1752.
Dinwiddie, Governor--Ohio Company--Lawrence Washington--His
Views on Religious Freedom--Davies and the Dissenters--
Dissensions between Dinwiddie and the Assembly--George
Washington--His Lineage--Early Education--William Fairfax--
Washington a Surveyor--Lord Fairfax--Washington Adjutant-General.
A NEW epoch dawns with the administration of Robert Dinwiddie, who
arrived in Virginia as lieutenant-governor early in 1752, with the
purpose of repressing the encroachments of the French, of extending the
confines of Virginia, and of enlarging the Indian trade. A vast tract of
land, mostly lying west of the mountains and south of the Ohio, was
granted by the king about the year 1749, to a company of planters and
merchants. This scheme appears to have been brought forward in the
preceding year by Thomas Lee of the council, and he became associated
with twelve persons in Virginia and Maryland, and with Mr. Hanbury, a
London Quaker merchant, and they were incorporated as "The Ohio
Company." Lawrence and Augustine Washington were early and prominent
members of this company. The company sent out Mr. Christopher Gist to
explore the country on the Ohio as far as the falls. He was, like Boone,
from the banks of the Yadkin, an expert pioneer, at home in the
wilderness and among the Indians, adventurous, hardy, and intrepid.
Crossing the Ohio, he found the country well watered and wooded, with
here and there plains covered with wild rye, or meadows of blue grass
and clover. He observed numerous buffaloes, deer, elk, and wild turkeys.
Returning to the Ohio and recrossing it, Gist proceeded toward the
Cuttawa or Kentucky River. Ascending to the summit of a mountain, he
beheld that magnificent region long before it was seen by Daniel
Boone.[453:A]
On the 13th of June, 1752, a treaty was effected with the western
Indians at Logstown, on the Ohio, by which they agreed not to molest any
settlements that might be made on the southeast side of the Ohio.
Colonel Fry and two other commissioners represented Virginia on this
occasion, while Gist appeared as agent of the Ohio Company.
Thomas Lee, the projector of this company, having not survived long
after its incorporation, the chief conduct of it fell into the hands of
Lawrence Washington. Governor Dinwiddie and George Mason were also
members. There were twenty shares and as many members. Lawrence
Washington, being desirous of colonizing Germans on the company's lands,
wrote to Mr. Hanbury as follows: "While the unhappy state of my health
called me back to our springs,[453:B] I conversed with all the
Pennsylvanian Dutch whom I met with, either there or elsewhere, and much
recommended their settling on the Ohio. The chief reason against it was,
the paying of an English clergyman, when few understood and none made
use of him. It has been my opinion, and I hope ever will be, that
restraints on conscience are cruel in regard to those on whom they are
imposed, and injurious to the country imposing them. England, Holland,
and Prussia, I may quote as examples, and much more, Pennsylvania, which
has flourished under that delightful liberty so as to become the
admiration of every man who considers the short time it has been
settled. As the ministry have thus far shown the true spirit of
patriotism, by encouraging the extending of our dominions in America, I
doubt not by an application they would still go farther, and complete
what they have begun, by procuring some kind of charter to prevent the
residents on the Ohio and its branches from being subject to parish
taxes. They all assured me that they might have from Germany any number
of settlers, could they but obtain their favorite exemption. I have
promised to endeavor for it, and now do my utmost by this letter. I am
well assured we shall never obtain it by a law here. This colony was
greatly settled, in the latter part of Charles the First's time and
during the usurpation, by the zealous churchmen, and that spirit which
was then brought in has ever since continued, so that, except a few
Quakers, we have no dissenters. But what has been the consequence? We
have increased by slow degrees, except negroes and convicts, while our
neighboring colonies, whose natural advantages are greatly inferior to
ours, have become populous."[454:A] He also wrote to Governor Dinwiddie,
then in England, to the same effect. He replied that it would be
difficult to obtain the desired exemption for the Dutch settlers, but
promised to use his utmost endeavors to effect it. It does not appear
whether the ministry ever came to a decision on this subject. The
non-conformists augured favorably of Dinwiddie's administration. The
Rev. Jonathan Edwards, in a letter addressed to Rev. John Erskine, of
the Kirk of Scotland, says: "What you write of the appointment of a
gentleman to the office of lieutenant-governor of Virginia, who is a
friend to religion, is an event that the friends of religion in America
have great reason to rejoice in, by reason of the late revival of
religion in that province, and the opposition that has been made against
it, and the great endeavors to crush it by many of the chief men of the
province. Mr. Davies, in a letter I lately received from him, dated
March 2d, 1752, mentions the same thing. His words are, 'We have a new
governor who is a candid, condescending gentleman. And as he has been
educated in the Church of Scotland, he has a respect for the
Presbyterians, which I hope is a happy omen.'" Jonathan Edwards was
invited in the summer of 1751 to come and settle in Virginia, and a
handsome sum was subscribed for his support; but he was installed at
Stockbridge, in Massachusetts, before the messenger from Virginia
reached him.[454:B]
Dinwiddie, the new governor, an able man, had been a clerk to a
collector in a West India custom-house, whose enormous defalcation he
exposed to the government; and for this service, it is said, he was
promoted, in 1741, to the office of surveyor of the customs for the
colonies, and now to the post of governor of Virginia. She was at this
time one of the most populous and the most wealthy of all the
Anglo-American colonies. Dinwiddie, upon his arrival, gave offence by
declaring the king's dissent to certain acts which Gooch had approved;
and in June, 1752, the assembly remonstrated against this exercise of
the royal prerogative; but their remonstrance proved unavailing. The
Virginians were in the habit of acquiring lands without expense, by
means of a warrant of a survey without a patent. Dinwiddie found a
million of unpatented acres thus possessed, and he established, with the
advice of the council, a fee of a pistole (equivalent to three dollars
and sixty cents) for every seal annexed to a grant. Against this measure
the assembly, in December, 1753, passed strong resolutions, and declared
that whoever should pay that fee should be considered a betrayer of the
rights of the people; and they sent the attorney-general, Peyton
Randolph, as their agent, to England, with a salary of two thousand
pounds, to procure redress. The board of trade, after virtually deciding
in favor of Dinwiddie, recommended a compromise of the dispute, and
advised him to reinstate Randolph in the office of attorney-general, as
the times required harmony and mutual confidence. The assembly appear to
have been much disturbed upon a small occasion. During Randolph's
absence Dinwiddie wrote to a correspondent in England: "I have had a
great deal of trouble and uneasiness from the factious disputes and
violent heats of a most impudent, troublesome party here, in regard to
that silly fee of a pistole; they are very full of the success of their
party, which I give small notice to."
