met with a setback in an
epidemic of yellow fever, which destroyed about a tenth of the popula-
tion. The hero of the scourge was a Negro gravedigger, who buried the
dead until he, too, was struck down by the plague. He is remembered as
'Yellow Fever Jack,' and a monument in a cemetery here testifies to his
faithfulness.

Margaret Douglas, a white woman from North Carolina, started Vir-
ginia's first Negro free school in Norfolk in 1853. When the enrollment in-
creased to 25 she was sentenced to 30 days in jail on the charge that sev-
eral pupils were slaves.

Hardly had the city recovered from the epidemic when the War be*
tween the States brought on a new series of disasters. After the secession oi
Virginia, the Federal command evacuated and burned the navy yard in
Portsmouth. But when Roanoke Island, south of Norfolk, was occupied ii?

244 VIRGINIA

February 1862, the situation of Norfolk became precarious; and, though
the Virginia (Merrimac) gained temporary victories in March, Norfolk
fel to Union forces under General John Ellis Wool, May 10, 1862. The
city was never again in Confederate hands.

With the coming of peace Norfolk had little trade and no apparent fu-
ture, but a hope came to fulfilment through the development of railroads.
The Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad, laid in 1858, was merged in 1870
with the Southside and the Virginia & Tennessee as the Atlantic, Missis-
sippi and Ohio Railroad. This system, reorganized in 1881 as the Norfolk
and Western Railroad Company, brought the first carload of coal into
Norfolk in 1882 and began the traffic that made Norfolk a commanding
coal port.

Meanwhile, the Norfolk and Southern (now Norfolk Southern) Rail-
road Company, chartered in 1875 as tne Elizabeth City and Norfolk Rail-
road Company, laid tracks between Norfolk and Elizabeth City, North
Carolina. When the road was extended to Albemarle Sound, Norfolk be-
came a port through which fruit, vegetables, and other perishable prod-
ucts of the South pass quickly to Northern markets. The Virginian Rail-
way (organized as the Tidewater Railway in 1904), which brings coal from
West Virginia, and the Belt Line, connecting all railroads with terminals at
Norfolk and Portsmouth, are more recent developments in transportation.

Norfolk has extended its boundaries several times. In 1906 it annexed
Berkley,, a town on the east side of the river's southern branch.

The Jamestown Tercentennial Celebration (Jamestown Exposition)
was held in 1907, on a 34oacre site at Sewall Point. A Congressional Act of
1905 provided for a celebration of i the birth of the American Nation, the
first permanent Settlement of English-speaking people on the Western
Hemisphere, by the holding of an international naval, marine, and mili-
tary celebration in the vicinity of Jamestown. 7 Virginia erected many
buildings; many States built duplicates of early homes to create a 'Colo-
nial City ' ; and the Federal Government contributed buildings and a pier.
The exposition was formally opened by President Theodore Roosevelt.
Today the grounds are occupied by the Naval Training Station.

Norfolk boomed during the World War. For two years training stations
and munitions factories hummed with activity; camouflaged ships sailed
in and out; soldiers and sailors and their followers overflowed the city;
officers came to Norfolk for diversion. With the coming of peace in 1918
the munitions plants were closed, but since then- the city has steadily
pulled itself out of postwar depression and acquired more territory. In
1919 it adopted the city-manager plan of government. Industrially, Nor-
folk is now one of the foremost cities of the New South. For the traveler
and Norfolk is a traveler's town there are few places that rival its varied
attractions.

POINTS OF INTEREST

i. The CONFEDERATE MONUMENT, Main St. and Commercial
Place, is a towering pedestal of white Vermont granite surmounted by the

NORFOLK 242

bronze figure of a soldier. The pedestal was erected In 1889 on the centei
lot of the original town of Norfolk. In 1907, when more funds were col-
lected, the monument was completed by the addition of the statue de-
signed by William Couper, Norfolk sculptor.

:- 2. ST. PAUL'S CHURCH (Episcopal) (open 8:30-5 daily, except 8:30-1
Thurs. and Sun.), NW. corner N.Church St. and E.City Hall Ave. s stand-
ing in a placid, brick-walled graveyard strewn with ancient tombstones ?
of which the oldest bears the date 1673, Incorporates much of the walls of
the only building that survived the bombardment by Dunmore's ships
and the subsequent burning of Norfolk in 1776. A cannon ball is embedded
In the south wall. Beneath a thick mantle of ivy the building shows good
proportions. Small 'rose' windows, late Georgian Colonial vestibules, and
a short, semidetached tower built in 1901 are recent alterations. The tran-
septs and the roof were reconstructed about 1892.

The first church on this site was erected in 1639-41, but the present
building dates from 1739. Long known as Borough Church, it still serves
Elizabeth River Parish, constituted about 1634.

On the second floor of the adjacent brick Parish House is ST.PADX'S
MUSEUM (open 8:30-5 weekdays except 8:30-1 Thurs.; 8:30-12 Sun.; adm*
free). Here are displayed documents and pictures relative to the history ol
4)ld Virginia churches and portraits of ecclesiastical and secular leaders.,^

3. The NORFOLK COURTHOUSE, SE. corner E.City Hall Ave. and
N.Bank St., built between 1847 an( l ^50, has a portico with six Tuscan
columns. The front of the two-story building Is of faced granite, the rest is
stuccoed. A colonnaded dome rising no feet above the street looks down
on magnificent shade trees that cover a neat lawn. When first erected, this
building was the city hall. The CLERK'S OFFICE, back of the courthouse,
was built, apparently, at the same time as the main structure.

4. The MYERS HOUSE (open 9-6 daily, adm. 25$, SW. corner E.
Freemason and N.Bank Sts., built in 1789-91, has one of the finest Adam
style interiors in America. The walls are thickly covered with ivy. A fine
cornice continues across the gable ends, which are pierced by fanlights.
The well-proportioned windows in two tiers have heavy flat arches of
stone with raised keys. Twin entrances, opening on each side of the outer
corner and approached by short, double flights of white marble steps be-
tween iron railings, have mahogany do6rs protected by arched pedi-
mented hoods supporte4 on slender fluted columns.

KEY TO NORFOLK MAP

i. The Confederate Monument a.St.PauPs Church 3-The Norfolk Courthouse
4/The Myers House 5. The Masonic Temple 6.01d Norfolk Academy 7. The First
Baptist Church S.Norfolk's Mace g.The United States Customhouse lo.The Sams
House i r .The Greene House 1 2.The Chinese Baptist Church 13 .The Whittle House
i4.The Selden House is/The Norfolk Public Library i6.The Milhado House
17-Fort Norfolk iS.The Museum of Arts and Sciences ig.Christ-St.Luke's Church
2o.The Female Orphan Society ai.Tazewell Manor 2 2. The Norfolk Division of the
CoUege of William and Mary and Branch of V.P.I. 23.The United States Marine Hos-
pital 24.The United States Naval Operating Base.

246

247

248 VIRGINIA

The ceiling of the spacious hall along one side is ornamented with beau-
tiful plaster work in low relief above a delicate cornice and deep frieze.
With variations of design the ceilings are similar in all the principal rooms,
and paneled dadoes lead around to mantlepieces of the finest Adamesque
delicacy. The dining room and the rooms above it were added about
1800.

Built by Moses Myers, merchant and consul of Dutch- Jewish ancestry
who moved here from New York, the house was occupied continuously by
members of his family until 1931, when it was opened as a museum. Be-
sides a large quantity of furniture of good American and English design,
there are portraits of Moses Myers and of his wife, Eliza Judd of Canada,
by Gilbert Stuart, a Thomas Sully portrait of their eldest son, John, and
others.

5. The MASONIC TEMPLE, SE. corner E.Freemason and N.Brewer
Sts., is a brick building appropriately erected, in 1875, on the street that
was designated Freemason on the 'Boush Plan, 5 a map of Norfolk made
in 1762. First chartered in 1741, the lodge subsequently surrendered its
charter, and a new one was granted in 1786.

6. OLD NORFOLK ACADEMY, N.Bank St., between Grigsby PL
and E.Charlotte St., is an austere brick building in Greek Revival style
modeled on the plan of the Temple of Theseus and painted gray. The fa-
gade has a double portico supported by six Doric columns. Built about
1840, the building housed the Norfolk Academy until it was acquired by
the city in 1916. It accommodates the juvenile and domestic relations
court.

7. The FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH (Negro), 418 E.Bute St., is a
brownstone building, the fourth on this site, completed in 1904 by the
oldest Baptist organization in the city. Organized in 1800 by the Rev-
erend James Mitchell, an Englishman, the congregation first met in a hall,
then in the f Borough Church ? (St.Paul's). In 1816 all the white members
except the ministers family withdrew and organized a new church.

8. NORFOLK'S MACE rests within a specially designed plate glass
case in the vault of the National Bank of Commerce Building (open 9-4
weekdays, 9-12 Sat.)', NE. corner N.Atlantic and E.Main Sts. Of pure
silver, the mace weighs six-and-a-half pounds and is 41 inches long. The
staff, composed of six sections, is embellished with leaves and scrolls.
Under the openwork of the crown surmounting the head are the arms of
Great Britain, the letters C.R., and the initials of Fuller White, London
silversmith who fashioned the mace. Around the paneled periphery are
the emblems of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland.

At the base is the inscription: 'The gift of the Hon ble Robert Dinwiddie
Es qr Lieu 1 Governour of Virginia to the Corporation of Norfolk 1753.'

Despite the date, the mace was not presented until 1754, when it was
'thankfully received. 7 Carried for safe keeping to Kemp's Landing when
Norfolk was burned in 1776, it was subsequently returned, making only two
appearances, in 1836 and 1857, until May 1862, when Mayor W.W.Lamb
(1835-1909), liberal editor of the Daily Southern Argus, alarmed at the
Confederate evacuation, buried the * beautiful and bright though ancient

Agriculture

j$ < iV ; ', w< V" "b,"< ^V.ft' 1 * 'Vv'' 1 ;;
! l *^^1I.VS^^. 1 ^VVK^'*J^v" '' ff k '':

4 ^M^Ai^^Jii^!* '^'1

Photograph by W. Lincoln Highton

DAFFODUS FOR THE MARKET, GLOUCESTER COUNTY

Photograph by courtesy of the Virginia Department of Agriculture
COTTON, GREENSVfUE COUNTY

EASTERN SHORE POTATO FIELD

Photograph by courtesy of the Virginia State Chamber of Commerce

ffjofograpri by W. Lincoln Highton

SPINACH FIELD IK EARLY SPRING, NEAR SMiTHFIELD

Photograph by courtesy of the Virginia Department of Agriculture

TOBACCO, CHARLOTTE COUNTY

Af OtCHAtDS, NEAt SALEM

Photograph by Unfted States Forest Servfce

HARVEST BEID IN THE BLUE SIDGE

Photograph by courtesy of Farm Security AdmfnrstratJoo

Photograph by courtesy of the Virginia Conservation Commission

APPLE 'RUNNER; WINCHESTER

ROWING IN THE PIEDMONT

Photograph by W. Lincoln Highlon

WALNUT GROVE, WHERE THE McCORMICK REAPER WAS INVENTED (1831)

Photograph by W. Lincoln Highton

SPRING PUNTING, NEAR WOODSTOCK

Photograph by W. Lincoln Highton

VALLEY FARM, NEAR ROANOKE

SKY MEADOW, HiAR 5ALTVIUE

Photograph by W. Lincoln Highton

OAfRY HERD, ROCICWGHAM COUNTY

Photograph by courtesy of the Virginia Department of Agriculture

NORFOLK 249

silver mace ' under the hearthstone of his house. It was discovered in 1894
among a litter of old records in a room at the police station.

9. The UNITED STATES CUSTOMHOUSE, Main and Granby Sts.,
Is a large stone building, completed in 1857. The Corinthian capitals of
the portico and the columns of the interior are of cast iron. Some of the
original floors, of black and white marble in checkerboard pattern^ havt
been replaced.

The first customhouse, built in 1819 at Church and Water Streets, was
converted into a Federal prison during the War between the States, after
which it was burned.

10. The SAMS HOUSE (private), 311 N.Boush St., is a yellow painted
brick structure, rising two stories above an English basement. It has a
high, classical porch and a double iron-railed flight of steps. The name of
the builder, Robert Boush, a great-grandson of Norfolk's first mayor, who
purchased the land in 1715, is cut in one of the bricks; two other bricks
bear the date 1800. Descendants of the Boush family owned and occupied
the house until 1847, when it was purchased by Conway Whittle. Here
Conway Whittle Sams wrote the Conquest of Virginia.

n. The^ GREENE HOUSE (private), 317 N.Boush St., set back from
the street in a neat greensward, is a square frame building in early Fed-
eral style. Twin flights of steps ascend behind iron railings to a stoop.
This house was probably built by John Pry or, who bought the land in
1786. In 1796 it became the property of Eli Vickery, and in 1883, of the
Greene family.

12. The CHINESE BAPTIST CHURCH, 206 E.Freemason St., a
brick building erected in 1879 by the First Christian Disciples, has a Chi-
nese minister and a Sunday school attended by some 70 Chinese children.
Church work among the Chinese, begun in 1901 by an interdenomina-
tional group, was turned over in 1918 to the Baptist Union of Norfolk and
Portsmouth, which in 1930 sponsored the organization of this church.

13. The WHITTLE HOUSE (private), SE. corner N.Duke and W.
Freemason Sts., a dignified brick building in Georgian Colonial style, has
a PaUadian window and a pedimented entrance approached by a flight of
wide and well-worn sandstone steps. The house was built about 1791 by
an English architect, who made it his home until 1795. In 1803 it was pur-
chased by Richard Taylor. Colonel Walter H. Taylor, who served
throughout the War between the States on the staff of General Robert E.
Lee, was born in this house.

14. The SELDEN HOUSE (private), SW. corner W.Freemason and
Botetourt Sts., a post-Colonial frame building with broad chimneys, was
built in 1807 as a country house for Dr. William B. Selden (1773-1849),
originally of Hampton, who settled in Norfolk after a medical education in
Philadelphia and Edinburgh, and became a leading physician.

When Norfolk was occupied by Federal troops from 1862-65, General
Egbert L. Viele, military governor of the city, occupied the Selden house.
Egbert L. Viele Jr., born here in 1864, settled in France at an early age
and under the name of Francis Viele-Griffin became an outstanding poet
and vers librist. Robert E. Lee, during his last visit to Norfolk in 1870, was

250 VIRGINIA

a guest In this house, then occupied by Dr.Selden's son, Dr. William Selden
(1808-87), formerly a surgeon in the Confederate army.

15. The NORFOLK PUBLIC LIBRARY (open 9-9 weekdays), 340 W.
Freemason St., the gift of Andrew Carnegie, is a large stone building in
French Renaissance style built on land donated by the daughters of Dr.
William Selden: Julia,' Charlotte, Caroline, and Mary. In the fireproof
William Henry Sargeant Memorial Room there is a valuable collection of
Virginiana. The library, which has about 90,000 volumes, maintains three
branches, including one for Negroes.

16. The MILHADO HOUSE (private), 250 W.Bute St., a tall brick
building, has a dormer-windowed attic and two front entrances, one in the
English basement and the other, more formal, through a portico to the
floor above. In the rear stands the old kitchen. Erected 'in the fields,'
probably by John Smith, the first occupant, the house was bought in 1768
by Dr.AIexander Gordon. While serving as surgeon in the British army
during the Revolution, Colonel Gordon was captured and imprisoned at
Norfolk. Exchanged for an American officer in 1775, he returned to Eng-
land, where he died. Aaron Milhado II (1808-51), Colonel Gordon's
grandson, and a subsequent owner of the house, was one of Norfolk's
leading citizens.

17. FORT NORFOLK (open by permission from District Engineer's
Office, War Department, Post Office Building), W. end of Front St., with gun-
less ramparts and a smooth lawn that sweeps to a sea wall, long ago out-
lived its usefulness as a fortress and is now district headquarters of the
United States Engineers and a storage place for ammunition.

Built in 1794 by the State of Virginia, the fort was sold the following
year to the Federal Government. From its key position, it aided American
troops in opposing the British at the Battle of Craney Island, June 22,
1813. Abandoned by the garrison upon Virginia's secession, it was held by
the Confederates until Norfolk was evacuated in 1862.

18. The MUSEUM OF ARTS AND SCIENCES (open 12-5:30 Tues.-
SaL; 2:30-5:30 Sun.; free), SE. corner Yarmouth St. and Mowbray Arch,
a limestone building of Italian Renaissance design, was opened in 1933.
American Indian artifacts and pottery, Mexican idols, Chinese ceramics,
stoneware and early porcelain are on display as permanent and loan col-
lections. An extensive library specializes in genealogical works. The mu-
seum conducts special exhibitions of contemporary art, publishes the
quarterly Tidewater Arts Review, and presents frequent lectures on art,
music, literature, and the drama.

19. CHRIST-ST.LUKE'S CHURCH (Episcopal) (open 8-5 M on.-Fri.,
8-2 30 Sat. and 6-1 :3o Sun,), SE. corner W.Olney Rd, and Stockley Gar-
dens, is a gray granite building with limestone trim designed in a modified
Tudor Gothic style. A high tower above the entrance is finished with elab-
orate finials. Foremost among the decorations are a bas-relief carved in
Caen stone after Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, and stained glass win-
dows by Meyer of Munich.

This congregation was formed and the building erected in 1936 follow-
ing the merger of three churches: Christ Church, founded in 1800 on its

NORFOLK 251

separation from the Borough Church (St.PauPs) ; St. Luke's Church, or-
ganized in 1871; and St.Andrew's Church, formed about 1912.

20. The FEMALE ORPHAN SOCIETY, 5505 Powhatan Ave., cares
for Norfolk girls from two-and-one-half to twelve years of age who are
orphans or from broken homes. Organized in 1804 by Bishop Francis As-
bury and a group of women, the society opened its first home in 1817.

21. TAZEWELL MANOR (private), 6225 Powhatan Ave., Edgewater,
is a two-story frame house, its hip roof slate-covered and pierced at each
corner by a brick chimney. A small portico has four Tuscan columns. The
wings are later additions. Built in 1784 on Tazewell St., the house was
moved to its present location in 1902. The front lawn, edging the Eliza-
beth River, overlooks Hampton Roads and the distant mouths of the
James and Nansemond rivers. Tazewell Manor was built by John Boush,
great-grandson of Norfolk's first mayor, and was subsequently purchased
by Governor Littleton Waller Tazewell.

22. The NORFOLK DIVISION OF THE COLLEGE OF WILLIAM
AND MARY and a branch of the VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INSTI-
TUTE, SW. corner Hampton Blvd. and Boiling Ave., providing college
courses for- local students, are housed in a former public school building
acquired in 1930 and a large brick structure built in 1936. On the grounds
is FOREMAN FIELD, containing a concrete stadium with a seating capacity
of 18,000, erected in 1936.

23. The UNITED STATES MARINE HOSPITAL, E.Hampton Blvd.
facing Lafayette River, is a large structure of concrete, stone, and brick,
built in 1922 and greatly enlarged in 1933. With a capacity for 400 pa-
tients, it admits persons certified for hospital and out-patient treatment
by the U.S. Public Health Service.

24. The UNITED STATES NAVAL OPERATING BASE (open
8 a.m. to sunset daily), Hampton Blvd. and 99th St., occupies the 85o-acre
site of the Jamestown Exposition on Hampton Roads. Established in 1917,
it is one of the most modern naval bases in the world. Scattered about are
453 buildings valued, with equipment, at $30,000,000. Major units are the
Navy Supply Depot, 12 warehouses that handle supplies for the entire
fleet; the Marine Corps Depot of Supplies, supply base and assembling
point for marines assigned to foreign duty; Marine Barracks; the Training
Station, consisting of a drill department for recruits, Service Schools De-
partment for the technical training of enlisted men, and a preparatory
school for enlisted candidates for the Naval Academy; and the Naval Air
Station, a repair base for fleet aircraft.

POINTS OF INTEREST IN ENVIRONS

Adam Thoroughgood House, 8 m.\ Seashore State Park, 14 m.\ Cape Henry,
17 m.-, Fort Story, 17.5 w.; Virginia Beach, 18 m. (see Tour 8a). Norfolk Navy Yard,
1 m, (see Portsmouth).

liliiiMiiiiiiliiliM

Portsmouth

Railroad Stations: Broad St. between Hartford and Wopdrow Sts., Port Norfolk, for At-
lantic Coast Line R.R. and Southern Ry.; E. end of High St., adjacent to Portsmouth-
Norfolk ferries, for Seaboard Air Line Ry. and Chesapeake and Ohio ferry, leaving
8: 45 a.m. daily for Newport News, for Virginian Ry., Norfolk & Western Ry., Chesa-
peake and Ohio Ry., Pennsylvania R.R. and Norfolk Southern R.R.
Bus Stations: Greyhound Bus Terminal, 119 High St., for Atlantic Greyhound, Penn.
Greyhound, Richmond Greyhound, Norfolk Southern, Virginia Coach, Carolina Coach,
and Peninsula Transit Lines.

Taxis : Fare 25^ for ist m., iojf for each additional half m.; no charge for extra passen-
gers.

Local Bus: Fare 7 fa 116 High St., for busses to Deep Creek, fare 25^, round trip 40?*,
and to Bowers Hill, fare 20$, round trip 30^.

Traffic Regulations: No U-turns under traffic lights, parking limits in business district
from 10 minutes to 2 hours day and night in most congested district.

Accommodations: 4 hotels; numerous tourist homes, especially on highways leading out
of the city.

Information Service: Chamber of Commerce, 215^ High St.; Tidewater Auto Ass'n,
Monroe Hotel, NE. corner Court and High Sts.

Motion Picture Houses: 4, including i for Negroes.

Baseball: Sewanee Field, Washington St. between Lincoln and Henry Sts., for games of

Portsmouth ' Truckers/ Piedmont League.

Golf: Portsmouth Country Club, Glensheallah, 0.5 m. NW. of city limits, off W. end

High St., 9 holes, open by arrangement, greens fee 25^ for 9, 40^ for 18 holes weekdays,

5of for 18 holes Sun.; Portsmouth Municipal Golf Course, Portsmouth City Park,

1.5 m. W. of city limits at end of King St., 9 holes, greens fee 25^, 40 j for 18 holes, Sat.

and Sun. 30^, 50^ for 18 holes.

Swimming: Y.M.C.A., 527 High St.; Portsmouth Country Club, 0.5 m. NW. of city

limits off W. end High St., adm. by arrangement, fee 25^; surf bathing at Ocean View,

10 m. NE. of city limits via Granby St., Norfolk, and Virginia Beach, 20 m. E. of city

limits on US 58.

Tennis: Portsmouth City Park, W. end King St., 4 courts, no fee; Portsmouth Country

Club, 0.5 m. NW. of city limits off W. end High St., open by arrangement.

Annual Events: Pilgrimage to Cape Henry, Apr. 26; tour to Dismal Swamp and Lake
Drummond, round trip fare $1.2$, Oct.; Navy Day, Oct. 27 (inspection of shops and
ships in dry docks).

In PORTSMOUTH (12 alt., 45,704 pop.) the sea dominates. The odors of
brine and creosote fill the air, and the hollow sound of boat whistles floats
eerily from the water. Commercial fisheries lie at the end of cobbled alleys
and near docks and freight piers. Blue-jacketed sailors hurry to some long-
anticipated rendezvous or idle in groups. Less conspicuous are the old
families of Portsmouth, who cherish their traditions and customs, and find
diversions at the country club and cotillion.

252

PORTSMOUTH 253

The city occupies a waterlocked point of flat land penetrated by nu-
merous arms of the oily Elizabeth River and its southern western
branches. Its geometric blocks, bisected by many railroad tracks, spread
from a rich truck-farming section on the southwest to the circling water's
edge, lined on the east with piers that look across the river to the jagged
Norfolk skyline. The two cities are connected by a tollbridge and profit-
able ferries commercial shuttles that are crowded with weekend pleas-
ure vehicles.

Along Portsmouth's tree-lined streets, walled in by close-set rows of
comparatively modern residences, are occasional survivals of eighteenth-
century buildings, many overlooking narrow gardens planted with box-
wood, magnolia, and other shrubbery of the South. From dingy Crawford
Street, divided by railroad tracks and edged with raucous beer bars inter-
mingled with commercial houses, streets run at right angles to cut their way
through the old town, the center of which is occupied by the extensive Sea-
board Air Line Railway shops. The commercial life of Portsmouth flour-
ishes along wide and lengthy High Street, which begins opposite the ferry-
landing, runs between shops and restaurants, lighted at night in a blaze of
neon, then past churches and the courthouse, traverses a Negro section,
and finally leads into an area of homes. Residential Court Street, a wide
north-south artery, begins at the water's edge, runs through midtown, and
ends in a cluster of all-night food-and-beer bars at the guarded entrance
of the Navy Yard. During working hours Navy Yard employees hurry
along the shaded length of these two thoroughfares, while at night
shipbound sailors and marines trudge its darkened sidewalks. Westward
stretch the suburbs, densely populated, shaded, flat, and frozen or cooled,
according to the season, by winds sweeping across the wide mouth of the
Western Branch. Living in numerous sections is Portsmouth's Negro pop-
ulation (41 per cent of the whole), which supplies the city with sea-food
workers, fishermen, marine yard employees, and domestics. Along parts
of County and High Streets, and for several blocks on streets extending
toward Scott's Creek, life teems in ramshackle houses that rise flush from
the sidewalk. The homes of the business and professional class meet
much -higher standards. Despite too-evident poverty, the Negroes sup-
port a theater, and many 'cook shops' and general stores.

Portsmouth's industrial life is carried on in the 40 freight piers that edge
the water front, in buildings on the ragged peninsula just beyond the Navy
Yard, and in various factories and mills scattered about the city. Cotton-
seed oil, fertilizer, paint, hosiery, chemicals, foundry products, and lumber
constitute the major part of the city's industrial output. The aggregate an-
nual pay roll exceeds $12,000,000.

The palisaded village of the Chesapeake Indians had long disappeared
when Captain William Carver, mariner, aqquired a plantation in 1664
along the brackish southern banks of the Elizabeth River. Later, despite
the high offices he held, Captain Carver, f deciding to risk his old bones
against the Indian rogues,' participated in Bacon's Rebellion (1676), even
attempting to capture Governor Berkeley. For this treasonable escapade,
he was afterwards hanged. His confiscated land was granted in 1716 to

254 VIRGINIA

Colonel WilMam Crawford, who In 1750 'laid out a parcel of land . . . into
one hundred and twenty-two lots, commodious streets, places for a court
house, market, and public landings for a town . . . and made sale . . .
to divers persons . . . desirous to settle and build thereon speedily.*
Naming the pkce Portsmouth, he presented it to Norfolk County. In 1752
the general assembly * enacted . . . that the said . . . parcel of land
be ... established a town . . . and retain the name of Portsmouth/

Among the traders, merchants, and shipbuilders, chiefly Scots, who
flocked to the new town, was Andrew Sprowle. Acquiring land imme-
diately to the south, he started the village of Gosport named after the
town opposite Portsmouth, England by building a marine yard and
tenements for workers. The British Government, recognizing the value of
this enterprise, soon took over the yard as a repair station and appointed
Andrew Sprowle navy agent.

When royal government ended in Virginia in 1775, Governor Dunmore
fled to Sprowle's home in Gosport, where he lived 'riotously upon his
friend/ For several months, he rallied Tories and Negroes about him and
plundered the countryside, until his defeat at Great Bridge. Immediately
afterwards he joined the British fleet, accompanied by Sprowle.

Following the burning of Norfolk in 1776, Dunmore and his Tories took
possession of Portsmouth and remained until the eccentric General
Charles Lee arrived with his forces, and Dunmore sailed away with his
whole following. Finding the town a hotbed of Tories, General Lee, ' to
quell this Toryism/ had the houses 'of the most notorious Traitors' de-
molished. Sprowle's property and the abandoned marine yard were seized.
Later, Fort Nelson, named for General Thomas Nelson, was erected on
Windmill Point.

One May morning of 1779, a great gray British fleet, carrying 2,000 men
and commanded by Sir George Collier, anchored in Elizabeth River. Gen-
eral Edward Mathew of the fleet burned Fort Nelson and the marine yard,
and the British departed. Portsmouth was the landing place and base for
three other invading British expeditions under Leslie, Arnold, and Phillips.

The Revolution had repercussions in Portsmouth. Filled with refugees
from burned Norfolk, the town, tolerant at first } soon flamed with indig-
nation. About 1784 'those execrable miscreants called Tories' were told
'to leave this town immediately' or 'measures' would be taken. Thus ban-
ished, the 'Tories' went back to ruined Norfolk.

In 1784 Andrew Sprowle's confiscated property, Gosport, was divided
into lots and made a part of Portsmouth. A decade later, the navy yard,
which the State had retained, was lent to the Federal Government, Cap-
tain Richard Dale was placed in command, and the keel of a frigate was
laid. The Chesapeake, the first ship built by the Federal Government, was
completed in 1799. In 1801 the Government purchased the Gosport Navy
Yard (now Norfolk Navy Yard) for $12,000. In 1798 a visitor remarked
that 'one might walk from Portsmouth to Norfolk on the decks of vessels
at anchor.'

In an attempt to take Portsmouth and the navy yard during the War of
1812, the British landed 2,600 men at Port Norfolk (now a part of Ports-

PORTSMOUTH 255

mouth), but the guns of Fort Nelson and Fort Norfolk stopped the inva-
sion. A fresh onslaught was made on sandy Craney Island, fined with re-
doubts. Approaching in barges, the British were met with a bombard-
ment that sank several vessels and caused an immediate retreat.

After extending its town limits in 181 1 , Portsmouth witnessed the open-
ing of the Dismal Swamp Canal in 1812, a 'boat containing 10,000 shin-
gles 7 being the first to pass over the mingled waters of Chesapeake Bay
and Albemarle Sound. In 1821, when the first horseboat ferry was built,
the town was swept by a fire of incendiary origin, but it was soon rebuilt.
The land on which Fort Nelson lay was augmented by a 6i-acre tract in
1826, the old fort was demolished, and on its site a naval hospital was be-
gun. The town's first railroad was chartered in 1834, and public schools
were established in 1846.

During this period Portsmouth attended its jockey, cricket, and quoit
clubs; frequented racecourses; watched the launching of the Lady of the
Lake (1830), which 'moved by its own steam'; and welcomed such visi-
tors as Andrew Jackson (1833) and Henry Clay (1844).

Yellow fever, brought by a ship just returned from the tropics, deci-
mated the inhabitants of Portsmouth in 1855. Of the 4,000 people who re-
mained in the town during the epidemic, 1,089 died. In 1858 Portsmouth
was chartered as a city.

When Virginia seceded from the Union, the Gosport Navy Yard was
evacuated and burned, after which Virginia troops occupied the area. In
May 1862 the Confederates burned the navy yard and evacuated the
area. Then Federal forces moved in, established martial law in Ports-
mouth, and again took possession of the navy yard.

Another phase of Portsmouth's commercial era began in 1837 with the
completion of the Portsmouth and Roanoke Railroad. Subsequently this
line was incorporated in the Virginia and Carolina Railroad, which in 1900
became the Seaboard Air Line Railway, with its coastal terminus at Ports-
mouth. Branches of two other railroads, the Atlantic Coast Line and the
Southern, bring inland produce to the city. Since taking over the lines of
the Atlantic and Danville Railway in 1894, the Southern has built an elab-
orate system of freight piers on the Western Branch.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Portsmouth started extend-
ing its wharves along the water front, and, as necessity demanded, de-
molished its old houses to make way for modern business establishments.

POINTS OF INTEREST

The NORFOLK COUNTY COURTHOUSE (open 9-5 Mon.-Fri., 9-1
Sat.), NW. corner Court and High Sts., is a one-story brick building with
broad stone steps leading to a shallow, four-columned portico. The first
courthouse for Norfolk County, built 1784-89, was in Berkley and the sec-
ond was erected in Portsmouth in 1801. The present structure was built
between 1844 and 1846 -William R. Singleton, architect and was re-
modeled after the War between the States. New Norfolk County was
formed in 1636 from Elizabeth City County and the next year divided into

256 VIRGINIA

Upper Norfolk and Lower Norfolk. The present Norfolk County was cut
from Lower Norfolk IB 1691.

TRINITY CHURCH (^w 9:30-5 daily), SW. corner Court and High
Sts., is a brick building, stuccoed tan, with green classical trim. One of the
original churches of Portsmouth Parish formed from Elizabeth River
Parish in 1761, It was erected In 1762, partly rebuilt in 1829, and later re-
modeled. The bell, which cracked while pealing the news of Cornwall's
surrender, was recast. The church is on one of the four corner lots that
Colonel William Crawford gave for public buildings in 1750.

Because its greensward was the first public burying ground in Ports-
month, Trinity stands among the tombs of the city fathers. The oldest
stone, dated 1763, memorializes Alexander Scott, editor of a Norfolk news-
paper, who lived In Gosport; others identify Commodore James Barren
(1768-1851), commander of the Chesapeake; Colonel Bernard Magnein,
aide to La Fayette; and the Reverend John Braidfoot, second rector of
Portsmouth Parish (1774-85) and a chaplain In the Continental army.

UNITED STATES NAVAL HOSPITAL (open 6 a.m.-g p.m. daily;
adm. by arrangement), N. end Green St., occupies a beautiful peninsula in
the Elizabeth River. The main unit, a three-story brick and stone struc-
ture on a high basement, is stuccoed in white and gray. Long stone steps
lead up to the ten Doric columns of the portico. Among the 51 other build-
ings to the west is the Pharmacist's Mates School, in which an average of
325 men are trained annually. A swimming pool, athletic field, and tennis
courts provide diversion for the 572 enlisted men and civilian employees.
The institution serves navy and marine corps, their dependents, and the
Virginia and North Carolina war veterans.

The naval hospital was begun in 1827 under the direction of John Havi-
land, Philadelphia architect, and was opened in 1830. During the yellow
fever epidemic of 1855 nearly 600 patients were cared for here. Its capacity
was taxed during the War between the States and the Spanish- American
War. In 1902 the Hospital Corps Training School was instituted. Between
1907 and 1909 the main building was demolished, except for the portico,
and a new one erected.

On the grounds are two monuments. One, designed by John Haviland,
is a memorial to Major John Saunders, commander of Fort Nelson in 1805 ;
the other, of rough granite surmounted by a cannon, marks the site of Fort
Nelson.

In the BURYING GROUND, NW. corner of the grounds, are tomb-
stones bearing inscriptions in many languages. Here lie the bodies of yel-
low fever victims, of many members of the Confederate and the Union
navies, of those who drowned when the ship Huron was wrecked in 1877,
and of many Spanish-American and World War veterans. The STONE
CAIRN, surmounted by a pillar and an urn, is in memory of 300 men lost
when the Cumberland and Congress were sunk by the Confederate ironclad
Virginia (Merrimac) in 1862.

The RICHARD DALE HOUSE (private), i Crawford Place, foot of
Washington St., is a two-story stuccoed brick house. It was built by Colo-
nel William Crawford presumably in 1735, an d was the boyhood home of

PORTSMOUTH 257

Richard Dale (1756-1826), who served first in the Virginia Navy, trans-
ferred his allegiance to the British, and then returned to fight for the
American cause. Captured by the British, he escaped to France and be-
came lieutenant on the Bonhomme Richard. In 1794 Dale was put in com-
mand of the Gosport Navy Yard. Jefferson, in 1801, raised his rank to
commodore and sent him in command of a squadron to blockade the Tri-
politan ports. The following year Dale resigned from the service and set-
tled in Philadelphia.

The WATTS HOUSE (private), NW. corner Dinwiddie and North Sts.,
a frame building with a gabled roof, has three porches with fluted columns
and a fanlight over the main entrance. The interior woodwork remains in-
tact from heart pine floors to hand-carved mantels and graceful curving
stairway. Colonel Dempsey Watts built the house in 1799. ^ passed to his
son, Captain Samuel Watts, who entertained Chief Black Hawk here in
1820, and Henry Clay in 1844.

The PORTER HOUSE (private), 23 Court St., a tall stuccoed brick
structure, has a hipped roof with elaborate cornice and a classically framed
portal. Built just before the War between the States, it was acquired by
John L. Porter, designer of the ironclad Virginia, and was his home until
the Confederate evacuation of Portsmouth.

The BALL HOUSE (private), 213 Middle St., set back from the street,
is a frame building with paired chimneys at each end of a steeply curbed
green-shingled roof, and five dormers are set closely along the lower roof
surface. It was built about 1794 by John Nivison at the corner of Crawford
and Glasgow Streets. After the building had served as barracks during the
War of 1812, subsequent owners entertained La Fayette in 1824 and An-
drew Jackson in 1833. It was moved to the present site in 1869.

The BUTT HOUSE (private), 327 Crawford St., is a two-and-a-half
story brick building with leaded-glass windows. It was built about 1826 by
Dr.Robert Bruce Butt and used during the War between the States as
commissary headquarters for the Federal army.

The CASSELL-McRAE HOUSE (private), 108 London St., two-and-a-
half stories of brick, painted gray, has a steep gabled roof and twin chim-
neys. The house has stone lintels over the windows, a graceful fanlight
over the entrance door, large outside locks, paneled doors, and deep wain-
scoting on the interior. About 1825, when the house was being constructed,
Captain John W. McRae, the builder, is thought to have left on a long
voyage and to have been lost at sea.

The CRAWFORD HOUSE (open day and night), SW. corner Crawford
and Queen Sts., is a tall brick building with four dormer windows in the
gabled roof. Aaron Milhado I, a Spaniard who had just migrated to
America, built the house in 1779 as a residence. For many years it served
as the Centennial House, an exclusive hotel frequented by naval officers
and their families. About 1835 its name was changed to Crawford House in
honor of Portsmouth's founder. Remodeled and painted cerise, it was used
for several years as a warehouse and store, but since 1938 has housed the
Helping Hand Mission.

The IRONMONGER HOUSE, NE. corner Crawford and High Sts., a

258 VI&GIHIA

large "buck building built in 1822 by John Thompson, has been gaily
painted and metamorphosed into shops. Here, in 1853, was born Frank
M. Ironmonger, youngest soldier of the Confederacy. Enlisting when not
quite eleven years old, he acted for a time as courier then participated in
important battles. Captured within the Federal lines in 1865 and sen-
tenced to be shot as a spy, he escaped and served until the end of the war.

The BILISOLY HOUSE (private), 80 1 Court St., a white frame build-
ing, has one gable end facing the street, and the other is broken by paired
cMmneys. In the yard stands a two-story kitchen, formerly detached, but
now joined to the main unit by an addition. The house was built sometime
after 1797, the date that Captain Andrew W. Kidd purchased the prop-
erty. It passed to the Biiisoly family, French refugees who came to Ports-
mouth in 1799.

Hie NORFOLK NAVY YARD (open 8:30-4:30 daily; adm. free, pass
issued at gale), entrances S. end First and Fourth Sts., is one of the two
largest navy yards in the United States. Scattered over 453 acres are 212
low brick buildings, including the marine barracks, housing machine and
training school shops; and plants manufacturing from government formu-
lae and specifications such widely divergent articles as paint, gases, metal
furniture, and turbine blades. Along the water front are 6 dry docks vary-
ing in length from 324 to 1,011 feet, 30 berths totaling 9,000 feet, for ships
of every class, immense steel framework building ways, a reservation for
ships condemned to be sold, and a base station for the lighthouse service.
In addition to the ever-changing enlisted personnel, some 5,000 civilians
are steadily employed.

TROPHY PARK, reached through First St. gate, is a tree-shaded reserva-
tion established to preserve Confederate and other American weapons of
war and equipment of historic value from old ships.

After its acquisition by the Federal Government in 1801, the Gosport
Navy Yard, as it was known until the War between the States, remained
under the somewhat inadequate direction of navy agents until 1810; then
Commodore Samuel Barron was appointed the first commandant, a posi-
tion to which his brother, Commodore James Barron, later succeeded. The
year after the launching of the Delaware (1820), the first battleship built in
a government-owned navy yard, a school for midshipmen was established
here aboard the frigate Guerriere. A dry dock was opened in 1833 in the
presence of President Andrew Jackson and his cabinet. Here in 1861-62,
the Merrimac was converted into the ironclad Virginia. During the World
War a fourth dry dock was added, one of the largest in the world.

POINTS OF INTEREST IN ENVIRONS

Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, 20.6 m. (see Tour 66): Virginia Beach,
20m, (see Tour &a).

IfffpiaiilliillliM

Newport

Railroad Station: 23rd St. and River Rd. for Chesapeake and Ohio Ry.
Bus Stations: NW. corner 28th St. and Washington Ave. for Greyhound and Peninsula
Transit Lines; SE. corner a8th St. and Washington Ave. for Great Eastern Lines.
Taxis: Fare 10^ and upward, according to distance.

Streetcars and Busses: Local and interurban; fare 5^ within city limits, 5^ for each zone
outside city.

Traffic Regulations : No all-night parking in main part of city, i hr. parking 8-6 on Wash-
ington Ave.

Accommodations: 3 hotels; tourist homes.

Information Service: Tidewater Auto Ass'n, Warwick Hotel, 25th St. between Washing-
ton and West Aves.

Radio Station: WGH (1310 kc.).
Motion Picture Houses: 3, including i for Negroes.

Golf: James River Country Club, 5.3 m. W. of city limits on US 60, 18 holes, open by ar-
rangement, greens fee $2; Old Dominion Golf Club, i6th and Chestnut Sts., 18 holes,
greens fee 40^ for 18 holes, 25 $ for 9 holes.

Swimming: James River Country Club, open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, guest fee 40^.
Tennis: James River Country Club, 5.3 m. W. of city limits on US 60, no fee for guests;
Huntington Park, 1 m. W. of city limits on US 60, 4 courts, no fee; Woodrow Wilson
School Grounds, Maple Ave. and Kecoughtan St., i court, no fee; Newport News Base-
ball Park, 28th and Wicham Sts., i court, no fee.

Ice Skating: Old Dominion Skating Rink, near Old Dominion Golf Club, i6th and Chest-
nut Sts., open 8-1 r p.m. in winter, adm. 40^.
Boating: Boats for hire at piers, S.end of Warwick Ave.

Annual Events: Newport News Regatta, usually in late summer.

NEWPORT NEWS (25 alt., 34,417 pop.), at the mouth of the James
River and at the head of Hampton Roads, is the Tidewater terminus of the
Chesapeake and Ohio Railway and the home of one of the largest ship-
yards in the world. The area of the city is roughly triangular, with its base
stretching across the marshy lowlands of Virginia's most historic peninsula
and its sides the James River and Hampton Roads.

Overlooking the waters, new and comfortable homes present a sharp
contrast to clustered slums. The better residential district, beginning at
the northernmost limits, is contiguous to the shipyard. Southward, parks
stretch to meet the great railway terminal, which dips into the city behind
more than a mile of river front. At the apex of the triangle is the terminus
of the Chesapeake Ferry Company and close by are the municipal pier and
a harbor for small boats. On the Hampton Roads shore line is a confusion of
industrial plants and warehouses. A residential section at the eastern edge
of the city has been named Kecoughtan for its remote ancestor.

259

260 VIRGINIA

Men In uniform frequent the streets of Newport News sailors and
naval officers from Norfolk or from cruisers anchored in the bay; army
officers and enlisted men from Langley Field and Fort Monroe. Newport
News has a festive air when the shipyard launches a new vessel or when a
man-of-war casts anchor in Hampton Roads and sends ashore its pleasure-
seeking crew.

