SETTLEMENT
Although Spotswood's treaty, as we now know, had finally ended the
Indian menace in Piedmont, the Colonists had to be convinced of that
fact by reassuring experience before any great movement to the upper
lands would begin. There had been other treaties and, as they well knew
to their cost, Indian promise and performance were not always
consistent. The first ten years following the treaty, or from 1722 to
1732, are a twilight zone for Loudoun in which one has to depend on
fragmentary traditions and comparatively few grants as to actual
settlement; but after the latter year the records become increasingly
numerous and tradition more definite and the student stands on
progressively firmer ground. Slowly there grew a steady increase in
trappers and hunters to the cismontane region and then, gradually and
cautiously, the landless men, the poorer whites from the lower
settlements, the redemptioners or indentured servants who had fulfilled
their contracts of service, began to make their way by Indian trail or
through the untravelled woodlands. Very soon, however, there were
purchases of substantial tracts by a more prosperous class who began to
seat themselves upon their new possessions. They were a rough and sturdy
folk, those first poorer arrivals, illiterate for the most part, bred to
primitive conditions of living, many accustomed from birth to
self-reliance in meeting the problems of existence on a sparsely settled
land and wholly ignorant of the relative comforts of life enjoyed by the
prosperous planters in tidewater. They built their rude cabins of logs
in such places as seemed best to them, paying scant attention to land
titles and being in fact, for the most part, mere squatters on their
holdings; and there they planted small patches of corn and beans which,
with the abundant game in the woods and fish in the streams, provided
their liberal and hearty fare. It has been traditional that these
earliest pioneers found many open spaces burned over before their
arrival; for so prevalent had been the Indian habit of firing the woods,
that historians have suggested that had the coming of the Europeans to
Virginia been delayed for a few more centuries, its great forests would
have vanished before their arrival. Taylor records that the early whites
found the timber (probably second or younger growth) "far inferior in
size and beauty to what it is at present. Indeed it has been asserted
that in clearing ten acres of land there could hardly be obtained from
it sufficient material to enclose it;" but as he was a Quaker, living in
the midst of the Quaker settlement between the Catoctin range and the
Short Hills in the northern part of the county, whose people were in
habits and daily life somewhat isolated and up to Taylor's time at
least, given to keeping largely to themselves, we may assume that his
tradition applied more particularly to his locality. However, the
present writer, some twenty years ago, while improving a farm then owned
and occupied by him in the Catoctin hills, about four miles northeast of
Leesburg, had occasion to clear woodland for roads and gardens, he found
that none of the larger trees, many of them oaks, had rings indicating
an age of over two hundred years. Taylor, and following him Head, places
the responsibility of burning the forests upon the hunters (ranging over
the ground before the first settlers) who are said to have fired the
underbrush "the better to secure their quarries;" but it is
unquestionable that the Indians had preceded them in the practice. It
will be remembered that more than a hundred years before, Smith's
Manahoacs could not inform him of conditions _beyond_ the mountains
"because the woods were not burnt;" obviously in contrast to conditions
on the Piedmont side; and Beverly in his history, written in 1705, amply
confirms the Indian usage.
Although tradition tells us, and the absence of recorded grants
confirms, that these earliest settlers were mostly squatters, there had
been acquisition of large tracts within present Loudoun from the
Proprietor of the Northern Neck long before their arrival.
In an earlier chapter the title to the Northern Neck has been traced
down to the year 1681 when it vested for the most part in the second
Lord Colepeper and it is now time to continue its history. Upon
Colepeper's death, in 1689, his only child Catherine, with her mother,
inherited the Proprietary. This second Lady Culpeper, or Colepeper as
the name was then also spelled, was something of a character. By birth,
it seems, she was Dutch and had inherited from her own family both a
large fortune and an independent spirit, not infrequently found
together; and it was this fortune
"which enabled Lord Colepeper to hold together his large properties,
particularly the vast Northern Neck proprietary in the Colony of
Virginia. It was also her fortune which rescued from bankruptcy the
English property of her son-in-law, the fifth Lord Fairfax.... Lady
Colepeper, it appears, never succeeded in mastering the English
language. She both spoke and wrote it very imperfectly."[9]
[9] _An Historical Sketch of the two Fairfax Families in Virginia._
Lindsay Fairfax, (1913) p. 41. As to spelling of Culpeper or Colepeper,
see Fairfax Harrison's _Proprietors of the Northern Neck_; also 33
_Virginia Magazine History and Biography_, 223.
