ROADS AND BOUNDARIES
We have mentioned in the foregoing pages that an unusual feature in the
settlement of these Stafford or Prince William backwoods, soon to be
known as Loudoun, was not only the diversity of origin of the new
population but that it came almost simultaneously from the north and the
south and the west as well as from the Tidewater east. As the falls of
the Potomac and Rappahannock blocked continuous water transport from the
older settlements, the pioneers all were forced to come through the
woodland trails and these trails or roads, if they could be then so
called, now demand our attention.
What one might call the Appian Way of Piedmont, the _longarum regina
viarum_ as Statius calls the Roman road, was undoubtedly that aboriginal
trail which, perhaps beginning as a buffalo path,[35] was followed
habitually by the Indians in their north-south journeys to the earliest
knowledge of the whites and appears in the records of the Colony at a
very early date. The Carolina Road, as it is best known, became a great
highway between the north and the south and if our surmise be correct
that, in common with so many of our earliest colonial roads, it owes its
origin to a beaten trail made by the heavier animals of the forest, it
was probably used by the Manahoacks and their predecessor tribes long
before the Susquehannocks frequented it in the latter half of the
seventeenth century, not only on their trading journeys between the
Dutch of Manhattan and the Carolina Indians, but in their war forays as
well. The Iroquois of New York, as we have seen, followed their
Susquehannock kindred to Piedmont and in Spotswood's day it was their
ordinary and accustomed route. We think we get our first record of it
among the Susquehannock "plain paths" noted in the Virginia Act of 1662
and it was sometimes referred to by that name. Later and from about 1686
until at least 1742, that part of the road between Brent Town and the
Rappahannock was also known as the "Shenandoah Hunting Path," a name
still occasionally heard; but the popular name was the Carolina Road
with its no less popular descriptive appellation of "The Rogue's Road"
due to the cattle and horse thieves who infested it throughout the
eighteenth century. That these gentry misused the road only, rather than
were residents of the country it traversed, was always maintained, and
apparently with truth, by the Piedmont people; but so numerous had they
become by 1742 that the Assembly passed an act[36] calling on those
driving stock along the public highways to have in their possession a
bill of sale of their cattle and horses to be exhibited to any justice
of the peace when due demand therefor was made. Yet the rogues still
continued to travel their road until the ebb and wane of its traffic in
the early nineteenth century. Although the records fail to shew that
highwaymen plied their trade on this or other Virginia roads, Loudoun
folklore has held to a belief in their activities as witness the legend
concerning Captain Harper, Loudoun's own Robin Hood:
"This portion through the present Loudoun of the old Carolina Road was
then locally known as 'Rogue's Road' on account of the many bold
robberies committed along its route by the famous gentleman highwayman
of the day, Captain Harper, who regularly patrolled it and terrorized
all those who lived adjacent to it until such was the fear of this
dashing and bold highwayman, that women were afraid to venture out upon
this road alone. A rather pretty story is related in this connection--a
young Virginia maiden was walking this road alone one evening about
twilight, hurrying from a visit to a neighbour, when a dashing cavalier
rode up and reined his horse beside her. 'Are you not afraid to walk
this road alone on account of Captain Harper and his band?' he asked.
'No' replied the maiden 'for I have always heard Captain Harper was a
gentleman.' The dashing horseman looked at her a moment and then walked
his horse beside her until she reached the gate leading to her home. And
then raising his hat and bowing he said: 'Captain Harper bids you good
night' and digging the rowels into his steed he vanished as he
came."[37] The writer omits to mention the local tradition that Harper,
though mercilessly robbing the rich, gave generously to the poor.
[35] _Historic Highways of America_, A. B. Hulbert, I, 19.
[36] Hening, V, 176.
[37] Harry T. Harrison in _Loudoun Times_, 20 Dec., 1916.
