William Fitzhugh Gordon, a Virginian of the old school: his life, times and contemporaries (1787-1858)

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Introduction

In his "Life of James Monroe," in the "American Statesmen" series of biographies, Dr. Daniel C. Oilman, in allusion to the unwritten story of many "illustrious Virginians whose memory it is well to revive," quotes St. George Tucker's letter to William Wirt, in which he says "in a half-playful, half-earnest tone, that Socrates himself would pass unnoticed and forgotten in Virginia, if he were not a public character, and some of his speeches preserved in a newspaper."

"Who knows anything," queries Tucker, "of Peyton Randolph, one of the most popular micn in Virginia? Who remembers Thompson Mason, esteemed the foremost lawyer at the bar ; or his brother George Mason, of whom I have heard Mr. Madison say that he possessed the greatest talents for debate of any man he had ever heard speak? What is known of Dabney Carr, but that he made the motion for appointing committees of correspondence in 1773? Virginia has produced few men of finer talents, as I have repeatedly heard. I might name a number of others, highly respected and influential men — yet how little is known of one half of them at the present day?"

Even those who were public characters, and had their speeches preserved in newspapers, have not all escaped the corroding tooth of time; and there are many men named in this volume, of whom no biography has yet been written, who were well worthy to adorn the annals of any period of any people.

A valid reason which may be alleged for this neglect is that for a long time, both in the Colony and the Commonwealth, the ablest men in Virginia were more interested in making history than in keeping a record of it; and that consequently there was as little consideration of preserving original sources as of reducing them to literary form. And so it has happened, with respect to the period of which this biography treats, that the Jeffersonian view of the Federal Constitution, which flourished in Gordon's time as one of its chief political influences, has been far less widely advertised or adequately presented in written substance than has been that of the Hamiltonian school; and the State-Rights construction has for the later generations lost much cf its prestige and influence through its failure to secure a more general and permanent hearing from the public.

The Southern participants in political affairs who succeeded the men of the Revolutionary epoch, and whose careers extended over the first half of the nineteenth century, were temporarily neglected or forgotten in the stress of arms and in the ensuing social cataclysm which accompanied the War between the States in 1 861-1865; and the events of that mighty struggle served too often to obscure even the most significant occurrences which preceded and led up to it. In the devastation and ruin of the South which the war left in its wake, no small part of the material out of which that earlier history might have been fashioned, also perished; and it has only been in recent years that the serious gathering together of such material as was left from the wreck, and its painstaking reduction into permanent form, have had an inception and awakened an interest among the Southern people.

Of the subject of this volume, though belonging to a later generation than any of the four men named by Tucker in his letter to Wirt, comparatively little is now generally remembered even in the State in whose public affairs he filled for a while no inconsiderable space, and where he was known as one of the most eloquent popular orators of his day; while even the writers who have undertaken to deal learnedly with the great financial device of the national

Sub-Treasury, of which he was the originator, make mention of him only in the most cursory manner. Thousands of Virginians, for whom the story of Jefferson's great nursery of intellectual achievement, the University of Virginia, possesses an abiding interest, have little or no knowledge of the persistent and important part that was played by Gordon, in the General Assembly of the Commonwealth, in accomplishing its final and practical creation, organization, and location; while even less known to them is the story of his successful settlement, in the Constitutional Convention of 1 829-1 830, of the basis of representation which had caused the convocation of the convention, and whose adjustment by him probably deferred for more than three decades the political separation of what is now West Virginia from the mother State. And of the unnumbered throng that daily passes the Sub-Treasury building in Wall street, in the city of New York, where the statue of Washington marks the spot on which Randolph of Roanoke saw him take the oath to support the Federal Constitution, and saw too, "the poison under its wings," perhaps not one in a million knows that the Sub-Treasury of the National Government emanated from the brain of Gordon and was formulated by his pen.

He was a typical representative of the school of political thought that had its origins in the teachings of Mr. Jefferson and its apotheosis in the unsuccessful but none the less brilliant and logical statesmanship of John C. Calhoun; and he was the trusted personal and political friend and associate of each of these great Americans. In his generation the public career occupied and illustrated the ablest intellects of the South. Letters and science and art and the commercialism of money-making were all subordinated to the study and practice of government; and amid the social and political conditions which prevailed statesmanship became a second nature to the able, the patriotic and the ambitious Southerners who pursued it.