Negroes make up 39 per cent of the population of Newport News. Most
of the men have stable and comparatively well-paid employment in indus-
try, particularly in the shipyard , where many hold skilled jobs, and the
Negro business and professional group is increasing.

Newport News, though on the site of a very old settlement, became a
city in recent years. It lies within the original Kecoughtan area, which ex-
tended from the Chesapeake Bay westward to Skiffe's Creek and north-
ward to Back River. In 1607 the first English settlers entering the James
River named the apex of the triangle Point Hope. In 1611 Robert Salford,
with his wife and son, came to the creek now in the eastern part of the city.
The name of the stream, Salford Creek, was changed through usage to Sal-
ter's. Other land within the limits of present Newport News was patented
in 1621 by the Newce brothers, Thomas and Sir William, who came from
Ireland. Sir William Newce had offered to transport 1,000 persons to Vir-
ginia, but brought f only a few weak and unserviceable people, ragged and
not above a fortnight's provisions, some bound for three years, and most
upon wages.' For his failure William Capps impatiently dubbed him ' Sir
William Naughtworth.' But there was some reason for Sir William's failure
to bring the thousand persons he died in 1621.

Daniel Gookin, an Englishman who had moved to Port Newce in
County Cork, Ireland, followed the Newces to this area, bringing with him
* fifty men of his owne, and thirty Passengers, exceedingly well furnished
with all sorts of Prouision.' It was he who probably named the community
some say for his home in Ireland ; others, to honor Newce and Captain
Christopher Newport; and still others, for the good news that Newport
brought the starving colonists the most likely origin since old inhabit-
ants still call the city Newport's News. That the name was current in
1626 is attested by the minutes of the general court, which record a trans-
fer to Daniel Gookin of land 'situate above Newport's News at a place
called Marie's Mount.'

Though tracing its ancestry to Kecoughtan and sharing in Colonial and
American vicissitudes, Newport News was merely an area of farm lands
and a fishing village until the coming of the railroad and the subsequent
establishment of the great shipyard. In 1852 an act of the general assem-
bly 'to legalize a wharf at Newports News/ gave the Warwick County
Court ' the same powers in regard to said wharf as are possessed by the
county court of James City in regard to the Grove Wharf on the lands of
Thomas Wynne.' In 1873 Major Robert H. Temple surveyed a railway
line from Richmond to the mouth of the James River. Seven years later
Collis P. Huntington, the industrialist, found Major Temple's wooden
markers intact and undertook to build the road along that route. The rail-
road was completed in 1882, and a town was plotted without formal au-

NEWPORT NEWS 26l

Ihorization by the general assembly. Four years later the Chesapeake Dry
Dock and Construction Company, now the Newport News Shipbuilding
and Dry Dock Company, was begun and boom years followed. la 1900 the
population was 19,635 ; and in 1920, 35,596.

Humanity's flotsam and jetsam landed upon an area that came to be
known significantly as Hell's Half Acre, a district between i8th and 23rd
Streets now occupied by a railway yard. When Newport News was Incor-
porated as a city in 1896, Hell's Half Acre lay outside its limits. Shacks
were hurriedly built to house its motley population, estimated during the
World War at about 2,000 persons almost equally divided between Ne-
groes and whites, whose barrooms and brothels catered to water-front
workers and visiting seamen. It is said that the area then averaged a mur-
der a week. At the end of the war, however, Newport News annexed Hell's
Half Acre and the adjacent Negro district known as Poverty Row, and insti-
tuted a program of law enforcement. Between 1925 and 1927 all the land
of both sections was bought by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, and the
disreputable shacks were razed.

Now, in addition to the giant shipyard and the sea terminus of a great
railway, the city's industries include the manufacture of soft drinks, ice
and ice cream, mattresses and pillows, metal fixtures, automobile parts,
caskets, hotel and hospital supplies, and building accessories.

POINTS OF INTEREST

The COURTHOUSE (open 9-5 Mon-Fri., 9-1 Sat.), NW. corner Hunt-
ington Ave. and 25th St., is a red brick structure, built in 1891-93 and
used for only three years as the courthouse of Warwick County. In 1896,
the year of its incorporation as a city, Newport News held its courts in this
building. The courthouse, later bought by the city, is now used by the cor-
poration court of Newport News and the circuit courts of Warwick and
Elizabeth City Counties.

The PUBLIC LIBRARY (open 9-5, 7-9 weekdays), SW. corner West
Ave. and 3oth Sts., is of modified Federal architecture with pink brick and
white pilasters. It was designed by Charles Robinson and built in 1928 un-
der the direction of the Newport News Library, Inc., organized in. 1908
through the efforts of local clubwomen. The library contains nearly 24,000
volumes.

The PLANT OF THE NEWPORT NEWS SHIPBUILDING AND
DRY DOCK COMPANY (open by arrangement), Washington Ave. be-
tween 35th and 49th Sts., stretching nearly a mile along the James and
covering 125 acres, has been an important factor in the development of
Newport News. The vast plant of red brick shops is dominated by the
numerous giant trellises of two steel cradles and three dry docks one ca-
pable of accommodating the largest ships afloat. The clean and orderly ap-
pearance of the whole yard displays the high standards of the founder,
Collis Potter Huntington, whose statement, ' We shall build good ships here
at a profit if we can, at a loss if we must, but always good ships,' is inscribed
in bronze on a giant rock within the entrance. Organized in 1886, it is one of

262 VIRGINIA

the largest private shipbuilding yards In the world. It occupies a perfect
situation with respect to tides, deep water, and proximity to the sea. The
first dry dock was completed in 1889. Normally employing about 7,000
men, it enlarged its working force to 14,000 during the World War. More
than 350 vessels have been constructed here for the Merchant Marine and
United States Navy. After the World War the equipment was modified to
produce locomotives and other heavy machinery, particularly hydraulic
turbines. Some of these turbines, among the largest in the world, were
built for Boulder Dam, Muscle Shoals, and for Dnepropetrovsk, the huge
power development project of the Soviet Republics on the Dnieper River.
Safety regulations, medical and surgical services, noncontributory pen-
sions, and workers' insurance have functioned since about 1916, and rec-
reational activities are sponsored by the plant. A system of employee rep-
resentation has been in operation since 1927. In 1919 an apprentice
school was established, providing a four-year course in craft training with
wages. Increased naval appropriations of 1938-39 resulted in immediate
acceleration of work at the shipyard, where the largest passenger vessel
ever built in America is under construction (1939).

The CHESAPEAKE AND OHIO RAILWAY TERMINAL, bounded
by 2$rd St., the river, Newport News Ave., and Warwick Ave., spreads
over more than 300 acres and is the largest single terminus in the world.
Ten piers, including four covered merchandise piers, two coal piers, and a
passenger pier, extend into the river along a mile and a half of frontage.
Two piers have facilities for emptying an entire gondola carload of coal
into a ship in one rapid operation. There are extensive warehouses, espe-
cially for tobacco, of which the volume moving through Hampton Roads
is unrivaled. This section was chosen in 1880 by Collis P. Huntington as
the deep-water terminal for his railroad. Coal dumpings rose from 575,000
tons in 1882 to 51,488,060 in 1935. More than 62,000,000 tons of other
commodities were moved in 1935 as against 1,150,000 tons in 1882.

The SOLOMON LIGHTFOOT MICHAUX TEMPLE, SW. corner
Jefferson Ave. and igth St., a blue-painted brick building, is the headquar-
ters of Elder Michaux, Negro evangelist, who once sold fish on the streets
of Newport News. By sharp business acumen, particularly in becoming
chief local purveyor of fish to the United States Navy during the World
War, he accumulated a fortune, which he expends liberally in charity to
black and white unfortunates. He has large congregations in New York,
Philadelphia, and Washington, besides local followers, who meet most
often on the shore at the foot of Jefferson Avenue in an open-air tabernacle
seating 5,000.

The SITE OF CEELEY'S, 225 Chesapeake Ave., is occupied by a resi-
dence. First the home of Thomas Ceeley, it was later the plantation seat of
the Gary family. Thomas Ceeley, the younger, a burgess from Warwick
Plantation in 1629 and from Warwick County in 1639, sold the property to
William Wilson, from whom it passed with his daughter's hand to Miles
Gary and to Miles's son, Wilson Miles Gary. George Washington is sup-
posed to have courted one of Wilson Miles Gary's daughters until he was
discouraged by her father. Considering young George too poor a match,

NEWPORT NEWS 263

Mr.Cary is reported to have told Mm rather haughtily that she had a
coach of her own to drive.

The VIRGINIA STATE SCHOOL FOR COLORED DEAF AND
BLIND CHILDREN, NW. end of Pear (Sampson) Ave., occupies a group
of seven brick buildings on spacious grounds, including on its 140 acres a
farm, workshops, and an infirmary. It was founded in 1906 through the
efforts of William C. Ritter, himself deaf, who was superintendent until
1937. Opened in 1908 with 25 children, the school had an enrollment of too
in 1937 with 9 instructors. The ratio of blind to deaf is about 40-60. Train-
ing is provided in farming, arts, crafts and trades, and in the ' three R T s. 7
There is also a creditable school orchestra.

The NEWPORT NEWS HOMESTEADS, around the intersection of
Aberdeen and Newmarket Rds., is a model community built by the Farm
Security Administration to provide low-cost housing for Negro industrial
workers. Seventy-nine double houses are scattered over a 436-acre tract of
rich trucking land well drained and planted with trees. The 158 semide-
tached units, on half -acre lots providing garden space, are constructed of
red brick, and are connected by double garages. They range in size from
three to five rooms and are uniform in design except for minor variations.
They rent from $11.50 to $18 per month, and, after their first year of oc-
cupancy, are offered to renters for sale upon payments spread over 40
years. A large brick community house, including an auditorium and school
rooms, provides a center for recreation and education. A guidance and
supervisory program includes instruction in vegetable gardening and in
living under modern conditions. Except for architectural design, the proj-
ect has been carried out entirely by Negroes.

POINTS OF INTEREST IN ENVIRONS

Mariner's Museum, 5.3 m. ; James River Country Club and Golf Museum, 7.1 m, ;
Old Point Comfort and Fort Monroe, 9.8 m.-, Buckroe Beach, 10.5 m. (see Tour 8a).

Railroad Stations: Southern Station, Kemper St. off Park Ave., for Southern Ry.; Union

Station, foot of pth St., for Chesapeake and Ohio Ry. and Norfolk & Western Ry.
BmSMums: 5th and Church Sts. for Atlantic Greyhound Bus Line; 212 8th St. for Vir-
ginia Stage Line.

T&xis: Fare 25^ within city Emits, ioff each additional passenger.
Streetcars and Local Busses: Fare 7^4 tokens for 25^.

Tmjjk Regulati&ns: No U- turns in business district, one-hour parking limit 7 a.m.-
7 p.m., no parking 2-7 a.m.

Accommodations: 6 hotels, including 2 for Negroes; tourist places.

Information Service: Chamber of Commerce, 203-10 Lynch Bldg., Qth and Main Sts.;
A.A.A., Virginia Hotel, 3th and Church Sts.

Theater and Motion Picture Houses: Little Theater, 420 Rivermont Ave.; 5 motion pic-
ture houses, including i for Negroes.

Golf: Oakwood Country Club, Rivermont Ave.-Boonsboro Rd. at Peakland PL,
18 holes, greens fee 75^, Sat., Sun., and holidays, $i; Boonsboro Country Club, 4.2
ra. NW. on US 501, 1 8 holes, greens fee$i.

Smmmim: Miller Park and Riverside Park, daily fee ioff; Guggenheimer Playground,
1900 block of Grace St., fee 10^; Oakwood Country Club, Rivermont Ave.-Boonsboro
Rd. at Peakland PL, fee 55^.

Tennis: Oakwood Country Club, Rivermont Ave.-Boonsboro Rd. at Peakland PL, fee
5Sfi; Guggenheimer Playground, 1900 block of Grace St.; Miller Park, Park Ave. be-
tween Memorial and Fort Aves.

Annual Events: Tri-County Fair, Sept.

LYNCHBURG (800 alt., 40,661 pop.), the largest market for dark to-
bacco in the South and one of the largest in the country, winds its hilly
way along the banks of the James River and extends into the foothills of
the Blue Ridge on the northwest.

Through its steep streets pass the tracks of the Southern Railway and
the Norfolk and Western Railway. The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway,
however, clings to the edge of the river, where vestiges of the Kanawha
Canal still form part of the city's boundaries. Above the bluffs along the
river a wide residential section follows meandering streets and roads.
Separated from it by an unpopulated, hilly region, another series of neat,
small houses rambles southwestward beyond 'downtown's' industrial
belt. Slum sections turn up unexpectedly around the corner from tree-
lined avenues. Bridges for trains and automobiles cross into the country-
side to the northeast, and in the river are two slender islands. The princi-
pal Negro district follows Blackwater Creek up from the river.

Lynchburg industry employs about 8,000 workers, who are paid annu-
ally more than $8,000,000. Tobacco gave the city birth, brought it up, and

264

LYNCHBURG 265

still contributes to its support. Nearly 8,000,000 pounds of tobacco are
marketed here annually. Lynchburg shoe factories, fourth in National im-
portance, have an annual pay roll of $3,000,000. Other industries include
the world's largest tannin extract plant, foundries, an overall factory, and
lumber, paper, flour, cotton, silk, and hosiery mills.

Seventeen-year-old John Lynch established a ferry here in 1757, sup-
planting a difficult ford, and dwellings were built on the navigable river
near his ferry house. John Lynch was the son of Charles Lynch, an Irish-
man who served his indentureship in Louisa County, where in 1733 he
married Sarah Clark, ardent Quakeress and daughter of his master. Some-
what later he patented land near the present Lynchburg and lived at a
house named Chestnut Hill.

Tobacco was early the economic stimulus of this largely Quaker com-
munity. Before 1786, when the general assembly authorized a town on his
land, John Lynch had built the first tobacco warehouse north of the river
on the bluff above his ferry. Tobacco in hogsheads was ' rolled' in from the
surrounding fields and let down by ropes from the warehouse to bateaux
on the river below, and this point became a trade center for dark tobacco
a coarse-leaf variety used as chewing and pipe tobacco and for the mak-
ing of cigars. The first warehouse on the south bank was built in 1791, and
four more warehouses were added between 1800 and 1805. The village was
incorporated as a town in the latter year.

Strict attention to quality at that time made the town the world center
for dark leaf tobacco. Stemming was begun here in 1804 by Charles John-
son, and tobacco inspectorship was established in 1806. The partners
Hare and Labby (L'Abbe) were the first to use licorice in the treatment of
tobacco.

Before the days of canal and railroads, fleets of bateaux bore tobacco
down to Richmond. Three husky slaves manned each bateau. From
planked gunwales the two strongest propelled it with long iron-shod poles,
and the third used a large oar as rudder. They were furnished with 60
pounds of meat and two bushels of meal for the trip and helped them-
selves to potatoes, corn, and tobacco from the down cargoes and to salt,
sugar, molasses, and whisky from return cargoes. Poling demanded a high
degree of strength, courage, and skill, and the Negroes took great pride in
their job.

In 1829, when the population of the town was 4,630, a visitor recorded
that 500 bateaux left the wharves of Lynchburg and described the place as
a bustling business center with an incredible number of stores and 15 to-
bacco factories.

A curious figure of this period was Colonel Augustine Leftwich, born in
Bedford, England, in 1794, who came here at 18 and made a fortune in
tobacco. In summer he would stroll to his factory like an Indian nabob,
dressed in spotless white linen with a slave behind him holding aloft a
great green umbrella.

The James River and Kanawha Canal reached Lynchburg from Rich-
mond in 1840. In 1852, when the population was more than 8,000, Lynch-
burg received its city charter, and that year the first train steamed in.

266 VIRGINIA

During the War between the States the city was an Important Confederate
supply base y with hospitals and an arsenal

By 1870, when the community began to rise out of postwar depression,
railroads were almost the exclusive carriers of industrial products. Former
industries were continued; new ones were founded, including the manu-
facture of shoes, started in 1870. John W. Carroll the same year started
the manufacture of 'Lone Jack 5 and 4 Brown Dick,' widely known smok-
ing and chewing tobaccos. A great gambler down on his luck, Carroll drew
a Hone jack/ which, with the three others he held, won a pot of more than
$5,000 and the chance to recoup his fortunes. In 1882 James A. Bonsack
revolutionized the tobacco Industry by inventing a cigarette making ma-
chine. In 1886 more than 30,000,000 pounds of tobacco were marketed
from Lynchburg. Soon thereafter other industries were established. At the
close of the century the city had survived a depression that followed the
boom and had increased its population to i9j.79-

In 1883 Theodore Presser founded The Etude, a publication for music
teachers and pianists; Randolph-Macon Woman's College was opened in
1893; the Art Club was organized in 1896 and revived in 1925, and the
Civic Art League was established in 1932 by Bernard Gutmann; in 1912
Mrs. John H. Lewis organized the Equal Suffrage League; and the Little
Theater came into being in 1920.

Lynchburg is the home of Carter Glass, United States senator, former
Secretary of the Treasury, and author of the Federal Reserve Act.

POINTS OF INTEREST

1. The CITY COURTHOUSE (open 9-5 Mon.-FrL, 9-1 Sat.), 9 A and
Court Sts., is a white stuccoed brick building of Greek Revival architec-
ture. The dome that rises from the center of the gabled roof suggests the
Roman tradition, but the four-columned portico is Greek. Completed In
1855, the courthouse was designed by W.S.Ellison, Philadelphia architect,
and succeeds a frame building erected in 1812. The site was donated to the
city by John Lynch,Sr., with the stipulation that it revert to his heirs if
used for any other purpose.

2. MONUMENT TERRACE, continuation of 9th St. between Church
and Court Sts., designed by Aubrey Chesterman of Lynchburg and dedi-
cated in 1928, is a granite and limestone stairway with 13 landings, as-
cending a steep, yo-f oot hill between terraced lawns. At the top is a bronze
STATUE OF A CONFEDERATE INFANTRYMAN with bayonet fixed, designed by
James 0. Scott of Lynchburg and erected in 1898. The flight of steps, with
Italianate balustrades, gives access to small buildings that cling to the
hillside. At the bottom is a bronze STATUE OF A DOUGHBOY, designed by
Charles W. Keck of New York and erected in memory of the 47 Lynch-
burg soldiers killed in the World War.

3. LYNCHBURG BOULDER, E. end of 9th St., a rounded, smoke-
grimed, quartz boulder about five feet high, on a small grass plot among
intersecting railroad tracks, marks the spot where John Lynch built his
ferry house in 1 757.

LYNCHBURG 267

4. TOBACCO WAREHOUSES (open by Commerce St.
between loth and i3th Sts., are cavernous brick and frame buildings
where tobacco has been marketed since 1791. In a new building at Com-
merce and loth Streets are incorporated part of the walls of Springhill, the
first warehouse In present Lynchburg. The three largest warehouses in
Lynchburg are now MARTINS, SE. corner loth and W.Commerce Sts.,
built in 1806; FARMERS, SE. corner i3th and W.Commerce Sts.; aad
BOOKERS, SW. corner i3th and W.Commerce Sts. During the season about
2,500,000 pounds of tobacco are handled In each of these, but the biggest
year was 1886, when 37,208,100 pounds were sold.

5. The OLDEST HOUSE IN LYNCHBURG (private), SW. comer
Madison and loth Sts., a red brick cottage, is said to have been built soon
after John Lynch established his ferry (1757). Before It became a dwelling,
it was used as a school.

6. The TERRELL-LANGHORNE HOUSE (private), SW. comer
Jackson and 5th Sts., is a small red brick building erected about 1800 and
now in disrepair. It was occupied first apparently by Dr.Edward Terrell,
who returned to his farm at Rock Castle in 1803. His son, Dr. Christopher
Terrell; grandson, Dr. John Terrell; and great-grandson, Dr. Alexander
Terrell, practiced medicine in Lynchburg. ' Staunton ' John Lynch, nephew
of the city's founder, lived in this house. Mrs. John H. Lewis, a veteran
fighter for social reform, aunt of Lady Astor and Mrs.Charles Dana Gib-
son, started housekeeping here.

7. The bronze STATUE OF JOHN WARWICK DANIEL, in the tri-
angle bounded by gth and Floyd Sts. and Park Ave., designed by Sir
Moses Ezekiel and erected In 1913, represents Major Daniel (1842-1910)
seated and holding a crutch. Affectionately dubbed 'the Lame Lion of
Lynchburg,' he served in the Confederate army, and a wound at the
Battle of the Wilderness made him a cripple. He was one of Virginia's fore-
most orators and was elected to the United States Senate for four consec-
utive terms.

8. The SITE OF OLD LYNCHBURG COLLEGE, Wise St. between
loth and nth Sts., is occupied by two of the original Victorian Gothic
gray stuccoed buildings, now residences, in which the first Methodist
Protestant College in the South and the first college in Lynchburg once
functioned. Founded by the faculty of Madison College, Umontown,
Pennsylvania, in 1855, it was moved, to this site the next year. In Febru-
ary 1861 the college ceased to exist. The buildings were used as a Confeder-
ate hospital, and after the war as Federal barracks.

KEY FOR LYNCHBURG MAP

i. City Courthouse 2. Monument Terrace 3 .Lynchburg Boulder 4.Tobacco Ware-
houses 5.Oldest House in Lynchburg 6.Terrell-Langhorne House y.Statue of John
Warwick Daniel 8. Site of Old Lynchburg College 9. Virginia Theological Seminary
and College lo.Spring Hill Cemetery n.Fort Early 12. Lynchburg College
i3.Lynchburg Female Orphan Asylum i4.Point of Honor 15. Little Theater
i6Jones Memorial Library 17. Clay tor-Miller House iS.Hull of the Packet Boat
Marshall iQ.Randolph-Macon Woman's College 20.Lynchburg Federal Art Gallery
2 1, Virginia Episcopal School

LYNCHBURG,VA

268

269

270 VIRGINIA

9. The VIRGINIA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY AND COLLEGE
(Negro), N.W. comer Garfield Ave. and Dewitt St., a Baptist institution
occupying several gaunt brick buildings, was incorporated in 1888 i to pre-
pare Christian preachers, teachers, and workers for work among the
Negroes/ The college is coeducational and confers bachelor degrees in arts
and sciences; the seminary confers the degree of bachelor of divinity. Of
the 500 graduates, 150 are preachers and 25 are foreign missionaries. En-
rollment in 1937-38 was 120.

10. SPRING HILL CEMETERY (open daily), Fort Ave. between
Lancaster St. and Wythe Rd., is a 45-acre landscaped tract shaded by
trees and surrounded by a high brick wall. The land was bought in 1853
by Bishop John Early and other citizens. When neighbors objected to the
proximity of a graveyard, John Grouse, who sold the land, pleaded that he
had not known the difference between a cemetery and a seminary. An in-
junction suit having failed, the first grave was dug in 1855; pall bearers
and other mourners carried firearms.

Here are buried three Confederate generals James Bearing (1840-65),
JubaJ A. Early (1816-95), an( * Thomas Taylor Munford (1831-1918)
Bishop Early (1786-1871), Senator John W. Daniel, and a child of Gen-
eral J.E.B.Stuart.

11. FORT EARLY (open),NE. corner Fort and Vermont Aves., entered
through a semicircular stone archway, is a restored square earthwork built
during the Lynchburg campaign. Confederate forces, commanded by
General Jubal A. Early, repulsed General Hunter's attack here in June
1864. A CLUBHOUSE (open by arrangement), erected in 1922, is sheltered by
the grass-covered breastworks. The EARLY MONUMENT, opposite the fort
on a grassy triangle, is a tall granite obelisk erected in 1920. General Early
lived in Lynchburg from 1869 until his death.

^ 12. LYNCHBURG COLLEGE, NW. end of Vernon St., a coeduca-
tional institution controlled by the Christian Church, occupies a group of
three modern brick buildings and the renovated WESTOVER BUILDING.
The latter, a large, many-turreted frame strufcture, was the Westover
Hotel when purchased in 1903. Virginia Christian College was chartered
and classes began in the remodeled hotel in the same year. In 1919 it was
rechartered as Lynchburg College. In 1937-38 it had a faculty of 30 and a
student body of 250.

13. LYNCHBURG FEMALE ORPHAN ASYLUM (open by arrange-
ment), 2400 block of Memorial Ave., known as Miller Orphans' Home, a
four-story turreted building designed by General John Elliott in Victorian
Gothic style and set in a zoo-acre park, was opened in 1875. The institu-
tion cares for 65 white orphans under 18 years old and operates a day nurs-
ery for 20 children between the ages of two and eight. The grave of
Samuel Miller, philanthropist who endowed the orphanage, is marked by
a granite shaft.

14. POINT OF HONOR (open 9-4 daily), 112 Cabell St., is a plaster-
covered brick mansion built in 1806 by Dr. George Cabell. The early
Federal atmosphere of the interibr is preserved in the lofty ceilings, the
finely carved woodwork, the gracious sweeping stairway, and an elaborate

LYNCHBURG 271

chandelier. This mansion, named according to local tradition by young
William Lewis Cabell after the satisfactory culmination of a duel, was the
birthplace of Mary Virginia Ellett Cabell (1839-1930), an organizer of the
Daughters of the American Revolution. Lent to the city, Point of Honor
is now a playground and manual training and recreational center for
children.

15. LITTLE THEATER (open by arrangement), 420-22 Rivermont
Ave., is the first theater erected and owned by a little theater league in
Virginia. Built of gray concrete and brick, its auditorium seats 300. Two
interior murals by the Lynchburg artist, Scaisbrook Abbott, depict
tragedy from an early American melodrama and comedy from a scene in
Twelfth Night. The Little Theater League was organized in 1921, and the
present building was opened in 1930 with a production of Arnold Bennett's
Milestones.

16. JONES MEMORIAL LIBRARY (open 9-9 weekdays), SE. corner
Rivermont Ave. and Library St., above a series of lawn and stone terraces,
is a cream-colored brick structure with classic gray stone trim and an en-
trance loggia adorned with six Ionic columns between anta walls. It was
presented to the city by Mrs.George M. Jones and opened in 1908. The
library contains nearly 55,000 volumes and has three branches, including
one for Negroes.

17. The CLAYTOR-MILLER HOUSE (not open), in Riverside Park
at Ash St. entrance, built about 1792-93 by John Miller, is a two-story
white frame building with a steep gabled roof. About 1819 it was the home
of Owen and Jane Hughes Owens, originators of the first circulating li-
brary in Lynchburg, who used part of their house as a school. Thomas
Jefferson, while stopping here, is said to have demonstrated to one of the
Owens children that the tomato was not a poisonous ornament but a lus-
cious food. Sam Claytor owned the house about 1825. When it was about
to be razed to make way for a new building, the Lynchburg Historical So-
ciety moved it from 8th and -Church Streets to its present site.

18. The HULL OF THE PACKET BOAT MARSHALL, Riverside
Park at Look Out Point, is all that remains of the canal boat on which the
body of ' Stonewall ' Jackson was carried to Lexington for burial.

19. RANDOLPH-MACON WOMAN'S COLLEGE, Rivermont Ave.
between Norfolk Ave. and N.Princeton Circle, the first accredited college
for women in Virginia, is housed in 16 red brick buildings, several in Neo-
Gothic, the rest in Georgian Colonial styles. Surrounded by nearly 80 acres
of lawns and groves, the buildings overlook the James River and command
a distant view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Scattered throughput the
buildings are excellent examples of modern art, including paintings by
George Bellows, William Chase, Gari Melchers, Childe Hassam, Jules
Guerin, and John Carroll. Randolph-Macon Woman's College was opened
in 1893, with Dr. William Waugh Smith as first president. A chapter of the
Phi Beta Kappa Society, the first in an independent college for women in
the South, was established here in 1917. The college confers the degree of
bachelor of arts. In 1937-38 it had a faculty of 72 and an enrollment of
630. The LIBRARY (open daily"), erected in 1929, contains about 45?

272 VIRGINIA

volumes and a room in which a few valuable old books and manuscripts
are displayed. Among outstanding alumnae of the college is Pearl Buck
(Mrs. Richard J. Walsh), who as Pearl Sydenstricker was graduated in
1914.

20. The LYNCHBURG FEDERAL ART GALLERY (open 10-5 Mon.
-FrL 9 3-5 5M.) ? 1331 Oak Lane, Peakland, sponsored by the Lynchburg
Art Alliance, was established in 1936. Classes in painting, modeling, and
crafts are held for adults and children, besides extension classes for Negroes
and whites.

21. The VIRGINIA EPISCOPAL SCHOOL, Williams Rd. and Vir-
ginia Episcopal School Rd., opened in 1916, is a boys' preparatory school
housed in four large red brick buildings on 140 acres of grounds. The
LANGHORNE MEMORIAL CHAPEL (open), a red brick building, was given by
Chiswell Dabney Langhorne and his daughter, Lady Astor. In 1937-38
the school had a faculty of 1 1 and a student body of 1 17.

POINTS OF INTEREST IN ENVIRONS

Sandusky, 4.1 m.; Quaker Memorial Presbyterian Church, 4.2 m.; Sweetbriar
College, 12.1 m. (see Tour 4c). Poplar Forest, 8 m. (see Tour no). Appomattox
Courthouse, 23.6 m . (see Tours i ib and 3^). *

Peterstur:

Railroad Stations: 501 and St. for Atlantic Coast Line R.R. and Norfolk and Western

Ry. ; Dunlop and Appomattox Sts. for Seaboard Air Line Ry.

Bus Stations: 1 15 W. Washington St. for Greyhound Bus Line; 3 E. Washington St. for

Carolina Coach Line; Wythe St. near Sycamoft St. for Richmond-Petersburg Bus Line,

Taxis: Fare 25^ within city limits, 35^ across town, $z per hour.

Local Busses : Fare yfL

Traffic Regulations: No U- turns in business district; 30-minute parking limits.

Accommodations : 7 hotels; tourist homes.

Information Service: Chamber of Commerce, 209 N.Sycamore St.; A. A. A., Hotel Peters-
burg, 1 6 W.Tabb St.

Motion Picture Houses : 8, including 3 for Negroes.

Golf: Country Club of Petersburg, Johnson Rd. at Lee Park, g holes, adm. by arrange-

ment, greens fee $i; Municipal Golf Course, Lee Park, S.Boulevard and Johnson Rd,

under construction (1939).

Swimming: Lee Park, S.Boulevard and Johnson Rd., open 9-7:30 weekdays, 1-7:30

Sun., May 15 to Sept. 15, fee, adults io^a.m., 15 p.m., children 5^ a.m., io p.m., suits

Tennis: Lee Park, S.Boulevard and Johnson Rd., 9 courts, free; Country Club of Peters-
burg, Johnson Rd. at Lee Park, 4 courts, adm. by arrangement.

Annual Events: 'The Ninth of June/ Memorial Day observance; Southside Virginia
Fair, 2nd week in Oct.; Virginia Amateur Field Trials, Camp Lee, Nov.

PETERSBURG (xooalt., 28,564 pop.) stretches southward under a mass
of trees from the island-studded Appomattox River, spanned by two lofty
vehicular bridges, to an undulating countryside where the fields are
planted with tobacco and peanuts. Despite industrial encroachments the
city retains a certain charm.

Along the short narrow streets of the downtown commercial section,
survivals of the more remote past hold their own with false fronts of the
late nineteenth century and with modern buildings. Within sight of a
tangle of tracks surrounding the union depot is Petersburg's water front,
a bottled-up arm of the Appomattox formed by a peninsula containing the
old town of Pocahontas. Both sides of this estuary are lined with factories
and wharves, and in the stream weather-beaten barges, generally loaded
with lumber, pick their way among anchored pleasure craft.

Lengthy Sycamore Street mounts southward and crosses busy railroad
tracks into a residential section. Past the deep landscaped ravine cut by
Lieutenant Run the widened thoroughfare swerves through the fashion-
able suburb of Walnut Hills, wedged between former battlefields and Lee
Memorial Park, Petersburg's summer playground. Just back of the river-
front buildings lies a slum district, composed of white and Negro families,
that finds counterparts in the sections bordering sinuous Halifax Street,

2 73

274 VIRGINIA

midtown. At intervals, the brick hulks of enormous tobacco plants ding
to the Atlantic Coast Line tracks that pass through the heart of the city.
On industrial East Bank Street, peanut processing plants mingle^with to-
bacco warehouses, while trunk and bag factories give a commercial air to
'the West End, pressed on the south by a park, the fair grounds, and Alms
House Farm.

The city has its share of ancestor worshipers, counterbalanced by citi-
zens looking toward personal and group achievement. The art of gracious
living survives in clubs and homes, and old inhabitants retain Virginia
idioms that have all but disappeared in many other parts of the State.
People are still 'right much ' interested in family trees, refer to kitchens as
f cook rooms/ and call relatives 4 kinfolks.'

Although the Negroes of Petersburg, 44 per cent of the population, have
developed an educated group, with a social and cultural life that centers
about two educational institutions, the majority still live in crowded sec-
tions and gain their livelihood by menial and domestic work.

The beginning of Petersburg dates from 1645, when the general as-
sembly directed that Fort Henry be built at the falls of the Appomattox
River. The next year the assembly provided that the fort be given to
Abraham Wood for three years, on condition that he keep ten men there
for its protection. He established a trading post and cultivated friendly re-
lations with Indians, who furnished guides and hunters. Thus reinforced,
between 1650 and 1671 Wood undertook two journeys of exploration
westward.

Peter Jones, who married Wood's daughter, succeeded his father-in-law
as manager and proprietor of the trading post, which became known as
Peter's Point. The settlement figured prominently in Bacon's Rebellion
(1676), when unfriendly Indians were driven from the village.

William Byrd II in 1733 envisaged two cities, 'one ... to be called
Richmond, and the other at the Point of the Appamattuck River, to be
nam'd Petersburgh.' The strategic position at the head of navigation indi-
cated to him the future growth of Petersburg. As it is today, the city rep-
resents the amalgamation of Petersburg, laid out in 1748; Blandford, es-
tablished the same year; Pocahontas, constituted a town in 1752; and
Ravenscrof t, a settlement that meanwhile had grown up on a triangle en-
closed today by Halifax, Sycamore, and Shore Streets. These four were
united and incorporated in 1784, and ' stiled the town of Petersburg.'

During the Revolutionary War the city was too important to be over-
looked by the adversary. In 1781 General Benedict Arnold and General
William Phillips, commanding 2,500 British troops, destroyed stores in
Petersburg and pillaged the community despite the valiant efforts of
General von Steuben and General Muhlenburg. British forces, augmented
on May 20, 1781, by the army of Cornwallis, started from Petersburg four
days later on the journey that ended at Yorktown.

For years before the Revolution and until the War between the States,
a race track, a theater, many comfortable and merry taverns, and hospita-
ble homes made Petersburg a popular stopping-place for travelers and a
jolly center for long visits. When George Washington paused here on his

PETERSBURG 275

southern tour (1791), lie found, according to Ms diary, that Petersburg,
containing ' near 3,000 souls/ received *at the Inspections nearly a third of
the Tobacco exported from the whole State besides a considerable quan-
tity of wheat and flour/ He wrote also of telling a lie: * Having suffered
very much by the dust yesterday, and finding that parties of Horse, and a
number of other Gentlemen were intending to attend me part of the way
to day, I caused their enquiries respecting the time of my setting out, to be
answered that, I should endeavor to do it before eight o'clock; but did it a
little after rive.' The mayor of Petersburg is said to have bestowed upon
Washington during this visit the title ' father of his country/

Across from the town of Petersburg, according to Thomas Anburey's
Travels in the Interior Parts of America (1776-81), was *a Mod of suburb,
independent of Petersburg, called Pocahunta ... the principal trade of
Petersburg arises from the exporting of tobacco, deposited in warehouses
and magazines ... up to which sloops, schooners, and small vessels con-
tinually sail. 7

During the War of 1812 the territory furnished a company under
Richard McRae, which distinguished itself at Fort Meigs. These soldiers,
jauntily wearing cockades, gave President Madison occasion to call
Petersburg the ' Cockade City/ a name that has held through the years.
In Petersburg, John Daly Burk, Irish refugee, began his history of Vir-
ginia; Aaron Burr and his daughter, Theodosia, lived here in 1805; Win-
field Scott started his brief law career; and the returning La Fayette was
lavishly entertained here, Joseph Jenkins Roberts (1809-76), who mi-
grated to Liberia in 1829, was born in Petersburg. The American Coloni-
zation Society appointed him in 1842 the first Negro governor of Liberia;
when the country was proclaimed a republic in 1847, Roberts was elected
the first president.

After 1812 Petersburg overshadowed Richmond in many respects.
Theatrical companies, booked for Petersburg, went to Richmond inciden-
tally. Disastrous fires occurred in 1815 and 1826. The first general confer-
ence of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, meeting in Petersburg in
1846, made history through the organization of Southern Methodism.
Four years later Petersburg achieved the status of city. The Southern Star,
the first steamboat to reach Petersburg, was appropriately welcomed in
1858.

The War between the States ravaged the little city on the Appomattox.
Though at first no battles were fought near by, Petersburg sent 17 com-
panies to the front. In 1864 the city became the 'last ditch of the Con-
federacy/ Railroad lines through Petersburg constituted an artery of sup-
ply for Richmond and made the city a Federal objective. The long and ter-
rible siege of Petersburg marked the downfall of the Confederacy. Here the
South made its last stand against superior Federal forces. The fall of
Petersburg led directly to the surrender at Appomattox.

The city made a new start after 1865. By 1880 there were 70 more indus-
tries than existed here 20 years earlier. Census tabulations of ensuing years
showed steady gains. In 1888 a Negro, John Mercer Langston, bom in
Surry County in 1848, was elected to Congress from the Fourth Virginia

276 VIRGINIA

Congressional District. He had studied law in Ohio, had been minister to
Haiti and president of the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute. Al-
though his election was contested, and although he was not seated until
two months before the expiration of his term, Langston holds the distinc-
tion of being the only Virginia Negro Congressman.

Modern Petersburg takes pride in its industries. Here some 4,000 wage
earners are paid annually about $4,000,000. With a plug and twist tobacco
factory, preparing annually 6,000,000 pounds for export; a large cigarette
factory, making more than 4,000,000,000 cigarettes annually; two stem-
meries and rehandling plants; and three auction warehouses employing
2,100 people, chiefly Negroes, whose annual wages are $1,200,000, Peters-
burg has earned an important position in the manufacture of tobacco. It
boasts, in addition, a luggage factory that employs 1,500 people. Among
its other industries are two textile mills, a silk mill, a pants and overall fac-
tory, a mill that makes napkins and tablecloths, three peanut factories,
and plants that produce optical lenses, flour, woodwork, and furniture.

POINTS OF INTEREST

1. GOLDEN BALL TAVERN (open), SE. corner Grove Ave. and
N.Market St., is an unpainted frame building with brick ends and dormers
along its gabled roof. Now a lunch room, this tavern was built about 1750.
From the time of its erection until 1825, its sign of a large golden ball was
famous in Virginia. The tavern was host to Washington in 1791 and was
popular with settlers and trappers. During the British occupation of
Petersburg in 1781 the scarlet-coated officers had quarters here.

2. The OLD MARKET PLACE (open daily), bounded by Grove Ave.,
Rock St., River St., and Cockade Alley, is an octagonal red brick building
with twin chimney pots at each angle and a roof extending over the side-
walks. It was erected in 1879 to supersede a simple frame building. The
site for a public market was donated in 1805 by Robert Boiling. In its early
days it was the only place where meats and vegetables could be sold. The
building is now leased by operators of a grocery store and meat market.

3. The COURTHOUSE (open 8:30-5 weekday >s, 8:30-1 Sat.), E. end of
Courthouse Ave., facing N.Sycamore St., erected in 1835, is a brick build-
ing in Greek Revival style with a gray stucco finish. The wide portico has
four fluted stone columns in free classical design. An ornate cupola with a
clock is surmounted by a figure of Justice.

4. WEST HILL (private), E.Tabb St. between Monroe and Adams Sts.,
is a long frame house on a very high stuccoed-brick basement. Tall narrow
dormers line the gabled roof, and within there is a fine Chippendale stair-
case. The house was built shortly after the Revolution by Robert Boiling
and was the home of the family until the larger mansion, Center Hill, was
erected. West Hill later housed the stewards of the Boiling estate.

5. CENTER HILL (open by arrangement), on a court off N. side Frank-
lin St. between Jefferson and Adams Sts., is a two-story brick mansion of
30 rooms approached by a circular drive. The house has a low hip roof and
wide columned verandas facing north and south. Built about 1825 and re-

PETERSBURG 277

modeled in 1850, Center Hill, which succeeded Bollingbrook Hill as the
residence of the Boiling family, was noted during three-quarters of a cen-
tury for entertainment on a grand scale. Following Lee's evacuation of
Petersburg, Center Hill became the headquarters of the Federal Major
General George L. Hartsuff. Lincoln made the quip while visiting here,
* General Grant seems to have attended sufficiently to the matter of rent.'
The house has been acquired by the Government to be used as a museum
and headquarters of the National Park Service.

6. EAST HILL is on a knoll between N.Jefferson St. and the Atlantic
Coast Line tracks. This is the SITE OF BOLLINGBROOK, Colonial house of
the Boilings. Erected by Major Robert Boiling about 1725, it was origi-
nally two separate buildings; the larger burned in 1855 and the smaller
was razed in 1915. Twice headquarters of the British in 1781, it was bom-
barded by La Fayette. While Phillips and Arnold had headquarters here,
Phillips died. From his deathbed he remarked querulously that the Ameri-
cans would not even let him die in peace.

7. BLANDFORD CEMETERY (open 9-5 daily), E. side Crater Road
at city limits, stretches placidly beneath large, ancient trees. The oldest
stone, marking the grave of Richard Fairbrough, reads 1702. Veterans of
six wars are buried here, including 30,000 Confederates killed in the Siege
of Petersburg. Among the epitaphs are those of William Skipwith, Baronet
and Cavalier, who fled Cromwell's wrath; of Herbert, plain squire and
stout Roundhead; of the British commander, General Phillips; of John
Daly Burk, Irish refugee and historian, who was killed in a duel; of the
Corsican, Antommatti, who shot himself in the church, for unrequited
love. A shaft commemorates Captain Richard McRae and his Petersburg
Volunteers, who 'consecrated their valor at the Battle of Fort Meigs' in

1813.

The claim is made for Blandford, as for several other Virginia ceme-
teries, that here was the scene of the first Memorial Day ceremony. The
story goes that Mrs. John A. Logan, wife of the commander of the Grand
Army of the Republic, visited the cemetery in 1866 and spied Miss Nora
Fontaine Davidson, a schoolteacher, and her pupils putting flowers and
tiny Confederate flags on the soldiers' graves. Shortly afterward General
Logan issued a proclamation for the observance of Memorial Day.

BLANDFORD CHURCH (open 9-5 daily; key at office), W. edge of cemetery,
is a gabled T-shaped brick building, standing peacefully among trees
draped, like itself, with ivy. The walls bear scars of bullets fired in 1864-
65, The Colonial building' the Brick Church of Bristol Parish ' is now a
Confederate memorial chapel. Here among marble tablets erected to honor

KEY FOR PETERSBURG MAP

i.Golden Ball Tavern 2.01d Market Place 3.Courthouse 4. West Hill s.Center
Hill 6.EastHill y.Blandford Cemetery 8. Central Park Q.TheLawn lo.Southern
College ir.William R. McKenney Free Library i2.Wallace-Seward House ^.Mu-
nicipal Market i4.Trapezium Place 15. Stirling Castle i6.Beasley House
ly.Bishop Payne Divinity School iS.Battersea ig.Pride's Tavern 2o.Mountain
View 2 1 .Virginia State College for Negroes

PETERSBURG, YA.