Lady Culpeper died in 1710. The daughter Catherine had, some years
before, married Thomas, fifth Lord Fairfax, Baron of Cameron in the
peerage of Scotland and, on her mother's death, the grant rested in
them; for in the meanwhile Alexander Colepeper also had died (1694) and
left his one-sixth interest to Lady Margaret Colepeper, the second
Lord's widow. The fifth Lord Fairfax, dying in 1710, left three sons
(all of whom later died without issue) and it was the eldest of these,
Thomas, who inherited the title and became the sixth Lord. This sixth
Lord Fairfax had been born in England in 1691 and came later to
Virginia, living out his long life as something of a misogynistic
recluse (due, it is said, to an unfortunate love affair in early life
with a mercenary adventuress) at his seat Greenway Court, then in the
wilderness of Frederick County, where he died in 1781. Today his body
rests in Christ Church, Winchester. He it was who became the friend and
patron of the youthful George Washington and who fills so large a part
in the history of the Northern Neck.
The family of Fairfax had long been seated in Yorkshire where the men
were something more than typical English squires, often rising to
positions of much national as well as local importance. It traced its
descent from Richard Fairfax, Lord Chief Justice of England in the reign
of Henry VI. Sir Thomas Fairfax accompanied the Earl of Essex to France
and was knighted for bravery in the camp before Rouen. On the 4th May,
1627, he was created a Baron of Scotland with the title of Lord Fairfax
of Cameron, which not very glorious honour he purchased for the sum of
L1,500.[10] His son, Sir Ferdinando, was a general in the Parliamentary
Army during the English civil war, becoming the second Baron, and the
latter's son Sir Thomas, later third Baron, was commander-in-chief of
the Parliamentary Armies and a most capable soldier. Becoming
dissatisfied with the extreme policies of the Parliamentary party, he
resigned his position in 1650 and was succeeded by Oliver Cromwell. This
third Baron died in 1671, without male issue, and the title then passed
to his cousin Henry, grandson of the first Lord. Upon his death, in
April, 1688, he was succeeded by his son Henry as the fifth Lord Fairfax
who has already been mentioned as the husband of Catherine Culpeper.
[10] Neill's _Fairfaxes of England and America_, p. 8. (1868.)
The fifth Lord Fairfax, although his marriage brought the great
Proprietary into the family, seems to have been dissolute and
extravagant. When he died in London, on the 6th of January, 1710, his
affairs were in great disorder and it is said that at that time "his
servant who attended him robbed him of the little money he had left."
His widow, however, was a woman of thrift and character and intent on
guarding her Virginia patrimony for the benefit of her sons. In 1702
Robert Carter had been appointed local agent for the Proprietary; but
after her husband's death Lady Fairfax became dissatisfied with his
conduct of its affairs and the revenues she was receiving and appointed
in his place Edmund Jenings and Thomas Lee (then only twenty-one years
of age) as resident agents. As Jenings was unable to go to Virginia at
the time, young Lee found himself for four years in sole charge; and a
most conscientious and capable agent he became and continued until
Jenings came to Virginia in 1717 and took matters into his own hands.
This Jenings was a man of considerable prominence who later was to
serve, for a short time, as acting governor awaiting the arrival of
Spotswood. After the death of Lady Fairfax, her testamentary trustees
"turned again to Micajah Perry[11] for help and he pursuaded Robert
Carter to agree once more to assume the agency"[12] (1722) which he
continued to hold until his death ten years later. The Virginia office
of the estate then remained closed until 1734 when Lord Fairfax
appointed his cousin William Fairfax (whose son Bryan by his second wife
Deborah Clarke of Salem, Massachusetts, was eventually to succeed to the
title as the eighth Lord and in whose descendants the title still
remains) to act as collector of rents. In 1736 Lord Fairfax himself
assumed the management in Virginia for a short time; once more the
office was closed until in 1739 we find William Fairfax again in charge,
this time with more extensive powers until Lord Fairfax returned to
Virginia in 1745 and took upon himself control for the rest of his life.
[11] Micajah Perry, the great Virginia merchant of London.
[12] _Landmarks of Old Prince William_, I, 231.
We are thus introduced to two more men who, in themselves and their
families, had paramount roles to play in and about the territory now
Loudoun; and between whom there was to develop no little rivalry and
conflict of personal ambitions and interests. Lee, himself between 1717
and 1719 a purchaser of several thousand acres of wilderness lying on
either side of Goose Creek, had been born in 1690 at the family home Mt.