Under the contemporary and early posthumous influence of Mr. Jefferson, a large part of the political life and thought of the first half of the nineteenth century was permeated with his opinions and teachings; and Gordon, who had come early and intimately within the sphere of that influence, continued throughout his life a devout adherent of Jeffersonian republicanism. A passionate devotion to Virginia as the Commonwealth, under whose protecting aegis liberty should always find her place of refuge and home, was the motive of his political direction and the guide of his public career; while only second to this devotion to his State was his attachment to the Union of confederated States according to his interpretation of the Federal Constitution.

To his intense loyalty to these ideals he gave the service of his energies and talents, with little of the ambition that is most careful of self, and with the spirit of patriotism set high above that of partisanship. He left his party in the high tide of its success for what he regarded the good of his country; and surrendered a career that stretched fair and far before him for the sake of political principle.

The delineation of him that has been attempted here has contemplated also some depiction of the atrnosphere In which he moved, and the environment which surrounded him. It Is to be regretted that the larger part of his correspondence was destroyed by an accident in the time of the War between the States. Except his letters to his wife, many of which however, are fortunately more or less political in a narrative and descriptive way, little of an epistolary character, either written to him or from his hand, survives. Yet enough remains In the letters from Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Calhoun, President Tyler and others, here reproduced, and In most Instances for the first time published, to Indicate a measure of the esteem in which he was held by many of the wise and virtuous spirits of his age.

In the attempted picture of any public man's career the background must necessarily hold more or less of the contemporary movement of the period. The account here sought to be given of Gordon's times does not purport, however, to contain more than some detail of the events with which he was most closely associated, or which bulked so large as to compel observance of them. His adult life, extending as it did from Jefferson's second administration to that of Buchanan, covered a space that was crowded thick with historic happenings; and for a narrative of even the fewest of these there is but little room here.

So, too, of the men of his day mention has only been made of those of his own vicinage, or of his personal and political acquaintance and fellowship. If these shall seem unduly to throng the canvas, it may be pleaded in extenuation that the masters of history have set an example in illuminating their pages with the portrayal of contemporary figures of distinction; and that even in the limited space permitted to those here mentioned some memories worthy of preservation may be revived which have already grown faded, or become in degree forgotten ; or some strong figure, well-known and yet remembered, may stand forth again in renewed, if brief, distinctness.

CHAPTER I Ancestry

From the time of the Cromwellian settlement of Ireland, when "the baronies were assigned in Connaught for the new settlements of the ancient nobility, gentry and farmers of the Irish nation, corresponding in character to their old habitations in the three other provinces from v/hence they were transplanted," down to the present day, Ulster, the northernmost and nearest to Scotland of these three provinces, has been essentially Scotch. Separated from the Galloway county of Wigtonshire by a stretch of water only thirty miles wide, for the distance is no more than that by steamer to-day from Larne to Portpatrick, Ulster afforded an inviting field of enterprise to the venturous and canny inhabitants of Caledonia; who, as soon as they discovered room and opportunity, poured into northern Ireland in a steady stream of such numbers, that Scottish names are as frequent now throughout the whole province as in the country of their origin; while the cold religion of Knox has thenceforward so continued to flourish there as to cause those of a different faith elsewhere in Ireland, where politics and religion go hand In hand, to speak of the region as "Black Ulster." But under the thrifty and self-contained influences of the Scotchmen, prosperity has accompanied the Scotch blood and the Scotch burr in their adopted home; and no one of the Ulster counties has proven more fertile, more thrifty and more fortunate than the County Down, which is the most eastern county of Ireland lying upon the Irish Sea. Its most considerable place is the ancient town of Newry, seated on the Narrow Water, at the head of Carlingford Loch, and almost surrounded by mountains and rocky hills, except to the north and northwest, where a prospect opens Into a good country, through which the canal is carried that runs to Lough Neagh, famed in Moore's song as holding beneath its waters the "Round Towers of other days." In 1689 the Duke of Berwick burned the town of Newry to secure his retreat to Dundalk from the English under Schomberg. "It has been greatly improved since the settlement in 1691," says its ingenuous chronicler, "and is now one of the largest and most commercial towns in the country."