Petersburg

278

279

280 VIRGINIA

Revolutionary patriots and between memorial windows, one given by each
Southern State, are inscriptions in bronze to commemorate incidents and
personages of the 1860 >$. On a tablet is inscribed an elegy, written in 1841
and attributed to Tyrone Power I.

The church was first a rectangular structure, erected in 1 73 5-3 7 on
Wells' Hill. The long transept on the north side was begun in 1752 and
completed in 1764. In 1757 a wall was built around the churchyard. When
Petersburg was incorporated, the boundary was run so as to embrace the
'Church on Wellses Hill. 7 After StPaul's Church was built in 1802-06,
Blandford was abandoned. The Petersburg Ladies Memorial Association
In looi restored it as the memorial chapel.

8. CENTRAL PARK, NE. corner S.Sycamore and E.Fillmore Sts.,
now shaded by lofty trees, was formerly a smooth green known as Poplar
Lawn. Scene of demonstrations and open forum for distinguished orators,
the site has served as race track, drill and mobilization ground, and was a
hospital area during the siege of 1864-65. Here, mounted upon a stone
base, is the POCAHONTAS BASIN, a roughly oblong piece of gray stone, hol-
lowed out. In it, according to local legend, bathed the Indian princess.

9. The LAWN (private), 244 S.Sycamore St., a tall red brick house with
ivy blanketing its walls and massive chimneys obscuring its gable ends,
extends back among magnolias and boxwood bushes. It was erected about
1825 by George Boiling.

jo, SOUTHERN COLLEGE (open by arrangement), 220 S.Sycamore
St., occupying several gray buildings of brick and frame construction, was
granted a charter in 1863, a year after its founding by William Thomas
Davis, and was first called Southern Female College. The land it occupies
was part of the settlement of Ravenscrof t.

1 1. The WILLIAM R. McKENNEY FREE LIBRARY (open 9-9
Hon., Wed., Fri; 9-6 Tues., Tfmrs,, Sat.), NE. corner S.Sycamore and
E.Marshall Sts., formerly a residence, is a two-story building of stuccoed
brick. The mid-nineteenth-century house was built by John Dodson, then
mayor of Petersburg, and was later the home of General William Mahone.
The library contains about 30,000 volumes; Virginiana, including Nimo's
Notes; and a small museum.

12. The WALLACE-SEWARD HOUSE (private), 204 S.Market St., a
red brick house with a high front porch supported by iron columns, was
built in 1855 by Thomas Wallace and described at the time as 'a costly,
well designed, and handsome residence.' For a few hours following the
evacuation of Petersburg the abandoned building was occupied as head-
quarters by General Grant. On the porch Grant discussed with President
Lincoln, just arrived from City Point, the terms of the expected surrender
of General Lee.

13. The MUNICIPAL MARKET, on the triangle formed by Halifax
and Harrison Sts. and South Ave., is a large brick building erected in the
third quarter of the nineteenth century. In stalls within the building are
sold all manner of meats, fruits, and vegetables, shipped from afar or
brought by farmers from neighboring counties. On the sidewalks are ven-
dors' stands, tempting purchasers with bright flowers and fresh vegetables.

PETERSBURG 28l

14. TRAPEZIUM PLACE (open by arrangement), 244 N.Market St., is
a three-story red brick house with no right-angled comers and no parallel
walls. This architectural curiosity was erected in 1815 by an eccentric
Irishman, Charles O'Hara. He followed, it seems, the plans of a West
Indian servant, who claimed that the peculiar construction of the house
would ward off evil spirits. For years the place was known as i Rat Castle/
because of the pet rats O'Hara kept. He is believed to have served in the
British army, and his habit of appearing on the Queen's birthday, dressed
in a uniform, earned him the title of * General.'

15. STIRLING CASTLE (private), 320 W.High St., a two-story white
frame house on a red brick foundation, has a square portico with fluted
Ionic columns. Neat servants' quarters stand in the rear. The house was
built in 1735 by Peter Jones III on a site eight miles from present Peters-
burg. After Jones's death the 'wooden castle' was rebuilt in the newly es-
tablished town.

16. The BEASLEY HOUSE (open by arrangement), 558 W.High St., is
a two-story frame building, mildly mid- Victorian. From November 1-28,
1864, General Lee had headquarters here. A small weatherboard building
in the yard was used as Lee's office.

17. The BISHOP PAYNE DIVINITY SCHOOL (open by arrange-
merit) , S.West St. between Wilcox and Stainback Sts., occupies two brick
and two frame buildings. Organized in 1884, it has (1939) four full-time
professors and 13 students. It is the only seminary in the United States for
Negro clergymen of the Protestant Episcopal Church and has trained two-
thirds of the Negro ministers of that denomination.

18. BATTERSEA (private), N. end of Battersea Lane, in spite of shab-
biness, can still be described in the words of the visiting Marquis de Chas-
tellux (1781): 'The house is decorated in the Italian rather than the
British or American style, having three porticoes at the three principal
entrances, each of them supported by four columns.' The house consists of
a hip-roofed main part extended by passage-linked wings. The interior
woodwork, including a Chippendale stairway, is exceptionally fine. Prior
to the Revolution Battersea was built by Colonel John Banister, first
mayor of Petersburg. Because of his active participation in the patriotic
movement, Banister seems to have been 'a particular object of spite to the
British,' who visited his home in 1781, destroyed his furniture, and muti-
lated the house.

19. PRIDE'S TAVERN (dosed for restoration, 1939), N.West St. near
Norfolk & Western R.R. tracks, is a group of red brick buildings dating
from the Revolutionary period. Long offering travelers the comfort for
which Petersburg 'ordinaries' were renowned, it was a meeting place for
wealth and fashion, especially while Pride's Race Track operated near by.

20. MOUNTAIN VIEW (private), McKenzie St. opposite N.^ end
South St., a red brick residence, stands on what is believed to be the site of
Fort Henry. It is claimed that fragments of the fort are incorporated in
the house and that the low stone building at one end of the lot was the
home of Captain John Flood, first commander of the fort. Mountain View
was owned in 1830 by Dr.Donald McKenzie, president of the early Peters-

282 VIRGINIA

burg Railway Company. During the War between the States General
Heray A. Wise had headquarters here; later the Federal commander,
Lloyd Colling occupied the house.

21. VIRGINIA STATE COLLEGE FOR NEGROES, N. end of Camp-
bell's Bridge, covers 300 elevated acres above the Appomattox River.
On the campus of 37 acres are 31 brick buildings; the rest of the land is an
experimental farm. Established in 1882 as the Virginia Normal and Colle-
giate Institute., it was created largely through the activities of public-
spirited Negroes, particularly A.W.Harris, of Petersburg, who introduced
the bill to establish the institution. Inadequate State support long retarded
its progress. In 1902 the name was changed to Virginia Normal and
Industrial Institute, and in 1920 the institute was made the Negro land-
grant college of Virginia. The college has steadily increased its enrollment
and the standard of its 23 courses of instruction, which include liberal arts,
agriculture, manual crafts, and a department of education. In 1930 the
name of the institution was changed by the legislature. Enrollment in
1937-38 was 1,005, of which 576 were women.

POINTS OF INTEREST IN ENVIRONS

Turnbul! House, 3 m. (see Tour ic). Federal Tunnels and Museum, 2.5 m.; Fort
Davis, 3.1 m. (see Tour 14). The Crater, 2.6 m.; Petersburg National Military Park,
3.3m. (see Tour i$).

Richmond

Railroad Stations: Main Street Station, isth and Main Sts., for Chesapeake and Ohio
Ry. and Seaboard Air Line Ry. ; Broad Street Station, Broad St. between Davis Ave. and
Robinson St. for Atlantic Coast Line R.R., Norfolk & Western Ry., and Richmond,
Fredericksburg & Potomac R.R. ; Hull Street Station, 2nd and Hull Sts., for Southern Ry.
Bus Stations: Union Bus Depot, 412 E.Broad St., for Atlantic Greyhound, James River
Bus Line, Richmond Greyhound, and Peninsula Transit Corp. Line; Richmond Bus
Center, gth and Broad Sts., for Carolina Coach Co., Richmond-Ashland Bus, and Vir-
ginia Stage Lines.

Airport: Richard Evelyn Byrd Flying Field, 4.3 m. E. of city limits on side road (L) 0ff
Charles City Rd. (R) off US 60, for Eastern Air Lines; taxi $1.50.
Taxis : Fare 35^ within city limits.

Pier: S. end 32nd St., Fulton, East Richmond, for Buxton Lines to Norfolk (and James
River landings) ; excursions down river in warm season on Robert E. Lee.
Streetcars and Local Busses: Fare 7^ on streetcars, ji and 8^ on busses.
Traffic Regulations: No U-turns in congested district, speed limit 25 m.p.h., in business
district 1 5 m.p.h.

Accommodations: 16 hotels, including 2 for Negroes; tourist homes.

Information Service: Chamber of Commerce, State Planters Bank Bldg., gth and Main
Sts.; Richmond News Leader, no N-4th St.; Richmond Times-Dispatch^ 107 S.7th St.;
Auto Club of Virginia, in N.5th St.

Radio Stations: WRTD (1500 kc.), WMBG (1350 kc.), WRVA (mo kc.), WRNL
(880 kc.).

Theaters and Motion Picture Houses: Lyric Theater, 9th and Broad Sts.; The Mosque
(auditorium), Main and Laurel Sts.; City Auditorium, Cary and Linden Sts.; 26 motion
picture houses, including 6 for Negroes.

Baseball: Tate Field, Mayo Island, S. end of nth St., Richmond 'Colts' of Piedmont
League.

Golf: Laurel Golf Club, 5.2 m. W. of city limits on US 33, 18 holes, greens fees 35^ for 9,
75^ for 18 holes Mon.-Fri., 65^ and $i Sat., Sun., and holidays; Glenwood Golf Club,
0.5 m. NE. of city limits on Creighton Rd. (L), off State 33, 18 holes, greens fees 50^ for
9, 7S?f for 18 holes Mon.-Fri., 65^ and $i Sat, Sun., and holidays; Chesterfield Golf
Club, 4.8 m. SW. of city limits off County 681 (R), off County 679 (L), off State 147 (L),
9 holes, greens fees 50^ Mon.-Fri, 75^ Sat,, Sun., and holidays.

Swimming: Shields Lake, Byrd Park, S. end of Boulevard at Idlewood Ave., open sum-
mer months, free; Negro pool, Sledd and High Sts. and Old Chamberlayne Ave., open
summer months, free.

Tennis: Powhatan Hill, Williamsburg Rd. and Northampton Ave., 3 courts; Hotchkiss
Field, 700 Brookland Park Blvd., 6 courts; William Byrd Park, Boulevard and Idlewood
Ave., 12 courts; Carter Jones Park, 28th and Bainbridge Sts., 6 courts; Luck's Field,
Rogers and T Sts., 4 courts; Oakwood, 3ist and Kuhn Sts,, 4 courts for Negroes; all
open daylight hours, free.
Skeet: Richmond Skeet Club, 3.8 m. W. of city limits off US 250 (L).

Annual Events: Deep Run Hunt Race Meet, Curies Neck Farm, early Apr.; Garden
Club Week, Apr. or May; Virginia Kennel Club Show, Apr. or May; National Motorcy-
cle Races and Hill Climb, May; Deep Run Horse Show, Broad Street Rd., May; Vir-
ginia State Fair, Boulevard and Hermitage Rd., late Sept. or Oct.

283

284 VIRGINIA

RICHMOND (115 alt., 182,929 pop.), capital of Virginia, at the head of
navigation on the James, has spread from its seven hills to include a vast
territory along the rocky course of the river and across rolling country to
the north and south. The westward trend of population left old Richmond
forlorn and deserted, and caused a new city to be built and old houses to
be razed in order that the uses of business might be served. So today the
former capital of the Confederacy has the appearance of a modern city
with a residential section reaching toward fashionable suburbs and slum
areas, with retail streets and factory districts progressive and far from dis-
tinctive. Parks and playgrounds provide the city with a decorative fringe.

From Church Hill, the heart of old Richmond, six long streets extend to
the west end of the city, where they open fanwise to include many shorter
streets. Handsome residences and apartment houses extend from Monroe
Park to the city limits and southward on the Boulevard. Across the river
South Richmond, formerly Manchester but now a part of the city and
connected with the north side by four highway and four railroad bridges,
retains its business districts and separate community life. Suburban areas
extend westward along both sides of the river and northward across rolling
terrain.

The largest Kfegro district spreads in a southeasterly direction from
Union University through a section known as Jackson Ward, although it
is no longer a political subdivision. This is largely a district of squalid
houses, but along Marshall and Clay Streets, once outside of the ward but
now a part of It, are many fine old residences occupied by well-to-do Negro
families.

The principal retail district Is concentrated on Broad, Grace, and Frank-
In Streets between ist and gth Streets. The financial district is on Main
Street between yth and i2th Streets; and, for many blocks east of loth
Street, Gary Street is given over to commission merchants and manufac-
turers of tobacco.

In the river near by, Belle Isle the site of a Confederate prison and now
occupied by an iron mill Mayo's Island, and numerous smaller islands
and jutting boulders block navigation beyond the intermediate turning
basin near Nicholson Street. A combined Federal and city outlay of
$5,690,000 has provided three cut-off canals and a river channel 25 feet
deep and 300 feet wide. Richmond is a United States Customs Port of En-
try, and handles annually some 2,000,000 tons with a valuation in excess
of $90,000,000.

The beauty of an earlier day survives on Capitol Square in a few build-
ings that have escaped the wreckers' tools and in the memory of old
Richmonders. Despite the inroads of progress, the city has inexplicably
retained its atmosphere. Although outwardly its traditional exclusiveness
no longer exists, Richmond still has its inner circle. But there is a paradox
in the liberal attitude of old Richmonders. Social discriminations have not
precluded social justice. From old circles have come leaders who are intent
upon bringing about better civic conditions, and who work with people of
aft races, creeds, and previous conditions.

Richmond's Negro population, constituting nearly one-third of the

RICHMOND 285

whole, is made up chiefly of laborers and domestics, though a fairly stable
business and professional class is developing with the aid of rapidly im-
proving educational facilities. Negro men and women prominent in busi-
ness and the professions have found sincere co-operation among 4 the best
white people.' Negroes operate a hospital, two successful insurance com-
panies, a bank, a Y.M.C.A., and a Y.W.C. A.

The city's social season, from late fall to Ash Wednesday, retains its old
ritual, with the Monday germans as highlights. Tea in darkened drawing
rooms, dinners served by tradition-trained butlers, frosted mint juleps in
ancient goblets, and Smithfield ham and beaten biscuits are part of the
ceremonial that has continued with no deviation. It is still proper in old
Richmond to refer to a guest as So-and-So's granddaughter or the de-
scendant of a founding f ather. llie very broad a and the added y are indis-
pensable to good breeding. Guests come by street and motor cyar to have
tea in the gyarden at half past five, and no tomatoes are served in Rich-
mond.

The city pursues culture through groups that promote the arts by culti-
vating creative and appreciative faculties and through clubs that dwell
upon Richmond's contribution to history. On Capitol Square and in hotels
dose by the political pot is continually boiling. Yet citizens of Richmond
take only mild interest in government affairs and pay small attention to
legislators who congregate biennially for sessions of the general assembly.

The industries of Richmond are diversified. Annual sales of manufac-
turers reach $250,000,000, and the capital investment in 300 manufactur-
ing enterprises is $97,690,000. More than 2,600 retail stores and 413 whole-
sale houses bring the annual pay roll to $61,000,000. The city has one of
the largest fertilizer plants and one of the largest cigar factories in the
world, several book manufacturing and paper plants, and a flour miE with
a capacity of 600,000 barrels a year. As the seat of the Fifth Federal Re-
serve Bank, Richmond is the financial center of five States and the Dis-
trict of Columbia. Tobacco, however, is the staple product. Downtown
Richmond is fragrant with the odor of the cured leaves being converted
into cigars, cigarettes, and smoking and chewing tobacco. The city has its
own water and gas companies and a municipally-owned plant generates
electricity for lighting streets and public buildings.

A week after the English landed at Jamestown in 1607, Captain Chris-
topher Newport set out to explore the James River. On the ' 27th daye of
May,' coming upon some falls, the party set up a cross on a small island
near the foot of the present 9th Street. Two years later, sent by John
Smith, Captain Francis West purchased a site at the falls from the Indians
and erected a fort that he called Fort West. After trouble with the Indians
the settlement was abandoned. In 1610 Lord Delaware led an expedition
to the falls, vainly sought minerals, and returned to Jamestown. In 1637
Thomas Stegg established a trading post at the head of navigation on the
James and was later granted lands about the falls. His son, Thomas
Stegg II, who had acquired property on both sides of the river, in 1670 left
his holdings to William Byrd I, a nephew, then only 18.

After the massacre of 1644 the settlers established Fort Charles at the

286 VIRGINIA

head of navigation and offered freedom from taxation to anyone who
would establish a home near by. Young Nathaniel Bacon had taken up
land near the falls. In this neighborhood the Susquehannock incited other
Indians to the depredations that precipitated Bacon's Rebellion in 1676.
The settlement at Fort Charles, encouraged by 'certain privileges'
granted William Byrd I for Inducing able-bodied men to live there as a de-
fense against the Indians, became a trading post for furs, tobacco, and
other commodities and was known as Byrd's Warehouse or Shocco.

In 1733 William Byrd II 'kid the foundation of two Citys': Petersburg
and Richmond. Colonel Byrd combined truth with prophecy when he
wrote: 1 . . . these two places being the uppermost Landing of James and
Appamattux Rivers, are naturally intended for Marts, where the Traffick
of the Outer Inhabitants must Center.' Four years later Major William
Mayo plotted on what Is now Church Hill 32 squares for Richmond 'with
Streets 65 Feet wide/ and named the place after Richmond on the Thames.
In 1742, when the population was 250, the general assembly enacted that
the 'piece or parcel of land ... at the falls of the James River ... be
. . . constituted ... a town.' Ten years later, the assembly appointed
nine trustees ' to lay off and regulate the streets and to settle the bounds of
the lots in the said town.' In 1769 William Byrd III 'laid out another par-
cel of his lands, on the north side of the James river ... at a place called
Shoccoes.' That year, moreover, a town later called Manchester was estab-
lished at Rocky Ridge on the south side of the river.
/During the next two decades Richmond grew slowly, with vicissitudes
that included the destructive 'great freshet' of 1771. In 1775 three epoch-
making conventions met in the town. The First Virginia Convention, held
in Williamsburg In August 1774, had elected delegates to the First Con-
tinental Congress and adopted a system of nonintercourse with Great
Britain. The Second Convention opened on March 20, 1775, at St.John's
Church In Richmond. Patrick Henry made his impassioned plea for lib-
erty or death and put through his resolution for 'embodying, arming, and
disciplining' the militia. The Third Convention, meeting in Richmond in
July, appointed the Committee of Safety, proposed the enlisting of re-
cruits, and inaugurated a plan for financing the war; and the Fourth Con-
vention was organized in Richmond but adjourned to Williamsburg.

In 1779 Richmond was made the capital of Virginia. The following year,
when Governor Jefferson moved into a rented house and the assembly
convened in temporary quarters, there were but 684 people living in Rich-
mond. The town played an important part in the last days of the Revolu-
tion, suffered pillaging by Benedict Arnold in January 1781, was rescued
from the British under Arnold and Phillips the following April by the ar-
rival of La Fayette, and in June was on Cornwallis's line of march east-
ward.

With peace came a new era of growth. The Virginia Gazette was moved
from Williamsburg to Richmond, and three other newspapers were estab-
lished in the new capital. In 1782 Richmond was incorporated as a town,
though it was called a city in deference to its status as capital. William
Foushee was elected mayor. The general assembly held sessions that led to

RICHMOND 287

a convention of other States for the framing of a Federal Constitution,
which amid verbal fireworks Virginia ratified in 1788. Thomas Jeffer-
son's beautiful building went up on Capitol Square. By 1790 the popola-
tion had increased to 3,761, and by 1800 had reached 5,730.

In 1802 Benjamin Henfry, a Scotsman, demonstrated lighting by gas
before citizens in Haymarket Garden, present terminus of the Atlantic
Coast Line Railway, and heard his ' tea kettel apparatus 1 ridiculed; Rich-
mond missed the opportunity of being the first American city to Install
street lighting. In 1803 came Tom Moore, Irish poet, * whose songs were
sung to every guitar and harpsichord in Richmond/ In 1807 Aaron Burr
was tried for high treason behind the portico of the Jeffersonian capitol.
In 1811 a theater fire took the lives of 73 people. That year the Allans of
Richmond adopted Edgar Allan Poe, an orphaned baby. His youth here
and his later connection with the Southern Literary Messenger are justi-
fication for Poe's declaring, 'I am a Virginian. At least, I call myself
one/

Like most cities Richmond grew with the development of transporta-
tion. Though it was not until 1840 that freight was shipped by canal be-
tween Richmond and Lynchburg, a canal was proposed by the Rever-
end Robert Rose in 1750. The general assembly passed an act in 1764 'for
extending navigation of the James River from Westham (seven miles)
downward through the Falls. 7 In 1784 the James River Navigation Com-
pany was chartered, and the following year George Washington was
elected its president. In 1790 the canal was opened from Richmond to
Westham, and in 1836 the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Rail-
road carried its first passengers out of Richmond, at the terrifying speed of
10 miles an hour. When the James River and Kanawha Canal was com-
pleted in 1840, Richmond was linked with the Piedmont country.

The city became as gay and fashionable as Williamsburg had been in
its heyday. Hostesses vied with each other in elaborate entertaining. In
1842, the year that Richmond became a city in reality as well as in name,
Charles Dickens at a dinner given in the Exchange Hotel was toasted as
'the artful dodger' because he had 'dodged Philadelphia and Baltimore/
but not Richmond. Theaters presented stars of the European and Amer-
ican stage the Booths, Joe Jefferson, Jenny Lind.

But the 'Fiery Epoch' had begun. Sectional misunderstanding had
thwarted a movement within the State for the emancipation of slaves.
The capital city was caught up in the excitement of war. On the night of
April 19, 1 86 1, Richmond blazed with fireworks and 'ten thousand hur-
rahing men and boys carried torches' to celebrate Virginia's secession. On
May 29, the Confederate capital was moved from Montgomery, Alabama,
to Richmond.

For a time the city was headily gay. Officers, resplendent in uew uni-
forms, strolled beside hoop-skirted beauties, whose very curls danced with
patriotism. Sewing circles culminated in 'danceable teas,' and pretty
heads were forever planning balls, parties, and theatricals. But there was
bickering, too. Richmond ladies were critical of the wives of new official-
dom. 'This Cabinet of ours,' wrote Mary Boykin Chestnut on July 27,

2&8 VIRGINIA

'are in such bitter quarrels among themselves everybody abusing every-
body. 1 f .. f

As the war years deepened Richmond was the center of political wrang-
ling and the objective of an invading army. Privation stifled gaiety and
fends- Wounded soldiers were brought to hurriedly equipped hospitals. In
May 1862, McCielan came within sight of Richmond. Defeated in the
Seven Days' Campaign, he changed his base from the York to the James,
where he remained until recalled in midsummer.

Foremost among the war heroines was Sally Tompkins, who as head of
a hospital was commissioned captain in the Confederate army. Elizabeth
Van Lew heroically toiled for the Union and emancipation, sending daily
communications to Federal officers and helping blue-clad soldiers to es-
cape from crowded Libby Prison, a ship chandlery and tobacco warehouse
built by William Libby in 1845 at Twentieth and Gary Streets. On Febru-
ary 9, 1864, she aided Colonel Thomas E, Rose and 108 Federals in a dar-
ing break from the prison. On April 3, 1865, Richmond was evacuated and
burned by its own people.

After the war Richmond began the slow task of rebuilding. Elizabeth
Van Lew became postmaster the only woman ever to hold so important
a government post in the city; the canal was reopened; railroads were re-
paired; a system of public education was established; and the emancipated
Negro began to find Ms place in the economic scheme. In 1887 horse-
drawn streetcars, which had been running since 1861, were supplanted by
electric cars.

A romantic literature, characterized by nostalgia for bygone days, gave
place in time to the writing of history and realism. Mary Johnston be-
came America's foremost historical novelist; Etten Glasgow held the mir-
ror before the people she knew too close for their happiness; and James
Branch Cabell created a medieval realm in which he ridiculed the Philistia
about him. Edward V. Valentine, Sir Moses Ezekiel, Dugald Stewart
Walker, and others achieved National recognition in the world of art. John
Powell took front rank among musicians. Schools and colleges increased in
number and size and strengthened their curricula. Richmond became a
hospital center for Virginia and other Southern States. In 1910 Manches-
ter across the river was annexed as a unit of greater Richmond. Women,
under such leaders as Lila Meade Valentine and Mary Cooke Branch
Munford, began to participate in public affairs. Negroes set out to learn
the use of new tools that freedom and education had given them. Com-
merce and the arts built a new Richmond, which while celebrating its bi-
centennial in 1937, refreshed its memory by means of a historical pageant.

POINTS OF INTEREST

i. CAPITOL SQUARE, bounded by Bank, N.pth, Capitol, and Gov-
ernor Sts., is shaded by large trees, patterned by worn brick walks, and in-
habited by tame squirrels. Half its 12 acres slope steeply. The act by
which the capital was moved from WiUiamsburg set apart 'six whole
squares ' for public buildings, provided for the erection of a ' house ' for use

EICHMONB 289

of the general assembly, and for temporary buildings elsewhere. The
grounds were laid out in 1816 by Maximilian Godefroy.

The WASHINGTON MONUMENT, NW. corner of the Square, is probably
Richmond's finest sculptural group. A bronze equestrian statue of George
Washington stands on an elaborate stone base flanked by nine-foot bronze
figures of George Mason, Patrick Henry, General Andrew Lewis, John
Marshall, Thomas Nelson, and Thomas Jefferson. Around the base are
female figures seated on trophies of victory.

Public subscriptions for a monument were first raised in 1817 by a com-
mittee under John Marshall. The 6o-foot monument, unveiled in 1858,
was completed with the figure of Marshall in 1867. Thomas Crawford exe-
cuted all the figures except those of Nelson and Lewis, which were done by
Randolph Rogers after Crawford's death. The base and pedestal were
designed by Robert Mills.

The STATE CAPITOL (open 8-5 Mon.-Fri., 8-4 Sat) raises a proud
Ionic portico above the trees on the steep hill. Robert Mills, one of Amer-
ica's first professional architects, wrote: 'I remember the impression it
made on my mind when first I came in view of it coming from the South.
It gave me an idea of the effect of those Greek temples which are the ad-
miration of the world.' The lofty portico and the rectangular mass of the
main block are tied together by an unbroken cornice and pilaster treat-
ment, which continues the effect of columns around the sides and back.
Short passages lead to side wings modified miniatures of the older build-
ing.

Thomas Jefferson sent from France a plaster model he had prepared in
collaboration with the French architect, Charles Louis Clarisseau, as a
modified design of the Maison Carree, late Roman temple at Nlmes. The
capitol antedated by more than 20 years the Madeleine in Paris, first exam-
ple in Europe of similar quasi-literal temple architecture. The cornerstone
was laid in 1785 but the capitol was not completed in time to house the
ratification convention in June, 1788, although the general assembly met
in the unfinished building in October. The original portion was finished in
1792 under the supervision of Samuel Dobie and the brick was covered
with stucco in 1798. The wings and the long flight of steps were built in
1904-05.

Here, where one of the world's oldest representative legislatures stiE
meets, events of National importance have taken place: in 1807 the dra-
matic trial of Aaron Burr on charges of treason; in 1861 the secession con-
vention, which met here for part of 54 days of bitter debate; sessions of
the Congress of the Confederate States of America, 1861-65; and a no-
table tragedy, the ' Capitol Disaster' in 1870, when the floor of the old Hall
of the House of Delegates collapsed, killing 63 persons and injuring 60.

Beneath the dome of the rotunda stands the noted marble FIGURE OF
GEORGE WASHINGTON, by Jean Antoine Houdon. Washington is por-
trayed in military uniform, a plowshare and small implements of war
about his feet, his left arm resting on a fasces. One day while Houdon was
following Washington about Mount Vernon to catch a characteristic pose,
he watched him bargaining for a yoke of oxen. When Washington, his arm

21)0 VIRGINIA

on a fmce post, explosively protested about the price, Houdon went at
once to mold his figure. Niches In the encircling wall are occupied by busts
of the seven other Virginia-bom Presidents of the United States and Hou-
don's bust of La Fayette, A marble plaque in memory of Lila Meade Val-
entine (1865-1921), Virginia's leader in the fight for enfranchisement of
womea, is in tie House of Delegates.

Along the north side of Capitol Square are three bronze figures: The
STATUE OF GOVERNOR WILLIAM SMITH, a work of W.L.Sheppard unveiled
in 1006* the STATTJE OF GENERAL THOMAS J. JACKSON, by J.H.Foley,R.A.,
presented in 1875 by Beresford Hope as a gift of English admirers of
4 Stonewall'; the STATUE OF DR.HUNTER HOLMES McGuiRE, a work of
William Couper, unveiled in 1904- Dr.McGuire (1835-1900), born in
Winchester, was an eminent physician.

The GOVERNOR'S MANSION (private), NE. corner of the bquare, a
twoHStory brick house painted white, is designed in simplified early Fed-
eral style with a single-story Doric portico and four chimneys rising from
the ridge corners of the deck roof. Built in 1813, it was the second gov-
ernor's house on this site. When Richmond became the capital, the State
umde no provision for the executive's residence, and Governor Jefferson
was forced to rent one. Nineteen years later, however, the State erected on
this site a four-room makeshift, which was dubbed ' The Palace ' and made
to serve until pleas especially those of Governor Tyler convinced the
legislature that a more appropriate one should be built. Virginia's gov-
ernors, from James Barbour to James H. Price, have occupied this man-
sion. In more expansive times it was customary during legislative sessions
to keep a huge bowl always full of toddy. Here the Prince of Wales (later
Edward VII), Marshal Foch, Winston Churchill, several Presidents of the
United States, and other notables have been entertained.

The VIRGINIA STATE LIBRARY (open 9-5 Mon-Fri., 9-12 130 5<tf.)>
E. side of the Square, is cramped in an undistinguished pale yellow brick
building with gray stone trim, but is soon to be moved to a new building
bang erected (1939) near by. A library bill presented by Jefferson in 1 779,
the first attempt to obtain a public library for Virginia, was unsuccessful
An act of the Virginia Assembly in 1823 provided the meager proceeds
from the sale of Hening's Statutes at Large for a library to be used by the
court of appeals, general court, and general assembly. In 1828 'the room
in the southeast corner of the Capitol ' was chosen for a library. The pres-
ent building was completed in 1892 and enlarged in 1908 and in i92o.The
library contains more than 250,000 volumes, files of old newspapers, his-
torical maps and charts, and more than 1,000,000 manuscripts. Here also
are a bronze bust of Commodore Matthew Fontaine Maury by Edward
Valentine, a very early map of Virginia (1590), and several early portraits
and copies. Source material of inestimable value is made available to re-
search workers by a staff that guards the irreplaceable books and docu-
ments. Wilmer Hall is the librarian, and Coralie H. Johnston has been in
charge of the reading room since 1916.

The OLD BELL TOWER (open by arrangement with park keeper), near
SW. corner of the Square, is a mellowed red brick building. The little

RICHMOND 291

thickset square tower was built in 1824, replacing one of wood. Calls to
the colors have pealed from both towers.

2. ST.PAUL'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH (open 10-4 M<m.-Pri., 10-12
Sat.; Sun. services), SW. comer N.Qth and E.Grace Sts., of brick stuccoed
dark gray, was designed in classical style by Thomas Stewart of Phila-
delphia and dedicated in 1845. A wide Corinthian portico is surmounted
by a towering cupola. St.Paul's is known as the ' Church of the Confed-
eracy/ associated as it is with Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, who
worshiped there during the War between the States. Jefferson Davis was
confirmed in this church and was attending services there when he re-
ceived news on April 2, 1865, of the proposed evacuation of Petersburg
and Richmond. The Lee Memorial Window is noteworthy. A mosaic re-
production of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper above the altar is illumi-
nated upon request.

3. The JOHN MARSHALL HOUSE (open 9-5 Mon.-Fri., 9-2 Sat.;
aim. 2$$, NW. comer N.gth and E.Marshall Sts., is a square brick build-
ing of post-Colonial simplicity, designed and built soon after 1789 by
Chief Justice John Marshall, who lived here until his death in 1835. The
gable, above one of two little formal porches that flank the outer corner, is
pedimented. The interior, including high mantels, simple paneling, and
cornices with plaster relief, is characterized by classical serenity.

John Marshall (1755-1835), born near Germantown (see Tour 40), was
related through his mother, Mary Randolph, to Thomas Jefferson and the
Lees. After taking an active part in the Revolution, he went to the College
of William and Mary in 1780 to study briefly under George Wythe. In
1782 Marshall was elected to the Virginia Legislature and moved to Rich-
mond, where he married Mary Ambler in 1783 and hung out his shingle.
He exerted great influence in the ratification convention of 1788, cham-
pioned Washington's administration and Hamilton's financial measures,
and became the Federalist leader in Virginia. He was elected to Congress
in 1799, served as President Adams's Secretary of State, and in 1801 be-
came Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Bitter antagonist of his cousin,
Thomas Jefferson, he made precedent-setting conservative decisions for
34 years. By his decision in the case of Marbury v. Madison he established
the Supreme Court's power of judicial review of National legislation.
Marshall presided in 1807 at the trial of Aaron Burr.

4. The VALENTINE MUSEUM (open 10-5 weekdays), SW. corner
E.Clay and N.I ith Sts., a two-story house of brick stuccoed gray, conceals
a terraced garden dotted with trees and shrubbery. It was designed by
Robert Mills for John Wickham, chief attorney for Aaron Burr, and
built in 1812. A sweeping stairway and a parlor, proudly retaining every
detail of furnishing in lushest Victorian style, stand out among the
rooms.

Mann S. Valentine purchased the house and left it to the city in 1892;
it was restored and opened to the public in 1930. In the garden at the rear
is the original carriage house, used for 30 years as a studio by Edward Vir-
ginius Valentine, and acquired by the city in 1937. The museum houses
the Mann S. Valentine collection of oriental casts and some of Edward V.

VIRGINIA

Valentine's best work, including the plaster cast of his recumbent statue
of Robert E. Lee, furniture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
rare books, cultural history material from Europe, the Orient, Africa,
Polynesia, and North America, and a series of miniature groups depicting
Richmond's history.

5. The CONFEDERATE MUSEUM or WHITE HOUSE OF THE
CONFEDERACY (open 9-5 Mon.-Fri., 9-2 Sal.; adm. 25$, SE. corner
N.X2tb and B.Clay Streets, is an angular white stuccoed-brick house with
a shallow, flat-roofed portico in Roman-Doric style. A small cupola stands
rather incongruously in the center of the roof. Built in 1818, this is one of
the few buildings designed by Robert Mills in the city, but its original
Hues were altered in 1 844 by a third-story addition.

Known as the Brockenbrough Mansion, it was bought and furnished by
the Confederacy as a 'worthy White House 3 for the Davis family. Here
was born Winnie Davis, "Daughter of the Confederacy,' and here died
little Joseph Davis after falling from a porch. The house was occupied for
five years after the war by the Federal Government, and served as Cen-
tral School for 20 years, and finally, in 1893, was saved from ruin by the
Confederate Memorial Literary Society, which made it a treasure house of
'things Confederate/ Here, among other exhibits, are Robert E. Lee's
sword, the original Great Seal and provisional constitution of the Confed-
eracy, Jackson's sword and cap, and the military equipment of Gen-
eral Joseph E. Johnston and General JJE.B.Stuart.

6. MEDICAL COLLEGE OF VIRGINIA, scattered about the corner
of E. Marshall and N.isth Sts., is a group of 13 major buildings. The
Egyptian Building, first permanent building of the institution, erected in
1854 from the design of Tlomas S. Stewart of Philadelphia, is (1939) being
restored.

The Medical College was founded in 1838 as a department of Hampden-
Sydney College but was granted a separate charter in 1854. After John
Brown's raid of 1859, Dr.Hunter Holmes McGuire persuaded some 300
Southern medical students in Pennsylvania universities to transfer en
masse to Southern medical schools. Of these, 140 enrolled in the medical
college here. Dr.McGuire founded the rival University College of Med-
icine in 1893, but after years of bitter competition, amalgamation of the
two colleges was effected in 1913. Women were admitted in 1918.

The institution, one of the largest medical plants in the South, consists
of ii units: the Memorial, Dooley, St.Phillip's, and Crippled Children's
Hospitals; McGuire and Cabaniss Halls; the Egyptian Building; the Li-
brary; the dormitory and educational unit for StPhillip's Hospital School
for Nursing; the cHnic and laboratory building; and the staff dormitory.
New units are in process of construction (1939). Enrollment in 1937-38
was about 700, and the faculty numbered 223.

7. MONUMENTAL CHURCH (open 9-1, 2-5 weekdays; Sun. for serv-
ices), E.Broad St. between N.i2th and College Sts., is a stuccoed brick
building of Classical Revival architecture. The body of the building, an
octagonal domed auditorium, is extended on four faces, and the entrance
portico is of brown sandstone with columns between anta walls. It was

RICHMOND 293

completed In 1814 from the design of Robert Mills; no similar example of
Ms work survives. Here is preserved a baptismal basin, dated 1733, % rom
the last church at Jamestown.

On this site stood the Richmond Theater, where Edgar Allan Poe's
mother acted. Governor George William Smith and many other promi-
nent citizens were burned to death December 26, 1811, during a perform-
ance of The Bleeding Nun. A stalwart slave, Gilbert Hunt, saved the lives
of about 20 women and children by catching them in his arms as they were
dropped from flaming windows. Laws in Virginia and elsewhere to prohibit
the opening inward of theater doors resulted from this tragedy.

8. CRAIG HOUSE (open 10-12, 2-6 daily), NW. corner N.igth and
E.Grace Sts., a two-story white frame building built by Adam Craig late
in the eighteenth century, is set back in a picket-fenced comer garden.
This is the birthplace of Jane Craig, Poe's ' Helen.' A Negro art school is
conducted here and in the restored brick kitchen in the yard.

9. MONTE MARIA ROMAN CATHOLIC CONVENT, E.Grace St.
between N.22nd and N.23rd Sts., occupies a group of brick buildings, in-
cluding an old galleried house built by William Taylor in 1859. The Sisters
of the Visitation of Baltimore established themselves here in 1866, altered
the interior, and erected a small church.

10. ST. JOHN'S CHURCH (open 8:45-5:30 daily, Sun. for services),
E.Broad St. between N.24th and N.25th Sts., is a simple white frame
building with a three-tiered square tower over the front entrance. The cen-
tral part was built in 1741 on ground given by William Byrd together with
'wood for burning bricks into the bargain.' The church has been enlarged
several times. The Second Virginia Convention met in St. John's on
March 20, 1775, and heard Patrick Henry rhetorically ask for liberty or
death. Among the graves in the churchyard are those of George Wythe
(see Williamsburg) , the first professor of law in the United States; Eliza-
beth Arnold Poe, mother of the poet; and Dr. James McClurg, one of Vir-
ginia's delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787.

McClurg (1746-1823) was born near Hampton and was graduated from
the College of William and Mary and from the University of Edinburgh;,
During the Revolution he served as physician-general and director of hos-
pitals for Virginia and in 1779 was appointed professor of anatomy and
medicine at the College of William and Mary. When that chair was dis-
continued in 1783, he moved to Richmond. Dr.McClurg was the only Vir-
ginian at Philadelphia to advocate monarchial forms of government for
the United States.

11. CHIMBORAZO PARK, E.Broad St. between 32nd and 35* Sts.,
a landscaped promontory overlooking the wharves and many of Rich-
mond's largest manufacturing plants, was whimsically named for a moun-
tain in the Andes. In 1862 Dr. James B. McCaw established here a hospital
of 150 buildings and 100 tentsthen the largest military hospital in the
world. Seventy-six thousand patients were cared for, with a mortality of
less than 10 per cent. The park site was purchased by the city in 1874. The
stone that once marked Powhatan's grave stands here on the bluff above
the site of the old chief's village.

294 VIRGINIA

12. The HENRICO COUNTY COURTHOUSE (open 9-5 ltm.-Fri. 9
g-i Sat.), SW. comer S.aand and E.Main Sts., a red brick building erected
in 1896, occupies a half-acre lot deeded for county use to William Randolph
in 1750, about the time the first courthouse was built here. Henrico,
formed in 1634, was one of the eight original counties, and was named for
Henry, Prince of Wales. It first embraced a wide area extending westward
on both sides of the river.

13. EDGAR ALLAN POE SHRINE (open 9:30-5:30 daily; adm. 25^),
1916 E.Main St., is a little gray stone cottage with dormers along its
gabled roof. Inscribed on the front wall are the letters ( J.R./ believed to
be the initials of * Jacobus Rex/ James II, King of England. This is appar-
ently the oldest house in Richmond, erected about 1686. Beyond a shel-
tered garden at the rear is an ivy-covered loggia, built with material sal-
vaged from the Southern Literary Messenger Building, which stood on a
comer near by. On exhibition here are many of Poe's manuscripts and
other objects associated with his life in Richmond.

14. MASONIC HALL (open by arrangement 9-4:30 Mon.-Fri., 9-1
Sat.), 1805 E.Franklin St., a white frame building, was erected in 1785,
lately through the efforts of Chief Justice John Marshall. It has been oc-
cupied by the Masonic order longer than any other building in America.
La Fayette was feted here in 1824.

15. The VIRGINIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY HEADQUARTERS
(open 9-4:30 Mon.-Fri. y 9-1 Sat.), 707 E.Franklin St., is a three-story
brick building with a high Doric porch. It dates from 1845 and is typical
of prosperous mid-nineteenth-century Richmond dwellings. From 1862
until June 1865 it was the residence of General Lee's family. After Appo-
mattoz the defeated hero rode to this house amid the cheers of Union sol-
diers occupying the city. In its front room he declared, on hearing of Lin-
coln's assassination, 'This is the hardest blow the South has yet received/

The Virginia Historical Society has occupied the building since 1892.
Organized in 1831 with John Marshall as president, the society has pre-
served many valuable books, manuscripts, and a large collection of por-
traits, which are on exhibition in a fireproof addition. These include a por-
trait of La Fayette by Charles Willson Peale, Thomas Sully's Pocahontas,
and a death mask of Lee.

16. ELLEN GLASGOW'S HOUSE (private), i W.Main St., is an im-
posing square gray stuccoed building with deck-roof, built by David
Branch about 1839. At the rear is an enclosed formal garden. Ellen Glas-
gow (1874- ) is the author of 20 novels that deal with aspects of the
Virginia scene (see Literature).

17. ^ The CASKIE HOUSE (private), NW. corner E.Main and N.sth
Sts., is a two-story octagonal red brick building, the only one of this type
in Richmond. It was built about 1815 and was once the home of William
Wirt (1772-1834), author and member of counsel in the prosecution of
Aaron Burr.