The Carolina Road entered Virginia at a point on the bank of the
Potomac, above the mouth of Maryland's Monocacy, where Noland's Ferry
sometime prior to 1756 became its connecting link with Maryland; thence
it ran in a southeasterly direction somewhere along the present clay
road to Christ Church just south of modern Lucketts; thence south,
following closely the present Leesburg-Point of Rocks State Highway,
through Leesburg over what is known as King Street (the King's Highway
of yesteryear) and approximately along the present James Monroe Highway
(Route 15 of the United States Highway System) to Verts' Corner, thence
along what is still locally called the Carolina Road (or sometimes the
Gleedsville Road) to Goose Creek at Oatlands. The present hard road from
Verts' Corner to Oatlands, now the main road, was probably built and the
old road's traffic at that point diverted about 1830 when the rough
pavement of the road was undertaken. From Goose Creek at Oatlands the
old road followed United States Route 15 as at present to the Little
River Turnpike, now known as the Lee-Jackson National Highway, just east
of the village of Aldie; crossing this, it followed what is now but a
local and little used county road which, in its progress south of the
county and under changing conditions, eventually crosses the other great
rivers above their falls line and so on to North Carolina. Along its
route the first church in Loudoun, Aubrey's little log "Chapel of Ease,"
was erected at the Big Spring; and later many of the mansions of the
Loudoun gentlefolk, such as the Noland House, Rockland, Springwood,
Selma, Raspberry Plain, Morven, Rokeby, Oatlands, Oak Hill, and others
in due time came to be built and historic "Ordinaries" or taverns such
as that known as West's and later as Lacey's and towns such as Leesburg
and the nearby Aldie grew up. All through the eighteenth century the
flow of its colorful traffic continued and developed in volume until the
founding of the City of Washington, as the nation's Capital, drew to the
east those travelling between the northern and southern States. And now,
over a hundred years after the passing of its golden days of activity,
there are rumoured plans to revive the old road as a main north and
south highway and once again, in the not too distant future, we may see
its old life restored, with motors and trucks speeding along its surface
where the old-time foot and horse-travel and Indians and soldiers,
missionaries and traders, drovers honest or otherwise, were wont slowly
to pass.
Nor are the old mansions and towns the only surviving landmarks along
its way. The famous Big Spring still rises in as steady volume as of
yore; the Tuscarora and Goose Creeks, no longer needfully forded but now
spanned by modern concrete bridges, still flow complacently in their
old-time channels and between them, on the west side of the present road
and two and a half miles south of Leesburg, still stand the old Indian
mounds.
These mounds, for there are others scattered to the west of the one so
noticeable from the highway, have always excited local interest but the
present generation has all but forgotten their traditional story.
Somewhere in the neighbourhood of the house of Mr. T. W. Gaines, on
whose land rises the mound nearest the road, or perhaps over the land
where the mounds themselves now stand, there was fought a hardly
contested Indian battle at about the time the first of the white
pioneers were coming into that neighbourhood. Many years ago the late
Mrs. William H. Martin, then a bride recently come to Leesburg, with the
assistance of the late Miss Lizzie Worsley, who gave a lifetime of study
to the past of Leesburg and Loudoun, carefully gathered up what she then
could of the old story which had been handed down from generation to
generation and incorporated it in a gracefully written "History and
Traditions of Greenway" which was published in the _Record_ of Leesburg,
then edited by her husband.
"Numberless were said to be dead warriors," wrote Mrs. Martin, "who
found their last resting place so far from their native lands beneath
the mounds that were easily distinguishable in the gloom of the thick
forest. This battle had been between the Catawbas of the Carolinas and
the Delawares.[38] An hereditary enmity existed between these two
tribes, distant as they were, the one from the other. A large band of
Delawares, pushing into the territory of the Catawbas had severely
punished that tribe, and victorious, were travelling northward to their
home. The Catawbas followed and unexpectedly fell upon them, having
overtaken them at the Potomac. Terrible and swift was their revenge, yet
such were the fighting qualities of the Delawares thus brought to bay,
that the Catawbas were forced to retreat, without prisoners. But when
the remaining Delaware warriors looked upon their dead they saw the
flower of their tribe, stark in death, and too far to be carried to
their own hunting grounds. So there they were buried...."[39]
[38] According to C. W. Sam's _The Forest Primeval_ (p. 382) the
Delawares and Catawbas were at war in 1732.
[39] Balch Library. Loudoun Clippings, Vol. 2, p. 66.
