Annals of Augusta County

Front matter

ANNALS OF Augusta County, Virginia, With Reminiscences ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE VICISSITUDES OF ITS PIONEER SETTLERS; Biographical Sketches OF CITIZENS LOCALLY PROMINENT, AND OF THOSE WHO HAVE FOUNDED FAMILIES IN THE SOUTHERN AND WESTERN STATES; A Diary of the War, 1861–'5, AND A CHAPTER ON RECONSTRUCTION, WITH A SUPPLEMENT, BY JOS. A. WADDELL. Member of the Virginia Historical Society.

[COUNTY SEAL.]

J. W. RANDOLPH & ENGLISH, Publishers, RICHMOND, VA. 1888.

Introduction

ANNALS

OF

Augusta County, Virginia.

INTRODUCTION.

THE SCOTCH-IRISH.

At different periods subsequent to the Reformation, many lowland Scotch people emigrated to the province of Ulster, north Ireland. There they prospered greatly, and maintained unimpaired the manners and customs and the religious faith of the country from which they came. They and their posterity regarded themselves—and were regarded by the Irish of Celtic blood—as Scotch in all essential particulars. Some of these settlers, before leaving their native land, goaded by persecution under the Stuart Kings, had borne arms against the British government, and were among the prisoners captured at Bothwell Bridge, in 1679. When the Revolution of 1688 occurred, the Scotch-Irish sided with William of Orange. The siege of Londonderry, in 1689, is one of the most remarkable events in history. Upon the march northward of the army of James II, says Macaulay, "All Lisburn fled to Antrim, and, as the foes drew nearer, all Lisburn and Antrim together came pouring into Londonderry. Thirty thousand Protestants, of both sexes and of every age, were crowded behind the bulwarks of the City of Refuge." The ordinary population of the town and suburbs furnished only about six hundred fighting men; but when the siege began there were 7,300 men armed for defence. Dissenters having been excluded from offices in the army, none of that class were fitted by previous military experience for command. Therefore a majority of the higher officers were of the Church of England. A majority of the inferior officers, captains and others, were Presbyterians; and of the soldiers and people generally, the Dissenters outnumbered the others by fifteen to one.

"Now," says Froude, in his History of Ireland, "was again witnessed what Calvinism—though its fires were waning—could do in making common men into heroes. Deserted by the English regiments, betrayed by their own commander, without stores and half armed, the shopkeepers and apprentices of a commercial town prepared to defend an unfortified city against a disciplined army of 25,000 men, led by trained officers, and amply provided with artillery. They were cut off from the sea by a boom across the river. Fever, cholera and famine came to the aid of the besiegers. Rats came to be dainties, and hides and shoe leather were the ordinary fare. They saw their children pine away and die—they were wasted themselves, till they could scarce handle their firelocks on their ramparts." Still they held on through more than three miserable months. Finally a frigate and two provision ships came in, and Derry was saved after a siege of eight months. The garrison had been reduced to about three thousand men. The Rev. Mr. Walker, a minister of the Church of England, was one of the prominent leaders. Enniskillen was successfully defended in like manner.

Yet, notwithstanding their loyalty to the Crown, as settled by the Revolution, and their heroic services, the Scotch Irish received no favors from the British government, except a miserable pittance doled out to their clergy after a time. They were proscribed because of their religion, being excluded from the army, the militia, the civil service, and seats in municipal corporations. Dissenters from the Irish Episcopal church were not allowed to teach school. Presbyterian marriages were declared illegal. The laws against Catholics were even more severe than those against Protestant dissenters—so severe, indeed, that they were not generally executed, public officers revolting at their harshness. Presbyterians, however, were pursued unrelentingly to the extent of the law. The Presbyterian magistrates in Ulster, says Froude, were cleared out. Men having nothing to recommend them but their going to church, were appointed in their places. The power being now in their hands, the bishops fell upon the grievance of the Presbyterian marriages. CathoHc marriages did not trouble them; but, in their view, a marriage ceremony by a Protestant dissenting minister was only a license to sin. It was announced that the children of all Protestants not married in a church should be treated as bastards, and in 1704 many persons of undoubted reputation were prosecuted in the bishop's courts as fornicators for cohabiting with their own wives. Ministers, for the offence of preaching the gospel outside of certain bounds, were arrested and held for trial, while their hearers were threatened with the stocks.