^ 18. SHOCKOE HILL CEMETERY (open 8-5 daily), N. end of 3rd
St., a twelve-and-a-half-acre tract sheltered by ancient elms and mag-
lolias and enclosed by a buttressed red brick wall, was used chiefly be-

RICHMOND 295

tween 1825 and 1875. Here are buried Peter Francisco, 'Hercules of the
American Revolution'; Chief Justice John Marshall and Ms wife, Mary
Ambler ; Elizabeth Van Lew, whose grave is marked with a Roxbury l pud-
ding-stone 7 from Boston's Capitol Hill; Claude Benoit Crozet, French
engineer, who built the Afton tunnel; and Jane Craig Stanard, inspiration
of PoeVTo Helen.'

19. The SIXTH MT.ZION BAPTIST CHURCH (open 9-12, 1-5
daily), NE. corner Duval and St. John's Sts. ? is a red brick structure. Here
John Jasper, a Negro preacher, acquired a National reputation by his ser-
mon, 'The Sun Do Move and the Earth Am Squaar/ delivered for the
first time March 28, 1879. His theme was Joshua's saving of the Gib-
bonites. Jasper would say, 'Dey had an orful fight, . . . but yer might
know dat Ginr'l Joshwer wuz not up dar ter git whip't ... As a ac y ,
Joshwer wuz so drunk wid de bat'l . . . dat he tell de sun ter stan y still
tel he cud finish his job. What did de sun do? Did he glar down . . . an*
say, ' What you talkin' 'bout my stoppin' for, Joshwer ; I ain't navur startid
yit . . . ?" Naw, he ain't say dat. But wat de Bible say? It say dat it
wuz at de voice uv Joshwer dat it stopped. I don' say it stopt; 'tain't fer
Jasper ter say dat, but de Bible, de Book uv Gord, say so, But, I say dis;
nuthin' kin stop untel it hez fust startid ... It stopt fur bizniz, an'
went on when it got through ... an I derfies ennybody to say dat my
p'int ain't made.' Jasper was once offered 400 to go to London, but he
refused to forsake his church. A bust of Jasper by Edward V. Valentine is
in the church.

20. The ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AND FINE ARTS OF THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (open 10-4:30 weekdays, July and
Aug. io-i2 Sat., adm. lof), 102 E.Franklin St., occupies a pleasant red
brick house in what is known as Linden Row. In 1786 the Chevalier Alex-
andre Marie Quesnay de Beaurepaire, an enthusiastic young French offi-
cer, after ten years of effort founded an academy with this title. A building
was erected in Richmond, and the academy was affiliated with the Royal
Academy of Sciences and the Paris Royal Academy of Sculpture and
Painting. Beaurepaire was recalled to France by the Revolution, and with
him went active interest in the academy.

A second institution was established in 1817, with the sponsorship of
the Virginia legislature. A building for a Museum of Art and Natural Sci-
ence was erected on what is now Capitol Square. After 1822, however, in-
terest died, and the collection was publicly auctioned. The Virginia League
of Fine Arts was formed in 1918, and the present Academy was chartered
in 1930. It led the movement to establish the Virginia Museum of Fine
Arts and now sponsors the Federal Art Project in Virginia. Art classes for
children and adults are conducted, art exhibitions are held, and a Chil-
dren's Federal Art Gallery is maintained.

21. The RICHMOND CITY LIBRARY (open 9-9 weekdays), SE.
corner E.Franklin and N.ist Sts., moved in 1930 into this gray sandstone
building of simple contemporary design by Baskerville and Lambert,
which has been described as 'an outstanding example of austere beauty
combined with practical realization of function.'

296 VIRGINIA

Hie first public library in mdunond, besides the State Library, was
opened in 1924 at 901 W.Franklin Street. The present building, contain-
ing about 125,000 volumes, was the gift of Mrs.SalIie M. Dooley, as a
memorial to her husband, James H. Dooley.

22. The TREDEGAR IRONWORKS, S. end of 6th St., between the
Canal and James River, a jumble of blackened brick buildings spread, dis-
consolately over a 25-acre lot and interspersed with heaps of rusty scrap
iron, is the oldest plant of its kind south of the Potomac. Business has been
carried on here since 1836, the plant having contributed munitions and
supplies to the Confederacy and to the United States in all foreign
wars ance its establishment. Here were rolled the plates that armored
faMcmmac-Virginia (see Hampton Roads Port), terror of the Union
Navy. Tie plant is named after Tredegar, England, notable for its iron-
works.

23. HOLLYWOOD CEMETERY (open summer 7-6:30, winter 7-5
datty), entrance SW. comer Cherry and Albemarle Sts., a ii5~acre tract
rising to a bluff overlooking the James, is cut by ravines and thickly set
with finelxees. The cemetery was dedicated in 1849 and named for its mag-
nificent holly trees. Among those buried here are John Randolph of Roa-
note, Gnnmodore Matthew Fontaine Mauiy, President Jefferson Davis,
Presidents Monroe and Tyler, many Virginia governors, and Confederate
officers.

24. The CATHEDRAL OF THE SACRED HEART (open 7-6 daily),
in a triangular plot formed by Cherry St., Park and Floyd Aves., is a lime-
stone structure of Italian Renaissance design, with dome and portico, and
an ambulatory at one side. The cathedral was built in 1906 with funds
donated by Mr. and Mrs.Thomas Fortune Ryan.

25. VIRGINIA UNION UNIVERSITY (Negro), 1500 NXombardy
St., occupies 15 buildings on a tree-shaded 55-acre campus, 8 of them con-
structed of gray, roughhewn Virginia granite in a modified Romanesque
style. This university represents the fusion of four institutions and had
a twin beginning in 1865 when the American Baptist Home Mission So-
ciety founded in Richmond a theological school for freedmen under
Dr. J.C.Binney and the Wayland Seminary in Washington.

The Richmond school, which opened in 1867 under Dr.Nathaniel Col-
ver in Lumpkin's Slave Jail, united in 1899 with the Wayland Seminary,
which in 1869 had absorbed the National Theological School, founded in
Washington in 1865. By act of the Virginia Legislature in 1900 the name
was changed to Virginia Union University. In 1932 Hartshorn Memorial
College, a Negro woman's college near by, founded in 1883, was co-ordi-
nated with Union University.

The university has two divisions, the Theological Seminary and the Col-
lege of Arts and Sciences, besides an extension in Norfolk. Enrollment in
the college exceeds 550 students, of whom slightly more than half are
women; there is a faculty of 30. The library contains about 28,000 books
and pamphlets, including the McClay Collection of books by or about Ne-
groes. The bachelor degrees of arts, science, theology, and divinity are
conferred. Nearly 2,000 graduates include such Negro leaders as Eugene

RICHMOND 297

Kinckle Jones, T.Arnold Hill, Charles S. Johnson, Dr. Joshua B. Simpson,
and Dr.Bessie B. Tharps.

26. UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY (Presbyterian), Cham-
berlayne Ave. between Melrose and Westwood Aves., occupying n brick
buildings around an open lawn, was founded in 1812 at Hampden-Sydney
and was moved to Richmond in 1898. The enrollment in 1037-38 was 16*.

The GENERAL ASSEMBLY'S TRAINING SCHOOL FOR LAY-
WORKERS, 3400 Brook Road, quartered in two large buildings of pink
brick with light stone trim in early Federal style, erected in 1922, was
established in 1914 by the Presbyterian general assembly. Bachelor and
master degrees in religious education have been conferred since 1933. The
enrollment in 1937-38 was 91,

MONUMENT AVENUE, a continuation of W.FranHin St., the most
fashionable residential street in the city, is a tree-shaded thoroughfare
with a central parkway of grass and shrubs, dotted with statues of distin-
guished Virginians.

27. The J.E.B.STUART MONUMENT, at Lombardy St., a dramatic
equestrian bronze of the great cavalry leader, was executed by Fred Moy-
mhan and erected in 1907.

28. The LEE MONUMENT, at Allen Ave., a bronze figure of the gen-
eral upon his horse, Traveller, stands on an ornate stone pedestal. The
monument was unveiled by Lee's West Point classmate and friend, Gen-
eral Joseph E. Johnston, in 1890. Because the sculptor, Jean Antoine
Mercie, thought ' the brow of Lee too noble to be hidden under a hat,' this
was the first equestrian statue with bared head erected in the United
States.

29. The bronze JEFFERSON DAVIS MONUMENT, at Davis Ave.,
portrays the Confederate President in. an oratorical pose, backed by an
open, semicircular colonnade and a classical column supporting an allegor-
ical female figure. This work of Edward V. Valentine was unveiled in
1907.

30. The STONEWALL JACKSON MONUMENT, at Boulevard, de-
signed by F.William Sievers and dedicated in 1919, is a bronze figure of
the general astride his horse, Little Sorrel.

31. The COMMODORE MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY MON-
UMENT, at Belmont Ave., is a bronze figure of Maury, in a chair below
a massive bronze globe.

32. The JAMES BRANCH CABELL HOUSE (private), 3201 Monu-
ment Ave., home of the author, is a brown stone building. James Branch
Cabell (1879- ) has written 30 books, including satirical fiction and es-
says. Since 1929 he has been writing under the name of Branch Cabell (see
Literature) .

33. The CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL INSTITUTE or BATTLE
ABBEY (open 10-5 weekdays, 2:30-5:30 Sun.; adm. 25^), N.Boulevard
between Kensington and Stuart Aves., set in landscaped grounds of six
acres, is an oblong, windowless building of white marble with a tall Ionic
portico, completed in 1913. Charles 'Broadway' Rouss of New York, a
Confederate veteran, donated $100,000 in 1896 toward such a building.

VIRGINIA

The State of Virginia appropriated $50,000, and various contributions
made up a total to equal the initial donation. The institute houses a large
collection of portraits of Southern heroes and is distinguished also by the
mural series of the French artist, Charles Hoffbauer, depicting Confeder-
ate battle scenes. Hoffbauer made preliminary sketches in 1914 before his
enlistment in the French army, destroyed them upon his return, and en-
riched by personal knowledge of war painted the present murals.

34. The CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS 1 HOME (open 9-5 daily),
JSf.Boulevard between Stuart and Grove Aves., a group of six frame build-
ings, comprises a chapel, hail, museum, two cottages, and a combination
hospital and mess hall It was founded in 1884 for disabled ^ Confederate
veterans. In 1936, because its original 300 inmates had dwindled to 17,
eight buildings were razed. Now (1939) only seven old soldiers remain.
Little Sorrel, * Stonewall ' Jackson's horse, has been mounted and placed in
the museum. A cannon used in Fort Sumter's defense stands lonely guard
over a lawn shaded by oaks and sycamores.

35. HOME FOR CONFEDERATE WOMEN (private), 301 N.Shep-
pard St., is a white stone building of modified French Renaissance style.
The central section, with an Ionic portico, is connected by solaria to its
wings. Chartered in 1896 to care for needy daughters, widows, mothers, or
sisters of Confederate soldiers, the home has been twice moved. The pres-
ent building, first occupied in 1932, has accommodations for 75.

36. The VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS (open 9:30-5 Tues-
Sat., adm. 25^; 2-5:30 Sun., adm. free), NW. corner N.Boulevard and
Grove Ave., is a pink brick building of modified Federal architecture. It is
the first unit of a building that will be much larger. Built in 1934 after a
$100,000 gift by Judge John Barton Payne and another of $100,000 from
ii sponsors, the museum has a notable permanent collection, the nucleus
of which is the John Barton Payne collection presented to the Common-
wealth of Virginia in 1919, containing a Del Sarto, a Rubens, aMurillo, a
Canaletto, a Reynolds, and others. Judge Payne also bequeathed $50,000
for the purchase of paintings by American artists. On indefinite loan is the
Henry P. Strause collection of clocks, gold, and silverplate. The museum
sponsors lectures, special exhibitions, research, and restoration work.

37. WILLIAM BYRD PARK, entrance S. end of Boulevard, is a 300-
acre recreation area with roads through peaceful groves and around three
artificial lakes, in one of which a fountain is colorfully lighted at night.
The park dates from 1874, when the city council bought 60 acres for a
reservoir. It has bathing, tennis, and other athletic facilities. In the south-
west corner is Virginia's memorial to World War dead, the CARILLON, a
240-foot tower of pink brick, designed in Georgian Colonial style. Erected
in 1932, it contains 66 bells, cast in England, that are seldom played. On.
the ground floor is a MUSEUM OF WORLD WAR RELICS (open 10-12, 2-4
weekdays, 3-5 Sun; adm. free).

A bronze STATUS OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, by Feruccio Legnaioli,
is in the northwest section of the park.

38. REVEILLE (private), Cary Street Rd. between Lafayette St. and
Woodlawn Ave., is a tall, white-painted brick house of simple eighteenth*

RICHMOND 299

century design, rambling back into a large garden with box-bordered
flower beds. When built, it was a plantation house far outside the city.
Tradition attributes its title to the Revolutionary period, but the name "is
not found in deed books earlier than 1852.

39. VIRGINIA HOUSE (private), S. side Sulgrave Rd. in Windsor
Farms, is a large gabled Tudor manor house of brownstone surrounded by
English gardens. Alexander Weddell, ambassador to Spain, brought mate-
rials for the house from Warwick Priory, Warwick, England, and recon-
structed the house on this site in 1925. Eventually the Virginia Historical
Society will be housed here.

40. AGECROFT HALL (private), S. side Sulgrave Rd. in Windsor
Farms, a Tudor mansion of plaster and half- timber construction, was built
about 1393, in Lancashire, England, and reconstructed on its present site
in 1925.

41. AMPTHILL (private), S. end Ampthill Rd. off Gary Street Rd., Is
the stolid red brick house built by one of the Henry Carys father or son
(see Williamsburg). The hip-roof central section is flanked by gable-roofed
wings. Exterior detail is severe, but the full interior paneling is hand-
somely designed. Before being moved in 1929-30 the main house and Its
formerly detached buildings stood beside Falling Creek, on the south bank
of the James. Built many years before 1732 if its then obsolete bonding
be taken as evidence the house appears to have been enlarged subse-
quently. The interior woodwork and the outhouses probably date from
about 1750-60, during the ownership of Archibald Gary, chairman of the
committee that directed the Virginia members of the Continental Con-
gress in 1776 to move for independence.

42. WILTON (open 9-5 weekdays, 9-12, 3-6 Sun.; adm. 25$, S. end
Wilton Rd. off Gary Street Rd., built by William Randolph III about
1750 on the north bank of the James six miles below Richmond, is a well-
proportioned brick mansion. A broad hip roof raises its plain surfaces be-
tween tall end chimneys. The entrance doors, framed by Ionic pilasters,
and a crowning cornice are the chief exterior ornaments. The interior is
fully paneled and has been refurnished in the style of the period. Beneath
the cornice of a bedroom is Inscribed: ' Sampson Darrell put up this Cor-
nish in the year of our Lord 1753.' The house was moved to this site in
1935 and restored.

43. The UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND, College Rd. W. of Three
Chopt Rd,, is housed in 16 buildings scattered in groups over nearly
300 acres of rolling ground. The T.C.Williams School of Law, founded
1870, and the Evening School of Business Administration, founded 1924,
branches of the University, are in downtown Richmond.

The light red brick buildings of Richmond College, to the northeast, are
designed in various styles of architecture ranging from modern to Col-
legiate Gothic. A nine-acre artificial lake separates this campus from that
of WESTHAMPTON COLLEGE, where red brick buildings of Collegiate
Gothic style were designed by Ralph Adams Cram. On a steep slope above
the lake, screened by great oaks is the LUTHER H. JENKINS OUTDOOR
THEATER.

3OO VIRGINIA

Apparently the first organized movement by the Baptists for education
in the new commonwealth began in 1788, when a committee of 10 was or-
ganized to * forward the business respecting the seminary of learning/ but,
after 21 years, the project was given up because of lack of funds. The at-
tempt was renewed in 1830 with the formation of an 'Educational Soci-
ety/ and in 1832 the Virginia Baptist Seminary was founded, with Robert
Ryland as principal and sole teacher and with fourteen theological stu-
dents. In 1840 the institution was chartered as Richmond College. Almost
destroyed and closed by the war, it was reopened in 1866. Coeducation
was begun in 1898, with the matriculation of four young women.

Westhampton, a separate women's college, was founded in 1914 to come
within the University of Richmond, which was created by charter several
years later. At the same time the Baptist Women's College of Richmond,
an independent school, turned its property over to the new organization.
The modern plant has been constructed since 1914.

The university libraries house about 67,000 volumes. Bachelor and mas-
ter degrees in arts and science and LL.B. degrees are conferred. The total
enrollment (1939), including the schools of law and business administra-
tion, a summer school, and the graduate department, is about 1,500.

POINTS OF INTEREST IN ENVIRONS

Du Pont de Nemours Manufacturing Plant, 6.7 m. (see Tour ic). Seven Pines
Battlefield, 8.5 m. (see Tour 8a). Mechanicsville and the National Battlefield Park
Route, 6.5 m. (see Tow 2oa). Fort Harrison, Park Headquarters and Museum
8.9 m. (see Tom 24).

afflililiilif^^^

Roanoke

Railroad Stations: Shenandoah Ave. and Randolph St. for Norfolk and Western Ry.;
Jefferson and Walnut Sts. for Virginian Ry.

Bus Stations: 16 W. Church Ave. for Greyhound Lines; 608 S. Jefferson St. for Pan-
American Lines.

Taxis: Fare 25^ within city limits.
Streetcars: Fare 7^, 4 tokensas^, weeklypass$i.

Accommodations: 13 hotels; tourist homes.

Information Service: Chamber of Commerce, 13 W. Church Ave.

Radio Station : WDB J (930 kc.) .

Theaters and Motion Picture Houses: Roanoke Theater, 15 W.Campbell Ave.; Academy

of Music, S. side of W.Salem Ave. near Park (5th) St., concerts and road shows; 7 motion

picture houses, including i for Negroes.

Golf: Monterey Golf Club, 1.2 m. N. on County 605 (R) off State 115, 18 holes; Blue

Hills Golf Club, 1.5 m. N. on County 605 (R) off State 115, 18 holes; greens fees for

both $i Sat., Sun., and holidays, 75 other days.

Swimming: Lakeside, 2.5 m. W. of city limits on State 24, open 9-8; Roberts Pool,

0.8 m. W. on US 1 1, open 7 a.m.-8 p.m.; adm. at both 25^, children 15 j; Blue Hills Golf

Club pool, open 6:30 a.m.-7:30 p.m., adm. 25^.

Tennis: Courts in 10 of 1 2 parks in city (2 courts for Negroes), free.

Annual Events: Roanoke County Fair, Sept.

ROANOKE (950 alt., 69,206 pop.) lies in a bowl formed by the Blue Ridge
and Allegheny Mountains and ranks third in population among Virginia
cities, though in 1880 it was only the small town of Big Lick. Within the
southern corporate limits rises Mill Mountain, detached from surrounding
ranges. Its summit commands a view of twisting streams, ridges, valleys,
and distant peaks. From the mountain's base extend streets, cut by rail-
road tracks, creeks, the winding course of the Roanoke River, and by parks
generously scattered throughout the city.

It is perfectly evident that the population is not preponderantly Vir-
ginian, for people seem always in a hurry. Industrial executives, factory
workers, merchants, and professional people make up the majority of those
seen on the streets.

The era of architectural ugliness in which Roanoke was born and the
city's precocious growth have complicated the task of the planning com-
mission created in 1928. Shops and factories are near the center of the city
as well as toward the outskirts, and better sections are close to those not so
good. There are unsightly areas of houses quickly built and poorly kept,
and junk heaps near historic places. The retail district, with Jefferson Street

301

302 VIRGINIA

as Its ams, Is crowded between railroad tracks and Tazewell Avenue. Houses
In the older residential section are late Victorian, but suburban develop-
ments give evidence of an architectural renaissance.

The Negro population, 18 per cent of the whole, finds work principally
in factories and railroad shops and yards. Negroes are skilled in manipulat-
ing the immense car wheels, a task that requires a delicate sense of balance.
Though several Negro residential districts reflect a wage scale higher for
Negroes than that prevailing in most other Virginia cities, many districts
show tie need for slum clearance.

The opening of the Blue Ridge Parkway from a point 25 miles south of
Roanoke to the Pinnacles of the Dan and the completion of the Skyline
Drive to Rockfish Gap near Waynesboro bring thousands of visitors
through Roanoke annually. Plans for the ultimate development of the two
scenic highways involve the parkway's circling Roanoke and joining the
drive north of the city.

One hundred and sixty-one industries and n utility companies thrive in
Roanoke, annually paying 17,711 people salaries that total $23,893,840.32.
Though the railroad shops and the enormous cellulose factories are the
mainsprings of industrial prosperity, and though the city owes its origin
wholly to the establishment here of a railroad terminal and shops, the sur-
rounding country with its fertility and wealth of natural resources has con-
tributed to the miraculous growth of Roanoke.

The country around Roanoke was once a favorite hunting ground of the
Indians, attracted by the abundance of game drawn to the salt deposits,
or 'licks/ within the limits of the present city. In 1654 Abraham Wood
passed this way, and in 1671 his son Thomas came through, having set out
from the Indian town of Appomattox 'in order to discover the South Sea/
he wrote in his diary.

When Augusta County was formed in 1738, the valley of the Roanoke
lay within its boundaries. Settlements were made here as early as 1740. In
1749 Dr.Thomas Walker of Albemarle organized the Loyal Land Com-
pany and on a trip to explore the country found squatters in the valley. At
the ' Great Lick they bought corn for their horses from Michael Campbell'
and farther on 'lodged at James Robinson's.'

The French and Indian War almost wrecked these frontier settlements,
yet a few stalwart people continued to hold their homes, and others came
to set up homesteads. About the turn of the century Old Lick, already a
stage on the Great Road down the valley, became an important crossroads
when it was reached by the turnpike running west from Lynchburg.

In 1834 the community made its first effort to become a town. Streets
were laid out and lots were sold, but only the little town of Gainsborough
materialized. Salem, and not Big Lick, was made the seat of Roanoke
County when it was created in 1838.

In 1852 the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad built a depot at Big Lick
and a few shops and stores followed immediately. In 1858 IshamM. Fergu-
son established a tobacco factory in the village, and 10 years later a can-
ning factory was put in operation. Big Lick was chartered as a town in
1874; John Trout was elected mayor; the council met regularly in Rorer's

R O A N O K E 303

Hall; and the town even erected a calaboose 12 feet square. Four years la ter
The Big Lick News printed its first edition.

In 1 88 1 it was noised abroad that two railroads, the Shenandoah Valley
and the Norfolk and Western, were seeking a junction point. John C. Moo-
maw suggested that the council offer inducements that would bring the
terminal to Big Lick and started on a 5<>mile ride to Lexington, where he
was to confer the next day with railroad officials. He had arranged that a
messenger convey to him at Buchanan in the morning details of the town's
offer. The council promised a terminal and $10,000. Charles W. Thomas
rode to Buchanan and delivered the papers to Mr.Moomaw, who hurried
on to Lexington. The junction was awarded to Big Lick.

In 1882 the town changed its name to Roanoke (Ind., shell money) and
extended its limits. In 1881 there had been less than 700 inhabitants; in
1883 there were 5,000, and Roanoke received its city charter the next year.
In 1906 the Virginian Railway carne, bringing its shops and its great coal
traffic. Mark Twain was a passenger on the first Virginian coach that en-
tered the city. In succeeding years many industries have been attracted to
Roanoke.

POINTS OF INTEREST

ELMWOOD PARK, Jefferson St. between Bullitt and Elm Aves., is
a seven-and-a-half-acre landscaped municipal park and children's play-
ground. A large cream-painted brick house with Dutch-style stepped gable
ends, built by Jonathan Tosh in 1820, stands on the crest of the steep,
wooded knoll in the center. The house is occupied by the PUBLIC LIBBARY
(open 10-9 weekdays, 3-6 Sun. and holidays), founded by local women in
1920 and opened in 1921. The city donated the park grounds and provided
financial support. The library maintains four branches, one for Negroes,
and has more than 58,000 volumes, including a collection of illuminated
manuscripts and local Virginiana.

LONE OAK (private), SW. corner Franklin Rd. and King George (i6th)
Ave., on a hill facing Mill Mountain and overlooking the Roanoke River,
is a red-painted brick house of modern appearance. Its central block, with
walls two feet thick, was built by the Tosh family, incorporating an earlier
log house. It was known originally as 'Rock of Ages' from the rock ledge
on which it stands, and was probably the first brick house in this part of
the valley. The house is surrounded by five acres of lawn and gardens re-
stored to their Colonial character all that is left of the Tosh land.

MILL MOUNTAIN (2,183 alt -)> S. edge of city limits, rises more than
1,000 feet above the city. For some distance up the tree-covered side facing
Roanoke, new and old houses cling like Swiss chalets on the mountain's
almost vertical flank. In 1910 an incline trolley line was built to the sum-
mit, which affords a magnificent view of mountains and valley and of the
city itself. The popularity of precipitous SYLVAN ROAD (toll 50^ for car and
2 persons, lojzf each additional person) , off Ivy St. S. from Walnut St., caused
the cable car to be abandoned in 1930, and its track was removed in 1934.
From the foot of the mountain issues CRYSTAL SPRING, E. side of S. Jeffer-

304 VIRGINIA

son St. and Wellington Ave. between Hamilton Teirace and McCIanahan
St. It has a flow of 5,000,000 gallons daily and provides water for the city,

The AMERICAN VISCOSE CORPORATION PLANT (open by ar-
ramgemmt), S. end of E.gtfa St., one of the largest artificial silk factories in
the world, occupies a neatly kept plant on a 1 20-acre tract where a Saponi
Indian village once stood. Opened in 1917, it has expanded swiftly. With a
production capacity in 1937 of 30,000,000 pounds, the company ^employs
nearly 5,000 workers. The plant is owned entirely by British capital. ^

The viscose process was developed from the inventions of three English-
niea s Cross, Bevan, and Topfaam. It is the latest and now most generally
used of four methods of rayon manufacture. Spruce wood pulp, before
reacting the plant, is ground and pressed into creamy-white, blotterlike
sheets about two feet square and an eighth of an inch thick. It is piled in
2So-pound batches, which are identified by number through every step in
the process in order to balance exactly the quantity of chemicals with which
they are to be treated. The batches are mercerized by steeping in a caustic
soda solution, drained, shredded into a damp, cottony mass of 'crumbs/
aged for several hours in temperature-controlled rooms, and treated with
carbon bisulphide to form orange-colored cellulose xanthate.^ Dissolved in
another caustic solution, the material becomes a brown, sticky, viscous
liquid. Pipes carry this modified cellulose from filters to hundreds of tanks
hi the cellars, where it is stored at an even temperature, and then fed under
pressure to the spinning machinery. Each unit consists of a ' spinnerette/ a
nozzle perforated by invisibly fine orifices, through which the brown fluid
oozes into a precipitating medium & dilute sulphuric acid bath, flowing in
troughs. The coarse thread that forms immediately is stretched and slightly
twisted as it is wound into a small cylinder in a t bucket ' revolving 6,000 to
10,000 times a minute. Solidification of the fluid is instantaneous, and
swiftly moving thread is made, within a few inches of the ' spinnerette, J out
of 50 to 150 separate filaments, depending on the number of perforations.
Washing and drying the ' cakes ' taken from the buckets ' removes most of
the acid solution and strengthens the thread, which is then unwound into
skeins and treated with sodium sulphide to desulphurize and refine the green-
ish-yellow yarn. Bleaching gives it a silken lustre. Again washed and dried,
the yarn is sorted, inspected, loosely wound on spools, then rewound tightly
on cones. During the winding processes several vast halls are filled with the
deafening hum of thousands of whirling spools and cones. Six or seven days
elapse between the shredding of impure cellulose and the last act in the
transformation of spruce logs into thread.

The CARR HOUSE (private), Dale Ave. (Vinton Rd.) between 22nd
and 23rd Sts., a sturdy, two-story building with brick end chimneys, was
built entirely of hand-hewn logs about 1800 by Colonel George W. Carr.
It was first the home of the Akers family and then the plantation home of
Colonel Carr, who served in the Mexican War. Near the house stand FOUR
SLAVE CABINS, snug two-story houses in excellent repair, also of hand-
hewn logs with plaster chinking. Three are occupied by white tenants, but
in the fourth lives Aunt Winnie Divers, believed to be (1939) about 107
years old.

R O A N O K E 305

The NORFOLK AND WESTERN SHOPS (open), Norfolk St. E. of
Randolph St., including several vast brick buildings and numerous smaller
sheds, all blackened by smoke, spread over a i45~acre tract in the center of
the city. Beneath the lofty roof of one immense building, the mottled gray
and red shell of a new locomotive may hang in the easy clutches of a giant
overhead crane, while deafening blows contribute to its completion. At an-
other end of this shop, a powerful locomotive, new or reconstructed, may
straddle a pit, as workmen paint its gleaming flanks. Machines are every-
where snarling lathes, saws that eat into steel as though it were butter,
casting molds, and welding tools that send off showers of sparks. Shouts
rise above the clanging din in the ENGINE-ERECTING SHOP to make way
for a gigantic new engine part suspended from a traveling crane overhead.
In the PAINT SHOP rows of wheelless new coaches or freight cars receive
protective coats of orange paint. Among the buildings are a blacksmith
shop, machine shop, boiler shop, foundry, planing mill, car-erecting shop,
lumber yards, storehouses, lumber kiln, and a 22-stall engine house.

These main repair shops of the Norfolk and Western Railway have a pro-
duction capacity of 4 locomotives per month and 20 freight cars per day.
With the rest of the railroad's local facilities, they constitute Roanoke's
chief industry, employing about 6,000 workers at an annual pay roll of
$9,350,000. The shops, acquired by the railroad in 1883, were started two
years earlier as the Roanoke Machine Works and have been enlarged sev-
eral times.

Roanoke's FIRST POST OFFICE (private), SE. corner Lynchburg Ave.
and E.4th St., a diminutive two-story frame building built about 1837,
stood in what was then Old Lick on the first stage road from Lynchburg to
the West. This first official post office in the district was served daily by one
east- and one west-bound coach until the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad
reached Big Lick. The building is used by the Big Lick Garden Club (Ne-
gro), which was organized in 1930 and has 40 members. There are four
other Negro garden clubs in Roanoke, the Ideal, Sunset, Magic City, and
Homemakers.

The RALEIGH TAVERN (private), Lynchburg Ave. between E.2nd
and E.4th Sts, is a long, unpainted frame building with a two-story gal-
lery porch and a pair of brick end chimneys. Built about the beginning of
the nineteenth century and long known as Pate's Tavern, it was for several
decades a popular stopping place for travelers on the north-south stages or
on the road from Lynchburg west to Seven Mile Ford. Passengers could
alight on the tavern's broad steps, which still hug the dirt road. During the
War between the States local women nursed wounded soldiers here. In a
little frame house opposite lives (1939) Aunt Martha, a former slave, more
than 95 years old.

The MUNICIPAL MARKET, bounded by Campbell Ave., Salem, Nel-
son, and Wall Sts., is housed in a commodious three-story brick building.
The market was established in 1885 in quarters that have been subse-
quently enlarged. On a vast expanse of first-floor space are vendors' stalls,
displaying products from neighboring farms and distant places. On the
second floor a matron keeps children happy while mothers make purchases

306 VIRGINIA

or sell their wares. The third floor is given over to offices of market execu-
tives and to a large auditorium where dances and public meetings are held.
On the sidewalks around the building country folk set up stands, gay from
early spring till late fall with many-colored flowers, fruits, and vegetables.
A paved parking square is continually crowded with automobiles and huck-
sters' trucks.

BELMONT (private), in Monterey Golf Course on Tinker Creek, just
across bridge (R) off State 115, long known as 'Monterey,' is a wide one-
story log house painted white, with several rooms and wide stone-flagged
porch. Hie 53<>acre tract called Bell Mount upon which the house was
built was conveyed by Israel Christian to William Fleming, who had mar-
ried Christian's daughter in 1763. Dr.Fleming, member of the Continental
Congress in 1779-80 and the only man from west of the Blue Ridge ever to
sit in that body, landed at Norfolk in 1755. This Jedburgh-born Scot and
graduate of Edinburgh, having quit His Majesty's Navy in which he was
a surgeon for several years, began almost at once to play a militant part in
Ms adopted country. He joined Major Andrew Lewis as a lieutenant and
surgeon on the Sandy Creek Voyage,' the unsuccessfuLexpedition sent out
by Governor Dinwiddie in 1756 to join the friendly Cherokee against the
Shawnee and the French along the Ohio; he became an ensign in the First
Virginia Regiment, commanded by Washington, and was made a captain
in 1760; later he practiced medicine at Staunton; and moved to his new
home here in 1768. He commanded the Botetourt regiment at Point Pleas-
ant in 1774. Though shot twice in the arm and once through the chest, he
assumed command when all the other leaders had fallen, and his shouted
commands forced part of his lung through the bullet hole in his chest. In
1781 he was a member of Governor Jefferson's council. After the expiration
of Jefferson's term on June i, Colonel Fleming acted as governor for nearly
two weeks before a successor could be appointed. Fleming fled before Tarle-
ton with the legislature to Staunton. While he was ' holding his court' in
Staunton, the nervous legislature indulged in a second run for its life on a
false rumor that Tarleton had crossed the Blue Ridge a flight so precipi-
tate that Patrick Henry is said to have left Staunton wearing only one
boot. Colonel Fleming died at Belmont in 1795 an d lies buried somewhere
near the house.

POINTS OF INTEREST IN ENVIRONS

Veterans' Facility Hospital, 6.9 m,\ Hollins College, 7.7 m.\ (see Tour 56).

Staunton

Railroad Stations: Middlebrook Ave. and S.Augusta St. for Chesapeake and Ohio Ry.;

Greenville and Waynesboro Aves. for Baltimore & OHo R.R.

Bus Station: NW. comer Johnson and New Sts. for Atlantic Greyhound, Virginia Stage

Lines, and Pan American Lines.

Taxis: Fare 25 for 2 passengers, within city limits,

Traffic Regulations : Half hour parking one side of street only in business district.

A ccommodations : 4 hotels ; tourist homes.

Information Service: Staunton- Augusta Chamber of Commerce, 112 W.Frederick St.;
Shenandoah Valley, Inc., Stonewall Jackson Hotel, Market and Johnson Sts.

Motion Picture Houses: 3.

Golf: Gypsy Hill Park, Churchville and Thornrose Aves., 9 holes, greens fee 25^ Stone-
wall Jackson Tavern, 2.3 rn. N. on US 1 1, 18 holes, greens fee $1.25.
Swimming: Gypsy Hill Park, Churchville and Thornrose Aves., free.
Tennis: Gypsy Hill Park, Churchville and Thornrose Aves., 3 courts, open daily, fee iojf
perhr., children si-
Annual Events: Staunton Motorcycle Hill Climb, July 4; Staunton Fair, 6 days in late
summer; Gold Star Mothers* Pilgrimage to birthplace of Woodrow Wilson, autumn.

STAUNTON (pronounced Stan'ton, 1,385 alt, 11,990 pop.), in the Shenan-
doah Valley, originated the city-manager form of government and is the
birthplace of Woodrow Wilson.

The city is set among mountains. Round about are fertile fields, grazing
lands, and acres of orchards, in spring snowy with blossoms that distil their
fragrance through the countryside and in fall heavy with fruit and pungent
with the cidery odor of ripe apples.

Streets in Staunton drop and wind perilously, following trails once used
by Indians, stagecoaches, and bell-decked wagon caravans. Old homes of
mellowed brick and of clapboard, not too recently painted, stand close to
sidewalks and hide gardens tucked behind them. Children's children have
lived in these houses, content to remodel but unwilling to destroy.

At the center of the city is the crowded business district. Narrow streets
that are laid here at right angles curve and broaden slightly as they climb
toward residential sections. Within the circle roughly defining the city
limits are a lake around which a race track has been laid; a cemetery, spa-
cious and landscaped; the grounds of the Western State Hospital and of
the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind; the small neat campuses of two
colleges; a park; and a line of railroad tracks running through unsightly
slums.

From September till June youth rules Staunton. Boys from two prepar-

307

308 VIRGINIA

atory schools confident that brass buttons and uniforms are irresistible-
and pretty girls who are wise enough to study fashion magazines as well as
classical subjects find time to be admired. Undergraduates from men's
colleges near by flock to Staunton for delightful though vigilantly chap-
eroned hours with the girls of Mary Baldwin and Stuart Hall.

Negroes, not so numerous here as they are in many other Virginia cities,
are a stable element in the population. Sue M. Brown, author, organizer,
and leader in racial and interracial work, was born in Staunton.

Local industrial plants manufacture furniture, men's garments, woolens,
hosiery, flour, and dairy products. An ingenious woman dresses period dolls
so originally as to have won National notice. Staunton is the market for
one of the richest agricultural counties in America. The principal farm
products hay, com, wheat, fruit, milk, butter, and poultry have an an-
nual value of more than $7,000,000.

In 1736 William Beverley was granted a large tract of land embracing
the present city of Staunton, ' in consideration for inducing a large number
of settlers to the community/ In 1738, when Augusta County was formed,
extending from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Mississippi River and
south from the Great Lakes to North Carolina, no provision was made for
a county seat. Beverley gave a small stone building at Mill Place, earliest
name of the settlement, for use as the county courthouse. In 1761 the gen-
eral assembly authorized the town of Staunton. Some say the name hon-
ored Lady Gooch, wife of Governor William Gooch and a member of the
Staunton family, others that the town was named for Staunton, England.

The town was advantageously situated at the crossing of the Valley Pike
and the Midland Trail. Travelers westward bound and those journeying
southward or northward stopped in Staunton. Here they refreshed them-
selves at taverns, rested their horses, and replenished their supplies.Through
Staunton were shipped luxuries that East sent West, and along the streets
of the frontier city great droves of hogs passed on their way to eastern
markets. In 1796 Isaac Weld, an Irish traveler, wrote, 'As I passed along
the road in the great valley and the village called Staunton, I met with
great numbers of people from Kentucky and the new state of Tennessee,
going towards Philadelphia and Baltimore and with many others going in a
contrary direction, "to explore," as they call it, that is to search for lands
conveniently situated for new settlements in the western country. This
town called Staunton carries on a considerable trade with the back coun-
try and contains nearly two hundred dwellings, mostly built of stone, to-
gether with a church. Nowhere, I believe, is there such a superfluity of
. . . military personages as in the town of Staunton.' In 1797 the Due de
la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, a French philosopher, visited Staunton on
his way to Monticello, and commented in his diary upon the town: ' There
are eight Inns, fifteen to eighteen stores and about 800 inhabitants . . .
The inhabitants, Uke the generality of Virginians, were fond of gambling
and betting/

Throughout vast Augusta County Indians gave no end of trouble, for
the unreasonable savages resented the white man's theft of their land.
Among the Indian fighters was c Mad Ann' Bailey, intermittently a resi-

STAUNTON 309

dent of Staunton. She came to America from England as an Indentured
servant, married Richard Trotter, and brought forth a son. After her hus-
band was killed by the Indians, Arm set out to avenge his death. She l hat-
ways carried a hax and a hauger and could chop as well as hany man/
Dressed in men's clothes, equipped with rifle, tomahawk, and knife, she
became a spy, messenger, and scout, killed more than one person's share of
Indians, saved stockades, and lived to the creditable age of 83,

Staunton was once the capital of Virginia, though the distinction was
unpremeditated and short-lived. In 1781, when the British Colonel Tarle-
ton approached Charlottesville, the general assembly fled to Staunton and
continued its sessions in Old Trinity Church.

After the Revolution Dr.Alexander Humphreys, pioneer surgeon and
teacher of medical science, who died in 1802, lived in Staunton. Ephraim
McDowell, pioneer in the science of ovariotomy, William Wardlaw, Samuel
Brown, and other distinguished physicians were pupils of Dr.Humphreys.
In 1788, after the disappearance of a visiting Englishman, Dr.Humphreys
was suspected of murder when a bag that bore his name and contained the
bones of a man was found in a cave. He sued his accuser and received a ver-
dict of ' slander.' Later Dr.McDowell positively identified the hair as
that of a Negro whose corpse Dr.Humphreys probably had used for dis-
section.

The town was chartered in 1801. The Central Railroad completed its
tracks as far west as Staunton in 1854. During the War between the States
no battles were fought in the immediate vicinity of Staunton, but both
armies used the city as a base for supplies. Staunton became a city in 1871.

It is one of the few cities that have made original contributions to gov-
ernment. In conceiving the city-manager plan, adopted in 1908, it set a pat-
tern that has been followed by about 500 other cities. This wholly Ameri-
can form, based upon methods used in business corporations, has been
adopted in several foreign countries. In Staunton a unicameral council of
five members, elected by the voters, appoints a city manager, who admin-
isters municipal affairs.

Staunton has been visited by many notables, including Washington, Jef-
ferson, Jackson, and Lee. President Coolidge, while spending his summers
in Virginia, worshiped in Staunton at the First Presbyterian Church. Since
1936 the Gold Star Mothers of America have held annual conventions here.

POINTS OF INTEREST

CITY HALL, 100 block E.Beverley St., originally a small rectangular
frame structure erected in 1871 and known as Grangers Hall, was entirely
remodeled in 1931 and built of red brick. On the second floor is the HEAD-
QUARTERS OF THE STONEWALL BRIGADE BAND (open 9-5 weekdays), organ-
ized in 1845 as the Mountain Saxe Horn Band. At the beginning of the
War between the States the band was mustered in as the Fifth Virginia
Regimental Band, and General Jackson raised its rank to the Stonewall
Brigade Band. General Grant at Appomattox allowed members to take
home their instruments. When Grant, making his first trip south as Presi-

310 VIRGINIA

dent, passed through Staunton, the band serenaded him at the station
the first welcome he received by a southern organization, he said. At his
funeral in New York the band was given the post of honor, and in 1897 it
pkyed at the dedication of Grant's Tomb on Riverside Drive. During^the
summer months the band plays regularly in Gypsy Hill Park. The original
instramentSj preserved here, are the only complete set known to have been
manufactured by Antoine Saxe in Brussels. A bugle in the band's collec-
tion was used in the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and
the War between the States, and sounded the call to colors for the Spanish-
American War and the World War.

MARY BALDWIN COLLEGE, Frederick St. between New and Mar-
ket Sts., a large group of yellow buildings, brightened by white colonnades
and sitting on a terraced hillside, is the second oldest Presbyterian college
for women in the United States and the oldest of uninterrupted history in
the South. Established in 1842 by the Reverend Rufus W. Bailey as the
Augusta Female Seminary, it was kept open during the War between the
States and Reconstruction by Miss Mary Julia Baldwin, principal for 34
years. By act of the general assembly in 1895-96 the seminary was named
for Miss Baldwin. In 1923 it became a college and now confers the degree
of bachelor of arts. The enrollment is more than 300. President Wilson was
baptized in Waddell Chapel, in which his father preached before it became
part of the college.

WOODROW WILSON'S BIRTHPLACE (open 8:30-5 Mon.-Fri.,
8:30-12 Sat.; adm. 25$ , 24 N.Coalter St., is a square house of gray-painted
brick. A flat-roofed portico, somewhat altered and now at the rear, was
originally the main entrance. Its two-story columns face the garden, land-
scaped to conform with the old pattern. The house was built in 1846 as the
manse of the First Presbyterian Church. Woodrow Wilson was born here
December 28, 1856, while his father, the Reverend Joseph R. Wilson, was
pastor of the church. The building was purchased by Mary Baldwin Col-
lege in 1931, and sold in 1938 to the Commonwealth of Virginia. As a part
of the annual convention of Gold Star Mothers a pilgrimage is made to this
house.