The surviving conquerors gathered together the bodies of their slain
tribesmen and over them toiled to erect the mounds that still stand. The
mounds and many hundred acres of surrounding land were early acquired by
the Mead family, who later built nearby Greenway, and in that family the
legend was handed down that in the springtime of each year, about the
anniversary of the battle, there came through the forest a band of
Indians who, when they reached the mounds, conducted weird mourning
rites for their fallen brethren, made offerings of arrows and food and
then disappeared in the surrounding woods as silently as they came. As
the years passed, the mourners grew fewer and fewer until at length but
a solitary old warrior arrived and held what proved to be the final
ceremony. But the story does not end with those last solitary rites.
According to the Mead family tradition, year after year, as the night
fell on the anniversary of the battle, weird sounds of conflict came
from the Indian mounds though no person or living thing could be seen.
Perhaps of equal antiquity and second only to the Carolina Road in early
importance but in that respect now by far surpassing it, is the highway
roughly paralleling the Potomac, the old Ridge Road now generally known
as the Alexandria Pike. This road also originated in an Indian trail,
possibly following an earlier buffalo path; it joined the famous Potomac
Path of Tidewater above the ford at Hunting Creek and it was along its
course that we have seen Giles Vandercastel and Burr Harrison, in 1699,
exploring their way on their mission to Conoy Island. This was the main
entrance from the lower part of the Northern Neck to at least so much of
Loudoun as lies between the Potomac and the Catoctin Hills; and along
its course and that of the Colchester Road to the south came the
majority of the Tidewater settlers. Its route through what later was to
be the Town of Leesburg is marked by Loudoun Street. The late Charles O.
Vandevanter of Leesburg, who made a careful study of the location of
these old roads, believed that originally its course west of Leesburg
followed what is now known as the Dry Mill Road to Clark's Gap; but
there is reason to believe that he was mistaken. As the road approaches
the rise of the Catoctin Hills, it certainly at one time followed the
hollow to the west of the present established road and upon the land
later owned by the author; so running west of the present Roxbury Hall
and on to Clark's Gap, marks of its old route being still plainly
discernible. When the highway was incorporated in 1831, its route at
this point was changed to approximately its present location to avoid
the sharpness of the grade as it left the little branch now crossed by
stone culverts. Remains of the old road were discovered in 1923 when
building the private road to the house last named. At the foot of the
hill and in front of the present tenant house, rough piking was
uncovered and nearby, where the path leaves the lane to go to the barn,
some old brick were dug up. The late Samuel Norris, who died in 1933 at
the age of eighty-four, said that at this point there once was a cottage
where, as he had heard when a boy from older people, there had lived a
man whose duty it was to care for the extra horses which were attached
to the stage coaches before they began the abrupt rise of the road at
that point in following the hollow northwesterly. From Clark's Gap the
early road followed the present sandclay road to what is now known as
Ely's Corner, past the present Paeonian Springs and Warner's Cross Roads
and Wheatland and Hillsboro to the depression in the Blue Ridge known
as Vestal's or Key's Gap--Gershom Keys having owned land at that point
as early as 1748 and the Vestal family having operated a ferry across
the Shenandoah nearby at least as early as 1754 and perhaps in 1736; for
we know it was in operation at that time and that one G. Vestal was
living in the immediate neighbourhood then. Washington followed this
road on his mission to Fort du Quesne in 1753 and once again in 1754 as
major of that expedition against the French on the Alleghany (to the
command of which he later succeeded on the illness and death of Colonel
Fry), which resulted in the building and surrender by him of Fort
Necessity.[40] In the following year it was trodden by that brigade of
Braddock's army which, under the command of Sir Peter Halkett, left the
main body of the troops when that main body crossed the Potomac over
into Maryland at the present Georgetown as is related in a later
chapter.
[40] _Landmarks of Old Prince William_, 481, 511.
In an effort to attract the increasing traffic to and from the west,
Leesburg citizens incorporated in 1831 the Leesburg and Snickers' Gap
Turnpike Company which built an improved road north from Clark's Gap to
Snickers' Gap, as the old Williams' Gap had then come to be called; and
this new road (which is the present Alexandria-Winchester Highway) took
the traffic theretofore going through Vestal's Gap and has since been
the northerly main route across the Blue Ridge.