Yet the loyalty of the people to the Crown was unshaken, doubtless owing to the fact that the sovereigns generally were opposed to measures of persecution. William III had opposed them, and George I in vain urged the repeal of the obnoxious laws. Therefore when, in 1715, the rebellion in behalf of the Pretender, son of James II, began in Scotland, and an insurrection in Ireland was looked for, the Irish Presbyterians tendered their services to the government. In the emergency military commissions were distributed to them, although contrary to law, and many regiments were speedily raised. After the danger was over they were threatened with prosecution for even that service.

The chief agents of persecution were the bishops of the established church. Some of these prelates, during the earlier part of the eighteenth century, were not only High Churchmen of the most ultra sort, but at heart it was believed partisans of the Stuart dynasty. Dean Swift, no friend to Dissenters, sarcastically described the nominees to the Episcopal bench of Ireland, "as waylaid and murdered by highwaymen on Hounslow Heath, who stole their letters patent, came to Dublin, and were consecrated in their places." All the Irish prelates, however, did not deserve Swift's wholesale denunciation, notably Bishop Berkeley; and many of the parish clergy were worthy of all honor.

Every effort of enlightened statesmen to obtain a relaxation of the stringent laws against Dissenters failed, and in 1719 the Protestant emigration to America recommenced. In addition to the restrictions on religion, Irish industry and commerce had been systematically repressed. Twenty thousand people left Ulster on the destruction of the woollen trade in 1698. Many more were driven away by the first passage of the Test Act. The stream had slackened in the hope of some relief. When this hope expired, men of spirit and energy refused to remain in the country. Thenceforward, for more than fifty years, annual shiploads of families poured themselves out from Belfast and Londonderry. England paid dearly for her Irish policy. The fiercest enemies she had, in 1776, were the descendants of the Scotch-Irish who had held Ulster against James II. The earlier emigrants were nearly all Protestants. The emigration of Catholics from Ireland to America, in large numbers, did not begin till the nineteenth century. Previously, when the Irish people of this class emigrated it was to France, Spain, or other European Catholic country. "There was," says Froude, "first a Protestant exodus to America, and then a Catholic, each emigrant carrying away a sense of intolerable wrong."

The people of Ulster had heard of Pennsylvania, and the religious liberty there enjoyed and promised to all comers, and to that province they came in large numbers. They were mainly farmers, tradesmen and artisans. But jealousies arose in the minds of the original settlers of Pennsylvania, and restrictive measures were adopted by the proprietary government against the Scotch-Irish and German immigrants. Hence many of both these races were the more disposed, in 1732 and afterwards, to seek homes within the limits of Virginia, and run the risk of the church establishment existing there. The Scotch-Irish drifted on in the wake of John Lewis to the present county of Augusta; the German people generally located in the region now known as Shenandoah, Page, and Rockingham. The two races did not keep entirely apart, and there was some commingling of them in the various settlements, and in a short time a few people distinct from either came into the Valley from lower Virginia.

Many of our people are descendants of the defenders of Derry. And to go back a little further, the list of prisoners captured at Bothwell Bridge and herded like cattle for months in Grayfriars' Churchyard, Edinburgh, is like a muster-roll of Augusta people.

Chapter I

CHAPTER I.

FROM THE FIRST SETTLEMENT TO THE FIRST COUNTY COURT.

As far as known, the country now embraced in Augusta county was never entered by white men until the year 1716. Six years earlier, however, some portion of the Valley of Virginia had been seen from the top of the Blue Ridge by Europeans. Governor Spotswood, writing to the Council of Trade, London, December 15, 1710, says that a company of adventurers found the mountains "not above a hundred miles from our upper inhabitants, and went up to the top of the highest mountain with their horses, tho' they had hitherto been thought to be unpassable, and they assured me that ye descent on the other side seemed to be as easy as that they had passed on this, and that they could have passed over the whole ledge (which is not large), if the season of the year had not been too far advanced before they set out on that expedition."—[Spotswood Letters, Vol. I, page 40.] It would seem that the adventurers referred to looked into the Valley from the mountain in the neighborhood of Balcony Falls, but no description of the country seen by them is given.