KALORAMA (private), 19 S.Market St., a large frame house, incorpo-
rates the foundations, four rooms, and a hall of Beverley Manor House,
built about 1737. Carter Beverley, a grandson of William Beverley, rented
the house from Daniel Shefiey, who bought it in 1805. After Mr.Sheffey's
death in 1831, Mrs.Sheffey and her two daughters opened a school for
'young ladies 7 here.

AUGUSTA COUNTY COURTHOUSE (open 9-5 Mon.-Fri., 9-1 Sat.),
NE. corner Johnson and Augusta Sts., a classic structure in cream brick
with large stone columns, is the fifth courthouse on this site. The limestone
corner marker planted at the end of the first day's surveying of the Bever-
ley grant in 1736 is in the courtroom. In the same room hang portraits of
early justices and judges, including one of Chief Justice Marshall the
work of Robert Sully.

STUART HOUSE (private), 120 Church St., is a large, red brick build-
ing with plain white portico and fine interior woodwork, perhaps designed

STAIINTON 311

by Thomas Jefferson. The house was built in 1791 by Archibald Stuart,
member of the Virginia Convention of 1788 and a close friend of Jefferson.
Except for a wing added in 1845, the house has not been altered. When the
British approached Wiiliamsburg in 1780, Judge Stuart's son, Alexander
H. H. Stuart, was a student of the College of William and Mary and an
officer of the newly founded Phi Beta Kappa Society. Fleeing from the city,
he carried with him the seal of the society, which was later found in this
house in a secret drawer.

OLD TRINITY CHURCH (open 9-6 weekdays, Sun. services), Beverley
St. between Church and Lewis Sts., built in 1855 and third on this site, is
of Gothic Rivival style in dull red brick, with a 3<>foot tower half covered
with ivy. The interior, except for the brick-lined chancel, has fine walnut
woodwork, and some of the stained glass is excellent. The first church of
Trinity Parish, organized in Augusta County in 1747, was erected in 1760-
63 on land acquired from William Beverley for 6. The vestry ordered the
work done 'in a fashionable and workmanlike manner.' The Virginia as-
sembly met in this building in 1781, after crossing the mountains to escape
the British. A bronze tablet near the gate bears the names of assemblymen
who took refuge in the church.

SMITH THOMPSON HOUSE (open by arrangement), 701 W.Beverley
St., half log and half brick beneath white clapboarding, was built in 1790
by Smith Thompson. All the nails, latches, and locks are hand-wrought.
The fireplaces have wide flagstone hearths and high mantels. Thompson,
a barber, was a Revolutionary soldier. He boasted of having shaved Wash-
ington and displayed the razor he used.

STUART HALL, 325-29 W.Frederick St., a preparatory school for girls,
occupies a group of eight cream-painted brick buildings on a small campus.
The older buildings have white porticoes with tall square columns. It was
founded in 1843 as a small day school in ' Old Main ' a fine example of the
Greek Revival now used as a dormitory and for classrooms.

Known first as the Virginia Female Institute, the college was renamed in
1907 to commemorateMrs.J.E.B.Stuart,widowofVirginia ? scavalry leader,
who became principal in 1880. Robert E. Lee and Bishop William Meade
served on its board. It is owned and operated by the three Episcopal dio-
ceses of Virginia, and had an enrollment in 1938 of about 120 girls.

STAUNTON MILITARY ACADEMY, Prospect St. between Market
and N.Coalter Sts., occupies a group of white-trimmed gray stone build-
ings on a hilltop overlooking the city. It is a private military school founded
by Captain William K. Kable in 1859 as the Charles Town Male Academy
at Charles Town, now West Virginia. It was moved to Staunton in 1884
and is a unit of the Reserve Officers 7 Training Corps.

VIRGINIA SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF AND BLIND (open by ar-
rangement), E. Beverley St. at New Hope Rd., is a group of brick and stone
buildings on one of Staunton's hills at the edge of 98 farm acres. Construc-
tion of the three-story brick central portion of the administrative building,
with six fine Doric columns, was begun in 1843. This structure is flanked
by two newer buildings, which follow its Greek Revival style. The school
was established in 1838. State-supported, it is a coeducational institution

312 VIKGIHIA

with an enrollment of 35 students who receive general education and vo-
cational training.

WESTERN STATE HOSPITAL (open by arrangement) , Greenville Ave.
S. of Waynesboro Ave. , with a capacity of 2,438 (including the De Jarnette
senoaprivate sanatorium, 1.5 m. E. on US 250), is the largest of three State
asylums for white insane. The group of more than a dozen brick buildings
is in the corner of 966 acres of farm land, from which the institution derives
most of its food. There is a golf course for patients. The hospital was estab-
lished in 1825 as the Western Lunatic Asylum.

By iS66 nearly 2,oco patients had been treated. According to a news-
paper report in that year, 'of patients treated during the last ten years, 23
became deranged because of "the war "from disappointed love 7; from
Intemperance and dissolate [sic] habits, 30; from religious excitement, i;
from the use of tobacco, 5; jealousy, 4; idleness, 5.' Since 1935 the plant
has been improved with Federal funds, and overcrowding eliminated
through enlargement.

POINTS OF INTEREST IN ENVIRONS

Belief ont (home and grave of John Lewis), 2.2 m.', Augusta Church, Augusta
Military Academy, 8.6 m. (see Tour 50).

Williamsbui

Railroad Station: N. end of Boundary St. for Chesapeake and Ohio Ry.
Bus Station: College Shop, Duke of Gloucester and Boundary Sts., for Greyhound and
Peninsula Transit Corp. Lines.
Taxis : Fare 25 within city.

Traffic Regulations: Half hour parking limit on Duke of Gloucester St. ; large public park-
ing lots adjoining business area; speed limit on Duke of Gloucester St. and around col-
lege, 15 m.p.h., elsewhere 25 m.p.h.

Accommodations: 2 large, 10 small inns, numerous guest houses; seasonal rates.

Information Service: Information Bureau of the Restoration, Craft House, S.England St.
beside Williamsburg Inn; Chamber of Commerce, New Shop Buildings, W. end Duke of
Gloucester St.; booth on Richmond Rd. during tourist season.

Motion Picture Houses: One.

Golf: Yorktown Golf Course, 13 m. SE. on Colonial National Parkway, 18 holes, greens

fee$i.

Swimmingi Yorktown Beach, 13 m. SE. on Colonial National Parkway, suit 25^, bath

house 25 i.

Annual Events: Garden Week, late Apr. or May; Alumni Day at College of William and
Mary, early June; General Assembly of Virginia meets in Colonial Capitol once during
each biennial legislative session.

WILLIAMSBURG (78 to 84 alt, 3,778 pop.), capital of Virginia from
1699 to 1780 and now the showplace among Colonial restorations, Is
spread upon a ridge in the peninsula between the James and York Rivers.
Queen's Creek and College Creek (called in early days Archer's Hope)
partly encircle the city. Round about, fields roll toward the water or
stretch inland to meet pine woods. On the outskirts are new houses of
brick or wood. East-west Duke of Gloucester Street, wide, straight, and
tree-shaded, bisects the little city from the college to the capitol.

Eighteenth-century Williamsburg, lately a straggling, dusty ghost, is
today a lively reincarnation of the busy and important Colonial capital.
Bordering deep sidewalks, with benches at the curbs, are shops behind
facades of eighteenth-century design and signs in flowing script. Set close
to the street, most of the dwellings have green shutters and gambrel or
gabled roofs pierced by a line of dormer windows. Those of frame are
small, with vast single-buttressed brick chimneys; a few, built of brick,
are large and formally designed, while many have rambling additions. But
whether of pink brick or white clapboard they appear old in pattern only.
In the interiors, paneling and wainscoting are freshly painted or of pol-
ished natural woods, and walls are tinted ' Williamsburg blue' or covered
with fresh paper. Gardens, where old-fashioned flowers bloom from early

313

314 VIRGINIA

spring till late fall, have great boxwood trees or hedges of dwarf box
planted In Intricate patterns.

The past constitutes Williamsburg's livelihood, its present, and its fu-
ture. The colonists' homes and taverns, where all classes of Virginians
lived and assembled, and the palace and its gardens, where royal gover-
nors surrounded themselves with such splendor as would make their 'bar-
barous exile" more endurable, illustrate like a picture book the long fight
waged by liberty-loving people against privileged aristocracy. Today boys
and girls in college clothes and tourists hurrying from house to house con-
trast ludicrously with Negro guides and attendants in eighteenth-century
costumes. Williamsburg without patina is the^only Colonial city that
appears today much as it did before the Revolution. Old and new build-
Ings, In about equal proportion, glisten with pristine freshness; and now,
as always, handicrafts represent the only local industries.

The * Act for the Seatinge of the Middle Plantation/ passed in 1633, en-
couraged settlement In the area where Dr. John Pott was living. Middle
Plantation stood just within the six-mile palisade built across the penin-
sula to protect settlers from a repetition of the Massacre of 1622. The
'pailisades . . . bounded in by two large Creekes' gave 'all the lower
part of Virg&40, ... a range for their cattle, near fortie miles in length
and In mosr'praces twelve miles broade.' Middle Plantation suffered in
the Massacre of 1644, and two years later a new palisade was ordered to
replace the neglected original. On August 3, 1676, at the house of Otho
Thorpe occurred the taking of the 'Oath of Middle Plantation/ an impor-
tant event In Bacon's Rebellion. Here William Drummond and other
principals In that abortive assertion of independence were hanged by Gov-
ernor Berkeley. Jamestown having been destroyed by Bacon, Middle
Plantation became for a short time the seat of restored royal Government.
Though citizens of York signed a petition urging the temporary capital as
most fit to become permanent, Jamestown was rebuilt.

The choice of Middle Plantation by the assembly in 1693 as the site of
* a free school and college to be known as William and Mary ' and the burn-
lag of the State House in Jamestown caused Middle Plantation, still only
a loose concentration of plantation dwellings, to be designated in 1699 as
the new capital, renamed Williamsburg in honor of William III. Immedi-
ate provision was made for construction of a capitol and for platting the
new city accordL* to the survey of Theodoric Bland.

The ne^ capital rapidly attained the size and appearance it presents to-
day. Alexander Spotswood, who arrived in Virginia as lieutenant governor
in 1710, had several ravines filled and the streets leveled, and assisted in
erecting college buildings, a church, and a magazine for the storage of
arms. He was patron of one of the earliest theaters in America, built in
1716 by V^illiam Levingston, who brought musicians and actors from Eng-
land to penorm " f comedies, drolls, and other kinds of stage plays. 7 The
theater was conducted by Charles Stagg and his wife Mary, America's
first ' leading lady.' The first successful printing press in Virginia was set
up at Williamsburg in 1728 by William Parks, who founded the colony's
first newspaper eight years later and Virginia's first paper mill in 1744.

WILLIAMSBURG 315

Incorporated in 1722, Williamsburg became the political and educa-
tional center of Virginia and the scene of the most 'fashionable ? social life
in Colonial America. During legislative sessions substantial planters
emerged from rural isolation to occupy 'town houses/ comfortable rooms
at inn or tavern, or to lodge with friends. Sycophants and adventurers
swelled the throng. English visitors testified that balls, races, fairs, and
other entertainment composed a i season 7 not greatly inferior to London y s
in amusement and elegance.

The tranquillity of this scene was broken in 1765 when Patrick Herny,
undeterred by cries of ' Treason P incited the burgesses to pass resolutions
against the Stamp Act. Here in 1773 were developed the intercolonial ac-
tivities of a committee of correspondence that grew out of the standing
committee originated in 1759 to communicate with the colony's London
agents. The house of burgesses, meeting in Williamsburg in 1774, called
the First Continental Congress. The First Virginia Convention, indirectly
resulting from closure of the port of Boston, met at Williamsburg in the
summer of 1774 to elect delegates to a general Colonial congress. Fear of
Lord Dunmore and of a British man-of-war near by in the York River
caused the next three conventions to meet in Richmond. The fifth and
most noted Virginia Convention met in Williamsburg on 6, 1776,

and began the open move toward American freedom by declaring Vir-
ginia an independent commonwealth and by instructing the Virginia dele-
gates to the Second Continental Congress to propose American inde-
pendence.

Williamsburg began to decline when the capital was moved to Rich-
mond in 1780 to escape the invading British. In 1781, before and during
the Siege of Yorktown, Williamsburg was headquarters first of the British
and then of the Continental and French forces. From the capitulation of
Cornwallis in October until the following summer the French army was
quartered near by. Though these closing events of the war temporarily
animated Williamsburg, the population dwindled from more than 2,000 in
1779. to about 1,200 in 1795, and in 1804 the former capital was described
as very ' decayed. 7 Between 1770 and 1790 the Reverend Mr.Moses, who
seems to have been the first Negro preacher in Virginia, had organized the
Williamsburg Baptist Church, undaunted by opposition that was at times
physical. The church, its membership recruited almost entirely from the
city's Negroe^ survived under the Reverend Go wan Paffiphlet &nd other
Moses proteges. f *

Except for brief revivals brought about by two wars, Wilnamsburg
dozed for a century and a half as shopping center for the surrounding
country. Many residents owned small farms near by and managed to live
with a minimum of enterprise. The Battle of Williamsburg took .place on
May 5, 1862, when a Union corps engaged Confederates retrying from
Yorktown toward Richmond. The city suffered at the hands of the Union
troops, and reached the nadir of its fortunes when the College of William,
and Mary was closed in 1881. After 1889, when the college reopened, a
slow recovery began and continued until the little community was aroused
suddenly in 1917 by the location on its outskirts of a munitions factory

316 VIRGINIA

with nearly 15,000 workers. Hastily constructed cheap buildings disfig-
ured the Colonial city.

In its newborn ugliness Wiiliamsburg dozed again. In 1926 John D.
RockefeDerJr., came to Wiiliamsburg at the invitation of Dr.W.A.R.
Goodwin, who had been responsible for the restoration of Bruton Paris
Church, of which he was rector, and of the Wythe House. Mr. Rockefeller
was enthusiastic over Dr. Good win's plan for restoring the city to its
eighteenth-century appearance. On Mr, Rockefeller's authorization most
of the property in the Colonial area was acquired by Colonial Williams-
buig, Inc., and within a decade most of the research and restoration was
completed. Research covered Colonial documents and records in libraries,
museums, and family archives in America, England, and France. Build-
ings totaling 459 were torn down, 91 of the Colonial period rebuilt, 67 re-
stored, and a new shopping center in Colonial style was provided. Six new
houses were built in the Negro section in 1929. Negroes, 23 per cent of the
local population, whose ancestors raised the Colonial structures, are
chiefly employed as domestics or as costumed attendants at Colonial
buildings.

Nearly 200,000 tourists come annually to Wiiliamsburg and the little
dty has a widening influence throughout America. The eighteenth

century as mirrored in Wiiliamsburg inspires styles of dress, furniture, in-
terior decorations, and domestic architecture.

POINTS OF INTEREST

(Numbers identify each point of interest on the accompanying map and^ on the pictorial
map supplied free by the Restoration. Points of interest treated here are given the numbers
used in Wiiliamsburg Restoration literature. At the Information Office in the Craft House
(73) where maps are obtainable, combination tickets are sold for $1.50 each, 7$for children
Hinder 16, providing admission to all exhibition buildings of Colonial Wiiliamsburg, Inc.:
The Capitol, Public Gaol, Raleigh Tavern, Ludwell-Paradise House, and Governor's Pal-
ace.)

The COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY, the second oldest col-
lege in America, was the first to establish an honor system, an elective sys-
tem of studies, schools of law and modern languages, and second to estab-
lish a school of medicine all in 1779. The Phi Beta Kappa Society was
founded here December 5, 1776.

The three original buildings of the college are set in the fenced and elm-
shaded triangle formed by the convergence of Jamestown Road and Rich-
mond Road. Grouped behind them in adequate harmony are the many
new buildings constructed since 1919.

6 Their Majesties Royal College of William and Mary, in Virginia,' es-
tablished by charter from King William and Queen Mary in 1693, revived
the ' University of Henrico/ which had been chartered in 1618 but given
up after the Massacre of 1622. The college opened in temporary buildings
in 1694. It was given a seat in the house of burgesses and was supported by
taxation of a penny per pound on tobacco exported from Maryland and
Virginia, quitrents in Virginia, 20,000 acres (for which the college still pays
two copies of Latin verse yearly as rent to the governor), 3,000 pledged

WILLIAMSBURG 317

by London merchants, and 300 donated fay several pirates who had been
pardoned through intercession by Commissary James Blair. In 1694 it re-
ceived from the College of Heralds the only coat of arms ever granted an
American college. Three Presidents of the United States, Thomas Jeffer-
son, James Monroe, and John Tyler, were educated here; three signers,
besides the author, of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Har-
rison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., and George Wythe; and many other distin-
guished Revolutionary patriots, including Richard Bland, Peyton Ran-
dolph, John Blair, and Edmund Randolph. George Washington became
chancellor in 1788. The first recorded college club, the Flat Hat ? was or-
ganized here in 1750 ; and in 1770 the first collegiate prizes in America were
awarded, when Lord Botetourt presented gold medals. In 1784 the first
course in political economy in America was established, and in 1803 the
first school of history.

After the beginning of the nineteenth century the college was gradually
eclipsed by the University of Virginia. It was suspended from 1861 to
1865, closed in 1881, and reopened in 1889. In 1906 the property was
deeded to the State. Women, now more than half the student body, were
admitted in 1918. The next year a program of rapid expansion gave new
life to the old college. Enrollment in 1937-38 was 1,299.

i. The WREN BUILDING (open 9-5 daily) is the oldest academic
building in America and the only structure in America designed by Wren.
Though first modelled by Sir Christopher Wren/ it was 'adapted to the
Nature of the Country by the Gentlemen there,' and has the simple solid-
ity typical of American building in the early eighteenth century, when
nice spacing and proportion of windows were the chief external ornament.
The sandy pink brick of the long rectangular mass is set in courses of
Flemish and English bond. A steep hip roof above two full stories is
pierced by 12 dormers and surmounted by a plain cupola between two
huge chimneys near the ends.

The foundation was laid in 1695, and the building was so far advanced
by 1699 that the general assembly could meet in the great hall while the
capitol was being built. In 1781 the structure was used as the main hos-
pital for the French army. Although it was burned in 1705, 1859, 1862, and
rebuilt each time, the original walls were still standing when restoration
was undertaken in 1928. An illustrative copperplate in the Bodleian Li-
brary and a plan drawing by Jefferson have made it possible to retain the
old walls and to approximate the appearance of the building in 1705. A
portrait of Robert Boyle in black gown, painted about 1689 by Friedrich
Kerseboom, and a faded one of James Blair, first president, by Charles
Bridges, hang among others in the wide, paneled Blue Room, where offi-
cers of the college have always met.

In the south wing is the Chapel, built by 'overseer' Henry Gary, Jr.,
in 1729-32. Its high-paneled interior is richly restored in late Jacobean
style. Among those buried beneath its floor are Governor Botetourt,
Sir John Randolph, Peyton Randolph, John Randolph 'the Tory/ and
Bishop James Madison, cousin of the fourth President of the United
States and president of the college from 1777 to 1812.

318 VIRGINIA

lA. The COLLEGE LIBRARY (open 8:30-1, 2-6, ^-midnight daily),

formerly housed In the Wren Building occupies a plain pint brick building
in Georgian Colonial style. This was erected in part in 1908 with funds
from Andrew Carnegie and other friends of the college and subsequently
enlarged twice. The library contains 125,000 volumes, including a large
collection of rare books and about 250,000 manuscripts, largely Virginiana.

Among more than 200 paintings in the library are portraits of John
Page (1627-92) by Sir Peter Lely; of several Lewis family members by
John Wollaston; of Fielding Lewis Taylor by William J. Hubard; and a
St.M6nin engraving of StGeorge Tucker. There is a mezzotint said to
have been done from an original painting of General George Washington
by * Alexander Campbell of Williamsburg,' got up hastily in London to
satisfy curiosity about the American rebel leader and published in 1775.
The * Frenchman's Map/ dated 1782, has been useful in restoration work
by showing the location of every house then standing.

2. The BRAFFERTON BUILDING (open school hours), with two
stories of pink brick and a half-story beneath the tall hip roof, was built in
1723, possibly under the direction of Henry Gary Jr., to house the first
permanent Indian school in the colonies. Five semicircular steps approach

KEY FOR WILLIAMSBURG MAP

NOTE: Names in capital letters are described in text.

i.WREN BUILDING lA.COLLEGE LIBRARY 2.BRAFFERTON BUILDING
3.STATUE OF LORD BOTETOURT ^PRESIDENT'S HOUSE s.New Shop
Buildings 6.New Fire House y.Taliaferro-Cole House S.Pulaski Club g.The
Rectory jo.Maupin Shop n. James Gait House 12 John Custis Tenement
i3.Travis House i3A.Repiton House ^.Colonial Prison is.PUBLIC MAGAZINE
i6.Market Square Tavern ly.Lightfoot House iS.Captain Orr's Dwelling
I9.BLAND-WETHERBURN HOUSE rpA.Tarpley's Store 2 o.Charltons Inn
2i.Purdie's Dwelling 22.Kerr House 23.COLONIAL CAPITOL 24.Public Records
Office 25.Colonial House 26.Colonial House 27.RALEIGH TAVERN 28.The
Sign of the Golden Ball 29. Davidson Shop 3<xTeterel Shop 31. Virginia Gazette
Printing Office Site 3iA.Pitt-Dixon House 32.DR.BLAIR'S APOTHECARY
SHOP 33-LUDWELL-PARADISE HOUSE 3 3 A.Blair's Brick House 3 4.0LD
COURTHOUSE 35.Norton House 36 James Geddy House 37.BRUTON PAR-
ISH CHURCH 3 a.Armistead House 39 JOHN BLAIR HOUSE 3 9 A.Parish House
40~4i-42.New Shop Buildings 43-Timson House 43A.MATTHEW WHALEY
SCHOOL 44.Minor House 44A.Deane House 45.WYTHE HOUSE 4sA.Deane
Shop and Forge 46.Carter-Saunders House 47.GOVERNOR'S PALACE 48.Brush
House so.Levingston House 51. ST. GEORGE TUCKER HOUSE 52.Archibald
Blair House 53.SIR JOHN and PEYTON RANDOLPH HOUSE S4.Colonial House
55.Colonial House 56.PUBLIC GAOL sy.COKE-GARRETT HOUSE sS.Dr.
Robert Waller House sg.Site of the Second Williamsburg Theater 6o.Benjamin
Waller House 6i.BASSETT HALL 63.Asycough Shop 64.SEMPLE HOUSE
6$.Colomal House 66.Chiswell~Bucktrout House 6 7. Wig-Maker's House 68.Ewing
House 69.Moody House 7o.Colonial Dwelling 7i.Powell-Hallam House 72.WI1-
liamsburglnn 73.CraftHouse 74.0rreU House 7$.TheQuarter 76. Masonic Lodge
77,Bracken House 78.Allen-Byrd House 7p.Site of First Courthouse So.TAZE-
WELL HALL SoA.WiUiamsburg Lodge 81. CUSTIS KITCHEN SiA.EASTERN
STATE HOSPITAL 82. Griffin House

320 VIRGINIA

the plain centra! door beneath a small pediment. By 1712 20 Indians were
assembled in the school established on the income from part of a 4,000
fund left for "pious and charitable 1 uses by Robert Boyle, English scien-
tist and seventh son of the Earl of Cork. Governor Spotswood's Indian
School was moved here from Fort Christanna about 1722. The building
was named after the English manor in which the fund was invested. Never
very successful, the school was closed when the Revolution began, and the
income was diverted to the West Indies for Negro education. Although of
the three original buildings it is the only one that was never burned, it had
been stripped of interior woodwork long before it was fully restored in
1932. The alumni office and information bureau are in the rebuilt KITCHEN

close by,

3. The STATUE OF LORD BOTETOURT, in front of the Wren
Building, is a life-size white marble figure of Virginia's royal governor.
Hatless but bewigged and protected by flowing baronial robes and a fur
muff, the noble lord holds an easy stance upon a baroque pedestal. Com-
missioned by the general assembly, Richard Hay ward of London executed
the figure in 1773. It stood originally in the piazza of the capitol and was
moved here in 1801. The Right Honorable Norborne Berkeley, Baron de
Botetourt (pronounced Botytot in Virginia) came to Virginia in 1768 and
died in 1770, mourned as 'best of governors and best of men.' The statue
was cleaned twice a year by order of the assembly, even during the Revo-
lution, and escaped all but slight damage when once overturned by hood-
lums.

4. The PRESIDENT'S HOUSE (private), built in 1732 under the
direction of Henry Gary Jr., is similar to the Brafferton Building but
somewhat larger. Its central door is approached by a flight of square
stone steps, James Blair, first president, lived here for ten years before his
death in 1743. He was largely responsible for the establishment of the col-
lege, having suggested it to the assembly, which sent him to England in
1691 to interest Their Majesties in the proposal. He brought back the
charter, royal and private endowments, and Wren's design for the main
building. The 20 presidents of the college have lived here. This building
was the headquarters of Cornwallis for ten days prior to the Battle of
Green Spring and of the French surgeon general during the Siege of York-
town. It was then accidentally burned but was repaired at the expense of
Louis XVI. In 1931 it was restored. Among portraits of Colonial Vir-
ginians that hang within are several of the Page family by John Wollaston.

15. The PUBLIC MAGAZINE (open 10-5 daily; adm. 25^, children
ioj4)j lately called ' Powder Horn,' stands in the southern part of Market
Square. The octagonal building, with brick walls two feet thick, has a
peaked roof and an encircling wall ten feet high. It was built in 1715-16
under the 'overseership' of John Tyler and the supervision of Gover-
nor Spotswood to store ' all Arms, Gun-Powder, and Ammunition, now in
the Colony, belonging to the King.' The protecting wall, recently restored,
was built in 1755 during the alarms of the French and Indian War, and
was pulled down in 1855. Early on the morning of April 20, 1775, Gov-
ernor Dunmore removed powder stored here, precipitating the outbreak

WILLIAMSBURG 321

of revolution in Virginia. Patrick Henry, leading Hanover County troops,
compelled payment of twice the powder's equivalent in sterling.

19. The BLAND-WETHERBURN HOUSE, an unrestored frame
building, is still used as an inn. Almost certainly the birthplace in 1710 of
Richard Bland, 'Great Virginia Patriot' and statesman, this house, gen-
uinely ancient-looking in spite of a Victorian porch, was sold by Eland's
father about 1716 and became a tavern. In 1738 Henry Wetherburn, for-
merly of the Raleigh, bought this tavern and, until his death in 1760, ran
it along with three others acquired by marriage to their keepers' widows.
Thus one of the earliest 'hotel chains' was established. Wetherbum en-
larged the building and named the rooms, but his 'Arrack punch 1 glo-
rified the establishment. For a single ' biggest bowl J of it Peter Jefferson ac-
quired 400 acres of land in Albemarle (then Goochland) County from
William Randolph of Tuckahoe.

23. The COLONIAL CAPITOL (open 10-6 daily summer, 10-5
adm. 75jzS), a pink brick building within a brick-walled yard, is a recon-
struction of the first capitol and is built on the original foundations of the
'best and most commodious pile' in Colonial America. It is H-shaped,
composed of two parallel units with two-story semicircular bays at the
southern ends and a connecting gallery over an arcaded piazza. The gal-
lery roof is surmounted by a slender white cupola bearing the arms of
Queen Anne, in whose reign the building was erected, and a clock and the
Union Jack high above. The legislative chambers are accurately refur-
nished according to ample records. The house of burgesses and the office
of the clerk of the house are on the first floor of the east wing. Occupying
similar positions in the west wing are the general court and the office of
the secretary of state. The original speaker's chair in the house of bur-
gesses, with its graceful cabriole legs and high paneled and pedimented
back, is centered against the wainscoted wall of a circular platform at the
end of the room and is effectively silhouetted against a large bull's-eye
window.

Here Bob Cooley, Negro custodian of the capitol during the Revolu-
tionary period, would dust off a chair for each entering statesman 'with
the solemn aspect of the dignitary who sat in it. 3 In the office of the clerk
of the house hangs a full-length portrait of Washington by Charles Will-
son Peale, a replica of one in Philadelphia. On the second floor are council
and committee rooms. The Council Chamber in the south bay of the west
wing is a stately oval room above the general court, decorated in Palladian
style with 14 Jacobean chairs around the green baize-covered table; here
hangs a good portrait of Queen Anne after the school of Kneller. The gal-
lery over the lower central arcade was used as a conference room where
councilors and burgesses met together. Among other portraits in the cap-
itol are those of Queen Mary by Sir Godfrey Kneller; of William III by
Sir Peter Lely; and of Queen Elizabeth, full length, by Marc Gheerardts.

The original building, erected under the ' overseer-ship' of Henry Cary
between 1701 and 1705, was burned in 1747 and rebuilt in 1751-53. The
second building, which had a western portico admired by Jefferson, was
burned in 1832. Restoration began in 1929.

322 VIRGINIA

The general assembly met here from 1704 until 1779, having used the
Wren Building of the college during the five previous years. Many impor-
tant events of the Revolutionary period took place here. On Decem-
ber 24, 1779, & e assembly met here for the last time before its removal to
Richmond.

On the eastern side of the capitol is the SITE OP THE OLD EXCHANGE, an
open space that served as official trading center of the colony.

24. Near by on the west is the PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, a brick
building under reconstruction (1939). It was erected about 1751 for the
f preservation of the Public Records and papers of the colony' after ^the
capitol had burned. Once popularly known as the c Secretary's office/ it is
the only building still standing that was used by the Colonial government
for administrative purposes.

27. RALEIGH TAVERN (open 10-6 daily summer, 10-5 winter; adm.
SOjS), an L-shaped white weatherboard building with 18 dormer windows,
has been completely reconstructed on its original foundation. A bust of
Sir Walter Raleigh is above the door. The interior is faithfully furnished in
late eighteenth-century style. The rear wing is a modern kitchen. Built
sometime before 1742, the tavern was once owned by John Blair; its first
known keeper was Henry Wetherbura.

In 1769 the ]R.aleigh began its career as a center of sedition when the
burgesses, dissolved because of resolutions against the British Revenue
Act, convened in the Apollo Room as the 'late representatives of the
people ' and. adopted the Non-Importation Agreement. Hilaritas sapien-
tiae et bonaevitae proles (jollity is the offspring of wisdom and good living)
is the motto over the mantel This room was the frequent rendezvous of
Jefferson, Henry, and other Revolutionary patriots. They met here in
1773 to develop intercolonial committees of correspondence. Dissolved by
Xhmniore, the burgesses met again in the Apollo Room in May 1774. The
tavern was an institution. Auctions as well as balls were held under the
Raleigh's aegis. La Fayette was entertained at a banquet here in 1824, and
the building was still used as a tavern until it burned in 1859. Portraits of
La Fayette by Samuel Lovett Waldo and of Henry St.George Tucker by
W. J.Hubard hang here.

32. DR.BLAIR'S APOTHECARY SHOP (open 9-5 weekdays) is one
of the earliest drug stores in America. This small brick building, once
called the ' Unicorn's Horn,' was erected early in the eighteenth century
by Archibald Blair. Its swag roof, gabled with a c kick out/ is not unusual in
Tidewater Virginia. Prentis & Company, occupants at the time of the
Revolution, were consignees of the shipment of tea that a ' Yorktown Tea
Party ' threw into the river from a British ship in 1774.

33. The LUDWELL-PARADISE HOUSE (open 10-6 daily summer,
10-5 winter; adm. 25^) is a rectangular brick building erected about 1717
by Philip Ludwell II, stepson and heir of Sir William Berkeley's widow.
The architecture of this typical early Georgian Colonial house is notable
for the pleasing arrangement of the i8-pane windows and the basket-
weave effect of its Flemish bond brick, accented with glazed headers. The
compact low hip-roof building has a fine denticulated cornice. A lean-to at

WILLIAMSB0RG 323

the back provides additional space. The white frame kitchen, the cover of
the well, and the brick stables at the end of the long narrow garden have
all been reconstructed from their foundations. The LudweEs, who prob-
ably used this town house during the legislative season, were wealthy
planters. Eccentric Lucy Ludwell Paradise, daughter of Philip Ludwell
and widow of John Paradise, a scholarly Londoner who was a friend of
Dr Johnson, returned in 1805 to live here until she was confined in the
asylum. She horrified London society by pouring hot tea on a gentleman
who displeased her, and it is said that in this house she received visitors in
her coach, which was rolled back and forth in the haU. Well preserved, the
house needed slight repair by the Restoration.

34. The OLD COURTHOUSE (open 9-9 daily), on Courthouse Green,
is a well-proportioned T-shaped one-story brick building with a cupola.
The entrance is protected by a cantilevered, gabled hood. It was erected in
1770 to serve as hustings court of the city and courthouse for James City
County, in which only half of Williamsburg originally lay. The building
now houses the WILLIAMSBURG RESTORATION ARCHEOLOGICAL EXHIBIT,
a collection of objects recovered during excavation of building sites, a
series of photographs showing progressive stages of restoration, and the
eighteenth-century Bodleian copperplate of Williamsburg's public build-
ings.

37. BRUTON PARISH CHURCH (open 9-12, 1-5 daily), apparently
the oldest Episcopal church of uninterrupted use in America, is a mellow
red brick building of early Virginia Colonial design. Tall white-shuttered
windows, well proportioned and nicely spaced, run along the sides and
east end. Above the cornice of the square tower at the west end rises a
two-tiered octagonal steeple. Within is the spacious box pew of the Colo-
nial governor, sheltered by an elegant canopy and bearing the royal in-
signia.

Bruton Parish was created in 1674 through the union of two earlier par-
ishes. A new church on land donated by Colonel John Page, ordered built
in 1679 and completed in 1683, was inadequate for the fashionable crowds
after Williamsburg became the capital. Governor Spotswood drew the
plans and supervised construction of the present structure, which was
built in 1710-15. The tower was not constructed, it seems, until 1769. The
interior was altered in 1838-40 but restored in 1905-07 under supervision
of the rector, Dr. Goodwin. Beneath the aisles and in the yard are buried
many distinguished Virginians, including Governor Edward Nott, Lieu-
tenant Governor Francis Fauquier, Judge John Blair, and three secre-
taries of state. The church preserves a seventeenth-century marble font
from Jamestown, Bibles, and three communion services. A silver flagon,
dated 1756, chalice dated 1764, and alms basin are supposed to have been
given to Bruton Parish by Governor Fauquier between 1759 and 1768.
The silver service presented by Lady Rebecca (Staunton) Gooch to the
college is kept here. The cup has the hallmark of London's Peter Maraden,
and the plate is dated 1737. The third service preserved here is the chalice,
paten, and basin given by Acting-Governor Francis Moryson in 1661-62,
'For the use of James City Parish Church.'

324 VIRGINIA

39. The JOHN BLAIR HOUSE (private), a snug story-and-a-half
frame house with a chimney set in the middle of the roof and five dormers
unevenly spaced, was built about 1747 by John Blair,Sr., enlarged later to
accommodate two families, and recently restored. John Blair,Sr., twice
acting-governor, was a merchant and father of John Blair, Jr., ardent sup-
porter of the cause of independence and first to sign the Non-Importation
Agreement in 1769. He served as a judge and chief justice of the general
court and as judge of the Virginia high court of chancery. He was grand
master of the first Grand Lodge of Masons in Virginia, organized in 1778.
Chancellor Blair was one of the Virginia delegates to the Constitutional
Convention in 1787 and a signer of the Constitution. Washington ap-
pointed him in 1789 a justice of the United States Supreme Court, from
which he resigned in 1796. John Marshall probably lived in this house
while studying law with George Wy the.

43 A. The MATTHEW WHALEY SCHOOL (open school hours), N.
end Nassau St., only public school for white children in Williamsburg, is a
large, well-equipped brick building of simple design, completed in 1931.
Its name revives that of the school founded in 1706 for the poor of Bruton
Parish by Mary Whaley and provided with 50 by her will in 1742, to
'eternalize the name of Matty's School by Matty's name forever.' Matty
died in 1705, aged nine. The original 'Matty's Free School' occupied three
frame buildings just outside town and continued f the teaching of the
neediest children of the Parish of Bruton in the art of reading, writing, and
arithmetic' probably until the Revolution, but without benefit of the leg-
acy. Payment was refused by Mrs.Whaley 's executor, and the suit dragged
on for more than 120 years. In 1866 the College of William and Mary, as
new trustees, received $8,470 and the following year opened the * Gram-
mar and Matty School ' in Brafferton Hall.

45. The WYTHE HOUSE (open 9-1, 2-5 weekdays, 2-5 Sun.; adm.
25^), a rectangular brick mansion, has built-in end chimneys and a hip
roof. The simplicity and disposition of the windows is unusually satisfy-
ing. Richard Taliaferro, 'one of our most skillful architects,' built the
house in 1755 and left it in 1775 to his son-in-law, George Wythe. Ad-
mitted to the bar at 20, Wythe was the first professor of law in America,
the teacher of Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, James Monroe, and
Henry Clay; the first Virginia signer of the Declaration of Independence;
chairman of the committee that designed the seal of Virginia; delegate to
the Constitutional Convention, although absent when the Constitution
was signed; and chancellor of Virginia from 1778 to 1801. In his opinion
on the case of Commonwealth v. Caton, 1782, Wythe established himself as
one of the first formulators of the American theory of judicial review: i If
the whole legislature . . . should attempt to overleap the bounds ... I,
in administering the public justice of the country, will meet the united
powers at my seat in this tribunal; and pointing to the Constitution, will
say to them, Here is the limit of your authority; and hither shall you go
but no further.' He died in 1806 from poison administered by a nephew
an impatient heir and is buried in St. John's Churchyard, Richmond.

The house was Washington's headquarters before the Siege of York-

WILLIAMSBURG 325

town and Rochambeau's afterward. Restored under the supervision of the
Reverend Dr.Wiiiiam Goodwin, it was deeded in 1931 to Braton Parish
and used as a parish house until 1937. Here hangs the only known por-
trait of George Wythe, copied from a lost original.

47. The GOVERNOR'S PALACE (open io~6 daily summer, 10-5
winter; adm. $i) is an authentic reconstruction of the brick house erected
as a residence for royal governors soon after Williamsburg became the cap-
ital. A wide green flanked by a double driveway leads to the palace and its
dependencies. At the end of the green the driveway turns in a loop before
a fine iron-grilled gate. This stately entrance, topped with an elaborately
scrolled heading and flanked by the British lion and unicorn, leads into a
formally landscaped forecourt enclosed by the palace building, two dor-
mered flankers, and a curving brick wall at the front.

The palace rises two full stories to a denticulated cornice beneath a
steep and many-dormered hip roof, surmounted by a balustraded plat-
form and a tall lantern cupola rising in two octagonal stages between mul-
tiple chimneys. The design of the five-bay facade is in keeping with the
earliest phase of the Georgian style narrow many-paned sash windows
with wide architraves set almost flush with the brick openings, a simple
square-transomed doorway beneath a centered wrought-iron balcony, and
a brick string course between the first and second stories. The plan of the
main block was originally square, but in 1751 it was extended by the addi-
tion of a ' ball-room' wing at the rear. In the gable end of this wing the
royal arms of the first Georges, wood-carved and gaily painted, overlook
the palace gardens.

About a reconstructed KITCHEN and SCULLERY, close to the west side,
cluster small brick outbuildings smokehouse, laundry, dairy; and there
are still others on the east side. The huge formal gardens, roughly square
in total plan, embrace a CANAL and FISH POND along the western edge.
There are ten separate gardens including box, fruit, and kitchen gardens, a
maze, and a bowling green all completely restored, their rectangular
forms thickly set in eighteenth-century fashion with trim hedges and
walks in intricate geometrical patterns.

The interior is notable for its fine woodwork. The wide entrance hall,
most of the passages, and several smaller rooms are fully paneled. In other
rooms the wall surfaces and some of the woodwork have been painted in
the original soft shades of gray-green, yellow, and blue. The walls of the li-
brary, directly above the entrance hall, are covered with antique Span-
ish tooled leather. Furnishings and interior decoration, chiefly in mid-
eighteenth-century style, have been restored in lavish detail. As men-
tioned by Lord Botetourt, coronation portraits of George III and Queen
Charlotte, by the court painter Allan Ramsay, hang against the pale blue
walls of the large and stately ballroom, flanking the door to the music
room. Among other portraits in the palace are those of the Honorable
Mary Howard, by Sir Peter Lely; of Charles II and Catherine of Bra-
ganza, after the school of Lely; and of Charles I and Queen Henrietta
Maria, by Van Dyck.

The construction of this haven for ' exiled' royal lieutenants was begun

326 VIRGINIA

in 1705 under Henry Gary. The bulk of the work was accomplished under
the direction of Governor Spotswood, and the building was completed by
1720. The palace was the hub of Virginia social life convivial symbol of
royal prestige and fount of royal authority until 1775. Governor Fauquier
held intellectual bachelor dinners with Dr. William Small, George Wythe,
and Thomas Jefferson. Here Sy Gilliat, slave violinist to Governor Bote-
tourt, played for entertainments. Possessed of 50 suits, Gilliat usually
wore a * powdered brown wig, with side curls and a long cue, 7 and 'His
manners were as courtly as his dress/ The building burned in 1781, while
in use as a hospital for American soldiers wounded at Yorktown. Two
smaller structures facing the forecourt were torn down in 1863.

The entire establishment and extensive gardens have been reconstructed
since 1930 upon their excavated foundations according to a plan drawn by
Jefferson; an illustration of the buildings as they appeared between 1732
and 1747, which was found on a copperplate in the Bodleian Library at
Oxford; and almost 300 pages of source material. Minute inventories taken
by three governors and many contemporary descriptions have made pos-
sible accurate restoration and refurnishing.

51. The ST.GEORGE TUCKER HOUSE (private), though large and
built in the Early Republican period, has the simplicity of an earlier day.
From the central portion the white clapboard structure rambles pleas-
antly beneath dormered gable roofs at descending levels. The restored
kitchen, with its massive chimney at the western end, is again in use.
St. George Tucker, a native of Bermuda, bought the property from Ed-
mund Randolph in 1788 and enlarged the house to its present size. Tucker,
successor to George Wythe as professor of law at the College of William
and Mary, wrote the Annotated Edition of Blackstone's Commentaries
(1804) , first American text on law.

53. SIR JOHN AND PEYTON RANDOLPH HOUSE (adm. by ar-
rangement) is a long rectangular frame dwelling erected about 1715. Built
as two dwellings, the house was bought in 1724 by Sir John Randolph,
whose 'person/ according to The Virginia Gazette, was 'of the finest turn
imaginable.' Sir John was an enlightened economist whose services as Vir-
ginia's representative in London ushered in the colony's greatest period of
prosperity. His mission in 1729 resulted in a loosening of restrictions on
colonial trade, and led, through passage of Virginia's tobacco inspection
law in 1730, to the vast expansion of tobacco trade during the next half
century. On his trip in 1732 to present 'The Case of the Planters of To-
bacco in Virginia' he played an important part in the controversy over
Sir Robert Walpole's tobacco excise bill. His grasp of the theory and ad-
vantages of excise taxation so impressed Walpole that he was knighted
the only native Virginian ever so honored by George II, then under Wai-
pole's thumb. He was the first to report legal cases in Virginia and col-
lected papers used later by William Stith, his nephew, as sources for the
first comprehensive Virginia history.

