A GRAVEYARD AND AN EPITAPH.
Within a short distance of this spot, perhaps not a mile from Drum
Point, there is a small creek which opens into the river and bears
the name of Mattapony. In early times there was a notable fort here,
and connected with it a stately mansion, built by Charles Calvert,
Lord Baltimore, for his own occasional residence. The fort and
mansion are often mentioned in the Provincial records as the place
where the Council sometimes met to transact business; and accordingly
many public acts are dated from Mattapony.
Calvert was doubtless attracted to this spot by the pleasant scenery
of the headland which here looks out upon the noble water-view of the
Chesapeake, and by its breezy position as an agreeable refuge from
the heats of summer.
Our party, therefore, determined to set out upon a search for some
relics of the mansion and fort; and as a guide in this enterprise, we
engaged an old negro who seemed to have a fair claim in his own
conceit to be regarded both as the Solomon and the Methuselah of the
plantation. He was a wrinkled, wise-looking old fellow, with a watery
eye and a grizzled head, and might, perhaps, have been about eighty;
but, from his own account, he left us to infer that he was not much
behind that great patriarch of Scripture whose years are described as
one hundred and threescore and fifteen.
Finding that he was native to the estate, and had lived here all his
life, we interrogated him with some confidence in his ability to
contribute something useful to the issue of our pursuit. Amongst all
the Solomons of this world, there is not one so consciously impressed
with the unquestionable verity of his wisdom and the intensity of his
knowledge as one of these veterans of an old family-estate upon which
he has spent his life. He is always an aristocrat of the most
uncompromising stamp, and has a contemptuous disdain and intolerance
for every form of democracy. Poor white people have not the slightest
chance of his good opinion. The pedigree and history of his master's
family possess an epic dignity in his imagination; and the liberty he
takes with facts concerning them amounts to a grand poetical
hyperbole. He represents their wealth in past times to have amounted
to something of a fabulous superfluity, and their magnificence so
unbounded, that he stares at you in describing it, as if its excess
astonished himself.
When we now questioned our venerable conductor, to learn what he
could tell us of the old Proprietary Mansion, he said, in his way, he
"membered it, as if it was built only yesterday: he was fotch up so
near it, that he could see it now as if it was standing before him:
if _he_ couldn't pint out where it stood, it was time for him to give
up: it was a mighty grand brick house,"--laying an emphasis on
_brick_, as a special point in his notion of its grandeur; and then
he added, with all the gravity of which his very solemn visage was a
copious index, that "Old Master Baltimore, who built it, was a real
fine gentleman. He knowed him so well! He never gave anything but
gold to the servants for tending on him. Bless you! he wouldn't even
think of silver! Many a time has he given me a guinea for waiting on
him."
This account of Old Master Baltimore, and his magnificent contempt of
silver, and the intimacy of our patriarch with him, rather startled
us, and I began to fear that the story of the house might turn out to
be as big a lie as the acquaintance with the Lord Proprietary,--for
Master Baltimore had then been dead just one hundred and twenty-one
years. But we went on with him, and were pleasantly disappointed when
he brought us upon a hill that sloped down to the Mattapony, and
there traced out for us, by the depression of the earth, the visible
lines of an old foundation of a large building, the former existence
of which was further demonstrated by some scattered remains of the
old imported brick of the edifice which were imbedded in the soil.
This spot had a fine outlook upon the Bay, and every advantage of
locality to recommend its choice for a domestic establishment. We
could find nothing to indicate the old fort except the commanding
character of the hill with reference to the river, which might
warrant a conjecture as to its position. I believe that the house was
included within the ramparts of the fortification, as I perceive in
some of the old records that the fortification itself was called the
Mattapony House, which was once beleaguered and taken by Captain John
Coode and Colonel Jowles.
After we had examined all that was to be seen here, our next point of
interest was a graveyard, which, we had been informed by some of the
household at Mrs. Carroll's, had been preserved upon the estate from
a very early period. Our old gossip professed to know all about this,
from its very first establishment. It was in another direction from
the mansion-house, about a mile distant, on the margin of an inlet
from the Bay, called Harper's Creek; and thither we accordingly went.