This portion of the Valley was then entirely uninhabited. The Shawnee Indians had a settlement in the lower valley, at or near Winchester, and parties of that tribe frequently traversed this section on hunting excursions, or on warlike expeditions against Southern tribes, but there was no Indian village or wigwam within the present limits of the county. At an early day. Indians, or people of some other race, had doubtless resided here, as would appear from several ancient mounds, or burial places, still existing in the county.

The face of the country between the Blue Ridge and the North Mountain was, of course, diversified by hill and dale, as it is now, but forest trees were less numerous than at the present time, the growth of timber being prevented by the frequent fires kindled by hunting parties of Indians. Old men living within the writer's recollection, described this region as known by them in their boyhood. Many acres, now stately forests, were then covered by mere brushwood, which did not conceal the startled deer flying from pursuit.

At the time of which we speak, wild animals abounded in this section. The buffalo roamed at will over these hills and valleys, and in their migrations made a well-defined trail between Rockfish Gap, in the Blue Ridge, and Buffalo Gap, in the North Mountain, passing by the present site of Staunton. Other denizens of the region at that day were the bear, wolf, panther, wildcat, deer, fox, hare, etc. It would appear that wolves were very numerous There were no crows, blackbirds, nor song birds, and no rats, nor honey bees till the coming of the white people.

The first passage of the Blue Ridge, and entrance into the Valley by white men, was made by Governor Spotswood in 1716. About the last of July, or first of August in that year, the Governor, with some members of his staff, starting from Williamsburg, proceeded to Germanna, a small frontier settlement, where he left his coach and took to horse. He was there joined by the rest of his party, gentlemen and their retainers, a company of rangers, and four Meherrin Indians, comprising in all about fifty persons. These, with pack-horses laden with provisions, journeyed by way of the upper Rappahannock river, and after thirty-six days from the date of their departure from Williamsburg, on September 5th, scaled the mountain at Swift Run Gap, it is believed. Descending the western side of the mountain into the Valley, they reached the Shenandoah River and encamped on its bank. Proceeding up the river, they found a place where it was fordable, crossed it, and there, on the western bank, the Governor formally "took possession for King George the First of England." The rangers made further explorations up the Valley, while the Governor, with his immediate attendants, returned to Williamsburg, arriving there after an absence of about eight weeks, and having traveled about 440 miles out and back.

The only authentic account we have of the expedition is the diary of John Fontaine, and that is very meagre. The gentlemen of the party were: Governor Spotswood, Robert Beverley, the historian. Colonel Robertson, Dr. Robinson, Taylor Todd, Fontaine, Mason, Clouder, Smith and Brooke. They crossed the Shenandoah river on the 6th of September, and called it Euphrates. The river is said to have been very deep, and "fourscore yards wide in the narrowest part." The Governor had graving irons, but could not grave anything, the stone was so hard. "I," says Mr. Fontaine, "graved my name on a tree by the river side, and the Governor buried a bottle with a paper enclosed, on which he writ that he took possession of this place in the name of King George First of England." The most astonishing thing related by the diarist, however, is the quantity and variety of liquors lugged about and drank by the party. He says: "We had a good dinner" [on the 6th], "and after it we got the men together and loaded all their arms, and we drank the King's health in champagne and fired a volley, the Princess's health in Burgundy and fired a volley, and all the rest of the royal family in claret and a volley. We drank the Governor's health and fired another volley. We had several sorts of liquors, viz: Virginia red wine and white wine, Irish usquebaugh, brandy, shrub, two sorts of rum, champagne, canary, cherry punch, cider, &c." Bears, deer and turkeys were abundant, and in the Valley the foot-prints of elk and buffalo were seen.—[Dr. Slaughter's History of St. Mark' s Parish.]