In 1 175 a Cistercian Abbey was founded at Newry by Maurice McLaughlin, King of all Ireland, which possessed extensive endowments and privileges, and large areas of adjacent land. In 1543 the Abbey was converted into a collegiate church for secular priests, and was finally dissolved by King Edward VI of England, who granted it and its possessions to Sir Nicholas Bagenal, Marshal of Ireland. Sir Nicholas made the Abbey his private residence, and under his auspices Newry entered upon its career of growth and prosperity. The Bagenal family continued to possess some portions at least of the Abbey properties down to the period of the Revolution of 1688; for in the "Charter Abbatiae," of the old Cistercians of St. Benedict, which was granted them by the Irish King Maurice, we find included, among other lands and territories conferred upon the Abbey, "the land of Enacratha," which is now Carnmeen, "with its woods and waters," and "the land of Lisdorca," now Lisduff; and in 1692 the public records show portions of the townlands of Carnmeen and Lisduff, situated in the vicinity of the Sheepbridge, about three miles north of the town of Newry, to have been the property of Nicholas Bagenal, esquire, namesake and descendant of the marshal.

On the 28th of November, 1692, James Gordon, "of Sheepbridge in the Barony of Newry, gentleman," as he is described in the old conveyances, was granted a lease held In fee farm of the half town-land of Cloughenramer and the half town-land of Derraboy by this Nicholas Bagenal, esquire; and on the 22d of March, 1731, the lease, which was in effect a fee simple tenure, subject to an annuity, was confirmed to the three sons of James Gordon, with the addition of the half town-land of Lisduff and the quarter town-land of Carnmeen, including an almost baronial tract, which comprised what was thenceforth known as the Sheepbridge estates. This property, which continued to remain in the possession of the Gordon family, though with steady diminutions from generation to generation, due to the hospitality, the free-living and the sporting proclivities of its successive owners, until the mansion house and a remnant of something more than one hundred acres were left, was -^old in 1902, the last male Gordon owner of Sheepbridge having died as a youth of nineteen years, in 1891.

A careful examination of all the documentary evidence, in the shape of public records and contemporaneous writings that have proven accessible, tend to show that the first James Gordon of Sheepbridge, was a son of the Reverend James Gordon, of Comber, also a town In county Down. This reverend gentleman was a Scotch chaplain in the regiment of Lord Montgomery, a constituent part of Cromwell's invading army, and seems to have been under the especial patronage of Lady Montgomery, who was "the daughter of an Alexander of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, and a rigid Presbyterian." This lady is said to have been a personage of high social importance and distinction in her day; and became, after the Cromwelllan Invasion, the Viscountess Mount Alexander. After her husband's death she miarrled the famous Scotch General, Robert Munro.

In the Commissary records of the town of Elgin, in Morayshire, Scotland, we find that in 1649 ^^Is "Mr. James Gordoune, minister at Comber, in Ireland, sone lauchfull to umquhlle Alexander Gordoune of Satterhill," executed a certain instrument of gift to his brother, "Alexander Gordoune," and "umquhile Alexander," the father, is indicated by the records to have descended from one of the most ancient of the Gordon families of the north of Scotland.

The grandsons of the first James Gordon of Virginia, brought with them to the Colony, in 1738, the crest of the Lesmoir Gordons, described in heraldic phrase as "a hart's head proper," and their motto "Bydand," engraven on some pieces of silver plate; but neither for pedigree nor crest did their democratic descendant, whose life is sought to be depicted in these pages, care anything. He was a disciple and friend of Thomas Jefferson, and growing up in the aftermath of democratic rev^olutions, eschewed the assumptions of aristocracy. He was satisfied to think and to say that it "took three generations to make a gentleman," and that he was assured of his right to the title, and looked no further.

James Gordon the first, of Sheepbridge, in the barony of Newry, whose will is dated July 7, 1707, married Jane Campbell, a merchant of Newry, by his wife, Jane Wallace, of Ravarra, near Belfast, of the ancient house of Wallace of Elderslie. It was the custom of the Scotch in Ulster to intermarry among themselves; and only in most exceptional instances do we find this custom violated by marriage with the native Irish. This persistent tendency has been the chief factor in preserving their racial integrity in their local environment. Jane Wallace, the mother of Gordon's wife, was a character of celebrity in the history of the town of Newry. In 1689, when the town was burned by King James' army, she fled with her younger children to the Isle of Man, whose outlines, and those of the farther hills of England, are visible on a clear day from the Mourne mountains near Newry. As soon as King William restored peace to Ulster, she returned and re-established her family in their former home, "having," as her family chronicler naively relates, "a strength of mind superior to difficulties." Besides her daughter Jane, who married James Gordon, she had a number of children, whose families became so important and influential in the vicinage that they were locally known as "The Grand Alliance." Mrs. Campbell lived to a green old age; and it is further chronicled concerning her that she "had great authority and commanded great respect." She survived the death of her husband forty-three years, and, surrounded by a great number of descendants, "saw the fifth generation, a child brought from Scotland to be presented to her with much filial respect."