Sir John's son, Peyton Randolph, who inherited the home, was chair-
man of the first three Virginia conventions and first president of the First
Continental Congress. His service in the cause of revolution ended by his

WILLIAMSBURG 327

death in 1775. Rochambeau, La Fayette, and Washington had head-
quarters here before the Siege of Yorktown. Mrs.Mary Monroe Peachy,
owner of the house in 1824, entertained La Fayette. c When he left the tav-
ern nearly all the company followed him to his quarters at Mrs.Peachy's
where a number of ladies assembled to see him. 7

56. The PUBLIC GAOL (open 10-6 daily summer, 10-5 winter; adm.
5oizf), an irregular red brick building, restored to its appearance in 1773 for
exhibition only, was Virginia's first * penitentiary. 7 Its thick walls, partly
original, with small barred windows unglassed during the eighteenth
century extend around a narrow exercise yard. The cells, behind stout
nail-studded doors, were formerly crowded with prisoners who suffered
sometimes fatally from winter cold. Early in the eighteenth century the
gaol was called a ' strong, sweet prison for criminals' far too sweet J in
1718 for nine of Blackbeard's pirates, whose term ended on what was
afterwards known as Gallows' Road. In front of the building stand repro-
ductions of the original pillory and stocks. Built simultaneously with the
capitol and enlarged several times, the public gaol, where important polit-
ical prisoners were held during the Revolution, served the colony as gen-
eral prison until 1779, when it became the city jail.

57. The COKE-GARRETT HOUSE (private) is a rambling white
frame building 90 feet long in landscaped grounds including a large wheel-
shaped rose garden. The severe porch on the center section is supported by
five square, fluted columns. The oldest part, the west wing, built before
1750, has a fine Chinese Chippendale staircase. John Coke, a goldsmith,
owned the house from about 1750 until his death in 1767, when it was in-
herited by his son Robey. Shortly after the Revolution it passed to the
Garrett family.

61. BASSETT HALL (private}, approached by an avenue of fine old
elms, is a white frame building in Georgian Colonial style; its attractive
outbuildings, partly original, stand in an extensive garden. Built before
1753, Bassett Hall was owned until 1800 by Colonel Philip Johnson, a
burgess, who sometimes let it as a tavern. He sold it to Burwell Bassett, a
nephew of Martha Washington. While visiting here in 1804 the Irish poet,
Thomas Moore, wrote 'To the Firefly/ after seeing lightning bugs for the
first time. Thought until recently to have been owned by President John
Tyler, the house actually belonged to Abel P. Upshur, a member of his
cabinet. Damaged by fire in 1930, the restored hall is now the Williams-
burg home of John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

64. The SEMPLE HOUSE (private}, fully restored, a dignified white
frame building in early Federal style, shows the restraining influence of
the Adam mode. The two-story central portion with an unusually high
ceiling presents its gable to the street and opens on probably the finest
porch in Williamsburg small, gabled, and supported by two slender
Doric columns. The home of two judges of the general court James Sam-
ple, professor of law at the College of William and Mary, and John B.
Christian and perhaps of a third, Hugh Nelson, it was long identified as
the home of Peyton Randolph until his will was discovered in 1929, locat-
ing his house on Nicholson Street.

328 VIRGINIA

80. TAZEWELL HALL (primte), a large, unrestored, unpainted frame
house with a shallow double porch, was built about 1760 across the end of
England Street by John Randolph, last royal attorney general for the Vir-
ginia colony, and shifted to its present site about 1918. A staunch loyalist,
Tory John Randolph's sympathies were quite unlike those of his brother,
Peyton, and of his son, Edmund, who became the first Attorney General
of the United States and then Secretary of State. At the beginning of the
Revolution John moved to England, where he died impoverished and
longing for Virginia. This lavish establishment was the main dwelling on a
i,5oo~acre plantation. Tory John took pride in the extensive gardens and
wrote a Trm&ise on Gardening. The house was bought by Justice John
TazeweUin 1778.

81. The small brick structure in the exercise yard of the Eastern State
Hospital was the KITCHEN OF THE OLD CUSTIS HOUSE, built
about 1714. Daniel Parke Custis, Martha Washington's first husband,
lived here for many years.

8iA. EASTERN STATE HOSPITAL (adm. by arrangement], S. side
Francis St., occupying a group of stone and brick buildings on 8oo-acre
grounds, is the oldest public asylum for the insane in America. Originally
called the Lunatic Hospital and known as 'Mad House' or ' Bedlam,' it
was chartered in 1768 and opened in 1773. James Gait, whose family man-
aged the asylum through four generations, was the first superintendent.
This hospital, the first to relinquish the idea that a lunatic asylum is a
place of horror, is the first of its kind to care for Negro insane. Free Ne-
groes were taken in from the beginning, and slaves after 1846, but Negroes
have had separate quarters since 1850. The original buildings burned long
ago. The institution (1939) cares for more than 1,600 patients.

POINTS OF INTEREST IN ENVIRONS

Yorktown, 13 m. (see Tour 65). Carter's Grove, 6.3 m. (see Tour 80). Jamestown,
6.7 m. (see Tour BA). Green Spring, 6.5 m. (see Tour 24).

iiffliiiiifflaiWi^^

Winchester

Railroad Stations: Piccadilly and Kent Sts. for Baltimore & OHo R,R. and Winchester

and WardensviUe R.R.; Boscawen St. near Amherst St. for Pennsylvania R.R.

Bus Station : Braddock St. between Amherst and Boscawen Sts. for Greyhound, Brenner

Motor, Blue Ridge Lines, Potomac Motor Lines, and Virginia Stage lines.

Taxis: Fare 25^ for 2 passengers, within city.

Accommodations : 4 hotels; tourist homes and inns.

Information Service : Chamber of Commerce, Cameron St. and Rouss Ave.

Motion Picture Houses: 2.

Golf: Winchester Golf Club, 1.5 m. E. on Cork St. extended, 9 holes, greens fee $1.50 per
day, caddie 50^ for 18 holes.

Swimming: Rouss Spring Park, SE. edge of city on Millwood Rd., children only, free;
Winchester Golf Club, 1.5 m. E. on Cork St. extended, adm. by arrangement.
Tennis: Rouss Spring Park, SE. edge of city on Millwood Rd,, free In morning, 15^ per
hour in afternoon; Winchester Golf Club, 1.5 m. E. on Cork St. extended, adm. by ar-
rangement.

Annual Events: Apple Blossom Festival, spring, when blossoms appear in near-by or-
chards; Blue Ridge Hunt Club Horse and Colt Show, Carter Hall, June.

WINCHESTER (725 alt., 10,855 pop.), near the northern entrance to the
Shenandoah Valley, is the seat of Frederick County and the oldest Vir-
ginia city west of the Blue Ridge. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries stagecoaches and wagons lumbered through its muddy streets,
carrying adventurers westward and southward. Here crossed two old
trails, which are today arterial highways serving the uses of commerce and
vacationists.

In spring, when the rolling countryside is beautiful and fragrant, Win-
chester's Apple Blossom Festival attracts thousands of people, who come
to behold the beauty of the 700,000 apple trees that bloom each year in
Frederick County. Then the little city abandons itself to two days of fes-
tivity. Queen Shenandoah is crowned on the steps of Handley School.
Surrounded by ladies-in-waiting, Her Majesty views a pageant enacted by
i ,000 children. In the late afternoon there is an aerial show at Admiral Byrd
Airport, southeast of town. The first evening is crowded with a recep-
tion for the queen and her court; a parade of Virginia fire companies, ca-
det corps from military schools, and World War veterans, marching to the
music of many bands; street dances in roped-off areas; and a ball at the
apple palace. On the second day school children re-enact their pageant;
the queen is entertained; a parade with elaborate floats again enlists bands

329

330 VIRGINIA

and soldiers; and at a late hour the queen's ball begins, bringing the festi-
val to a close.

Town Run and the tracks of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad traverse
Winchester. The comparatively level older portion of the city rises toward
flat-topped hills: on the north Fort Hill, on the east Church Hill, on the
south Potato Hill, on the west Academy Hill, Powell's Ridge, and Apple
Pie Ridge, an undulating checkerboard of apple orchards.

Though many first settlers in Winchester were English, its neat com-
pactness is attributable to Germans from the Northern colonies. Houses,
built flush with the street, have tiny gardens tucked behind them and
stoops that steal space from sidewalks. On the outskirts of the city, how-
ever, newer homes have indulged themselves in the luxury of surrounding
lawns. In 1732 Joist Hite crossed the Potomac at Pack Horse Ford, near
present Shepherdstown, West Virginia, bringing 16 families from Pennsyl-
vania to settle at Opequon, five miles south of Winchester. From Isaac
and John Van Meter, Hite purchased lands that were a part of the North-
ern Neck proprietary of Thomas, Lord Fairfax.

Though Frederick County was sliced in 1738 from Orange County, the
story of Winchester, first Fredericktown, did not begin until 1744, when
James Wood laid out a courthouse square and 26 lots. Frederick County
held its first court in a log house Wood built at the present Glen Burnie. If
Lord Fairfax had had his way, Stephens City would have been made the
county seat. James Wood, however, outwitted him by serving one of the
justices enough toddy, and the deciding vote was cast for Frederick. In
1752 the town was laid out and named for Winchester, England.

Already settlers knew the lad, George Washington, who had been sur-
veying Lord Fairfax's vast holdings since 1748. Washington was 16 years
old redheaded, freckle-faced, and very eager when he set out in March
1748 for Winchester and his first job, and his eyes were busy as he 'went
through most beautiful groves of Sugar Trees and spent ye best part of ye
Day in admiring ye Trees and richness of ye Land.'

After General Braddock's defeat in 1755, Lieutenant Colonel Washing-
ton, placed in command of frontier forces, ' rid post to this place . . . and
found everything in the greatest hurry and Confusion, by the back In-
habitants flocking in, and those of the town removing out. . . No Or-
ders are obey'd, but what a Party of Soldiers, or my own drawn Sword,
Enforces.' He set about to quiet a frightened people and to build Fort
Loudoun for their protection.

Men of Winchester played a conspicuous part in the Revolutionary War.
Their leader was Daniel Morgan, who moved there from New Jersey in
1753. After the Battle of Bunker Hill he organized a company of northern
Virginia riflemen. Commissioned captain of militia under General Bene-
dict Arnold, he pressed with his company into Canada, was held prisoner
in Quebec, fought in both battles of Saratoga, and as hero of the Battle of
Cowpens is given credit for the defeat of General Tarleton. Morgan spent
the last ten years of his life in Winchester.

Between the Revolution and the i86o's Winchester grew and prospered.
In 1779 the general assembly authorized its incorporation as a town.

WINCHESTER 331

Early in the nineteenth century stage lines operated between Winchester
and Harpers Ferry, continuing even after the Winchester and Potomac
Railroad was completed in 1836.

From the beginning till the end of the War between the States Winches-
ter was a center of military activities. Crops and cattle, mills and factories
made the valley an important requisitioning area for the Confederacy, and
Winchester was a vantage point coveted by both armies. When Gen-
eral Thomas J. Jackson was given command of the Department of the
Shenandoah in October 1861, he cleared Winchester of invading Federal
troops; in March 1862 Union forces under General Banks forced Mm to
evacuate the town; but on May 25 he moved in again. Until the summer
of 1864 Winchester changed hands many times, and more than 100 mili-
tary engagements took place in the surrounding area.

Fighting at an end, Frederick County looked again to fields and or-
chards, and its principal town to marketing. Winchester was chartered as
a city in 1874 and adopted the city manager form of government in 1918.
It owes its recent prosperity to near-by orchards. Though the Virginia ap-
ple was not important commercially until after the War between the
States, its fame had spread long before. After the establishment of the
Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College now the Virginia Poly-
technic Institute serious attention was given to apple culture. The Insti-
tute's department of horticulture was founded in 1888. Today almost 400
fruit farms in Frederick County produce more than 650,000 barrels of ap-
ples annually. Winesaps, Pippins, Staymans, the Delicious, Black Twigs,
and all their manifold kin enter the packing houses; but York Imperials
crisp, pungent, and juicy make up 60 per cent of the apples that pass in
and out of Winchester. In enormous warehouses, situated at the ap-
proaches to the city and capable of handling nearly 1,000,000 barrels, ap-
ples are sorted, packed, and shipped. One of the storehouses, with a
5oo,ooo-barrel capacity, is the largest in the world. In other plants apple
by-products are manufactured. Winchester also has a brick plant and fac-
tories producing woolen and knitted wear, gloves, flour, and other com-
modities. The annual pay roll is $3,000,000.

Even in winter, when the trees are bare and only the cidery pungence
from the packing houses and the big apple in front of the Elks Club bear
testimony to its principal industry, Winchester, on main-traveled high-
ways, is still a goal for travelers.

POINTS OF INTEREST

The tree-shaded PUBLIC SQUARE, bounded by Loudoun, Boscawen,
Cameron Sts., and Rouss Ave., was donated in 1744 by James Wood.
Eleven buildings, as well as stocks, a whipping post, and a pillory were
once in the square. The FREDERICK COUNTY COURTHOUSE (open 9-5 Mon.-
Fri., 9-1 Sat.)j Loudoun St. between Boscawen St. and Rouss Ave., a
large white-painted brick building with a tall Doric portico, was com-
pleted in 1840 and succeeded two earlier log structures. A stone jail, built
about 1764, occupied the east side of the square until a brick market house

332 VIRGINIA

took Its pkce In 1821, The CITY HALL, Cameron St. between Boscawen
St. and Rotiss Ave., was erected in 1900, partly with funds contributed by
Charles/ Broadway' Rouss. Born in Maryland, Rouss was sent to school
in Winchester at the age of 10. At 15 he started his career in a local gen-
eral store and at 18 opened his own store with a capital of $500^ Later he
made a fortune as a merchant on Broadway, New York City. His gifts to
Winchester amounted to more than $200,000.

OLD TAYLOR HOTEL, 225 N.Loudoun (Main) St., a large brick
building, its ground floor occupied by a chain store, retains many-col-
umned verandas on its second and third stories. As the Coffee House, Mc-
Gwire's Tavern, the General Washington, and as Taylor's Hotel, it was a
center of business and social life for 150 years. During the War between
the States the building was occupied by Confederate and Union officers.
'Stonewall 1 Jackson had temporary headquarters here, and General
Banks used it at one time as a hospital. Burned in i845^and rebuilt three
years later, it was maintained by various owners until closed in 1905.
Among its guests were Washington, John Marshall, Henry Clay, and Dan-
iel Webster.

MOUNT HEBRON CEMETERY, E. end of Boscawen St., was estab-
lished in 1844 as a cemetery and adjoined the original Lutheran burial
ground. At the left of the entrance stand the RUINS or THE OLD LUTHERAN
CHURCH one thick stone wall, jagged and ivy-grown, with two arched
window openings. German Lutherans, organized before 1753 an d given
this site by Lord Fairfax in that year, began their church in 1764. It was
used as a barracks during the Revolutionary War, and was burned in
1864. Hie grave of Daniel Morgan is southeast of the ruins. Near by lie
five of the six men constituting Morgan's 'Dutch Mess/ his bodyguard
throughout the Revolution.

In STONEWALL CEMETERY, bounded by Greenwalt Ave., Cork
St., East and Woodstock Lanes, is the CONFEDERATE MONUMENT TO UN-
KNOWN DEAD, a tall shaft commemorating 829 unknown soldiers killed in
or near Winchester. More than 3,000 identified soldiers are also buried in
this cemetery.

In the NATIONAL CEMETERY, opposite Stonewall Cemetery across
Woodstock Lane, five acres purchased by the Federal Government ^in
1866, lie 2,110 known and 2,381 unknown Union soldiers killed in the Win-
chester area.

The FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 304 E.Piccadilly St., a
barnlike gray structure of rubble fieldstone, built about 1790, was the first
church of the Winchester Presbytery. The building was sold in 1834 to a
white Baptist congregation and later to a Negro Baptist congregation.
Union troops used it as a stable during the War between the States. In
1925 it was converted into a Negro school but is now used as an armory.

The SITE OF FORT LOUDOUN, Loudoun St. between Clark and
Peyton Sts., is a half acre over which Winchester's main street now passes.
Part of the SOUTHWEST BASTION, NW. corner Peyton and Loudoun Sts.,
still stands above the surrounding level all that is left of the redoubt
built by Colonel George Washington in 1756-57. The fort, named for the

WINCHESTER 333

Earl of Loudoun, commander in chief of Colonial forces, was garrisoned
with 450 men and defended by 24 guns. It was never attacked and its guns
were never fired, but it served its purpose: the French at Fort Duquesne
reported it impregnable.

STONEWALL JACKSON'S HEADQUARTERS, 415 N.Braddock
St., obscured by surrounding trees and houses, is a brick house designed
in Gothic Revival style. General Jackson had headquarters here in
1861.

The HANDLEY LIBRARY (open 10-9 daily in winter, 10-7 in sum-
mer) , NW. corner Braddock and Piccadilly Sts., a richly ornamented Ital-
ian Renaissance villa, was opened in 1913. It contains about 30,003 vol-
umes and has a lecture hall seating 300. The library and Winchester's
magnificent public school were gifts from Judge John Handley.

SHERIDAN'S HEADQUARTERS, SW. corner Braddock and Picca-
dilly Sts,, owned by the Elks Lodge, is a large brick house painted white,
with a two-story Corinthian portico. The building served as headquarters
for General N.P. Banks in 1862, for General R.H.Milroy during the next
year, and for General Philip Sheridan in the autumn and winter of 1864-
65. In the front yard stands a painted red APPLE about five feet high,
made of concrete and plaster and set here in 1932 after its use in a pageant.

DANIEL MORGAN'S HOUSE (private), 226 W.Amherst ; St., a many-
windowed stuccoed dwelling almost hidden by trees, was built by George
Flowerdew Norton and later enlarged. General Daniel Morgan lived here
two years before his death in 1802.

CHRIST CHURCH, NE. comer Washington and Boscawen Sts., a
rectangular brick building in simple Neo-Gothic style, was built in 1828-
29 to replace the log church on the * Public Lotts.' The tomb of Thomas,
sixth Lord Fairfax of Cameron, is in the basement of the church. The body
of Lord Fairfax was first buried in the old church and later moved here,
but its exact location was forgotten. In 1926 Robert T. Bartonjr., a Win-
chester lawyer, employed the Negro sexton to search for the bones. After
unprofitable days of digging he ordered the work discontinued. The Negro,
however, returned the following morning, declaring that the spot had been
revealed to him in a dream. 'If I find dem bones, Boss,' he argued, 'you
pay me. If I don't find 7 em, you don't/ Digging continued, the bones were
discovered, and Lord Fairfax (1693-1781), proprietor of the Northern
Neck, was reburied beneath the floor of the church.

GLEN BURNIE, W.Amherst St. near city limits, is a rambling red
brick house in the midst of trees surrounded by a wide low meadow, which
is encircled by a stone wall and crossed by a meandering stream. The
house was built by Robert Wood in 1794 to replace a log house built be-
fore 1743 by his father, Colonel James Wood. General James Wood, gov-
ernor of Virginia (1796-99), and brother of Robert, was bom here.

SHENANDOAH VALLEY MILITARY ACADEMY, Amherst St.,
occupying several buildings on 22 acres of tree-shaded grounds, is one of
the oldest in America. It was founded in 1764 as the Winchester Academy,
and sessions have been held continuously, except during the War between
the States, at least since 1785. The average enrollment is 100.

334 VIRGINIA

WASHINGTON'S OFFICE (new open), NE. corner Cork and Brad-
dock Sts., a one-story gabled-roof building, is in two sections. The newer
part is built of rough stone, the older of hewn Jogs covered with clap-
beards. The small windows have solid outside blinds. In the log section
two doors with old facings swing on large H- and L-hinges. George Wash-
ington used the older part as an office while surveying for Lord Fairfax.
Behind the building is a small cannon from Alexandria and a stone monu-
ment commemorating Braddock's line of march.

The SITE OF WASHINGTON'S QUARTERS, 204 S.Loudoun St., is
occupied by a stone house built in 1792. In a log building here Washing-
ton had his quarters in 1755 while he built Fort Loudoun.

RED LION TAVERN (adm. by arrangement), SE. corner Cork and
Loudoun Sts., is a pleasantly proportioned two-story house built of lime-
stone. Now a residence, it was a thriving tavern about the time of the
Revolution. George Washington stopped here several times. Peter Lauck
of Daniel Morgan's ' Dutch Mess' was proprietor in 1783.

POINTS OF INTEREST IN ENVIRONS

Home of Isaac Parkins, 0.8 m,\ Site of the First Battle of Winchester, 2.2 m.\
Star Fort, 2.3 m. ; Kenil worth, 5.8 m. (see Tour 50).

PART HI
Tours

60060 :J>1D MM JQ[

Tour 1

(Washington,D.C.) Alexandria Fredericksburg Ashland Richmond
Petersburg Dinwiddie South Hill (Henderson,N.C.). US i.
District of Columbia Line to North Carolina Line, 199.5 m.

Concrete roadbed throughout, three- or four-lane Washington to Petersburg.
Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac R.R., over the tracks of which pass trains of
Seaboard Air Line Ry. and Atlantic Coast Line R.R., parallels route between Washing-
ton and Richmond; Seaboard Air Line Ry. and Atlantic Coast Line R.R., over the
tracks of which pass the trains of Norfolk & Western Ry., between Richmond and
Petersburg; Seaboard Air Line Ry. between Petersburg and North Carolina Line.
All types of accommodations.

Following, more or less, the route of the Indian Trail that became the
Potomac Path and then the King's Highway, US i passes through the
northeastern Piedmont and then skirts the western rim of the forest-cov-
ered Coastal Plain, crossing the Rappahannock, James, and Appomattox
Rivers at their fall line. Agricultural pursuits predominate in this slightly
rolling country. South of Petersburg the highway, veering west, penetrates
'Southside' Virginia, a region of clay soil with thin forests and tobacco
farms. Except in the well-populated environs of the few cities, US i gives
the impression of mere distance in what Gertrude Stein has called 'all the
miles of uninhabited Virginia.'

Section a. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA to FREDERICKSBURG; 49.8 m.

Beginning at the south bank of the Potomac and paralleling the river,
US i has along its upper end myriads of commercial signs and tourist
cabins, tawdry blots that vanish as the road plunges through the region of

337

338 VIRGINIA

small farms and restored manor houses on river bluffs, and of towns that
once flourished through trade In world markets.

US i crosses the District of Columbia Line at the south end of the Four-
teenth Street Bridge, m,, at a point 2 miles from the zero milestone in
the District.

Right here to the Mount Vernon Memorial Highway, an alternate route, built by
the Federal Government in 1932, that passes landscaped lagoons of the Potomac and
the ROACHES RUN SANCTUARY for waterfowl and rejoins US i at Alexandria, 4 m.

HOOVER AIRPORT (R) 0.2 m., is the commercial landing-field for Wash-
ington.

ALEXANDRIA, 4.6 m. (52 alt., 24,149 pop.) (see Alexandria).
In Alexandria is a junction with State 7 (see Tour 13).

Left from US i in Alexandria 8.9 m. on another section of the Mount Vernon Me-
morial Highway to MOUNT VERNON (open winter 9-4 weekdays, 1-4 Sun.-, summer
0-5 weekdays, 1-5 Sun.; adm. 25^, children i$t). At the end of a long vista is the white
frame mansion flanked by numerous outbuildings, also frame, arranged symmetrically
on the estate laid out by George Washington.

The rectangular mass of the two-story Georgian Colonial house, joined to the
nearest outbuildings by curving arcades, has a modillioned cornice and a hip roof with
a low central pediment and widely spaced dormers. A graceful cupola pierces the roof
midway between the two chimneys at the ridge ends. The house, its sides covered with
pine slabs beveled to simulate stone blocks, faces east from behind the tall columns of
its familiar piazza. The tree-bordered lawn, encompassed by a ha-ha wall, slopes
steeply to the Potomac.

Furnished copiously with Washington's belongings, the handsome interior ex-
presses, no less eloquently than the stately exterior, the character of the first Presi-
dent. Every room possesses relics of interest. In the central hall, where the Colonial
color has been restored, hangs the key to the Bastille, a gift from La Fayette. The
dining room has a plaster ceiling, cornice, and overmantel plaque designed in Adam
style. In this room hangs Wollaston's portrait of Lawrence Washington, the builder of
the house. Across the south end of the house is the general's study, where copies of
most of the books he possessed have been restored to the shelves. Here he wrote in-
numerable letters and made notes in his voluminous diary. At the north end of the
house is the spacious banquet hall, a story-and-a-half high, with coved and plaster-
decorated ceiling and a Palladian window. The Italian marble mantel opposite was the
gift of a London admirer, who also presented the two vases standing upon it. Portraits
of Washington by Charles Willson Peale and Gilbert Stuart hang here. In the music
room staijpS again the 1,000 harpsichord Washington imported for his little step-
granddaughter, Nelly Custis. Upon it lies the flute that Washington never learned to
play. The bedrooms on the second floor are completely furnished.

The numerous outbuildings are those that were essential to the self-sufficient plan-
tation of the eighteenth century: smoke house, dairy, wash house, greenhouse, coach
house, spinning house, barn, and others. An information booth occupies part of the re-
stored latchen, In the south wing; and farther away, to the northwest, a reproduction
of the slave quarters contains a museum in which a large number of relics are dis-
played, notably the bust of Washington that Houdon made and used as a model for
his marble statue in Richmond. The 5,000 acres of the original grant stretch along the
Potomac between Dogue Creek and Little Hunting Creek. John Washington great-
grandfather of George and Nicholas Spencer applied for a patent to the land in
April 1669. Half the property the part called Hunting Creek descended to Law-
rence, the son of John Washington, and then to Lawrence's daughter Mildred, who
sold it in 1726 to her brother Augustine, father of George Washington. In 1735 Au-
gustine Washington built a house here and moved from Wakefield, bringing with him
his three-year-old son, George. In 1738, however, Augustine Washington moved again,
this time to Ferry Farm (see Tour 160).

T o u R i 339

Lawrence, the half-brother of George Washington, Inherited Hunting Creek in 1743
and that year built a house for his bride, Anne Fairfax, the daughter of Colonel William
Fairfax, probably on the foundations of his father's house, which had burned a few
years before. He called the place Mount Vernon for his old commander^ Admiral Ed-
ward Vernon of the British navy. Richard Blackburn was the architect. At the age of
1 6 George Washington came here to live with Lawrence. In 1752 Lawrence died. He
left the estate to his daughter Sarah, subject to the dower rights of her mother, stipu-
lating that if Sarah died without heirs Mount Vemon should descend to his half-
brother George. On Sarah's death and her mother's remarriage a few months later,
George Washington assumed possession of the estate. In 1 754 he purchased his sister-
in-law's right to the property and later the 2,500 acres that had once belonged to
Nicholas Spencer. Subsequently he bought adjacent land.

To Mount Vernon in 1759 George Washington brought his bride. He had great
plans for becoming the leading agriculturist in America and operated the estate as five
separate farms. He tried out crop rotation, kept elaborate notes, and conferred with
friends who were similarly experimenting. In 1773 he added the third story to the
house, with the six bedrooms beneath the eaves and drew plans for the north and
south additions. Called to lead the army of his rebellious country, he left the manage-
ment of the estate and the execution of his building plans to his distant cousin, Lund
Washington. He was at home again just in time to supervise the decoration of the ceil-
ing in the great banquet hall/ In 1783 George Washington returned to Mount Vemon
to devote himself, as he told both diary and friends, to agriculture and domesticity.
His field yielded harvests vastly satisfying; he was awarded ' a premium for raising the
largest jackass' by the Agriculture Society of South Carolina.

In 1787 he was called to preside at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
In 1789 he became the first President of the United States. Washington returned to
Mount Vernon in 1797 for two quiet years. With him and his wife lived his step-
grandchildren, Nelly and George Washington Parke Custis, whom he had adopted.
On December 14, 1799, George Washington died; Martha Washington died three
years later.

In 1853 Ann Pamela Cunningham of South Carolina set out to organize a society
that would purchase and restore Washington's estate, then in the hands of descend-
ants of his brother. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association of the Union was formed
in 1856, and in 1860, after having raised $200,000 for the purchase, it acquired the
mansion and part of the land.

On the hillside near the house is the little ivy-covered mausoleum in which Martha
and George Washington are buried in two simple sarcophagi in the outer vault.

Right from Mount Vernon on State 235 to WASHINGTON'S GRIST MILL (R), 11.8 w.,
a tall, gable-roofed structure of rubble stone that is a reproduction on old foundations.
It is equipped as a pre-Revolutionary mill. The white clapboard MILLER'S COTTAGE is
also a restoration. In 1760 George Washington said that the mill, built by Augustine
Washington, was * decayed and out of order.' He then repaired it, did some rebuilding
in 1770, and in 1795 reconstructed the millrace. Near the two mill ponds, vanished
long ago, stood also the miller's house, the distillery, the blacksmith's shop, and the
cooper's shop. George Washington asserted that his flour was t equal in quality to any
made in this country.' It was used at Mount yernon, by the neighboring gentry, and
was shipped to distant markets aboard Washington's 'schooners.' On one of his fre-

KEY FOR ALBEMARLE COUNTY MAP

i.University of Virginia 2.Blue Ridge Sanatorium 3.Michie Tavern 4.Monticello
5.Tufton 6.Ashlawn 7.Morven S.Ellerslie 9.Blenheim lo.Redlands n. Ruins of
Viewmont i2.Plain Dealing 13. Christ Church i4.Glendower is.Chester i6.Tall-
wood i7.Enmscorthy iS.Estouteville i9.Edgemont 2o.Bally-Les-Braden
2i.Farmington 22.Site of Locust Hill 23.Seven Oaks 24.Emmanuel Church
25.The Barracks 26.Carrsbrook 27.Bentivar 2 8. Site of Indian Village 'Monasuka-
panough' and Site of Mound examined by Jefferson 2o.Franklin 3o.Buena Vista
3i.Shadwell 32.Edgehill 33. Grace Church 34. Castle Hill 35.Boyd's Tavern

ALBEMARLE COUNTY

VIRGINIA

340

342 VIRGINIA

quent inspection tours to the mill, Washington cauglit the cold that resulted in his last
illness.
At 12.1 m. is a junction with US i (see below).

HUNTING CREEK, 5.7 m., is a marshy resting place for ducks in
autumn and winter. In the vicinity in 1676 a 'fort or place of defence on
Potomac river* was built as a protection against the Susquehannock In-
dians, whose depredations led to Bacon's Rebellion (see History).

At 5.8 m. is a junction with a private road.

Right on this winding road to MOUNT EAGLE, 0.3 m. The drive ends in a circle
before a white winged structure with a Georgian pediment. The house, now the Lord
Fairfax Country Club, was built late in the eighteenth century and was the home of
the Reverend Bryan Fairfax (1735-1802), who became the eighth Lord Fairfax. A
mild Tory, friend of Washington, and rector of the Fairfax Parish from 1789 to 1792,
the Reverend Mr.Fairfax remained nonpartisan during the Revolution. When in 1800
Bryan inherited the title of Lord Fairfax and the right to a seat in the House of Lords,
he chose to remain in Virginia.

Embedded in the long reaches of wooded parkway (R), 6.5 w., is a rem-
nant of the line of forts O'RoRKE, WEED, FARNSWORTH, and LYON
that formed part of the southern defenses of Washington during the War
between the States.

At 10.2 m. is a junction with State 235 (see above).

The entrance (R) to WOODLAWN (open during April Garden Week) is at
13.4 m. The square, rose-red brick house designed in Georgian Colonial
style with Classic Revival innovations, on the crest of shaded Gray
Heights, was designed by Dr. William Thornton in 1805. The central unit
with brick walls laid in Flemish bond rises two stories with flat arches of
stone over the windows to a gable roof with hipped ends. A central pedi-
ment pierces the roof like a dormer. The house is extended by two low
balancing wings connected with the main structure by low galleries. A
high brick wall joins the wings with outbuildings. The house has two cen-
tral halls connected by an elliptical stairway that rises in a long simple
sweep, and has been lately embellished with fine eighteenth-century wood-
work salvaged from the Barton House in Fredericksburg.

The 2,ooo-acre estate, once part of Mount Vernon, was willed by Wash-
ington to his nephew, Lawrence Lewis, who became the husband of
Eleanor (Nelly) Custis, granddaughter of Martha Washington, 'about
candle light' on Washington's last birthday, February 22, 1799. Wood-
lawn, ' grandeur in decay,' was bought in 1902 by the dramatist Paul
Kester (see Tour 160) and his brother Vaughan, who immediately re-
stored it.

The brick columned entrance to FORT BELVOIR (L) is at 13.6 m.
(visitor's pass obtained at gate). This military reservation of the United
States Corps of Engineers was formerly Fort Humphreys. The neat parade
ground, surrounded by staff headquarters, officers' quarters, and enlisted
men's barracks, occupies a wide peninsula, part of the Belvoir estate,
which once belonged to the Fairfax family. On the east side are a U.S.
FISH HATCHERY and EXPERIMENT STATION.

Commerce and Industry

Photograph by courtesy of the Richmond News-Leader

CIGARETTE GIRl, TOBACCO ROW,* RICHMOND

Photograph by courtesy of the Richmond News-Leader

HOSIERY WORKER IN A STAUNTON Mill

Photograph by W. Lincoln Highton

LIME WORKS, EAGLE ROCK

IN THE POCAHONTAS COAL FIELD

Photograph by W. Lincoln Highton

COYlNGTOfrf

TEXTILE MILLS ALONG THE DAN, DANVILLE

Photograph by W. Lincoln Highton

OYSTEMNG, OFF NORFOLK

Photograph by courtesy of the Norfolk Advertising

Photograph by courtesy of the Richmond News-Leader

ROASTING PEANUTS, SUFFOLK

Photograph by Robert McNeil!

COAL CUTTER, SOUTHWESTERN VIRGINIA

WIP AND PAPEt Mill, WEST POINT

Photograph by courtesy of the Richmond News-Leader

LOADING LUMftEt FOR BALTIMORE, NORTHERN NECK

Photograph by W. Lincoln Highton

>togroph by W. Lincoln Highto

PUMPING SALT FROM UNDERGROUND, SALTVfLLE

Photograph by courtesy of Newport News Shipyard
AIRCRAFT CARRIER ON THE WAYS, NEWPORT NEWS

NORFOLK TIDEWATER TERMINAL

Photograph by courtesy of Norfolk Advertising Board

TOUR i 343

On the grounds are the RUINS OP THE BELVOBK. MANSION, gutted by
fire in 17 83, and completely demolished by the British in 1814. Belvoirwas
set aside in 1741 for Colonel William Fairfax by his cousin ? the proprietor
of the Northern Neck, Lord Thomas Fairfax (see Tour 5-4). Colonel Fair-
fax (1691-1757) settled first in the Bahamas, then at Salem, Massachu-
setts. In 1734 he came to Virginia as agent for his cousin and in 1741 built
the brick house 'of nine rooms and suitable outhouses.' George William
Fairfax (1724-87), who inherited Belvoir, became Washington's intimate
friend and associate in many enterprises, and Washington, during early
manhood, was a frequent visitor here especially when Mary Gary, sister
of Mrs. George William Fairfax, was also a guest.

POHICK CHURCH (L), 16.4 m., is surrounded by old trees and a quiet
graveyard. The rectangular building, partly a restoration, has walls laid
in Flemish bond and two tiers of windows framed with brick flat-arched
below, round-arched above. The high hip roof rises above a denticulated
cornice with an unusually wide overhang. Local sandstone was used for
the heavy quoining and the enframement of the three portals, two on the
main facade and one on the south. Each portal has Ionic pilasters, full
entablature, and a severe pediment.

In 1765 the northern part of Truro Parish became Fairfax Parish, leav-
ing Truro with only one church Pohick, a frame building, not on the
present site. After building Payne's Church in 1768, the vestry, of which
Washington was a member, planned to replace the frame church by one
of brick, but had a hard time deciding upon a site. It was not till Septem-
ber 21, 1769, that the 'spott' was chosen. The church was completed in
1774. During the War between the States one wall, the interior, and the
furniture, except the marble font, were destroyed. The church was reno-
vated in 1874, and again in 1906.

At 18.2 m. is a junction with County 600.

Left here to GUNSTON HALL, 3.7m. (open during April Garden Week), the home of
George Mason (1725-92), author of the Virginia Bill of Rights, model for the first ten
amendments that make up the Bill of Rights in the Federal Constitution. The simple
story-and-a~half Georgian Colonial house, with stone quoining and walls of brick, has
a gabled roof with dormers and four built-in chimneys. Both front and rear porches
are noteworthy, the former closely following the lines of the Temple of Tyche at Eu-
menia, the latter eight-sided with pointed arches a rare example of American Colo-
nial Gothic. A delicate cornice upholds 'kicked-out } eaves. The broad central hall,
which has plastered walls, a paneled dado, and deep cornice, contains a stairway with
very low risers and very broad treads. The music room has Chinese Chippendale trim
and the drawing room an elaborate mantel and overmantel flanked by semicircular
niches, which are framed by pilasters and topped with broken pediments. Nearly all
the doorways and windows have full entablature and pilasters. The house was re-
stored in 1920.

The George Mason who built Gunston Hall (1755-58) was fourth of that name m
Virginia. The architect was William Buckland, a skilled draftsman of Oxford whom
Mason's brother had brought under indenture from England in 1754. The master of
Gunston Hall was the author of the Fairfax Resolutions in 1774 and the following year
became a member of the Virginia Committee of Safety. In 1776 he drafted the Vir-
ginia Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In 1787, as delegate to the Constitutional
Convention in Philadelphia, he refused to sign the instrument because it failed to abol-
ish slavery, because it contained no bill of rights, and because he objected to the large

344 VIRGINIA

and too indefinite powers it gave to Congress. Although one of the real mentors of the
Revolution, he returned to Gunston Hall after each public activity, fervently hoping
it is said never again to be called from his home.

At 19.9 m. is a junction with County 611.

Left here to COLCHESTER, 0.9 m n laid out in 1753 and once prosperous but now
merely two old buildings, a few modern houses, and a dock on Occoquan Creek,

THE ARMS OP FAIRFAX, a former ordinary, is a small story-and-a-half clapboard
structure on a high foundation. The large dining room with wide, fluted cupboards,
once assuaged the hearty appetites of many self-confessed gourmands. In his Travels
erf Pour Years and a Half in the United Slates of America (1798-1801), John Davis,
English tutor of Nathaniel Ellicott's children at Occoquan, wrote of "Mr. Gordon's
tavern;* * Every luxury that money can purchase is to be obtained at the first sum-
mons . . . The richest viands cover the table . . . and ice cools the Madeira that
has been thrice across the ocean . . . Apartments are numerous and at the same
time spacious . . . carpets of delicate texture cover the floors; and glasses are sus-
pended from the walls in which a Goliak might survey himself.'

At 21,1 m. on US i is a junction with State 9.

Right here to OCCOQUAN (Ind., hooked inlet), 2.1 m., directly across the river
from the DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA WORKHOUSE and close to the DISTRICT REFORMA-
TORY.

In 1801, John Davis, sailor with an ebullient flair for poetry and prose, arrived to
tutor the children of Nathaniel Ellicott, a local landowner. * Occoquan/ he wrote, ' con-
sists of a house built on a rock, three others on the river sideband a half a dozen log-
huts scattered at some distance/ But he found the settlement 'romantic beyond con-
ception/ Three years after his departure, the town, long planned, came into being. By
1830 Occoquan was well-known to travelers for its roasted canvasback ducks, which
the local inn served even for breakfast and sold, uncooked, for 'a shilling sterling
apiece. 1 The village was in a flourishing condition until silt filled Occoquan Creek, and
vessels could no longer reach the mills.

The ruins of the MERCHANT'S GRIST MILL, built in 1759 and destroyed in 1924, &re
close to the bridge. The high stone walls (L) are the remnants of one of the first COT-
TON MILLS in Virginia. Built in 1828 by Nathaniel Janney, the four stories hummed
with 1,000 spindles until they were silenced by fire during the War between the States.
South of these ruins, stands ROCKLEDGE, now called The Den, a two-story rock house
with dormers, built in 1759 by John Ballendine, on designs by William Buckland.
Under the gabled roof runs a fine denticulated cornice. With window panes that time
has made iridescent and a crane swinging in the huge kitchen fireplace, Rockledge pre-
serves the solid qualities of its builder, one of the earliest captains of industry in the
agricultural south.

Legended gateposts mark the entrance (L), 24.3 m., to RIPPON LODGE,
a story-and-a-half frame house, now much modernized. Three dormers,
piercing a gabled roof, project just above the balustraded roof of a re-
cessed porch with six small Doric columns. The hall and dining room are
paneled. In the upper hall an aperture in the north wall formerly led to a
secret stairway that connected with a tunnel extending from the basement
to a ravine. The brick office is still standing as is also the guardhouse with
iron-grilled windows, in which Thomas Blackburn quartered troops during
the Revolution.

Rippon Lodge was built about 1725 by Colonel Richard Blackburn of
Ripon, England, an architect who later designed both the original Mount
Vernon and the first Falls Church. Two daughters of the house of Black-
burn became mistresses of Mount Vernon: Julia Anne, daughter of Col-

TOUR i 345

one! Thomas Blackburn, married Bushrod Washington; and Jane Char-
lotte, her niece, became the bride of John Augustine Washington.
At 25.4 m. is a junction with County 610.

1. Right here to a junction with County 638, 0.1 m.; R. again 0.3 m. to a footbridge
that crosses once navigable NEABSCO CREEK (Ind., at the point of rock) on wMcfa
in 1697 * four houses for stores and garrisons ' were built for use in fighting Indians. On
the shore of the creek, covered by briars, are the rains of the NEABSCO IRON FOUNDRY,
which John Tayloe (1687-1747) operated in 1734 after he had abandoned Bristol
Iron Works (see Tour i6<z).

At 4.9 m. from US i on County 610 is a junction with a narrow lane; L. here to the
entrance gate (L) of BEL AIR 5.2 m., a small gabled brick house. Bel Air, on a hilltop,
has fine paneling in its large first-floor rooms, a wide-treaded stairway, and high base-
ment kitchen. The view from the house is exceptional; on clear days Washington land-
marks are visible.

Bel Air was built about 1740 by Major Charles Ewell. Marianne Ewell, his daugh-
ter, was married here to Dr. James Craik, surgeon general of the Continental armies;
and in 1795, Fanny Ewell, granddaughter of the builder, married Mason Locke
Weems (1759-1825). Weems, a Marylander, was ordained a clergyman by the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury in 1784 and returned to take charge of a Maryland parish. He
was not particularly happy in the church and had such difficulty making a living that
he exchanged preaching for book peddling. Marriage anchored him only temporarily.
After the death of his father-in-law, Colonel Jesse Ewell, in 1806, Parson Weems, who
had become both Author and bookseller, moved his family to Bel Air (on which he held
a mortgage), where he visited them briefly at intervals as he journeyed up and down
the Atlantic seaboard. His many moral tracts and his biographies of William Penn
and General Francis Marion were eclipsed by that egregious mixture of fact and fic-
tion: A History of the Life and Death, Virtues and Exploits of General George Washing-
ton, With Curious Anecdotes Equally Honorable to Himself and Exemplary to His Young
Countrymen. The chronicler of the 'cherry tree' and 'Spanish dollar' episodes lies in
the Ewell graveyard behind the house.