Pleasant in Westmoreland County and eventually became "President[13] and
Commander-in-Chief" of Virginia, as he is described in his will. He was
a grandson of that Richard Lee of a family long in possession of the
estate of Coton in Shropshire who, coming to Virginia sometime prior to
1642, first settled in that part of York which subsequently became
Gloucester, later moved to Northumberland and became the progenitor of a
family ever since of outstanding importance in the Northern Neck and
Virginia. Carter, a later purchaser of land on a truly vast scale, whose
father Colonel John Carter, believed to have been the son of William
Carter of Carstown, Hertfordshire and of the Middle Temple, had come to
Virginia prior to 1649 and first settled in upper Norfolk, now
Nansemond County, came to wield an even greater power than his long-time
rival. Our Robert Carter, (1663-1732) the "King Carter" of towering
memory, was the second surviving son, and his residence Corotoman was in
Lancaster County. The descendants of both Lee and Carter continued for
many years to hold great estates in Loudoun. One of Lee's grandsons,
Thomas Ludwell Lee, built Coton (long since vanished) about 1800 and
another grandson Ludwell Lee built about the same time and just across
the highway, the beautiful Belmont, that home of irresistible charm;
while in 1802 George Carter, great-grandson of the mighty Robert, built
and occupied Oatlands. Both Lee and Carter and their families and the
great mansions built in Loudoun by their descendants will receive later
mention.[14]
[13] President of the Council.
[14] Chapter XIII.
Unfortunately for the development of parts of the southern and
southeastern portion of the county, the purchase of these great tracts
by Lee, Carter and others greatly delayed their settlement and this to
the disadvantage of the owners as well as the neighborhood. Even Lord
Fairfax is found setting off to himself large specific tracts.[15] It
was their intention to create hereditary landed estates, modelled on
those existing in England and to be farmed by a numerous class of yeoman
tenantry. But as the very type of farmer-settler most desired as tenants
by the great owners came in, they early and strongly evinced that
determination, common to all in the Colonies, to hold their land in a
freehold that could be passed on indefinitely to their children and thus
insure to them the benefit of their parents' industry and thrift rather
than to become tenants for a limited period of any great estate; and
this no matter how advantageous or tempting the proffered terms of
tenancy. Under then existing conditions, with the supply of new and
cheaply purchasable land seemingly inexhaustible if one had but the
determination and courage to push on to the newer frontier, they went
beyond the great manors, as they came to be called, and seated
themselves in the upper lands or crossed the Blue Ridge to the
Shenandoah Valley. Eventually and much later, when parts of the manors
were sold, it was often in comparatively large parcels and these and the
remaining portions were, as a rule, farmed with slave labor, a custom
practically nonexistent in the northwest part of the county. Thus the
relative thinness of settlement, persisting to this day, of much of the
lower lands of Loudoun may be attributed not wholly to the fact that the
stronger and more fertile lands lay above Goose Creek but in part to the
social history of those early days as well.
[15] The well known Leeds Manor in Fauquier was one; named for Leeds
Castle, the Fairfax seat in Kent.
The first specific grant of land in the later Loudoun appears long
before the treaty of 1722. Under date of the 2nd February, 1709, Captain
Daniel McCarty "of the Parish of Cople in the County of Westmoreland,
Esq." obtained title to 2,993 acres "above the falls of the Potowmack
River, beginning on said River side at the lower end of the Sugar Land
Island opposite to the upper part of the rocks in said River,"[16]
apparently for speculation or investment rather than for immediate
occupation; the number and character of the Indians still to be
encountered thereabout made settlement on isolated plantations or farms
far too risky to be inviting to rich or poor. This Daniel McCarty was
the founder of another eminent family of the Northern Neck which
intermarried in early days with many of the best known of the early
Potomac gentry. He subsequently married, as her second husband, Ann,
sister to Thomas Lee already mentioned, and widow of Colonel William
Fitzhugh of Eagle's Nest in King George County. The joining together of
the prominent families of the lower peninsula began very early and by
the closing years of the eighteenth century had gone so far that almost
all were in very truth "Virginia cousins" of various degrees and through
numerous alliances. Indeed this became so general that the social status
of any family, tracing back to that period and locality, can generally
be determined merely by the test of its affinities.
[16] Land Patents Book, III, 248.