James Gordon the first, of Sheepbridge, and his wife, Jane Campbell, had Issue three sons, James, Robert and George. James inherited the Sheepbridge estates, and married Sarah Greenway, the daughter of a prominent merchant of Newry; and of their marriage were born four sons and three daughters. Two of these sons, the first and third, who were James and John, emigrated to Virginia in the early part of the eighteenth century, and were respectively the maternal and paternal grandfathers of William Fitzhugh Gordon, his father having been the son of John Gordon, and his mother the daughter of the elder emigrant, James.

The second son, Samuel Gordon, under his father's will, and by subsequent purchase from his brothers In Virginia, became the owner of the larger portion of the Sheepbridge lands, and of the mansion-house, an Imposing stuccoed edifice of three stories, situated on a hill on the road leading northward to Rathfriland, which was built by the first James. The fourth brother, George, likewise came to Virginia, where he resided for a brief period, and returned to Ireland. Of his descendants are the present Gordons of Maryvale, near Newry, who are a prominent family In the County Down.

In the Sheepbridge descent were several men of the name who took a conspicuous part in the Irish RebelHon of 1798, and in what was known as the "Volunteer Movement," preceding it. One of these was John Gordon of Templegowran, eldest son of Samuel of Sheepbridge, of whose rescue from prison by his wife, after his arrest and transportation to Belfast by the English soldiery, a romantic story is told in the local chronicles. This John of Templegowran was of patriotic spirit, for we find him again, though a zealous Presbyterian and churchbuilder, espousing the movement in April, 18 12, in favor of Catholic Emancipation.

Another of the family, who took part in the "Volunteer Movement," and the Rebellion of 1798, was Captain William Gordon, of Sheepbridge, younger brother of John, of Templegowran, who is said by Macnevin, in his "History of the Volunteer Movement of 1782 in Ireland," to have raised and equipped at his own expense a company, known as "The Sheepbridge Volunteers," for service in the Rebellion.

Colonel James Gordon, the eldest son of James Gordon, the second, of Sheepbridge, and his wife, Sarah Greenway, was born at Sheepbridge in 17 14. Before 1738 he emigrated to Virginia and settled in Lancaster county, on the north side of the Rappahannock River, in what is known as the Northern Neck. Here, at Merry Point, on the Corotoman River he built his mansion-house, which is still standing, and engaged in the exportation of tobacco from Virginia to Whitehaven in England. He amassed a fortune in the tobacco trade, and was a personage of importance and influence in his county; and in spite of his Presbyterianism, a member of the parish vestry, which under the union of church and state, constituted the local political governing body. He is represented as a man of great personal piety by Foote, in his "Sketches of Virginia," and it is certain that he was one of the founders and chief supporters of the Presbyterian Church in a section of country dominated by the estabhshed Church of England. Yet for all his devoutness he was an owner of slaves, a number of whom he bought from slave-ships coming Into the Rappahannock; he operated a distillery on one of his plantations and manufactured ardent spirits; and he conducted a lottery for the benefit of a Presbyterian meeting-house, which was built chiefly through his efforts. All these things he tells of in a "Journal" which he kept for many years, in which he recorded not only his business transactions but all the local happenings, including an occasional serious matter of neighborhood scandal; and in it he also kept a record, which was a voluminous one, of the persons who visited at his house. This journal affords a pleasing insight into the daily domestic life of a colonial merchant and planter of the period; and is full of entertaining incidents of the visitors who thronged his hospitable home. Whitefield, the great English evangelist, came on one occasion, and was received with enthusiasm and a lavish welcome; and when he departed "to the Northward," in the quaint phraseology of the journal, took with him as the gift of his generous host a new chaise and a pair of handsome horses.