It was in commemoration of this famous expedition that Governor Spotswood sought to establish the order of "Knights of the Golden Horseshoe" But the Governor's account of the expedition, as far as we have it, is very tame and disappointing. He was thinking chiefly of protecting the English settlements from the encroachments of the French, and apparently cared little for anything else. He also either misunderstood the Indians whom he encountered, or was grossly deceived by them in regard to the geography of the country. In his letter to the Board of Trade, under date of August 14, 1718, he said:

"The chief aim of my expedition over the great mountains, in 1716, was to satisfye myself whether it was practicable to come at the lakes. Having on that occasion found an easy passage over that great ridge of mountains w'ch before were judged unpassable, I also discovered, by the relation of Indians who frequent those parts, that from the pass where I was it is but three days' march to a great nation of Indians living on a river w'ch discharges itself in the Lake Erie; that from ye western side of one of the small mountains w'ch I saw, that lake is very visible, and cannot, therefore, be above five days' march from the pass afore-mentioned, and that the way thither is also very practicable, the mountainsto the westward of the great ridge being smaller than those I passed on the eastern side, w'ch shews howeasy a matter it is to gain possession of those lakes."—[Spotswood Letters, Vol. II, pp. 295-6.]

The country thus discovered by Governor Spotswood, and claimed by him for the British crown, became a part of the county of Essex, the western boundary being undefined. Spotsylvania was formed from Essex and other counties in 1720, and Orange from Spotsylvania, in 1734.

The expedition of the "Knights of the Golden Horseshoe," trivial as it may now appear, was at the time regarded as very hazardous; and it no doubt led to important results. The glowing accounts given by Spotswood's followers, if not by himself of the beauty and fertility of the Valley, attracted immediate attention, and induced hunters and other enterprising men to visit the country. Of such transient excursions, however, we have no authentic account; and at least sixteen years were to pass before any extensive settlements were made by Europeans in this region.

At length John and Isaac Vanmeter, of Pennsylvania, in 1730, obtained from Governor Gooch a warrant for 40,000 acres of land to be located in the lower valley, and within the present counties of Frederick, Jefferson, etc. This warrant was sold in 1731, by the grantees, to Joist Hite, also of Pennsylvania. Hite proceeded to make locations of his land, and to induce immigrants to settle on his grant. He removed his family to Virginia, in 1732, and fixed his residence a few miles south of the present town of Winchester, which is generally believed to have been the first permanent settlement by white men in the Valley.

Population soon flowed in to take possession of the rich lands offered by Hite; but a controversy speedily arose in regard to the proprietor's title. Lord Fairfax claimed Hite's lands as a part of his grant of the "Northern Neck." Fairfax entered a caveat against Hite, in 1736, and thereupon Hite brought suit against Fairfax. This suit was not finally decided till 1786, long after the death of all the original parties, when judgment was rendered in favor of Hite and his vendees. The dispute between Fairfax and Hite retarded the settlement of that part of the Valley, and induced immigrants to push their way up the Shenandoah river to regions not implicated in such controversies. In 1738 there were only two cabins where Winchester now stands. That town was established by law in 1752.

A strange uncertainty has existed as to the date and some of the circumstances of the first settlement of Augusta county Campbell, in his "History of Virginia" (pages 427-9), undertakes to relate the events somewhat minutely, but falls into obvious mistakes. He says: "Shortly after the first settlement of Winchester (1738), John Marlin, a peddler, and John Sailing, a weaver, two adventurous spirits, set out from that place" (Winchester) "to explore the 'upper country,' then almost unknown." They came up the valley of the Shenandoah, called Sherando, crossed James river, and reached the Roanoke river, where a party of Cherokee Indians surprised and captured Sailing, while Marlin escaped. Sailing was detained by the Indians for six years, and on being liberated returned to Williamsburg. "About the same time," says Campbell, "a considerable number of immigrants had arrived there, among them John Lewis and John Mackey. * * Pleased with Sailing's glowing picture of the country beyond the mountains, Lewis and Mackey visited it under his guidance," and immediately all three located here.

Whatever the truth may be in regard to other matters, Campbell's dates are entirely erroneous. He would seem to postpone the settlement of Lewis in the valley to the year 1744, although he immediately refers to him as residing here in 1736.