2. Left from US i on County 610, 0.3 m. ; R. here on a sharply ascending path to the
SITE OF LEESYLVANIA, 1 m., birthplace of Henry 'Lighthorse Harry 1 Lee (1756-1818),
Princeton graduate (1773), Revolutionary officer, governor of Virginia, and father o!
Robert E. Lee.

DUMFRIES, 29 m. (325 pop.), clings to a curve in tlie highway over-
looking the creek that once gave it life. After the bars to Virginia's profit-
able tobacco trade were lifted by the Navigation Law of 1707, Scottish
merchants immediately concentrated their activities around Quantico
Creek. As early as 1713 a 'factory' and an ' agent's house' had been built
and by 1749 the town had been established. In 1759 Dumfries became the
seat of Prince William County. Filled at the apogee of its commercial ac-
tivity with 2,000 people concerned only with exporting tobacco, Dumfries
reckoned without the vagaries of nature and more insidious mankind. Silt
began to clog Quantico Creek and boats, in search of flour as well as to-
bacco, sailed by its entry to Alexandria's more approachable wharfs. Im-
provident Dumfries gradually forwent its tea drinking, balls, and drama,
and dwindled to comparative nothingness.

Two-storied brick STAGECOACH INN (R), a pre-Revolutionary hostelry
known first as William's Ordinary, then as Love's Tavern, has stone
quoins on the front corners and around the doorway.

The brick, limestone-trimmed HENDERSON HOUSE corner of Duke and
Fairfax Sts., was built about 1785 by Colonel Alexander Henderson. The

346 VIRGINIA

old house has preserved Its dignified air despite additions. Alexander
Henderson organized what was probably the first chain of stores in Amer-
ica with shops in Alexandria, Colchester, Occoquan, and Dumfries. One
of his six sons, Archibald Henderson, was the first commander of the U.S.
Marine Corps, from 1820 to 1859.

At TRIANGLE, 30.5 m., a cluster of neon-decorated buildings, is the
landscaped entrance (L) to the MARINE CORPS BASE (visitor's pass at
post gate), eastern training center of the U.S. Marine Corps. The little
town" of QUANTICO stretches out from the railroad station, neon-fes-
tooned restaurants, little hotels, and other structures. The large govern-
ment reservation fringing the curving Potomac is dotted with regimental
and disciplinary barracks, three storehouses, commissary, bakery, a rifle
range, Brown Flying Field, and numerous other buildings and equipment
sufficient to accommodate some 400 officers and 3,000 enlisted men. The
Marine Corps School is attended, sometime during their career, by all
Marine officers.

The site of Quantico (Ind., by the long stream) was a 'naval base,' es-
tablished to serve the vessels of the 'Potomac Navy' during the Revolu-
tion. When the United States entered the World War in 1917, Quantico
was selected as a training camp and maneuver field for the Marine Corps,
and in 1918 became a permanent post.

Right from Triangle on County 626 to CHOPAWAMSIC RECREATIONAL
DEMONSTRATION AREA, 2 *., about 14,500 acres of submarginal land being de-
veloped by the National Park Service. At present (1940) there are four camps with rec-
reational facilities and cabins with accommodations for 435 persons, besides picnic
areas.

CHOPAWAMSIC CREEK (Ind., by the separation of the outlet),
32,7 m. y was long a difficult problem for the early road builders and one of
the causes for the near-disappearance of the road for a time. Testy John
Randolph of Roanoke likened the Chopawamsic Swamp to the Serbonian
bog that swallowed the unwary forever. The advent of the automobile
stimulated engineers to efforts that eventually brought the road back to
utility.

The large bronze CRUCIFIX 36.3 m., designed by George J. Lober, is a
memorial to the first English Catholic settlers in Virginia Giles, Mar-
garet, and Mary Brent who, around 1650, built homes on Aquia Creek.
George Brent, their nephew, was one of four men who on February 10,
1686, obtained from James II a Proclamation granting 'free exercise of
their religion 7 on 30,000 acres 'for the encouragement of inhabitants to
settle 7 in this area, known as the Brenton Tract. Giles, Margaret, and
Mary Brent had arrived in Maryland in 1638 and for many years were
prominently identified with affairs there. In 1650 Giles Brent first pat-
ented land in Virginia. His other patents and those of his sisters followed
in quick succession.

Mistress Margaret Brent, who is called in Maryland records 'Margaret
Brent, Gentlemen, 7 was one of the most remarkable women in Colonial
history. She appears frequently in the records of her two States, negotiat-

TOUR i 547

Ing transactions of her own and acting as attorney for her brother, her
sister, and neighbors who needed her help. She was the first woman in
America to ask for 'voyce & vote allso.' Because Leonard Calvert, gov-
ernor of Maryland, made her his sole executrix in an oral will that tersely
instructed her 'to take all and pay all,' and because the Maryland Coun-
cil made her administratrix of Lord Baltimore's revenues, she argued be-
fore the assembly in 1648 that she should be given full rights of citizenship.
When the request was denied, she declared that she would protest ail ac-
tion taken by the assembly if she were not present and granted *as afore-
saide voyce & vote ailso. 7 Her brother's difficulties with Lord Baltimore,
arising from Giles Brent's claims to land he considered due him because
of his marriage to the daughter of the Piscataway chief, and Margaret
Brent's indignation that Lord Baltimore should resent her having paid
hired soldiers out of his revenues, were responsible for the Brents' moving
to Virginia and for the speedy colonization of much of that territory then
known as Northumberland County.

On Aquia Creek (Ind., bush nut), the northern frontier of Virginia for
ten years after the Indian War of 1676, was established the first English
speaking Catholic colony in Virginia. Close by the bank of the creek rose
the Catholic town of Aquia near which, in mid-eighteenth century, was
built a small log chapel. This community was frequently visited by John
Carroll, who in 1789 became the first Catholic bishop of the United States.

Left from the Crucifix on County 637 to a junction with a private road, 0.2 m.; R.
here to the AQUIA (or BRENT) ROMAN CATHOLIC CEMETERY (R), 0.5 m., salvaged from
a tumble of briars and enclosed by a brick wall since its discovery in 1924. Within this
graveyard lie five generations of Brents. Decipherable still are tombstones to ' Flora,
1681 '; to George Brent's second wife, Mary (died in 1683), daughter of Lady Balti-
more by her first husband, Henry Sewell, Secretary of Maryland; and to Petty-
john Doyle 'who ended his life July 18, 1725, 50 years upward.'

By the cemetery wall is a bronze tablet dedicated to the memory of Jesuits who in
the isSo's established a mission in the vicinity and shortly afterward were killed by
the Indians, one of whose sons they had enslaved. Reprisals by the Spanish from
St. Augustine aroused among the natives hostility that had not been forgotten when
the Jamestown colonists arrived.

AQUIA CHURCH (L), 37.4 m., erected in 1757 and still serving Over-
wharton Parish, is remarkably large and fine for its day. The outer angles
of the walls, of large-sized brick, are heavily quoined with stone. The same
gray stone frames the large center doorway and one in each end of the
transept. The hip roof, above two tiers of windows and a generous cornice,
has a stocky, square cupola with its base embedded in the western hip
directly above the main entrance.

The interior has square, high-backed box pews with doors, a walnut
altar rail, a gallery supported on graceful columns, and a triple-decked
pulpit. White marble is set in the stone floor at the intersection of the
aisles. The silver communion service, inscribed: 'The gift of the Rev.
Mr.Alexander Scott,A.M., late minister of this Parish Anno 1739,' ami
dating from that year, was buried during three wars 1776, 1812, and
1861.

Overwharton Parish, formed before 1680, once covered the greater part

VIRGINIA

of the original Stafford County. The Reverend John Moncure, who served
as rector from 1738 to 1764, is buried beneath a stone bearing the inscrip-
tion: 'In memory of the Race of the House of Moncure. 1 The present
structure replaced a church built in 1751 and destroyed by fire three years
later. This had succeeded an earlier church at another site. Tablets com-
memorate the vestry that built the church, the rector, and ( Mourning
Richards, undertaker, and William Copein, mason.' By 1837 Aquia
Church was in a dilapidated condition; it was restored about 40 years
later.

STAFFORD, 40.3 m. (75 pop.), seat of Stafford County since 1715,
clusters around the COURTHOUSE, a brick building erected in 1922. Most of
the early county records disappeared during the War between the States;
a few of the documents, discovered in the New York Public Library, have
been returned.

Called a mother of counties, Stafford, formed from Westmoreland in
1664, was gradually reduced as the population spread westward. It was
the scene of 'Parson Waugh's Tumult/ an abortive religious insurrection
started in 1688 by John Waugh, who believed the story of an Indian,
later discredited, and inflamed the people through sermons that told of a
Catholic plot against Protestants.

Left here on County 212 to County 608, 3 m.; L. here to County 621, 6.3 w., and R.
to MARLBOROUGH POINT, 9.1 m., near the site of the town of Marlborough, one
of those authorized in 1680, and an early seat of Stafford County. It flourished briefly,
on tobacco and herrings, then quickly disappeared.

In this region, near the mouth of Potomac Creek, was the Indian village Patawo-
meke, where in 1613 Pocahontas, while visiting the Potomac Indians, was kidnapped
by the English. Through the trickery of lapazaws, ' an old friend of Captaine Smiths,'
the Indians 'betraied the poore innocent Pocahontas aboard' the vessel of Cap-
tain Samuel Argall for the price of a ' Kettle and other toies.' Conveyed to Jamestown,
die princess was held as hostage for the ' swords, peeces, tooles, &c. hee [Powhatan]
trecherously had stolne/ It was during this period of captivity that the ' Namparell of
Virginia' met and married John Rolfe. An Indian village here is being explored; many
artifacts and skeletons have been found.

At 48 m. on US i is a junction with County 652.

Right here to ELLERSLIE (R), 0.7 m. a two-and-a-half story, square brick house
built in 1748 by Dr.Michael Wallace who, at 15, had been indentured to Dr.Gustavus
Brown, of Charles City County, Md. ? to learn 'physical surgery and pharmacy.' To-
wards the end of his six years' apprenticeship, in 1747, he eloped a classic ladder-
and-second-story episode with * one of the nine Miss Browns who had twenty-seven
husbands between them.' Settling in Falmouth the following year, he acquired land
and built this stately house. Dr. Wallace's practice soon extended into Culpeper, Fau-
quier, and Loudoun Counties.

FALMOUTH, 48.2 m. (500 pop.), perched above the falls of the Rap-
pahannock, carries on its life amid the decayed charm of its former lively
self. Destined as a port for the tobacco and flour trade, Falmouth was
laid out as a town in 1727 on land that lay just above the beach on which
Captain John Smith and his ' Souldiers,' guided by the Indian Mosco, had
landed, fought the Indians, set up a cross, and sought gold in 1608. Mar-
ket for all the fertile country extending to the Blue Ridge, the town dotted

TOUR i 349

with storehouses grew rapidly. From London in 1773 came urbane trap-
pingsa fire engine and 40 leather buckets. In its streets drivers of wagon
trains met sailors from foreign ships. On the banks of the Rappahannock
(R) an iron foundry, operated as early as 1732 by Augustine Washington,
ran full tilt during the Revolution under the management of James Hunter
in order to furnish the American army and navy with such articles as pots,
pans, camp kettles, anchors, and bayonets. To protect the foundry the
governor of Virginia ordered General George Weeden to establish a camp
Camp Hunteron the hill adjacent. In 1786, Timothy Green published
the town's first newspaper, The Fahnouth Advertiser; and in 1813 progress
took another turn a bridge replaced the ferry. As industry- thrived,
Scotch Basil Gordon (1768-1817) carried on a business that made him
one of America's first millionaires.

Before and after the Battle of Fredericksburg (see Tour ib) Falmouth
was the headquarters of the Federal Army and of T.C.S.Lowe, ' Chief of
Aeronauts,' U.S.A. Hovering over the town, he successfully conveyed
one of the first air messages of the war. ' Balloon in the air, April 29, 1863,'
started the communique.

George Washington, so it is said, received his early education here, be-
tween the ages of seven and eleven, attending the school kept by * Master
Hobby/ nickname of William Grove, who was brought from England by
Augustine Washington, sponsor of his early undertakings. Here were bom
James Alexander Seddon (1815-80), Confederate Secretary of War, andT
Dr.Kate Waller Barrett (1858-1925), staunch advocate of social reform.

Beyond the road descending to the site of HUNTER'S IRON WORKS is the
stone-pillared entrance (L) to BELMONT, a two-story frame building,
painted white, erected in 1761, enlarged in 1843, and again in 1916, by a
studio wing, when purchased by Gari Melchers (1860-1932), portrait and
landscape painter. Trained at Dusseldorf , Melchers achieved a reputation
in Europe for his pictures of Dutch peasant life. In Virginia, his favorite
subjects were mountaineer types such as those in The Pot Boils.

Right from Falmouth on State 17 traversing the lower Piedmont and bordered by
small plots devoted to farming and dairying. Its undulating upper end passes into a
region of whitewashed fences, stud farms, and impressive estates.

John Lederer, a ' German Chirurgeon/ on August 20, 1670, set out from the Falls of
Rappahannock, accompanied by ' Col. Catlet of Virginia, nine English horse, and five
Indians on foot.' He proceeded up the north bank of the river toward the 'top of the
Apalataean Mountains,' his goal, but on the way the Englishmen found fault with
their leader and returned to Williamsburg and discredited his discoveries.

Along the highway near BEREA, 4.2 m., the Army of the Potomac moved west-
ward on January 20-21, 1863, toward the fords of the Rappahannock, in an attempt
to approach Lee's army from the rear. As the troops advanced a storm arose and con-
verted the road into such a quagmire that the 'Mud March' was abandoned.

At 8.3 m. is a boundary of the former gold mining district of Stafford County. The
ore was discovered by German miners (see Tour 36), who believed it held silver. Their
story was discredited and the region remained unworked until much later.

RICHLANDS, 9.6 m. (25 pop.), has grown up on the vast Richland estate, part of
four large grants made in 1703 to Robert 'King' Carter (see Tour 166), who in the fol-
lowing year built a tobacco warehouse here. On this land the master of Corotoman
started inland colonization and established three 'quarters/ On his death in 1732,
Stanstead Quarters came under the management of his son, Charles Carter.

350 VIRGINIA

GROVE BAPTIST CHURCH (L), 14,2 m,, Is a gray stone building erected in 181 1. Wil-
liam L. Royall Jr., a 1 9-year old Confederate scout, was captured by a Federal cavalry
detachment and placed In this church for safe keeping. Shortly afterward he was led to
the Presbyterian Church, directly across the road, tried by a ' drumhead court-martial'
for being a bushwhacker, and acquitted. The verdict had not been easily reached, for
orders had arrived to hang the first bushwhacker caught. Fortunately, Lieutenant
Colonel Timothy Q'Bryan, in command, had frequently been a guest at Mount Eph-
raira, the Royal! home, and had promised Mrs.Royall that her son would go unharmed
if he were ever caught.

At 15 m. is a junction with County 651.

Left on this road 0.8 m. to the LIBERTY GOLD MINE (L), worked extensively before
the War between the States; it was finally abandoned in 1937. A shaft, hoist, and sev-
eral beehive rock crushers spherical globes of reinforced concrete some 10 feet in di-
ameter are visible from the highway.

In MORRISVILLE, 18.6 m. (50 pop.), still a crossroads, once stood Richard Cov-
en ton's Ordinary.

Where the crossroads settlement of LOIS, 21.4 m., now stands, the Virginia assem-
bly made a gesture in 1798 toward establishing a town to be called Fayetteville, but
the enterprise failed.

At 26.4 m, on State 1 7 is a junction with State 295 (see Tour 40) .

In OPAL, 29.9 m,, on State 17 is a junction with US 15 (see Tour 36).

FREDERICKSBURG, 49.8 m. (50 alt., 6,819 pop.) (see Fredericksburg).
In Fredericksburg are junctions with State 3 (see Tour i6a and Tour 10),
US 17 (see Tour 6a), and State 2 (see Tour lA).

Section b. FREDERICKSBURG to RICHMOND, 56 m.

This section of the highway passes from the rolling country of hazy dis-
tances into the flat sand-clay outer fringes of the Coastal Plain, covered
with small farms dwarfed by vast reaches of forest.

In FREDERICKSBURG, m., US i swings R. on Lafayette Blvd. to a
junction with the Sunken Road at 1.1 m. Straight ahead is the entrance to
the National Military Cemetery on the slope of Marye's Heights, where
are buried 15,206 victims of the War between the States only 3,000 of
them identified. At the junction is (R) the NATIONAL PARK SERVICE HEAD-
QUARTERS AND MUSEUM (see Fredericksburg) of the Fredericksburg-Spot-
sylvania National Battlefield.

The Battle of Fredericksburg took place in December 1862 during the
fourth major drive by the Northern army for the capture of Richmond. A
hundred and twenty thousand strong, the Army of the Potomac, com-
manded by General Ambrose E, Burnside, marched south from Warren ton
and, blocked by General R.E.Lee's army on the hills below Fredericksburg,
camped from November 17 to November 20 on Stafford Heights across the
Rappahannock. On December n Burnside bombarded Fredericksburg
(already evacuated) and then, under fire, laid five pontoon bridges and
within two days took most of his force across the river. On December 13 he
ordered two attacks: the first at Hamilton's Crossing (see below), around
which General TJ. Jackson had massed his corps, began about 10 o'clock.
Under a blanket of thick fog General W.B.Franklin drew up his men in
battle formation on the plains below the hill. As the fog lifted, the Con-
federates saw waving flags and the gleam of 48,000 bayonets. The first
charge, led by General G.G.Meade, was repulsed, but a second charge, in

TOUR I 351

which Meade was supported by another division, broke through General
Jackson's line. Despite fierce fighting, the Federals were driven back and
the Confederate line was restored. No more fighting took place there.

The second and more costly venture was General E.V.Sumner's attack
on Marye's Heights. The Sunken Road at the base of the hill is protected
by a stone retaining wall. From behind this parapet the Confederate troops
successfully repulsed seven major attacks. As one division left its wounded
and dead, retreating in disorder under fire from the heights, another moved
forward in the icy wind to take its place. Two days later the Union army
recrossed the Rappahannock, having lost a total of 12,653 men as against
5,377 Confederates.

Right^from US i on the Sunken Road to BROMPTON (L), 0.2 m., a two-story brick
house with one-story wings, built about 1837 by John Lawrence Marye. The high ga-
bled roof of the main unit extends forward to form a portico its pediment pierced by
a lunette supported by four slender Ionic columns. An elliptical fanlight over the
door and the delicate detail of the portico cornice, repeated under the eaves of the
wings, are noteworthy. Inside, a hall extends across the front. The drawing rooms, in
the wings, have mantels of Italian marble imported for the White House but dis-
carded because of slight defects. Brompton's peaceful existence on its hillside came to
an abrupt end in December 1862, when Confederate officers used the porch as a van-
tage point to observe the progress of Federal troops below.

At 1. 7 m. on US i is a junction with a park road.

Left here through a part of the Fredericksburg-Spotsylvania National Battlefield
Park to HAMILTON'S CROSSING, 5.4 m., scene of action during the Battle of
Fredericksburg. The park road winds along a ridge through landscaped grounds, pass-
ing a Contact Station (information) and restored trenches and gun pits.

Left from Hamilton's Crossing on County 634 to a junction with US 1 7 (see Tour 60),
6.2 m.

At 4.4 m. on US i is a junction with State 51.

Right on this road to SPOTSYLVANIA 6,7 m, (see Tour 10).
At 4.7 m. on US i is a junction with County 636.

Left here to the SITE OF LEE'S HEADQUARTERS (L), 1 m. } occupied after the Fred-
ericksburg campaign.

MASSAPONAX CHURCH (R), 8.7 m., a rectangular brick structure, built in
1859 and owned by a Baptist congregation, witnessed at least one battle
during the War between the States a long battle of words inscribed by
soldiers on the rear wall of the gallery. c How many traitors have you killed
and where are you now? ' wrote one Yankee. ' I don't know/ was the scrib-
bled answer, followed by, 'In the hospital, I hope/ signed Rebel. John G.
Hamilton, from Richmond. Homeward bound/ stands out among lines of
vitriolic verse, scathing denunciations of leaders on both sides, crudely
drawn cartoons all tied together with faintly penciled signatures.

THORNBURG, 13 m., a crossroads, was called formerly Mud Tavern.

Left here on County 606 to NORTH GARDEN (L), 1.8 m., and STONEWALL JACKSON
SHRINE (L), 5.6 m. (see Tour iA).

352 VIRGINIA

At 16.1 . on US i Is a junction with State 208.

Left on this road is the entrance to BRAYNEFIELD (L), 5.9 m. (See Tour iA).

Every few miles along US i in this area are markers calling attention to
various episodes and the movements of troops through this section.
LADYSMITH, 21.2 m., a collection of garages and restaurants.

1. Left from Lady-smith on County 639 to WRIGHT'S CHAPEL (L), 3.8 m., a frame
building. In 1 774 William Wright, a communicant of the Established Church, strayed
into a Methodist camp) meeting and became so enthusiastic over^the new doctrine that
he Invited the minister to hold meetings in his own house. Quarterly and protracted
Methodist meetings, begun then in the home, continued for the rest of Wright's life
and during his son's lifetime. The first Wright did not himself profess Methodism un-
til the day of his death. The son, on his death in 1835, donated this land for a chapel
that was replaced about 1890.

2. Right from Ladysmith on State 229 to COUNTY LINE CHURCH (R), 4.4. m,, a
brick building covered with brown stucco lined to simulate stone. This church, built in
1841 on the opposite side of the road, was rebuilt on the present site in 1894. The first
building owned by the congregation, on still another site, was so named because of its
proximity to the line between Caroline and Spotsylvania Counties. The Baptist con-
gregation was organized in 1784 when some members of Waller's Church withdrew
and elected William Edmund Waller (1746-1830), brother of John Waller (see below),
as their pastor.

At 5.1 OT. is a junction with State 51; R. here 7.2 m. to WALLER'S CHURCH (R), a
comparatively new brick building belonging to a Baptist congregation that was con-
stituted December 2, 1760. The planting of Baptist churches in this section was ef-
fected through the preaching of Samuel Harris and James Read. When Waller's
Church, called at first Lower Spotsylvania Church, was organized, John W T aller (1741-
1802) became the first pastor. Until his baptism in 1867 this pioneer Baptist had a
reputation for recklessness and profanity and was known as 'Swearing Jack Waller*
and i the Devil's Adjutant/

Back of a white clapboard house (R) in GOLANSVILLE, 24 m., is a

QUAKER BURYING GROUND, a little fenced-in plot covered with ivy and
periwinkle beneath maple and paulownia trees; there are no markers.

At MT.CARMEL, 27.5 m., in a triangle is CARMEL CHURCH (R), a red
brick building with a gabled roof extending forward to form a high pedi-
ment. It was built in 1874 the third church on this site and repaired in
1923. The Baptist congregation was constituted in 1773 another church
'planted by S.Harris and J.Reed' (Read). Called at first Polecat Church,
it was later named Burruss' Church for the first pastor. In 1809 this church
had 162 white and 342 Negro members and rose to the point of ordaining
Negro deacons.

_ At one time the congregation organized a temperance society, which car-
ried on militant activities from an adjacent building. The frame structure
was moved eventually to a village near by, where it became a saloon,

i. Right from Mt.Carmel on County 658 to a deserted MORMON CHAPEL (R), 3.6 m.,
a small frame building that was probably built sometime after the War between the
States. The establishment of this sect here was bitterly resented, particularly by Ma-
jor John Page, who explained the reason for his feelings: 'I can't afford to let two of
my neighbors be confirmed in the theory of Mormonism. who have lived in the prac-
tice of it all their lives!'

TOUR i 353

2. Left from Mt.Carmel on State 207 to the cedar-lined entrance (L) of ELLERSLIE,
2.2 *., a two-story frame house on a high basement, with outside end chimneys and
one wing. It was built before 1800 by James Gatewood. The delicate tracery of a cut-
leaf mulberry brushes the unpainted clapboard. Frame outbuildings, former kitchen
and slave quarters, still stand.

Across the North Anna River, 30.5 m., the armies of Lee and Grant
faced each other from May 23 to May 26, 1864. Grant, frustrated in several
attempts to secure vantage ground south of the river, moved eastward and
crossed at Hanovertown.

ELLINGTON (R), 30.9 m., is a square brick house behind square col-
umns of a two-story portico. Built by the Thomas H. Fox, whose initials
*T F 7 are cut high above the entry door, Ellington was used before and
after the War between the States as a boys' academy called Fox School.
Under spreading tree branches is the two-story brick building that held
the classrooms. In 1864 General R.E.Lee, whose army was encamped by
the North Anna River, stopped here for a glass of buttermilk. He was about
to drink when a shot fired by a Federal battery passed close by him and
imbedded itself in the door frame. He slaked his thirst, then rode quickly
away. The buttermilk was blamed for a subsequent illness lasting several
days.

At 32.5 m. is a junction with County 688.

Left here to DOS WELL, 0.2 m., a crossroads named for the Doswell family, which
acquired Bullfield and converted it into a stud farm from which came the progenitors
of Epinard and other thoroughbreds. In ante-bellum days Negro jockeys of the area
achieved considerable reputation.

At 35.4 m. on US i is a junction with State 51.

Right here to the former HANOVER ACADEMY (R), 2.8 m., on a wide lawn shaded by
oaks. The school was established in 1849 by Lewis Minor Coleman, later professor of
Latin at the University of Virginia. Only two of the old buildings remain : a remodeled
two-story, clapboard structure with dormers, two outside chimneys, and spacious
porch; and a story-and-a-half clapboard-covered log building.

FORK CHURCH (R), 4.4 m., built in 1735, is a church of St.Martm's Parish. Conven-
tionally rectangular, the structure has brick walls laid in Flemish bend above a heavy
watertable. Two small and somewhat ungainly porticos that shelter the doors must
have been later additions.

Inside, across the west end, is the usual gallery. Renovations made at intervals have
removed all other distinctive old features.

Behind the church is a long, narrow brick-walled enclosure containing a single row
of gravestones. Near by are tombstones of the Nelson and Page families.

Fork Church was so called because of its proximity to the confluence of the North
and South Anna Rivers.

Left from Fork Church 2.5 m. on County 685 to SCOTCHTOWN (R) , a severe-looking
rectangular house suggesting the pictures of Noah's Ark. Broken trees and tattered
box are all that remain of once beautiful grounds and gardens. Standing on a high
brick foundation, this unusually large frame house, 100 feet long and 50 wide, has a
high gabled roof, pierced by four chimneys, that would give a barren appearance if the
ends of the ridge were not hipped. The unpainted clapboard walls, now silvery with
age, are topped with carefully spaced corbels that strike a surprising note of elegance.
Stone steps lead to small porches.

Colonel Charles Chiswell, a Scot who was accustomed to hop into his coach and rat-
tle down Negro Foot road to Williamsburg when the 'Season' opened, built Scotch-
town about 1732. That year William Byrd stopped here to ask information and ad-

354 VIRGINIA

vice, and recorded: 'I arrived about two o'clock, and saved my dinner. I was very
handsomely entertained, finding everything very clean, and very good ... I retired
to a very clean lodging in another house, and took my bark, but was forced to take it
In water, by reason a light fingered damsel had ransacked my baggage, and drunk up
my brandy. This unhappy girl, it seems, is a baronet's daughter, but her complexion,
being red-haired, inclined her so much to lewdness that her father sent her, under the
care of the virtuous Mr. Cheep, to seek her fortune on this side of the globe . . .
Mr. Chiswell made me reparation . . . by filling my bottle again with brandy.

In 1771 Scotchtown was acquired by Patrick Henry for 600. His first wife, Sarah
Shelton Henry, died In 1776, and the following year Henry, then living in the Gover-
nor's Palace in Williamsburg, sold Scotchtown not without a profit to Colonel Wil-
son Miles Gary, one of the wealthy lower peninsula planters fearful of British invasion.

John Payne, the Quaker, became the next owner. Dorothea, one of his many chil-
dren, who later married James Madison, preserved in her Memoirs a vivid impression
of Scotchtown. In 1783 John Payne gave up the struggle with the poor soil and the
battle with his conscience over the ownership of slaves and moved to Philadelphia.

Scotchtown has more legends than the average old house: the usual story is told of
Tarleton's having ridden up the steps and through the halls; there are hints of an In-
dian raid, of a duelresponsible for the 'bloodstain' on the hall floor and of a
woman chained by her husband in the ' dungeon '-a fearful name for what was doubt-
less the sweet-potato pit.

At .6 m. on State 51 is a junction with County 601; R. here 0.5 m. to OFFLEY (L),
once the home of Thomas Nelson (see Tour 6b). Nothing remains of the house but one
gaunt chimney in the midst of three wide-spreading oaks.

On State 51 at 10 m. is the junction with County 601 ; L. here 3.2 m. to the entrance
of OAKLAND (R). The L-shaped frame house was built in 1899 on the charred founda-
tions of a house erected not long after the Revolution. The oak-shaded circular drive
touches the porch steps on the low dormer-windowed wing. In the living room are
many portraits: Nell Gwynn by Sir Peter Lely; Addison by Sir Godfrey Kneller;
Dr Johnson, Dickens, and Thomas Nelson, Jr. by Chapman; the Artist Opie, and others.

At Oakland was born Thomas Nelson Page (1853-1922), who, after graduating
from Washington College and from the University of Virginia, practiced law in Rich-
mond until 1893.

In 1884 the Century Magazine published 'Marse Chan,' Page's first story. Later he
wrote numerous novels, essays, short stories, and verse. Some are in Negro dialect,
and almost all show the author's pride in the class from which he sprang and his nos-
talgia for the ante-bellum days he depicted with more charm than realism. Oakland is
the locale of his story Two Little Confederates. Among his best known works are: In Ole
Virginia, Red Rock, The Burial of the Guns, and Robert E. Lee, Man and Soldier. He
was ambassador to Italy from 1913 to 1918. At Oakland lived his brother, Rosewell
Page (1858-1939), historian and biographer.

ASHLAND, 39.8 m. (1,297 pop.), is a sprawling little town with its cen-
tral street cluttered by noisy and very profitable railroad tracks. Victorian
residences sit back on shaded lawns, aloof from the bright facades of the
business block. A leisurely town of commuters, merchants, railroad em-
ployees, and professors, Ashland has an air of its own created by the stu-
dents of Randolph-Macon College, who swarm the streets, overflow the
drug stores, and rattle about in 'jalopies.' Unacademic industry throbs in
one lone building a shirt factory.

In 1848, Edwin Robinson, president of the Richmond, Fredericksburg &
Potomac Railroad, bought 1 55 acres of wilderness c slashes' and around
a well of mineral water created a health resort, Slash Cottage. Richmond
came to dance in the ballroom; trains waited to let hungry passengers dine
here. Churches sprang up. By 1855 the village discarded its earlier name
and adopted Ashland, the name of Henry Clay's estate in Kentucky. Se-

T o u a i 355

lected as a mustering place for Confederate troops when the War between
the States began, it was later occupied alternately by both Northern and
Southern troops.

In Ashland lived the Sheltons, whose daughter, it is said, was the inspira-
tion for Poe's Lenore.

In 1866, the unsold part of the land passed into the possession of the
railroad company, which, to foster growth, induced the Methodist Church
by means of a land donationto move Randolph-Macon College here.

RANBOLPH-MACON COLLEGE was the first college founded in the United
States by the Methodist Episcopal Church. The rambling, brick buildings
are hidden by tall trees. The campus, of about 35 acres, is particularly
delightful in spring when thousands of daffodils cover the lawns. The school,
founded at Boydton in 1830, was moved here in 1868. Rapid growth fol-
lowed. In 1890 the Randolph-Macon system was organized (see Tour $A
and LyncJiburg) ; its three institutions are affiliated with the Baltimore and
Virginia Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and are con-
trolled by one self-perpetuating board of trustees.

Left from Ashland on State 54 to a junction with County 662, 1.5 m.; L. here 1.3 m.
to the entrance (R) to HICKORY HILL (open during April Garden Week), taU structure
of irregular shape. It was built in 1734 and, after a fire, rebuilt in 1875 after designs of
the day. In extensive gardens the outstanding feature is an ancient box walk, 307 feet
long and arched 30 feet above the broad path. Hickory Hill has long been owned by
the Wickham family. During the War between the States, it was the home of Wil-
liam F. Wickham, the father of General William C. Wickham of the Confederate army.
One of General Robert E. Lee's sons, General W.H.F. (Rooney) Lee, while recovering
here from a wound in 1863, was seized by a Federal cavalry detachment and taken to
Fortress Monroe.

HANOVER, 6.6 m. (see Tour lA) on State 54 is at a junction with State 2 (see
TouriA).

At 46.4 m. on US i is a junction with a paved road.

Left here 0.5 m. to a junction with another paved road, the old Telegraph Road be-
tween Fredericksburg and Richmond; R. to the STUART MONUMENT (R), 0.6 m., a tall
granite obelisk 'erected by some of his comrades to commemorate his virtues.' Upon
this field, on May u, 1864, General J.E.B. Stuart, having interposed his cavalry be-
tween that of General Philip Sheridan and the city of Richmond, was wounded during
the second of two attacks by the Federal troops. Shot by a dismounted cavalryman,
he was taken to Richmond, where he died on the following day.

SAINT JOSEPH'S VILLA (R), 48.6 m. } a Catholic orphanage for girls, was
erected in 1930-31 with part of the income derived from a $3,000, ooo trust
left in 1922 by Major James H. Dooley for the establishment of three elee-
mosynary institutions. On a beautiful landscaped tract are 14 buildings of
buff-colored brick trimmed with terra cotta and roofed with green Spanish
tile. The domed Romanesque church and a statue of Joseph wijth Jesus rise
in the center of the plaza formed by a curving drive fringed by the octag-
onal administration building and by the school building and auditorium.
In 1834 three Sisters of Charity opened an orphanage and school in Rich-
mond, called St. Joseph's; the institution here is its successor.

356 VIRGINIA

The remains of EARTHWORKS at 50 m. were part of Richmond's outer
fortifications during the War between the States. At this point General
Philip Sheridan's cavalry, pushing toward Richmond, broke through on
May 1 1 , 1 864, after the fight at Yellow Tavern, but turned eastward before
reaching the city.

At 50.9 m. is a junction with State 2 (see Tour lA).

RICHMOND, 56 m. (15 to 206 alt., 182,929 pop.) (see Richmond).

In Richmond are junctions with US 33 (see Tour 9), US 250 (see Tour
17), State 6 (see Tour 23), State 10 (see Tour 19), State 5 (see Tour 24),
US 60 (see T&ur 8), and US 360 (see Tour 20).

Section c. RICHMOND to NORTH CAROLINA LINE; 93.7 m. US i.

South of Richmond US i is lined with tourist cabins, garages, and lunch-
rooms swathed in neon signs that at night convert the road as far as Peters-
burg into a glittering midway. Below the Appomattox River, the highway
passes through southside Virginia, an undulating sand-clay country cov-
ered with tobacco farms and extensive pine and oak forests. It suggests
Gertrude Stein's comment on Virginia: 'There were no houses, no people
to see, there were hills and woods and red earth out of which they were
made and there were no houses and no people to see. 3

South on 9th Street from the State capitol in RICHMOND, m., to re-
join US i (L), 2 m.

At 5.3 m. is a junction with County 1209.

Left here on a cinder road to a fork, 0.4 m. ; R. here I m. to the RICHMOND-DEEP-
WATER TERMINAL, erected in 1938-39 at an approximate cost of $1,750,000.

Near by is the SITE OF WARWICK, which was flourishing in 1748. In April 1781 the
British came up the James and bombarded the village, burning Colonel Archibald
Gary's flouring mill a serious blow to the Commonwealth since the mill supplied
much flour for the Revolutionary forces.

The landscaped and brick-pillared entrance (L) to the Du PONT DE
NEMOURS MANUFACTURING PLANT is at 6.7 m. In the brick buildings cov-
ering 26 acres, rayon, cellophane, and synthetic fiber are manufactured
through the viscose process. This site was selected in 1927 because of the
supply of labor and the proximity to water with a low iron content.

On this tract stood Ampthill, which was moved to Richmond in 1929.
Archibald Gary (1721-86), dubbed by a recent biographer the 'Wheel-
horse of the Revolution,' in 1749 inherited Ampthill, built by his father,
Henry Gary, Jr., and carried on and enlarged already established manu-
facturing interests: an iron foundry, the flouring mill at Warwick, and a
ropery at Richmond. Called 'the Old Bruiser' and, at times, 'Old Irons/
Archibald Gary was known for his peremptory manner. Once, so it goes,
Washington was a guest at Ampthill. When he rose to take his leave, Colo-
nel Gary objected, not once but several times. Finally Washington made a
definite move to depart. Insistent Archibald Gary banged his fist on the
table with a 'By God! You shall stay.' And Washington stayed.

The unused arched stone bridge, spanning Falling Creek, 7.5 m. 9 was on

TOUR i 357

the Manchester-Petersburg Turnpike laid out in 1826 by Colonel Benott
Claude Crozet (see Tour 176).
At 8,5 m. is a junction with County 609.

Left here to DREWRY'S BLUFF, 0.8 m., rising high above the James River. For-
tifications built here in 1862 on the land of Captain A.H.Drewry enabled the Confed-
erate forces on May 15, 1862, to drive back the Union fleet, which was attempting to
reach Richmond. Among the five Union boats was the ironclad Monitor, which had
engaged the Merrimac (Virginia) in Hampton Roads two months earlier.

FORT DARLING, 200 yards R., was equipped for the most part with naval guns and
commanded a wide bend in the river to the south. The fort and its connecting land de-
fenses have been partly restored.

On May 14-16, 1864, some 40,000 of General B.F.Butler's men were held back in
the vicinity of the bluff by hastily gathered detachments of Confederate troops and
county home guards until the arrival of General P.G.T.Beauregard. Defeated, Butler
withdrew to Bermuda Hundred (see Tour 19) where, as General Grant expressed it, he
was ' bottled up.' Earthworks, thrown up by the Federals on the i4th and relinquished
two days later, are still visible.

On July 23, 1863, a Confederate naval school was established here on the Patrick
Henry, with Lieutenant William Harwar Parker as commandant. The 126 midship-
men engaged in many skirmishes, and fought more than they studied.

Beginning at 9 m. and extending a mile along US i is a double row of
sodium vapor highway lamps installed in February 1936 by the Virginia
Electric & Power Co. The object of the experiment is to determine the
degree to which accidents may be decreased by highway lighting.

HALF-WAY HOUSE (L), 11.3m., was so named because of its position be-
tween Richmond and Petersburg. This rectangular frame building was first
an academy, then a stage house, and is again an inn. The long double porch
at the rear was added in 1918; new, too, are the log cabin in the yard and
the shed that covers a well used for many generations by travelers.

At 12.6 m. is a junction with County 616.

Left here to a junction with County 615, 0.2 m.; L. 2.5 m. to OSBORNE'S WHARF.
Dredging operations here, begun in October 1936, are part of the James River develop-
ment project. A channel has been cut of sufficient depth and width to permit passage
of ocean-going vessels. A modern steam dredge continued work begun in 1611 by
Sir Thomas Dale, who, according to a method he had learned while campaigning in
Holland, cut across a neck of land a ditch known as Dale's Dutch Gap.

The land in this vicinity was settled in 1625 by Captain Thomas Osbome. Public
tobacco warehouses erected in 1 748 at this bend of the river made the place an impor-
tant shipping terminus for a number of years. On April 27, 1781, Benedict Arnold
with his troops burned 25 vessels anchored here; and the following month, La Fayette's
troops camped on the sloping banks.

At 1.5 m. on County 616 is a bridge crossing the old channel of the James to FAR-
RAR'S ISLAND; on the island is a fork, 1.9m.; L. here 1.5 m. to another fork; then
L. 0.6 m. on a road that skirts the north side of the island to the site of HENRICOPOLIS,
or the City of Henricus, third settlement in the colony, founded in 1611 by Sir Thomas
Dale, high marshal of Virginia, and named for his patron, Prince Henry, eldest son of
James I. Lulled into security by the Indians' apparent friendliness, the settlers of
Jamestown felt safe in moving up the river. Dale, with 350 men (chiefly German la-
borers), came to what is now called Dutch Gap> began to clear the wilderness, and
built the town of which Ralph Hamor, secretary of the colony, wrote: 'There is in this
town three streets, of well framed houses, a handsome church, and the foundation of a
more stately one laid of brick, in length an hundred foote, and fifty foote wide, beside
store houses, watch houses, and such like; there are also, as ornaments belonging to
this town, upon the verge of this river, five faire block-houses, or commanders, where-

VIRGINIA

in live the honnestes sort of people, as In farmes in England, and there keep continual]
centinell for the townes security . . .'

In 1618 Governor Yeardley was instructed to choose a suitable site at the City of
Henricus for *the college and university of Virginia/ already imposed in the town's
charter. Accordingly, io ? ooo acres were set aside, 1,500 were collected in England,
and George Thorpe was appointed superintendent. To provide additional revenue,
tenants were established on the land, and, in 1619, an iron foundry was built. But in
March 1622 came Opechancanough's carefully planned massacre. Henricopolis was
wiped out.

At 13.6 m. is a junction with State 10 (see Tour 19).

COLONIAL HEIGHTS, 21 m. (2,331 pop.), is a speed-conscious town
with service stations and stores compact along the highway and suburban
residences spreading east and west.

VIOLET BANK, at the end of Arlington Place, is a one-story clapboard
house with hipped gambrel roof, outside chimneys stuccoed white and
a high basement. Breaking the long line of the facade is a graceful portico,
which extends from a recess created by two bays. The slender fluted col-
umns of the portico support a roof surmounted by a solid balustrade. In
this gray building, overlooking a shrub-enclosed lawn shaded by the far
reaching branches of a gigantic cucumber tree, General R.E.Lee had his
headquarters from June to September 1864.

The first building on this site was erected in 1770 by Thomas Shore, a
shipping merchant. Luxuriously appointed with English furniture and nu-
merous objets d j art, this earlier Violet Bank, named for the thousands of
violets that grew under the oaks ori.ce shading the adjacent hill, was chosen
by La Fayette as headquarters in 1781. The first mansion burned in 1810.

OAK HILL, Carroll Avenue, also called Archer's, Hector's, or Dunn's
Hill, consists of two one-story clapboard structures connected by a deep
inside porch that extends an uncovered section toward the street.

From the lawn of this house in May 1781 General La Fayette, with can-
non behind a boxwood hedge that still fringes the hill, shelled Petersburg,
then occupied by the British.

PETERSBURG, 22.3 m. (14 to 85 alt, 28,564 pop.) (see Petersburg).

The CENTRAL STATE HOSPITAL (L), 25.2 m., is devoted exclusively to
the treatment of insane, epileptic, and feeble-minded Negroes. The 30
buildings, chiefly of brick, are on an estate of i ,814 acres, half of which is a
farm worked by the patients. The capacity of the hospital is 3,465, and the
number of initiates, 3,506 (1938). The institution was established in 1870
as Freedmen's Hospital at Howard's Grove near Richmond. In 1885 ^ was
moved to its present site.

The frame TURNBULL HOUSE (R), 25.3 m., was General Lee's headquar-
ters from November 1864 to April 1865. From the house Lee saw his sol-
diers retreating when his lines were broken under a concerted Federal at-
tack in the early light of April 2.

At 26.8 m. is a junction with State 142.