It is remarkable that the literature of romance has concerned itself so
little with Daniel McCarty. His ancestry, his own life and that of his
descendants unite in offering the richest material but, save in the
traditions of Virginia, he is today all but unknown. He was the son of
Donal, the son of Donough, Earl of Clancarty. Donal was an officer in
the Irish Army that fought against King William and was ruined with its
defeat. The Earl and his descendants were exiled and Daniel came to
Virginia as a youth and settled in Westmoreland County. The Earls of
Clancarty were the heads of a family descended from Cormac who was King
of Munster in 483; and Burke, the great authority on the British
peerage, declares that "few pedigrees in the British Empire, if any, can
be traced to a more remote or more exalted source" than theirs; while
another authority asseverates that "long before the founders of the
oldest royal families of Europe, before Rudolph acquired the empire of
Germany, or a Bourbon ascended the throne of France, Cormac McCarty
ruled over Munster and the title of King was at least continued in name
in his posterity down to the reign of Elizabeth."[17] Daniel's eldest
son and heir, Colonel Dennis, married Sarah Ball, first cousin to Mary
Ball, mother of General Washington; and Augustine Washington, the
general's father, named him as one of the executors of his will. It was
another descendant of Captain Daniel who was surviving principal in the
famous McCarty-Mason duel over a century later--an event that so
profoundly stirred the country and cost the life of one of the most
prominent and beloved citizens of the Loudoun of that day.[18]
[17] Journal Cork Historical and Genealogical Society, 2nd Series, Vol.
II, p. 213.
[18] Captain Daniel's descent is given in _The McCarthys in Early
American History_, by Michael J. O'Brien, who corrects Hayden's
assumption that Daniel was the son of Dennis of Lynn Haven, Lower
Norfolk. Also see Chapter XIV.
Francis Aubrey became a large purchaser of Loudoun land soon after the
Iroquois evacuation, first obtaining a grant at the mouth of Broad Run
about 1725. Among the tracts he later acquired was a grant of about 962
acres purchased on the 19th December, 1728 from Lord Fairfax on or near
which later he built a home and lived. Nothing of this early house has
survived; but we know that it was near the "Big Spring" then as now a
conspicuous landmark on the old Carolina Road and about two miles north
of the present Leesburg. Probably "the Chappel above Goose Creek" of
the Truro Vestry books, the Chapel of Ease or convenient neighbourhood
church, the building of which was supervised by him for the Parish, was
immediately adjacent to his home and the location of that structure, the
first church edifice of any kind to be erected within the bounds of
present Loudoun, is known within a fair degree of accuracy and in 1926
with appropriate ceremonies, was marked with a stone monument.[19]
[19] Aubrey's house is shewn on Robert Brooke's survey (1737) of the
Potomac River below the Shenandoah. Original of survey is in Enoch Pratt
Library, Baltimore; photostat copy is in Library of Congress.
Hamilton Parish was coextensive with Prince William County when the
latter was created in 1731. By a legislative act of May, 1732, that part
of Prince William lying above "the river Ockoquan, and the Bull Run (a
branch thereof) and a course thence to the Indian thoroughfare of the
Blue Ridge of Mountains" (Ashby's Gap) was set off as Truro Parish and a
Parish organization promptly followed. The new Parish was named for
Truro in Cornwall, a great mining district, for mining was expected to
be an important industry there. The first Vestry meeting was held on the
7th November, 1732; at a meeting held on the 16th April, 1733, an
agreement was made with the Rev. Lawrence De Butts to preach at the
Parish Church and "at the Chappell above Goose Creek" for 8,000 pounds
of tobacco, clear of the warehouse charges and abatements. The chapel
was then either contemplated or preliminary work on its construction may
have been begun; it was not finished until 1736. But during that
interval it is obvious, from the Vestry records, that occasional
services were held there--perhaps at first in the open air or at the
nearby house of Aubrey and thereafter in the unfinished chapel. At a
Vestry meeting held on the 12th October, 1733, Joseph Johnson was chosen
"Reader to the new Church and the Chappell above Goose Creek.... In the
Parish Levy for this year provision is made for 2,500 pounds of tobacco
to Captain Francis Aubrey toward building the Chapel above Goose Creek,
and the next year the same amount and in 1735, 4,000 pounds for
finishing said chapel."[20] Thus the construction of the chapel cost
the Parish 9,000 pounds of tobacco which about this time seems to have
been valued at eleven shillings per 100 pounds,[21] making the money
cost of the chapel about L49" 10s in Virginia currency or much less in
the more stable money of England. Undoubtedly it was built of logs from
the trees in its immediate vicinity and we may assume that it was very
small.
[20] _History of Truro Parish_, by Rev. Philip Slaughter, D.D., Edited
by Rev. Edward L. Goodwin, p. 7.
[21] Idem, 16.