Foote, in his "Sketches of Virginia," is silent as to the date of the settlement. He mentions, upon the authority of the late Charles A. Stuart, of Greenbrier county, a descendant of John Lewis, that the latter first located on the left bank of Middle river, then called Carthrae's river, about three miles east of the macadamized turnpike. Thence he removed to Lewis' Creek, two miles east of Staunton, where he built a stone house, known as Fort Lewis, which is still standing. According to Foote, Mackey and Salling came with Lewis, or at the same time, Mackey making his residence at Buffalo Gap, and Salling his at the forks of James river, below the Natural Bridge.

We are satisfied that Mackey and Salling did explore the Valley, but that it was about the year 1726, before there was any settlement by white people west of the Blue Ridge. Withers, in his "Border Warfare," gives the following account of Salling's captivity:

Salling, he says, was taken, to the country now known as Tennessee, where he remained for some years. In company with a party of Cherokees he went on a hunting expedition to the salt licks of Kentucky, and was there captured by a band of Illinois Indians, with whom the Cherokees were at war. He was taken to Kaskaskia and adopted into the family of a squaw whose son had been killed. While with these Indians he several times accompanied them down the Mississippi river, below the mouth of the Arkansas, and once to the Gulf of Mexico, The Spaniards in Louisiana desiring an interpreter purchased him of his Indian mother, and some of them took him to Canada. He was there redeemed by the French governor of that province, who sent him to the Dutch settlement in New York, "whence he made his way home after an absence of six years."—[Border Warfare, page 42.] Peyton, in his "History of Augusta County," gives an account of the coming of Lewis to the Valley quite different from Campbell's version of the matter, and somewhat at variance with Foote' s narrative. He says Lewis "had been some time in America, when, in 1732, Joist Hite and a party of pioneers set out to settle upon a grant of 40,000 acres of land in the Valley. * * Lewis joined this party, came to the Valley, and was the first white settler of Augusta." Lewis is represented as coming, not from Williamsburg, but from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and the date of his arrival here is given as "the summer of 1732." These statements and the authority upon which they are made appear conclusive of the matter.

John Lewis and his sturdy sons were just the men to battle with the adverse circumstances which surrounded them in this wilderness country. He was a native of Donegal county. Province of Ulster, Ireland, and of Scottish descent. He came to America from Portugal, in which country he had taken refuge after a bloody affray with an oppressive landlord in Ireland. It is stated, however, that upon an investigation of the affray, Lewis was formally pronounced free from blame. The story as related is briefly as follows: An Irish lord who owned the fee of the land leased by Lewis undertook to eject the latter in a lawless manner. With a band of retainers he repaired to the place, and on the refusal of the tenant to vacate, fired into the house killing an invalid brother of Lewis and wounding his wife. Thereupon, Lewis rushed from the house and dispersed his assailants, but not until their leader and his steward were killed.

It is a question what number of sons John Lewis had. Various writers state that he brought with him to America four sons, viz: Samuel, Thomas, Andrew, and William, and that a fifth, Charles, was born after the settlement here, but others mention only four, omitting Samuel. Ex-Governor Gilmer, of Georgia, a great-grandson of John Lewis, gives an account of the family in his book called "Georgians," printed in 1854, and is silent as to Samuel. Governor Gilmer's mother, a daughter of Thomas Lewis, lived to a great age, and it is hardly possible that she could have been ignorant of an uncle named Samuel, and that her son should not have named him if there had been such an one. All the others were prominent in the early history of the country, and we shall have occasion to speak of them often in the course of our narrative.

The permanent settlement of Lewis was in the vicinity of the twin hills, "Betsy Bell and Mary Gray," which were so called by him, or some other early settler, after two similar hills in County Tyrone, Ireland.