To carry the old Ridge Road over Broad Run, we know that there was
built, before 1755, one of the earliest highway bridges in Loudoun's
territory of which record has been preserved; for on the 1755 edition of
the Fry & Jefferson map a wooden bridge is shewn at that point. The
picturesque stone bridge that now spans the stream, venerable as it
appears, may not have been constructed before 1820, at about which time
that part of the road was being improved by the Leesburg Turnpike
Company; nevertheless in eastern Loudoun it is a popular legend that it
was built by George Washington as a young man and the inhabitants of the
neighbourhood firmly believe that to be true.
The third of the principal roads of colonial Loudoun is called by
Fairfax Harrison the Colchester Road and is described by him as also, in
its first beginning an Indian path, developed about 1728 by King Carter
and his sons Robin and Charles from the Occoquan below the falls "past
the future sites of Payne's Church and the present Fairfax Court House
all the way to the Frying Pan run."[41] The Carters believed that there
was copper on certain of their recently acquired lands and this road was
developed to bring the ore to tidewater. It became known as the Ox Road
and a year or so later joined Walter Griffin's Rolling Road running west
across Little Rocky Run and eventually across Elk Lick and Bull Run,
across the Carolina Road (near which crossing West's Ordinary was
built), and so above the ford over Little River to the Blue Ridge Road
to Williams' Gap. It was over this road that the youthful Washington
returned in the spring of 1748 from his survey with George William
Fairfax of the lands of Lord Fairfax in the valley and thus first set
foot in the present Loudoun; crossing the Blue Ridge at Williams'
Gap[42] they proceeded to William West's house, later to be licensed as
West's Ordinary and still later as Lacey's. Incidentally this old
building and landmark continued to stand until the year 1927 when it was
quite needlessly and most unfortunately torn down.
[41] _Landmarks_, 423; also C. O. Van Devanter in _Loudoun County
Breeders Magazine_, spring, 1931.
[42] Washington's _Journal Of My Journey Over the Mountains_. Edited by
Dr. J. M. Toner in 1892. p. 52.
The Colchester Road continued to be a main thoroughfare up to about 1806
when the construction of Little River Turnpike diverted most of its
travel and the new road with its branches became the principal highway
system in southern Loudoun.
The Virginia roads in the early days were in terrible condition for
wheeled traffic. Their most earnest defenders can only allege that they
were no worse than other American roads of those days and better than
many, a defense that damns without even the proverbial faint praise.
Englishmen of the period were still asleep in their attitude toward road
building and many of the highways of England seem to have been as bad as
those in America. One peculiarity of the Virginia road was its general
lack of side-fencing. Adjacent property owners were quite apt to run
their boundary fences across the highway, leaving a gate for the
traveller to open and pass through. Curious as this may seem to us, it
was not wholly without its advantage; for where the highway had become a
sink-hole of mud, it thus was possible for the passer-by to make as wide
a detour through adjacent fields or woods as might be necessary to avoid
the obstruction. This throws light upon the effort at Georgetown,
predecessor settlement of the larger Leesburg, to have the course of the
Carolina Road as it passed through that hamlet definitely established by
the court as early as 1742 and again in 1757.[43]
[43] Balch Library Clippings, III, 41 and 53.
Bridges were few, far between, and primitive. There was, as we have
shewn, a wooden bridge prior to 1755 carrying the Ridge Road over Broad
Run and it is believed that prior to 1739, the same road crossed
Difficult near Colvin Run over a bridge of sorts; but for the most part
fords were used to cross streams, or ferries in the case of the Potomac
and other great rivers. When fords and ferries failed, the mounted
traveller swam his horse across, leaving the wayfarer on foot to such
more precarious adventure as conditions and his courage offered.