Left here to the SITE OF FORT GREGG, 0.9 m., an artillery position held by 300 Con-
federates, April 2, 1865, until Lee could form a new line from Fort Lee towards the
Appomattox and prepare to evacuate Richmond and Petersburg.

TOUR i 359

In a field a short distance north at 27 m., General A.P.HH1, while trying
to reach his corps, was killed by two Federal stragglers. General Hill,
prominent in most of the major engagements of the Army of Northern Vir-
ginia, was one of Lee's most reliable officers.

In the stagecoach era, this section of US i was the Boydton Plank Road,
over which traveled the fashionable world on its summer visits to the
mineral water resorts in the hills. The coachman's horn once echoed
through the countryside, giving advance notice to passengers and to land-
lords, who knew by the number of blasts how many guests would soon be
seated at the long tables of the inn.

Around Burgess Mill, on HATCHER'S RUN, 31.3 m., a battle was
fought on October 27, 1864. The Second Corps of Grant's army, moving
toward the Southside Railroad in an attempt to cut Lee's communications
and supported by two corps, attacked Confederate works on Hatcher's
Run to the east and here encountered earthworks that stopped its advance.
Unexpected resistance caused Grant to order a withdrawal.

BECK'S BEACH (R) is a popular resort with boats, bath houses, and a
dance pavilion.

At 31.6 m. is a junction with County 613, the White Oak Road.

Right along this dirt road behind entrenchments, rested Lee's right wing in the
early spring of 1865. General G.K. Warren, attacking Lee's works on March 31, was
driven back, but returned with reinforcements, forcing the Confederates to retreat.

At FIVE FORKS, 6.4 m., Sheridan and Warren attacked Lee's extreme right on the
afternoon of April i, 1865, and overwhelmingly defeated infantry and cavalry under
Generals George E. Pickett and Fitzhugh Lee. On the following morning a general
Federal assault broke Lee's line south of Petersburg, causing the evacuation of that
city and Richmond; the surrender at Appomattox took place one week later.

DINWIDDIE, 38.2 m. (250 pop.), seat of Dinwiddie County, tapers
from widely spaced residences strung along the highway to braces of
stores, banks, and churches, which cluster around the court green. Dom-
inating the sloping square is the rectangular brick COURTHOUSE, painted
white. The four-columned portico that shields an iron balcony over the en-
try door, pilasters between the windows of the sides, and a right one-story
wing somewhat relieve the building's severity of line. Dwarfed by this
solid-looking structure is the tall granite CONFEDERATE MONUMENT, its
aloof soldier at rest.

Dinwiddie County, named in honor of Robert Dinwiddie, governor of
Virginia (1751-58), was formed from Prince George County in 1752. Many
valuable early records were destroyed during the i86o j s.

Dinwiddie's history reaches back to May 1607, when Jamestown colo-
nists came to the falls of the Appomattox River an exploration that Cap-
tain John Smith duplicated the following year. Fort Henry, built here in
1646, became a trading post, and finally a town (see Petersburg). General
P.H.Sheridan's large cavalry force, leading a westward movement to en-
circle Petersburg, occupied this village on the evening of March 29, 1865.
Two days later the forces of General Fitzhugh Lee and General George E.
Pickett drove back Sheridan's entire corps and camped near the court-

360 VIRGINIA

house for the night. Learning that Sheridan had been reinforced, the Con-
federates began to withdraw to Five Forks.

Diagonally across from the court green is the two-story, clapboard
building that was WINFIELD SCOTT'S LAW OFFICE. Born in Dinwiddie
County July 13, 1786, Scott graduated from the College of William and
Mary (1805) and then entered the law office of David Robinson in Peters-
burg with whom he rode the circuit, which included Dinwiddie Court. His
military career began in 1808. Commissioned captain of light artillery, he
participated in the War of 1812 and the Mexican War, and rose to the
highest rank in the U. S. Army. He retired in 1861 and died in 1866.

At 42.7 m. is a junction with County 646.

Left here to a junction with County 655, 5.2 m.; L. here 0.5 m. to SAPONEY CHURCH;
of Bath Parish. The small frame rectangular structure, low-pitched with a gabled roof
extending forward to form a pediment, was built in 1 725-26.

In this region lived the Saponey, ' the honestest, as well as the bravest Indians we
have ever been acquainted with,' according to William Byrd II, who camped in this
section on his return from surveying the Virginia-North Carolina boundary (1728).
1 All the grandees of the Sapponi nation did us the honor to repair hither . . . ' he
wrote. With them came 'four young ladies of the first quality.' The deliberate lure of
these 'copper colored beauties' and their surprising f air of cleanliness' were wasted on
the swampy air. 'We resisted their charms,' soliloquized Mr.Byrd, 'notwithstanding
the long fast we had kept from the sex, and the bear diet we had been so long engaged
in. Nor can I say the price they set upon their charms was at all exhorbitant. A prin-
cess for a pair of red stockings cannot, surely, be thought buying repentance much too-
dear.'

WARFIELD, 57.5 m,, a hamlet, is the SITE or EBENEZER ACADEMY
(L), the first Methodist school established in Virginia, founded by Bishop
Francis Asbury (1745-1816) in 1793. It passed out of the hands of the
church but remained a noted school for many years.

The SITE OF OLD BRUNSWICK COUNTY COURTHOUSE (L) is at 64 m*
When the county was formed in 1720, it was directed that a courthouse,,
prison, pillory, and church be built here, though the courthouse was not
erected until 1732. After Lunenburg County had been cut from Brunswick
in 1 746, the county seat was moved eastward.

SOUTH HILL, 78.7 m. (439 alt., 1,405 pop.), a comparatively new
town with a spacious look, is the third largest bright-leaf tobacco market
in the State. Auctions are held almost daily during the selling season, from
October i to March i, in four large warehouses, each with its own name
and something of an individual atmosphere. There are also several large
drying and rehandling plants, a large stemmery, and other facilities for
handling tobacco.

^ Early in the winter mornings scores of springless wagons and automo-
bile trucks, piled high with the golden leaves, come in from the rural dis-
trict. Throughout the day buyers, growers, auctioneers, and others thread
their way through the lanes of tobacco 'in the loose 3 on the warehouse
floors. The leaves, heaped in large flat baskets, are arranged in rows, the
size of the piles varying. The lingo used by the auctioneers is understood
only by the buyers, who represent the leading tobacco manufacturers. Al-
though nearly all business done here during the tobacco-selling season is

TOUR I A 361

on a credit basis, the growers pay cash for their purchases after they have
disposed of their crops. With the opening of the season, the town takes on
new life, business booms, and an air of prosperity prevails.

South Hill is also one of the leading cotton markets in Virginia. A large
lumberyard lies on the outskirts of the town.

In South Hill is a junction with US 58 (see Tour 76), with which US i
coincides to 84.8 m.

On the Roanoke River, 89.5 m. 9 one of the first waterways used for
transportation to the western part of the State, a well-organized fleet of
fiatboats operated as early as 1825.

Returning from a trip to f settle the bound 7 between Virginia and North
Carolina, William Byrd II and the other Virginia commissioners crossed
here in November 1728.

At 93.7 m. the highway crosses the NORTH CAROLINA LINE, 23
miles north of Henderson, N.C. (see North Carolina Guide).

Tour 1A

Fredericksburg Bowling Green Hanover Richmond; 53.8 m. States.
Asphalt-paved roadbed; heavy trucks barred.

State 2, an alternate to US i (see Tour i#) between Fredericksburg and
Richmond, is almost curveless. It follows roughly a Colonial trail over
gently rolling terrain covered for the most part with pine forests.

State 2 branches southeast from US i (see Tour i&), m., in FREDER-
ICKSBURG at the intersection with Lafayette Blvd. and coincides with
US 17 to a junction at 5.8 m. (see Tour 6a).

At 8.4 m. is a junction with County 612.

Left on this road to ROUND OAK CHURCH (L), 0.2 m., a large T-shaped brick build-
ing. The Baptist congregation (white) to which it belongs was constituted in 1840 as
the result of the Reverend Lawrence Battaile's zeal for religious work among Negroes.
When he expressed a desire to go to Africa, his father suggested that he do missionary
work at home and built a frame chapel on his estate for the purpose. Soon there was a
large congregation of both white and Negro members. After the War between the
States, the Negroes formed a separate congregation. The main part of the present
building was erected in 1852, and the transepts were added in 1915.

GRACE CHURCH (L), a plain brick structure just south of the junction
with County 612, was built in 1833 and is one of two churches that sup-
plantedon different sites a Colonial church of St.Mary's Parish. Many

362 VIRGINIA

of the communicants became members of the congregation at Round Oak.
At 11 m. is a junction with County 606.

Right here to a junction with County QOQ, 2.3 ro.; L. here 1.2 m. to MILL HILL (L),
birthplace of John Taylor (1754-1824), Now abandoned, the house seems a part of
the exhausted soil. Orphaned at ten, Taylor was adopted by his cousin and maternal
uncle, Edmund Pendleton, who sent him to Robertson's Academy (see Tour iB) and
in 1770 to the College of William and Mary, After his graduation Taylor studied law
under Pendleton's tutelage and then launched into his career as soldier, statesman,
politician, and agriculturist (see Tour&a).

At 3 m. on County 606 is a junction with a lane bordered by Lombardy poplars; R.
here 0,2 m. to the STONEWALL JACKSON SHRINE (free), a small one-story white clap-
board building, in which General Thomas J. Jackson on May 10, 1863, 'crossed over
the river' to 'rest under the shade of the trees.' Accidentally shot by his own men,
Jackson was taken first to Wilderness Tavern and then brought to Guinea Station
near by away from the war zone. This house, then the office of Fairfield, home of the
Chandler family, is now maintained by the National Park Service. In the rear room
are mementos and the bed in which Jackson died.

On County 606 at 6.8 m. is NORTH GARDEN (R), a frame house, two-storied, with ad-
ditions through which rise outside chimneys. Dominating the crest of a gently sloping
hill, the house stands among an elaborate array of modern buildings. It was built not
Ion* a ^ ter the Revolution by Captain Harry Thornton, who was devoted to racing and
cock fighting- the wide hall of North Garden was frequently covered with blood and
feathers. Captain Thornton became financially involved and spent many an anxious
moment, hoppingwhen the sheriff arrived across the dividing line between Caro-
line and Spotsylvania Counties, which conveniently ran through his yard. One day
sheriffs of both counties came simultaneously. In an offhand manner the captain
mounted a horse and rode off. At a safe distance he wheeled about, raised his hat, and
said, f Gentlemen, I have the honor to wish you a very good day.' Soon after this esca-
pade he moved to the less annoying confines of Kentucky.

At 8,6 m. is a junction with US i (see Tour 16).

VILLBORO (R), 13 m., a two-and-a-half story frame building with gable
roof and a right wing, clings tenaciously to its treeless hill at the Cross-
roads. This surviving part of a much larger building has felt no painter's
brush, apparently, since it was profitable Todd's Ordinary one of five
Colonial taverns between Fredericksburg and Hanover. Liquor prices were
fixed by a patriarchal court: 'Rum, the gallon, eight shillings; Virginia
brandy, six shillings; Punch or Flipp, the quart, with white Sugar, one and
three pence, with brown Sugar, one shilling; ... a hot Dyet, one shill-
ing; ... a Lodging with clean Sheets, six pence; Oats, the gallon, six
pence; Pasturage, the day, six pence per Head.'

Right from Villboro on State 208 to County 639, 3.4 w.; L. here 0.9 m. to BLENHEIM
(L), a sturdy, two-story house of brick laid in Flemish bond. A graceful front portico,
topped with a balustrade, is echoed on the left side and at the rear. Blenheim has lost
none of its dignified charm despite lack of proprietary care. Here was born in 1846
James Hoge Tyler, Governor of Virginia from 1898 to 1902.

On State 208 at 10 m, is a junction with US i (see Tour 16).

BOWLING GREEN, 19.6 m. (463 pop.), is the seat of Caroline County.
New churches, service stations, and spacious-porched Victorian houses
have not dissipated the atmosphere preserved by the buildings near the
court green. One vestige of the 1890'$ lingers in fading letters Bullard's
Opera House. The little town wakes on court day when farmers assuage
their often-thwarted gregarious instinct. From the old monthly court has

TOUR I A 363

grown the Social Court, a pleasant event that flowers the second Monday
In ever} 7 month. On these occasions anything can be bought on the streets
from puppies to plantations.

Hemmed on two sides by rows of one-room lawyers' offices, the verdant
green is dominated by the centrally placed square brick COURTHOUSE
(1803-09), with a belfry and an arcacled loggia. The small brick jail, look-
ing none too secure, is to the rear (R), and opposite is the brick Clerk's
Office. On the green are a pump; a tall granite shaft topped with a mou-
stachioed Confederate soldier, menacingly erect; and a marker announcing
that La Fayette, on his way from Maryland to Richmond, camped here
the night of April 27, 1781. Within the courthouse benign and rather
modern portraits of Washington, Edmund Pendleton, John Taylor, and
General William Woodford look out through the arches of the portico.

In 1727 Essex, King William, and King and Queen Counties contributed
territory that became Caroline County and by its name honored the wife
of George II. In 1742 another section of King and Queen County was given
to Caroline. The courthouse, at the first county seat, about two miles
north of the present one, was not without regal air, for Charles Bridges, an
English artist, was paid 1,600 pounds of tobacco in 1740 to decorate the
fagade with the king's arms. In the clerk's office at the old seat Edmund
Pendleton served as apprentice and studied law. Later, Pendleton tutored
in law two of his nephews who became men of note John Penn (i 741-88) ,
who moved to North Carolina in 1774 and two years later was among the
signers of the Declaration of Independence, and John Taylor.

The town grew up about a tavern at a junction of two roads on the Bowl-
ing Green estate of John Hoomes, who in 1794 donated four acres here for
a new county seat and a building for a courthouse 'until one could be built
of the same size and material as the former one.' When, however, one Ken-
ner petitioned for two additional acres for public use, Hoomes appealed to
the general assembly, requesting that the seat of justice be re-established
at its former site. Kenner's petition prevailed, more taverns were built, the
clerk's office was moved here, and the present courthouse was erected.

In 1868, during Reconstruction, Alice Scott Chandler (1839-1904.)
founded The Home School, later renamed Bowling Green Female Semi-
nary. In 1901 the school was removed to Buena Vista.

A bronze marker, at the junction with County 626, within the town,
commemorates the heroism ' of Baptist ministers imprisoned in the jail at
the old seat in 1771 for ' teaching and preaching the gospel without having
episcopal ordination or a license from the General Court/ Brought to trial,
the Reverend Bartholomew Chewning, James Goodrich, and Edward
Herndon were remanded to gaol, there to remain till they gave 'security,
each in the sum of twenty pounds & two securities each in the sum of two
pounds for their good behaviour twelve months and a daye.' Similar
charges were preferred against other ministers, and the same punishment
was meted out. Patrick Henry, on one occasion, hurried from his home in
Hanover County to the old courthouse to defend the ministers.

OLD MANSION (R), 20 m. 9 was center of the original Bowling Green
estate. Its weatherboarded bulk rises a story-and-a-half between ends of

364 VIRGINIA

brick in Flemish bond. The steep hipped gambrel roof has dormers above a
wide porch a later addition. Old Mansion still overlooks a terraced gar-
den and a circular drive lined with huge box bushes, gnarled and twisted.
Although built by Major John Hoomes on land patented by Mm In 1670,
Old Mansion Is associated principally with Colonel John Waller Hoomes,
a sportsman and Importer of thoroughbred horses. His sons died one by
one, under strange circumstances. Seated one day in the long dining room
at a table set for 13, Hoornes distinctly heard horses 7 hoofs galloping
around the track outside the house. No horses were visible. The following
day Hoomes's eldest son became 111 and died. With but slight variation, the
same event preceded the death of his other sons.

But even then the Old Mansion was not done with drama. The Wood-
fords, later owners, came under its spell. The story is that the husband,
having transferred his affections from an invalid wife to a buxom house-
keeper, to cut the Gordian knot swathed himself in a sheet, placed a jack-
o-!antern over his head, appeared before Mrs.Woodford's window, and
frightened the poor woman into the arms of death. When rumor of the
escapade got abroad, Woodf ord left the community accompanied.

At 22.5 m. is a junction with State 14 (see Tour iB).

The SITE OF NEWMARKET (R), 23 m. 9 Is an open field. The owner of this
outstanding Colonial mansion, John Baylor III (1705-72), was a colonel of
militia and a burgess, better known as an importer and breeder of thor-
oughbred horses. Pearnaught, imported in 1764, cost him 1,000 guineas and
brought forth a footnote by Patrick Nisbett Edgar in his pioneer studbook:
Until the day of Fearnaught no other than quarter races were run in Vir-
ginia. Speed had been the only quality sought for.'

Colonel Baylor, contrary to custom, sent his daughters, as well as his
sons, to England to be educated. Colonel George Baylor (1752-84), born
here, as chief of Washington's staff carried the news of the Battle of Tren-
ton to Congress, which presented him f a horse, properly caparisoned for
service.' Major Walker Baylor commanded the c Washington Life Guards'
at Germantown. One of his sons, Robert E.B.Baylor, was a member of the
convention that framed the constitution for the State of Texas and in 1845
one of the founders of Baylor University, which was named for him. James
Bowen Baylor passed his boyhood here. A representative of the U.S. Coast
and Geodetic Survey, he determined the elements of the earth's magnet-
ism from Canada to Mexico and was instrumental in determining several
state boundary lines.

At 39.1 m. is a junction with County 614.

Left here to HORN QUARTER (L), 4.1 m. y an ante-bdlum plantation. The brick house
dominates three terraces rising from a sluggish little stream that mirrors fringing box
bushes. Above a high basement, its two stories are topped with a steep hip roof that
terminates in a balustraded deck. The wide cornice rests on an elaborate frieze of cir-
cle and anchor design, no less ornamental than the carved wood panels set between the
upper and lower windows. The front portico has columns in pairs at each side with pi-
lasters behind them. On the lawn are two rectangular, one-story brick structures one
formerly the office, the other the kitchen.

The place was originally one of three adjacent plantations owned by the same fam-
ily. Here was the ' quarter ' where the horn was blown to summon the slaves from the

TOUR 1 A 365

fields. The present house was built during the first of the nineteenth century by George
Taylor, who equipped an entire regiment of the Confederate army and donated to the
* Cause J all surplus crops grown on the estate during the war.

At 39.4 m. on State 2 is a junction with State 54 (see Tour ib) .

HANOVER, 39.7 m. (125 pop.), seat of Hanover County, spreads along
intersecting roads, away from the main thoroughfare.

The COURTHOUSE (L), dominating the large, brick-waL^d green, is a
charming one-story T-shaped structure with an arcaded piazza across the
front, a tall hip roof covering the bar of the T, a fine cornice with heavy
dentils, and walls whose glazed headers still emphasize the Flemish bond-
ing. The courthouse was built about 1733.

In the courtroom among portraits of notable Hanover residents are
those of Henry Clay, Patrick Henry, Thomas Nelson Page, and the Rev-
erend Samuel Davies (see below).

On the shaded green is (R) the small new stone jail. Box-lined walks lead
past the courthouse to the CONFEDERATE MONUMENT, a granite shaft
pleasingly simple, beyond which is the old one-story brick Clerk's Office.
About 1920 a duplicate of the original office was erected with a passage
connecting It with the first.

In 1720 by enactment of the general assembly that part of New Kent
County which lyeth in the Parish of St.Paul ' was given the name of Han-
over County in honor of the Elector of Hanover. It was In this county,
through the preaching of the Reverend Samuel Davies, founder of the Col-
lege of New Jersey (now Princeton University), that Presbyterianisni in
Virginia secured a strong footing. The Reverend Mr.Davies,who later re-
buked George II for interrupting him in the midst of a discourse in Eng-
land, came to the county in 1747. Patrick Henry accepted Davies's ser-
mons as models of oratory and acquired from him ideas of religious liberty.

In the courthouse here Patrick Henry pled the Parsons' Cause on De-
cember i, 1763, the case that won him first fame. From the beginning of
the colony ministers' salaries had been paid in tobacco, fixed In 1696 at
16,000 pounds annually and, after 1748, 'laid in nett tobacco.' In 1758, a
year when the price of tobacco was high, the general assembly re-enacted
the law of 1755, providing that all tobacco debts be paid in currency at the
rate of two pence per pound. The clergy, demanding the usual quantity of
tobacco, appealed to the king, who sided with them. Then various clergy-
men sued for the remainder of salaries due them for 1758. Chief of these
cases was instituted here by the Reverend James Maury. When the suit
was tried in November 1763, the court found in Maury's favor. Moreover,
a special jury was summoned to determine whether the plaintiff had sus-
tained any damages. Apparently, the clergy had won. Accordingly, John
Lewis, counsel for the defense, retired from the scene. It was then that the
defendants employed Patrick Henry to represent them in the damage suit.

Patrick Henry's father, John Henry, one of the justices, presided at the
trial. An uncle, the Reverend Patrick Henry, heeding his nephew's warn-
ing that unpleasant remarks about the cloth would be made, retired from
the court green. Patrick Henry delivered an impassioned speech, defend-
ing the Act of 1758. The king, he said, had forfeited all rights to Ms sub-

366 VIRGINIA

jects' obedience. As for the clergy, they had changed from shepherds to
wolves i so rapacious J that they would not hesitate to take away l the last
blanket from the lying-in woman. 7 At that the righteous gentlemen bris-
tled and left the courtroom. The case ended. The jury retired and spent
five minutes in awarding the Reverend Mr.Maury one penny damage a
verdict that also smacked the throne.

HANOVER TAVERN (R) spreads Its long, frame, L-shaped bulk between
gabled roof and a high basement of brick. A long veranda fills in the angle
of the L. The tavern, erected about 1723, has grown with the years. Here
Patrick Henry was living when he appeared in the Parsons' Cause. His
father-in-law, John Sheiton, had acquired the tavern in 1760, and Henry
had moved here that year to be near the courthouse. Lord Cornwailis in
1781, while pursuing La Fayette westward, stopped here awhile. The Mar-
quis de Chastellux collected the story during his own visit after the Revo-
lution :' Mr. Tillman, our land-lord at Hanover Court House . . . though
he lamented his misfortune in having lodged and boarded Lord CornwaHis
and his retinue without his Lordship's having made the least recompense,
could not help laughing at the fright which the unexpected arrival of Tarle-
ton spread among a considerable number of gentlemen who had come to
hear the news, and were assembled in the Court House. 7

At 40.9 m. is a junction with County 605.

Left here to a private road, 0.4 m.- t L. here 0.5 m. to the VIRGINIA MANUAL LABOR
SCHOOL for delinquent Negro boys. Its many buildings are spread along a winding
drive bordered with clipped privet. Founded in 1897 by Dr.John H. Smythe (Negro)
to carry out the ideas of the Negro Reformatory Association of Virginia, the institu-
tion in 1920 was taken over by the State. Outside the classrooms and trade school, the
overalled boys work in shops, on the farm, and in the gardens.

At 42.5 m. on State 2 are junctions with County 643 (L) and County

657 (R).

1. Left on County 643 to the VIRGINIA INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL (L), 1.2 m., a State in-
stitution for delinquent Negro girls. Lining the circular drive are five large buildings.
The average annual enrollment is 100. The girls are kept busy in classrooms and de-
veloping their aptitudes for home economics, gardening, and poultry raising. There
are physical training classes and recreational facilities. The school was founded in 1915
by the Virginia State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, which purchased here a
i48-acre farm with a small building and grist mill. From its beginning the institution
has had as superintendent Janie Porter Barrett (Negro), whose interest in delinquent
children was responsible for its founding.

2. Right from State 2 on County 657 to a junction with County 656, 2.9 m.; R. here
0.2 m. to SLASH CHURCH (L), a frame building erected in 1729. Like its contempo-
raries, Slash Church has a steep gabled roof and denticulated cornice. Used now by a
congregation of the Christian denomination, it was formerly a church of St.PauPs Par-
ish, of which the Reverend Patrick Henry was rector when his nephew flouted British
rule in 1763.

County 656 continues northward and becomes County 654; at 1. m. is a junction
with a private road; R. here 0.2 m. and L. 0.5 m. to the SITE OF CLAY SPRING, now oc-
cupied by a cottage. Near by is a MONUMENT constructed of millstones, commemorat-
ing Henry Clay, who was born here April 1 2, 1 777. He attended the log school and car-
ried grain to the mill of 'The Slashes,' studied law under George Wythe, and was ad-
mitted to the bar at the age of 20. He moved to Kentucky in early manhood. Called
'the Mill Boy of the Slashes' and 'the Great Pacificator/ Henry Clay was thrice

TOUR I A 367

Speaker of the House of Representatives, four times senator, Secretary of State under
John Quincy Adams, thrice candidate for president, defender of the American tariff
system, and author of the Missouri Compromise and of the Omnibus Bill of 1850. He
freed his own slaves and advocated the plan of purchasing all slave children and set-
ting them free. But acceptance by his followers of his political philosophy only served
to postpone what Clay himself saw was inevitable a clash between the North and
South.

HANOVER WAYSIDE PARK (L), 44,7 m., is a wooded area (picnic
facilities: campsites and trailer-sites; free) bordered by a large artificial lake
(no boating or swimming).

At 47.7 m. is a junction with County 640.

Left on this road to a junction with County 606, 0.6 m.; "L, here 0.8 m. to a private
road; L. 1.1 m. to TOTOMOI, long home of the Tinsley family. Two other structures
had already occupied the site before the present rectangular house with clapboard-
ing and gabled roof was built in 1792. Additions since then include small wings, a
lean-to, and a two-deck porch, partially engulfed in folds of blue-green box. Half hid-
den by additions, tall twin chimneys form a solid wall extending to the second floor be-
fore separating. This well-preserved house rambles under the protecting branches of
huge catalpa trees that cast shadows over a line of tall box. Back of the dwelling ex-
tends a broad formal garden in which box-edged flower beds radiate from the axis of a
summer house and are welded together by a surrounding hedge of lilacs.

County 606 continues eastward, crossing TOTOPOTOMOY CREEK, 2.1 m. The
stream was named for Totopotomoi, chief of the Pamunkeys and faithful ally of the
English. Totopotomoi was killed in battle near here in 1656 while assisting the colo-
nists in resisting the Ricahecreans (see Tour 6 -A). Grant's army, attempting to get be-
tween Lee and Richmond, in 1864 tried to cross this creek. Finding Confederate re-
sistance too stubborn, Grant moved southward to Cold Harbor.

RURAL PLAINS (R), 23m., a brick residence erected in the late seventeenth century
stands on a shaded lawn. The story-and-a-half house kas four front and five rear dor-
mers in a hip-on-gambrel roof above a denticulated cornice. The windows, now wid-
ened, once had iron bars across them. Massive doors of maple have large English locks
with small brass knobs.

Patrick Henry in his nineteenth year was married here in 1754 to Sarah Shelton,
grandaughter of William Parks, editor of The Virginia Gazette. After his own house on
a neighboring farm, Pine Slash, had been destroyed by fire in 1757, Henry lived here
temporarily with his father-in-law.

At 6.6 m. is a junction with County 700; R. here 0.4 m. to the SITE OF THE STUDLEY
HOUSE (L), marked by foundations and old trees. Patrick Henry was born here on
May 29, 1736, the son of John Henry and Sarah Winston Syme Henry. His mother's
first husband was John Syme, and her son, John Syme, was heir to Studley. Soon after
Patrick Henry and his brother William were born, the family moved to Colonel
Henry's home, Mount Brilliant, where Patrick Henry spent most of his childhood.
Later Studley was acquired by Judge Peter Lyons, and here Henry's opponent in the
* Parsons' Cause ' passed his last years.

In A Progress to the Mines Colonel William Byrd tells of a visit to Studley in 1732,
when Patrick Henry's mother was yet the widow of John Syme: 'This Lady, at first
Suspecting I was some Lover, put on a Gravity that becomes a Weed; but so soon, as
she learnt who I was, brighten'd up into an unusual cheerfulness and Serenity. She
was a portly, handsome Dame . , . and seem'd not to pine too much for the Death of
her Husband . . . The courteous Widow invited me to rest myself . . . and go to
Church with Her but I excused myself, by telling her she woul'd certainly spoil my
Devotion. Then she civilly entreated me to make her House my Home whenever I vis-
ited my Plantations/

County 606 again crosses TOTOPOTOMOY CREEK at 8.7 m. Here, on June 13,
1862, General J. E.B.Stuart encountered Federal cavalry while on his memorable ride
around the Federal army. Stuart, with 1,200 cavalry, had left Richmond June 12 to

368 VIRGINIA

learn the position of the Federals, disrupt their supply base and lines of communica-
tion, and procure provisions for the Confederate army. He returned to Richmond
June 15, having passed around McClellan's entire army. Federal cavalry, after at-
tempting to stop Mm here, fell back for a further resistance a short distance south-
westward.

LINNET'S CORNER, 9.8 ., is the scene of the clash between Stuart's men and
Federal cavalry June 13,

At 10.1 m, is a junction with US 360 (see Tour 200).

At 53.8 m. on State 2 Is the southern junction with US i (see Tour r6X
RICHMOND, 58.9 m. (15 to 206 ait., 182,929 pop.) (see Richmond).

Tour IB

Junction with State 2 Sparta St.Stephen's Church King and Queen

Centervllle; 58.1 m. State 14.

Asphalt-paved except for a few miles east of Sparta.

State 14 parallels the north bank of the Mattaponi River and southeast
of St.Stephen's Church traverses a narrow peninsula called 'the Shoe
String. 3 The region produces corn, wheat, tobacco, and vegetables. Along
the way are patches of pine and oak forests richly sprinkled with dogwood,
laurel, and holly.

State 14 branches southeast from a junction with State 2 (see Tour iA),
m., at a point 2.9 miles south of Bowling Green.

MULBERRY PLACE (R), 0.3 m., has a late eighteenth-century house with
a steep hip roof and four wide chimneys. Across the back are double gal-
leries. This estate, named for a mulberry grove that once spread over
more than 100 acres, was established by John George Woolfolk (1750-
1819). His son Jourdan added to the fortune by operating the stage-coach
line run in connection with the railroad between Petersburg and Occo-
quan. In 1836 the railroad company advertised that the Stage Travelling,
which is conducted by Messrs. J. Woolfolk & Co. ... in the handsomest
manner, being now only 67 miles, is becoming rapidly reduced by the ex-
tension of this Rail Road/

At 6 m. is a junction with County 640.

Right here to WHITE PLAINS (L), 0.2 m., a weatherboarded house, painted white.
The gabled roof, pierced by dormers, has an air as distinctive as that of the delicate
Georgian portico. One of the outside chimneys has been partly engulfed by a one-story
wing.

The estate, once a part of Edmundsbury (see below), was given by Edmund Pendle-
ton^to his nephew, another Edmund Pendleton, who probably built this house. White
Plains has been the home of three Baptist ministers; Andrew Broaddus I (1770-1848),

TOUR IB 369

Andrew Broaddus II (c. 1815-1900), and Andrew Broaddus III, who for more than
100 years were successively pastors of Salem Church. The first Andrew was the son of
John Broaddus, commissary in the Continental army and an opinionated fellow, who
so bitterly opposed dissenters that he published several pamphlets ridiculing them.

On County 640 at 1.8 m. is a junction with County 643 ; L. here 0.5 m. to the SITE OF
EDMUNDSBURY (R), once the home of Edmund Pendleton (1721-1803), who, before he
was 14 years of age, had been bound by the court of Caroline County 'unto Benjamin
Robinson, clerk of this court, to serve him the full end and term of six years and six
months as an apprentice.' He purchased and read law books and was licensed to prac-
tice law before the expiration of his apprenticeship. Pendleton finally settled here,
where he acquired a large estate. In 1774 he was a member of the First Continental
Congress, in 1775-76 chairman of the Committee of Safety, president of the Virginia
Conventions of 1775 and 1776, and later head of the State's judiciary department.

At the outbreak of the Revolution, Pendleton was a leader of the * cavalier J party.
His wish was, he said, f a redress of grievances and not a revolution of Government.*
Although he opposed Patrick Henry's proposal to arm the militia, when the measure
carried, he helped to put it into effect. He believed in a liberal suffrage and equality of
man before the law and denied that government should be controlled by the wellborn
or wealthy. In 1 799 he published a document supporting the principles of Jefferson's
party.

In SPARTA, 6.8 m. (40 pop.), among hills, several roads converge.

SALEM BAPTIST CHURCH (R) is a massive rectangle of brick, painted
white, with a gabled roof extending forward over a heavy pediment sup-
ported by tall Doric columns. The congregation was organized in 1802 as
the result of the Great Revival that spread over Virginia in 1788.

NEWTOWN, 16.7 m. (50 pop.), is a hamlet of scattered old and new
buildings.

1. Left from Newtown on County 625 to a junction with an unimproved private
road, 1.5 m.; L. here 0.7 m. to THE GLEBE OF DRYSDALE PARISH. The square, story-
and-a-half brick house, built about 1763, was the home of rectors until the glebes were
confiscated in 1802.

2. Right from Newtown on County 625 to a junction with County 628, 2.6 m.; L.
0.8 m. to the SITE OF ROBERTSON'S ACADEMY (R) in a grove of oaks. About 1755 Don-
ald Robertson, a Scot, established here a classical school for boys. James Madison at-
tended Robertson's Academy while staying in this vicinity with his grandparents.
Among other pupils were George Rogers Clark and John Taylor of Caroline.

At 25 m. on State 14 is the junction with a private road.

Left on this road to SMITHFIELD, 0.6 m., among locust trees, bridal wreath, japon.-
ica, and forsythia. The two-story frame house, built in 1783 by William Hill, has a hip
roof and massive end chimneys. The original beaded, heart poplar weatherboarding,
fastened to oak studding by handmade nails, is intact. The interior is distinguished by
much hand-carved detail and doors with brass hinged rings instead of knobs.

At 25.5 m. on State 14 is a junction with County 628.

Right here to GREEN MOUNT (L), 0.9 m. The long frame house, with a^ two-story
central unit and one-story wings, has been made still longer by an addition placed
between the main building and one of the wings. Dr. Benjamin Fleet built Green
Mount about 1840. After his death his widow, Maria Louisa Wacker Fleet, an early
advocate of higher education for women, conducted a girls' school here.

ST.STEPHEN'S CHURCH, 26.6 m. (see Tour 200), is at a junction
US 360 (see Tour 200).

370 VIRGINIA

At 28.1 m. on State 14 Is a junction with a private road.

Right here to FARMINGTON, O.S m., an L-shaped frame house, on a hill overlooking
broad fields. Robert Ryland, born here In 1805, became the principal of the Virginia
Baptist Seminary, first president of Richmond College, a teacher in the National The-
ological Seminary (Negro), a founder of the Baptist Female Institute, and president
of the Shelbyville (Ky.) Female College. From 1841 to 1865, while president of Rich-
mond CoIlegCj he was pastor of the First African Church.

BUUINGTON CHURCH (R), 31.4 m. y in a quiet grove, is a large rectangular
red brick building with white trim. In the gable above the front entrances
is a graceful fanlight. The building belongs to a Baptist congregation
brought together in 1780 through the preaching of John Waller, James
Greenwood^ and William Stovall. This building, the third, was erected in
1851.

Within the iron-fenced cemetery is the grave of the Reverend Dr.Robert
Baylor Semple (1769-1831), first pastor of Bruington and historian of the
Baptist denomination. The College of William and Mary, though formerly
a unit of the Established Church and adversely affected by disestablish-
ment, conferred upon this pioneer Baptist the degree of doctor of divinity,
as did Brown University.

At 32.8 m. is a junction with County 629.

Right here to County 634, 1.8 m.\ L. here 2.4 m. to HILLSBORO (R), a story-and-a-
half house on a wide lawn, near the Mattaponi River. It has a brick basement, brick
gable ends with double chimneys, frame front and rear, and narrow windows. The
interior is elaborately paneled in walnut and has a black walnut stairway of unusual
design. Hillsboro was built about 1730 by Colonel Humphrey Hill (1706-75). During
the Revolution it was raided by British soldiers, and during the War between the
States, by Union troops. A hole in the ceiling of the hall was made by a Federal soldier
who, foraging for meat in the attic, fell through the plastering.

At 2.7 m. on County 629 is a junction with a dirt road; L. here 0.4 m. to the SITE OF
RYE FIELD (L), birthplace of Dr.Thomas Walker (1715-94), physician, soldier, ex-
plorer, and land agent (see Tour ija).

Colonel Thomas Walker settled here about 1 700, acquiring an estate that bordered
for 10 miles on the Mattaponi River.

WALKERTON, 3 m. (go pop.), on County 629, was once a thriving shipping point
on the Mattaponi River. Now tomato packing is its chief activity. It was created a
town in 1702. In 1748 the burgesses passed an act 'to prevent the building of wooden
chimneys in Walker Town and also to prevent the inhabitants thereof from raising
and keeping Hogs/ This act the king vetoed in 1751, and the general assembly, in an
'humble Address to His Majesty,' explained that 'what chiefly induced your Assem-
bly to pass this Act was the prevention of the public warehouses for the reception of
Tobacco in this town from the danger of fire.'

Before the War between the States, four or five two-masted vessels would be docked
here at the same time; but after the building of the railroad between Richmond and
West Point in 1860, the village lost its importance.

County 629 continues southward crossing the river; at 3.6 m. is ENFIELD (L), a
story-and-a-half frame house above a curve in the Mattaponi. The oldest part of the
house was built by a member of the Waller family on land granted during the reign of
Charles II. Near the house is a gnarled paper mulberry tree with bent limbs that have
taken root and sent new shoots in many directions.
At 5.4 m. on County 629 is a junction with State 30 (see Tour 20.4) .

STEVENS VILLE, 37.3 m. (50 pop.), is an old crossroads community.
Here was Bunker Hill, the ancestral home of the Bagby family and birth-

TOUR IB 3JI

place of John Garland Pollard (1871-1937), governor of Virginia from
1930 to 1934. Pollard was editor of the Virginia Code, Annotated and held
among other posts those of attorney general of Virginia and dean of the
Marshall- Wythe School of Government and Citizenship of the College of
William and Mary.
At 37.7 m. is a junction with County 631.

Right here 1.5 m. to DAHLGREN'S CORNER, where young Colonel Ulric DaH-
gren, Federal cavalry officer, was mortally wounded in a night skirmish with a home
guard unit on March 2, 1864. In February 1864 Colonel Dahlgren and General H.J.
Kilpatrick attempted to enter Richmond to release Federal prisoners. Frustrated and
separated from most of his command, Dahlgren, with 165 officers and men, made his
way to this vicinity, pillaging and destroying property. A lock of Colonel Dahlgren *s
hair, his watch, ring, and memoranda book were preserved by Juliet Jeffries Pollard
grandmother of Governor Pollard and, after the war, were sent to his father, Ad-
miral John A. Dahlgren in Philadelphia.

LOCUST COTTAGE (R), 38.3 m., in a grove of trees, is a small frame house
that has replaced a building that housed Locust Cottage Seminary for
girls, founded in 1838 by Mira Ann Southgate and her husband, James S.
Southgate. Locust Cottage ceased to be a school in 1852.

BEL AIR (R), 39.2 m., now with two full stories, was originally one-and-
a-half stories high, with a gambrel roof and dormers, outside end chim-
neys, and end lean-to's. This frame house was built about the beginning
of the eighteenth century by the Lumpkin family. Major Thomas Jeffries
acquired it about 1800 and gave it to his daughter Juliet, who married
John Pollard, grandfather of Governor John Garland Pollard.

In a wide churchyard (R), 40.3 m., shaded by old trees is MATTAPONY
CHURCH, built about 1755. The walls of the cruciform structure are laid in
Flemish bond. This was a church of St.Stephen's Parish, constituted in
1691. Abandoned after the disestablishment, it was acquired in 1824 by
the Baptists, who continue to use it. In 1922 it was gutted by fire.

At 43.4 m. is a junction with County 631.

Right on this road to a private road, 1.0 w.; R. here to the SITE OF NEWXXGTON,
1.8 w., birthplace of Carter Braxton (1736-97), a signer of the Declaration of Inde-
pendence. The house was destroyed by fire after the War between the States, and only
out-buildings remain.

George Braxton (1677-1748) acquired Newington about 1710. His only son, George
Braxton who married Mary Carter, was the father of Carter Braxton.

KING AND QUEEN, 44.5 m., seat of King and Queen County, is no
smaller and no larger than it was when a visitor from Detroit saw it in
1897 and said: ' We found the village to consist of the following buildings-
courthouse, clerk's office, ... a diminutive jail, in which one lone pris-
oner languished, a general country store, and a farmhouse of moderate
size, dignified as ' ' the Hotel." '

The COURTHOUSE, a small one-story brick building, cruciform and set
upon a neat greensward, was erected after the War between the States, to
replace a building destroyed during the war. Among the numerous por-
traits of native sons are those of Alexander Fleet, author of Virginia's poor

VIRGINIA

debtors 7 law; John Robinson, speaker of the house of burgesses; Thomas R.
Dew, president of the College of William and Mary; Dr.Robert B. Sem-
ple, Baptist minister and historian; Carter Braxton, signer of the Dec-
laration of Independence; the Reverend Andrew Broaddus, Baptist min-
ister; William Boulwarc, diplomat; and Thomas Ruffin, Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court of North Carolina.

King and Queen County, named for William and Mary, was formed in
1691 from New Kent County; its first seat was south of the Mattaponi
River. When in 1701 that part of the territory became King William
County, a new seat was established here. The community that sprang up
after a courthouse had been built was wiped out entirely in March 1864
when Kilpatrick and his cavalry burned its buildings.

At 52.5 m. is a junction with County 611.

Right here to a private road, 1.5 m.; R. here 0.3 m. to the SITE OF PLEASANT HILL,
built about 1740 by Colonel Augustine Moore when his daughter Lucy became the
second wife of John Robinson (i 704-66). 'Of cultivated mind and polished manners/
Robinson was born at Hewick (see Tour 6a). In 1 738 he became speaker of the house of
burgesses and treasurer of the colony and held both offices until his death. He was pre-
siding when George Washington appeared as a member of the house of burgesses at
the end of the French and Indian War. When resolutions commending his military
services were passed, Washington rose to thank his colleagues but fumbled for words.
'Sit down, Mr. Washington/ said Speaker Robinson. 'Your modesty surpasses your
valor, and that is beyond any language at my command/

OLD CHURCH (R), 53.1 w., in a quiet triangle was erected about 1720
and is typical of the middle-Colonial rectangular church low-pitched,
with a gabled roof, compass windows, a main door in the west end, and a
side door in the south wall. The ' Upper Church' of Stratton Major Parish,
it replaced an earlier frame church. As finally constituted, Stratton Major
Parish had two churches Upper and Lower. When New Church (see be-
low) was completed in 1768 for communicants of the entire parish, Old
Church was closed, and its windows and doors were boarded up. After the
Revolution it served as a school but after 1800 was again used as a church
by both Methodists and Baptists. Twice it was damaged by fire and twice
restored. When contention arose between Baptists and Methodists for
possession of this building, the court ordered it sold; and the buyer in
turn sold it to the Methodists. Though New Church disappeared, Upper
Church is still a sound building.

At 54,8 m. is a junction with a private road.

Right here to a private road, 0.3 w.j R. again to the SITE OF LANEVTLLE, 0.7 m.
Foundations, measuring 285 feet from end to end, are the remains of a house built
about 1750 by Richard Corbin.