Concurrenriy with the setdement of Lewis, or immediately afterward, a flood of immigrants poured into the country. There was no landlord or proprietor to parcel out the domain; the land was all before them where to choose, and for several years the settlers helped themselves to homes without let or hindrance. It is believed that all the earliest settlers came from Pennsylvania and up the Valley of the Shenandoah. It was several years before any settlers entered the Valley from the east, and through the gaps in the Blue Ridge. We may accompany, in imagination, these immigrants on their way from the settlements north of the Potomac, through the wilderness to their future homes. There was, of course, no road, and for the first comers no path to guide their steps, except, perhaps, the trail of the Indian or buffalo. They came at a venture, climbing the hills, fording the creeks and rivers, and groping through the forests. At night they rested on the ground, with no roof over them but the broad expanse of heaven. After selecting a spot for a night's bivouac, and tethering their horses, fire was kindled by means of flint and steel, and their frugal meal was prepared. Only a scanty supply of food was brought along, for, as game abounded, they mainly "subsisted off the country." Before lying down to rest, many of them did not omit to worship the God of their fathers and invoke His guidance and protection. The moon and stars looked down peacefully as they slumbered, while bears, wolves and panthers prowled around. It was impossible to bring wagons, and all their effects were transported on horseback. The list of articles was meagre enough. Clothing, some bedding, guns and ammunition, a few cooking utensils, seed corn, axes, saws, &c., and the Bible, were indispensable, and were transported at whatever cost of time and labor. Houses and furniture had to be provided after the place of settlement was fixed upon. In the meanwhile there was no shelter from rain and storm. The colonial government encouraged the settlement of the Valley as a means of protecting the lower country from Indian incursions. The settlers were almost exclusively of the Scotch-Irish race, natives of the north of Ireland, but of Scottish ancestry. Most of those who came during the first three or four decades were Dissenters from the Church of England, of the Presbyterian faith, and victims of religious persecution in their native land. They were generally a profoundly religious people, bringing the Bible with them, whatever they had to leave behind, and as soon as possible erected log meeting houses in which to assemble for the worship of God, with school-houses hard by.

Although the Church of England was established by law throughout the colony, and a spirit of intolerance inseparable from such a system prevailed in lower Virginia, the Dissenters of the Valley, as far as we know, had comparatively little to complain of in this respect.

For about twenty years the immigrants were unmolested by the Indians. "Some," says Foote, " who had known war in Ireland, lived and died in that peace in this wilderness for which their hearts had longed in their native land." During this halcyon time, the young Lewises, McClanahans, Mathewses, Campbells, and others were growing up and maturing for many a desperate encounter and field of battle.

But the authorities at Williamsburg had by no means relinquished the rights of the British crown, as held by them, to the paramount title to the lands of the Valley. In assertion of those rights, and without ability on the part of the people of the Valley to resist, on September 6, 1736, William Gooch, "Lieutenant-Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Colony and Dominion of Virginia," in pursuance of an order in council, dated August 12, 1736, and in the name of "George II, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith," etc., issued a patent for the "Manor of Beverley." The patentees were William Beverley, of Essex; Sir John Randolph, of Williamsburg; Richard Randolph, of Henrico, and John Robinson, of King and Queen; and the grant was of 118,491 acres of land lying "in the county of Orange, between the great mountains, on the river Sherando," etc. On the next day, September 7, the other grantees released their interest in the patent to Beverley. This patent embraced a large part of the present county of Augusta, south as well as north of Staunton.

William Beverley was a son of Robert Beverley, the historian of Virginia, and grandson of the Robert Beverley who commanded the royal forces at the time of "Bacon's Rebellion." He was a lawyer, clerk of Essex County Court from 1720 to 1740, a member of the House of Burgesses and of the Governor's Council, and County-Lieutenant of Essex. He died about the first of March, 1756. At the time of his death, his only son, Robert, was a minor.

The question is often asked. In what part of the county was Beverley's Manor? Readers generally could not ascertain from a perusal of the patent, and we have applied to several practical surveyors, the best authorities on the subject, for information. To Messrs. John G. Stover and James H. Callison we are indebted for the following description, which, although not perfectly accurate, will answer the present purpose: Beginning at a point on the east side of South river, about four miles below Waynesbo rough, thence up the same side of the river to a point opposite to or above Greenville; thence by several lines west or southwest to a point near Summerdean; thence northeast to Trimble's, three miles south of Swoope's Depot; thence northeast by several lines, crossing the Staunton and Parkersburg turnpike, five or six miles, and the Churchville road about three miles, from Staunton, to a point not known to the writer; and thence east by one or more lines, crossing the macadamized turnpike at or near Augusta church, to the beginning. The description given in the patent begins at five white oaks on a narrow point between Christie's creek and Beaver run (Long Meadow creek), near the point where those streams enter Middle river, and thence north seventy degrees; west, etc.