In a preceding chapter we have seen the Vestrymen of Truro Parish
engaged in ecclesiastical affairs committed to their charge; among their
secular duties was to appoint every four years reputable Freeholders to
"perambulate" the Parish, that is to say to travel over the plantations
and farms within it and renew their landmarks. In Virginia this was
called "processioning" but it derived from a very ancient English
practice know as "beating the bounds" believed to have been brought by
Saint Augustine to England from Gaul where "it may have been derived
from the Roman festival of Terminus, the god of landmarks, to whom cakes
and ale were offered, sports and dancing taking place at the
boundaries." In England we find the "beating of the bounds" observed
under Alfred and Aethelstan, whose laws mention it. In later days, maps
still being rare, it continued an English parish custom, generally
observed on Ascension Day or during Rogation Week. A procession was
formed, headed by the Priest of the Parish, the Churchwardens and other
Parish dignitaries and followed by a crowd of boys who were armed with
sticks with which they beat the Parish boundary stones and were
sometimes beaten themselves at each marker in order to fix those markers
in their minds and to insure the location of the boundary stones being
remembered through the life of the younger generation. The procession
frequently ended in a "parish-ale" or feast which doubtlessly assisted
in reconciling the boys to it all.[44] In earlier days the Priests
sought the Divine blessing for the following harvest on the lands within
the parish. But translated to Virginia the procedure was robbed of much
of its formality and many of its picturesque features and came to apply
to renewing the landmarks of private holdings rather than confirming in
memory those of the Parish bounds. There was a Truro Vestry meeting held
on the 8th October, 1743, to appoint "Processioners," which meeting, the
record states, was pursuant to an order of Fairfax County Court, Loudoun
then being included in Fairfax. The Vestrymen at their meeting "laid off
the said Parish into Precincts and appointed Processioners in manner
following." As the men appointed were representative men in their
neighbourhoods and as the "Precinct" may be taken to forecast the later
division of Loudoun into its Magisterial Districts of modern days, it is
interesting to study so much of the record as refers to the country
above Difficult Run which in a few years was to be organized as Loudoun:
"That John Trammell and John Harle procession between Difficult Run and
Broad Run; that Anthony Hampton and William Moore procession between
Broad Run and the south side of Goose Creek as far as the fork of Little
River; that Philip Noland and John Lasswell procession between Goose
Creek and Limestone Run as far as the fork of Little River; that Amos
Janney and William Hawling procession between Limestone Run and the
south branch of Kitoctan.
[44] _Encyclopedia Britannica_, and W. S. Walsh's _Curiosities of
Popular Customs_.
"Between the south fork of Kitoctan and Williams Gap, no free holder in
this precinct; between Williams Gap, Ashley's Gap, the County line and
Goose Creek, to the Beaver Dam, and back to the Gap, no freeholder in
this precinct. Between the Beaver Dam and the north east fork of Goose
Creek no freeholder in this precinct."
Level Jackson and Jacob Lasswell were ordered to procession between the
northeast and northwest forks of Goose Creek; John Middleton and Edward
Hews between Little River and Goose Creek; William West and William Hall
Junior between Little River and Walnut "Cabbin" branch; George Adams and
Daniel Diskin between Walnut Cabbin branch, Broad run and Cub run and
Popes head. The editors of the record add that these Processioners owned
land within their several precincts at that date.[45]
[45] _History of Truro Parish in Virginia_, 19.
The statement that there were no freeholders
(a) between the south fork of "Kitoctan" and Williams Gap;
and
(b) between Williams Gap, Ashley's Gap, the County line and
Goose Creek to the Beaver Dam and back to the Gap; and
(c) between the Beaver Dam and the north east fork of Goose
Creek
is interesting. A and C take in parts of the Quaker Settlement. Also it
is traditional in the Osburn family of Loudoun that their forebears John
and Nicholas Osburn, sons of Richard Osburn of New Jersey and later of
Chester County, Pennsylvania, came from Pennsylvania to the Shenandoah
Valley near Harper's Ferry and thence in 1734 crossed the Blue Ridge and
settled on its eastern foothills near the present Bluemont. It may be
that with other pioneers in the upper lands they occupied their farms at
first without title and later were obliged to buy the lands they had
rescued from the wilderness from the more shrewd and far-sighted land
speculators for we find no grants from the Proprietor to them. Many of
the earliest settlers were in that position. Catesby Cocke and Benjamin
Grayson particularly, took title to great tracts west of the Catoctin
Hills and in 1740 sold their holdings to John Colvil of Cleesch as will
later appear.[46] Neither Cocke nor Grayson were settlers in Loudoun.
The former was the son of Dr. William Cocke, Secretary of State and he
himself had been successively clerk of the counties of Stafford, Prince
William and Fairfax. Grayson, a Scotch merchant from Quantico, became
the father of Colonel William Grayson of Revolutionary fame who, with
Richard Henry Lee, first represented Virginia in the United States
Senate.
[46] See Chapter VII post.