Colonel James Gordon died at his house in Lancaster, In 1758, leaving behind him, in his obituary In the Virginia Gazette, of January 14, 1768, the story of having been one of the most accomplished and admirable men of his times. He married first, on March 28, 1742, Mllicent Conway, youngest daughter of Colonel Edwin Conway, of Lancaster, whose first wife was Ann Ball, half-sister of the mother of Washington. Gordon's second wife, whom he married on November 12, 1748, was Mary Harrison, youngest daughter of Colonel Nathaniel Harrison, of Wakefield, Surry county, a younger brother of that Benjamin Harrison, of Berkeley, on

James River, whose grandson, Benjamin, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and father of General William Henry Harrison, President of the United States.

It is interesting to note that Colonel Nathaniel Harrison, of Wakefield, was the first Harrison owner of Brandon, the famous colonial mansion on James River, of which Tyler in "The Cradle of the Republic," says: "Brandon and Merchant's Hope, or Powell Brook, became the joint property of Richard Quiney and his brother-in-law, John Sadler. The Quineys were from Stratford on Avon. Thomas Quiney married Judith, the daughter of William Shakespeare. Richard Quiney's wife, Ellen Sadler, daughter of John Sadler, was aunt of Ann Sadler, the wife of John Harvard, founder of Harvard College. Richard Quiney's moiety in Brandon as well as in Powell Brook, descended to his son Thomas, who in his will left the same to his great-nephew, Robert Richardson; and he in 1720 conveyed the same to Nathaniel Harrison, to whom the other moiety doubtless had, not long before, passed from the Sadlers."

The issue of the marriage of Colonel James Gordon and his wife Mary Harrison were four sons and five daughters, whose descendants are to be found in many states of the American Union, the men of whom in all the generations have upborne the soldierly qualities of their Cromwellian progenitor, and frequently, though not so persistently, the religious characteristics which are supposed to belong to a puritan chaplain.

The eldest daughter of Colonel Gordon's second marriage became at the early age of thirteen years the wife of the Reverend James Waddell, whose parents emigrated to Pennsylvania from the County Down, and who was born on the Atlantic Ocean during their voyage over. The imaginative sailors dubbed him "the child of the ship and star;" and he became in time one of the most eloquent and distinguished ministers of his generation in America. William Wirt, in the "British Spy," gives a graphic account of his physical appearance, and of his wonderful gift of speech — an account which superseded the sailor's appellation with the more famous one of "the Blind Preacher." In his old age Mr. Waddell lived in Louisa County; and his wife's nephew, William Fitzhugh Gordon, resided temporarily In his family when a lad, and went to school to his son, James Gordon Waddell. His association with "the Blind Preacher" made a lasting impression upon Gordon's plastic mind; and he was fond of narrating how the old gentleman would say to him, "William, popularity is a phantom that flees as you pursue It, — let It follow you"; or express to him the wish that when his time came to depart, he might "steal away from earth."

Another daughter, Elizabeth, married her first cousin, James Gordon, of Orange, or James Gordon, junior, as he was Indifferently called, who was the oldest son of the Immigrant, John Gordon, of Sheepbridge; and the second son of this marriage was William Fitzhugh Gordon.

Colonel James Gordon, of Lancaster, left a will, which was proved February i8, 1768; In which he made disposition of a large estate, consisting of lands, negro slaves and personal property. Nothing however, which remained of his possessions Is now as Interesting as his "Journal," the portion of which that survives, covering a period of five or six years, has been published In "The William and Mary College Quarterly," and furnishes very entertaining reading. Among Its various Items Is one reciting that on a day named, the ship Friendship, out of Whitehaven, was anchored In the river near his house. The date and the name of the vessel Indicate that upon It at that time. In the capacity of cabin boy, or occupying some other insignificant subordinate position, was the lad John Paul, son of the Kirkcudbrightshire gardener, who later became Commodore John Paul Jones of the American Navy, and burnt the town of Whitehaven, out of which the Friendship sailed.

About 1750, John Hesselius, a distinguished portrait painter of his day, visited Lancaster, and painted the portraits of James Gordon and his brother John. Both pictures are delineated in the ornate costume of the period, belaced and bewigged. Colonel James Gordon appears as a florid and somewhat corpulent personage, wearing a flaxen periwig of flowing curls; while his brother John, of a more bilious tinge of complexion. Is represented as a young gentleman of fashion, with a black peruke of cavalier-like locks, and is armed with a great walkingstaff.