Before we reached the spot, the old negro stopped at a cabin that lay
in our route and provided himself with a hoe, which, borne upon his
shoulder, gave a somewhat mysterious significance to the office he
had assumed. He did not explain the purpose of this equipment to us,
and we forbore to question him. After descending to the level of the
tide and passing through some thickets of wild shrubbery, we arrived
upon a grassy plain immediately upon the border of the creek; and
there, in a quiet, sequestered nook of rural landscape, the smooth
and sluggish little inlet begirt with waterlilies and reflecting wood
and sky and the green hill-side upon its surface, was the chosen
resting-place of the departed generations of the family. A few simple
tombstones--some of them darkened by the touch of Time--lay clustered
within an old inclosure. The brief memorials engraved upon them told
us how inveterately Death had pursued his ancient vocation and
gathered in his relentless tribute from young and old in times past
as he does to-day.
Here was a theme for a sermon from the patriarch, who now leaned upon
his hoe and shook his head with a slow ruminative motion, as if he
hoped by this action to disengage from it some profound moral
reflections, and then began to enumerate how many of these good
people he had helped to bury; but before he had well begun this
discourse we had turned away and were about leaving the place, when
he recalled us by saying, "I have got one tombstone yet to show you,
as soon as I can clear it off with the hoe: it belongs to old Master
Rousby, who was stobbed aboard ship, and is, besides that, the
grandest tombstone here."
Here was another of those flashes of light by which my story seemed
to be preordained to a prosperous end. We eagerly encouraged the old
man to this task, and he went to work in removing the green sod from
a large slab which had been entirely hidden under the soil, and in a
brief space revealed to us a tombstone fully six feet long, upon
which we were able to read, in plainly chiselled letters, an
inscription surmounted by a carved heraldic shield with its proper
quarterings and devices.
Our group at this moment would have made a fine artistic study. There
was this quiet landscape around us garnished with the beauty of May;
there were the rustic tombs,--the old negro, with a countenance
surcharged with the expression of solemn satisfaction at his
employment, bending his aged figure over the broad, carved stone, and
scraping from it the grass which had not been disturbed perhaps for a
quarter of a century; and there was our own party looking on with
eager interest, as the inscription every moment became more legible.
That interest may be imagined, on reading the inscription, which,
when brought to the full light of day, revealed these words:--
"Here lyeth the body of Xph'r Rousbie Esquire, who was taken out of
this world by a violent death received on board his Majesty's ship
The Quaker Ketch, Capt. Tho's. Allen Commander, the last day of
October 1684. And also of Mr. John Rousbie, his brother, who departed
this naturall life on board the Ship Baltimore, being arrived in
Patuxen the first day of February 1685."
This was a picturesque incident in its scenic character, but a still
more engaging one as an occurrence in the path of discovery. Here was
most unexpectedly brought to view a new link in the chain of our
story. It was a pleasant surprise to have such a fact as this
breaking upon us from an ambuscade, to help out a half-formed
narrative which I had feared was hopeless of completion. The
inscription is a necessary supplement to the marginal notes. As an
insulated monument, it is meagre in its detail, and stands in need of
explanation. It does not describe Christopher Rousby as the Collector
of the Customs; it does not affirm that he was murdered; it makes no
allusion to Talbot: but it gives the name of the ship and its
commander, along with the date of the death. "The Landholder's
Assistant" supplies all the facts that are wanting in this brief
statement. These two memorials help each other and enlarge the common
current of testimony, like two confluent streams coming from opposite
sources. From the two together we learn, that Colonel Talbot, the
Surveyor-General in 1684, killed Mr. Christopher Rousby on board of a
ship of war; and we are apprised that Rousby was a gentleman of rank
and authority in the Province, holding an important commission from
the King. The place at which the tomb is found shows also that he was
the owner of a considerable landed estate and a near neighbor of the
Lord Proprietary.
The story, however, requires much more circumstance to give it the
interest which we hope yet to find in it.