At a Vestry meeting held on the 18th November, 1735, a payment of 1,000
pounds of tobacco was ordered made to Samuel Hull, Clerk of the Chapel
above Goose Creek. In a meeting nearly a year later, on the 11th
October, 1736, the Vestry ordered "that the Reverend Mr. John Holmes
Minister of this Parish preach six times in each year at the Chappell
above Goose Creek; and it is also ordered, that the Sundays he preached
at the said Chappell the sermon shall be taken from the new Church;" but
Mr. Holmes' ministry seems to have been somewhat irregular for at the
bottom of the page is found this note signed by the Rev. Charles Green
"the first regular Rector of Truro Parish":
"The Levity of the members of the Vestry is worth notice. They applyed
to Collo. Colvill & entered an order, 23d Sept. 1734 for him to procure
them a Clergyman from England. By the order on the other page they gave
Cha. Green a title to the Psh. when ordained, and he had scarcely left
the country when they received Mr. John Holmes into the parish as
appears by the above order. N.B. Mr. Holmes was an Itinerant Preacher
without any orders, & recd. Contrary to Law."
This Dr. Green, for he was a physician before becoming a clergyman, was
"received into, and entertained as Minister" of Truro Parish at a Vestry
meeting held on the 13th day of August, 1737. At the same meeting it was
"ordered that the Churchwardens place the people that are not already
placed, in Pohick and the new Churches in pews, according to their
several ranks and degrees." Also "Ordered that the Reverend Mr. Charles
Green preach four times in a year only, at the Chappell above Goose
Creek. And that the Sundays he preaches at the Chappell, the sermon
shall be taken from the new Church."
At a meeting on the 3rd October, 1737, the Vestry appropriated "To
Francis Aubrey gent. for finding books for the Chappell 200 pounds
tobacco." Also
"Whereas the Rev. Charles Green hath this day agreed with the Vestry to
take the tobacco levied to purchase books for the Chappell above Goose
Creek and ornaments for the Churches, at the rate of eleven shillings
current money per hundred. He by the said agreement obliging himself to
find and provide the said books and ornaments, being allowed fifty per
cent. upon the first cost in accounting with the Church-Wardens. It is
ordered that the collector pay to the said Green the sum of 8000 pounds
of tobacco, it being the quantity this day levied for the purpose
aforesaid."
At a Vestry meeting held on the 15th April, 1745, it was ordered that
Messrs. John West, Ellsey and French view what necessary repairs were
wanting at Goose Creek Chapel and agree with workmen therefor.
That seems to be the extent of the Truro Parish records concerning the
"Chappell." It is believed to have been in use until about 1812 and
thereafter utterly disappeared.[22] In 1742 Fairfax County was created,
consisting of the Parish of Truro. In October, 1748, the Assembly passed
an act dividing Truro Parish at Difficult Run and the upper part became
Cameron Parish, in delicate compliment to the Lord Proprietor's Barony;
but most unfortunately the Vestry book of Cameron, which would be
invaluable source material for the Loudoun student seeking information
for the period from 1748 until after the Revolution, seems to have
wholly disappeared or been destroyed.[23] The Chapel had from its
beginning until it became a part of Cameron Parish, that is from 1733 to
1748, these Clerks and Lay Readers:
Joseph Johnson, new or Falls Church and Goose Creek 1733-1735
Samuel Hull, Goose Creek, 1736-1740
John Richardson, 1741-1745
John Alden, 1745-1746
John Moxley, 1747
Thomas Evans, 1748
[22] _Landmarks of Old Prince William_, 304.
[23] Chapter X post.
Aubrey is believed to have been the son of John Aubrey or Awbrey of
Westmoreland, was an ally and close friend of Thomas Lee and, from his
appearance in what is now Loudoun until his death in 1741, was of such
dominant importance that he has been called its then "first citizen."
When the county of Prince William was set off from Stafford in 1731, he
became a member of its first Court and, in 1732, "the inspector of the
Pohick warehouse and a member of the Truro Vestry." Two years before his
death he became the Sheriff of Prince William County and, at about the
same time, established the ferry at the Point of Rocks.[24]
[24] _Landmarks of Old Prince William_, 148 and 155.
But before Francis Aubrey settled at Big Spring, Philip Noland in 1724
had purchased land at the mouth of Broad Run. He married Aubrey's
daughter Elizabeth and later removed to lands on the Potomac above the
mouth of the Monocacy which his wife had inherited from her father. As
early as 1758 and probably before, Noland operated a ferry across the
Potomac from his new plantation to the Maryland side; thus joining the
Maryland and Virginia sections of the Carolina Road, from the earliest
days of local history a main artery of travel between north and
south.[25] It was in this immediate vicinity that he built the mansion
he was destined never to finish and which still stands incomplete, a
most interesting example of one of the earliest of the more pretentious
homes of Loudoun.
[25] Chapter VI post.