Of John Gordon, the younger of the tv/o brothers, who came to Virginia, much less is known than of his brother James. He was probably not so systematic, for we find Colonel James forgiving him a considerable debt in his will; and it is pretty certain that he was by no means so religious, or if so his piety must have been very strongly militant. For his elder brother records in the "Journal" an account of a visit paid by him to his brother John at Urbanna, in Middlesex County, across the river, where he then lived, on the occasion of which he found him suffering from a wound in his head, encountered in a fight. Mr. Philip Vickers Fithian, a Jersey youth then teaching in the family of Councillor Robert Carter, of Nomini Hall, in Westmoreland, who was first cousin of John Gordon's wife, Lucy Churchill, adds in his "Diary" under date of November 30, 1773, the no less convincing statement, — unless indeed horse-racing was as consistent with religion at that time as brandy-making and lotteries seemed to be, — that he had been solicited "at the Race" by Mr. Gordon "to take and instruct two of his sons."

John, however, in spite of these possible failings, possessed also the Scotch thrift and canniness of his eldest brother, and accumulated enough gear to serve sufficiently his needs in life. The date of his birth at Sheepbridge is not known, he not having taken the precaution to record it in a family Bible, as did his brother James in his own case. But he was probably five or six years younger than Colonel James. He was in Virginia prior to 1756; and settled at Urbanna, then a port of entry, where his mansion-house and brick store-house, in which he housed his export tobacco, were still standing a few years ago. He was a merchant there, and a planter in Middlesex County, as was his brother across the river in Lancaster. He owned several important tracts of land in Middlesex, and engaged extensively in the tobacco trade with England. In 1762 he sold his estates in Middlesex County, and moved to Richmond County, on the north side of the Rappahannock, where he continued to reside until his death. The exact date of this occurrence is as obscure as that of his birth. He was living September 17, 1779, the date of his conveyance of his interest in the Sheepbridge estate in Ireland to his nephew, George Gordon; and he was dead before the 6th day of November, 1780, when it appears that at a county court held for Richmond County, his son James Gordon, junior, qualified as his administrator. There remains no other record of his personality or of his domestic life; but he appears to have been an individual of Influence and property in both counties of Middlesex and Richmond; and in the latter he was a member of the county bench of magistrates, a position of conspicuous local honor and dignity under the colonial court system.

John Gordon married on December 15, 1756, Lucy Churchill, daughter of Colonel Armlstead Churchill, of Bushy Park, in Middlesex County, and his wife, Hannah Harrison, who was a daughter of

Nathaniel Harrison, of Wakefield, and an elder sister of Colonel James Gordon's second wife. There were no better families in the Colony, where birth and breeding counted for much, than these of the river-barons into which the two young Gordons entered by virtue of their matrimonial alliances; and it is said, on contemporary authority, that no handsomer couple ever walked down the aisle of Wicomico Church than John Gordon and his bride on the December day of their wedding, Lucy Churchill's father, Colonel Armistead Churchill, was the only son, by her second marriage, of Elizabeth Armistead, daughter of John Armistead, of "Hesse," the councillor. Her first husband had been Ralph Wormeley, of "Rosegill" in Middlesex, who was secretary of the Colony, and of that union were born a son, John Wormeley, who was father of Ralph, of the Council, and grandfather of Admiral Ralph Randolph Wormeley of the British Navy, Of this descent, also, were the writers. Miss Katherine Prescott Wormeley and her sister Mrs, Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer, From the marriage of Elizabeth Armistead and Ralph Wormeley, the secretary, came a daughter, who was the first wife of Mann Page; and his daughter, by her, married William Randolph, of Tuckahoe. An aunt of Colonel Armistead Churchill's on the maternal side was Judith Armistead, wife of "King" Carter, of whom Moncure D. Conway has written in "Barons of Potowmack and Rappahannock." Colonel Churchill's sister, Priscilla, married "King" Carter's son of a second marriage, Robert of Nomini Hall; and this Robert's fame has come down to us, in and out of the pages of Fithlan's gossiping "Diary," as that not only of one of the greatest of colonial landowners, but of a musical virtuoso, accomplished man of the world, and polished and cultivated scholar.