The natural prejudice felt by the aristocracy of Virginia against
Dinwiddie, as an untitled Scotchman, was increased by a former
altercation with him. When, in 1741, he was made surveyor-general of the
customs, he was appointed, as his predecessors had been, a member of the
several councils of the colonies. Gooch obeyed the order; but the
council, prompted by their old jealousy of the surveyor-general's
interfering with their municipal laws, and still more by their
overweening exclusiveness, refused to permit him to act with them,
either in the council or on the bench. The board of trade decided the
controversy in favor of Dinwiddie.[456:A]
It was during Dinwiddie's administration that the name of George
Washington began to attract public attention. The curiosity of his
admirers has traced the family back to the Conquest. Sir William
Washington, of Packington, in the County of Kent, married a sister of
George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, and favorite of Charles the First.
Lieutenant-Colonel James Washington, taking up arms in the royal cause,
lost his life at the siege of Pontefract Castle. Sir Henry Washington,
son and heir of Sir William, distinguished himself while serving under
Prince Rupert, at the storming of Bristol, in 1643, and again a few
years after, while in command of Worcester. His uncles, John and
Lawrence Washington, in the year 1657, emigrated to Virginia, and
settled in Westmoreland. John married a Miss Anne Pope, and resided at
Bridge's or Bridge Creek, in that county. It is he who has been before
mentioned as commanding the Virginia troops against the Indians not long
before the breaking out of Bacon's rebellion. He and his brother
Lawrence both died in 1677; their wills are preserved; they both appear
to have had estates in England as well as in Virginia. His grandson,
Augustine, father of George, born in 1694, married first in April, 1715,
Jane Butler; and their two sons, Lawrence and Augustine, survived their
childhood. In March, 1730, Augustine Washington, Sr., married secondly,
Mary Ball. The issue of this union were four sons, George, Samuel, John
Augustine, and Charles, and two daughters, Elizabeth or Betty, and
Mildred, who died an infant. George Washington was born on the
twenty-second day of February, N. S., 1732. The birth-place is sometimes
called Bridge's Creek, and sometimes Pope's Creek; the house stood about
a mile apart between the two creeks, but nearer to Pope's. Of the
steep-roofed house which overlooked the Potomac, a brick chimney and
some scattered bricks alone remain. George, it is seen, was the eldest
child of a second marriage.
Not long after his birth his father removed to a seat opposite
Fredericksburg; and this was the scene of George's boyhood; but the
house has disappeared. He received only a plain English education,
having obtained his first instruction at an old field school, under a
teacher named Hobby--the parish sexton. The military spirit pervading
the colony reached the school; in these military amusements George
Washington was predominant; but he found a competitor in William Bustle.
Augustine Washington, the father of George, died in April, 1743, aged
forty-nine years. He left a large estate. Not long afterwards Lawrence
Washington married Anne, eldest daughter of the Honorable William
Fairfax, and took up his residence at Mount Vernon, in Fairfax County.
Augustine resided at Bridge's Creek, and married Anne, daughter of
William Aylett, Esq., of Westmoreland County. George remained under the
care of his mother, and was sent to stay for a time with his brother
Augustine, to go to a school under charge of a teacher named Williams.
It is probable that, as he taught him his daily lesson, he little
anticipated the figure which his pupil was destined to make in the
world. While he became thorough in what he learned he became expert in
manly and athletic exercises. As he advanced in years he was a frequent
guest at Mount Vernon, and became familiar with the Fairfax family at
Belvoir, (called in England Beaver,) a few miles below, on the Potomac.
In the year 1747, when George was in his fourteenth year, a midshipman's
warrant was obtained for him by his brother Lawrence. His father-in-law,
William Fairfax, in September of the preceding year, had written to him:
"George has been with us, and says he will be steady, and thankfully
follow your advice as his best friend." From his promise to be steady,
it may be inferred that he was then not so. And from his consenting to
follow thankfully his brother's advice, it would appear that the plan of
his going to sea originated with Lawrence, and not from George's strong
bent that way, as has been commonly stated.
While the matter was still undetermined, his uncle, Joseph Ball, who,
having married an English lady, had settled as a lawyer in London, wrote
as follows to his sister Mary, the mother of Washington, in a letter
dated at Strafford-by-Bow, May the 19th, 1747: "I understand that you
are advised, and have some thoughts of putting your son George to sea.
I think he had better be put apprentice to a tinker; for a common sailor
before the mast has by no means the liberty of the subject; for they
will press him from a ship where he has fifty shillings a month, and
make him take twenty-three, and cut, and slash, and use him like a
negro, or rather like a dog. And as to any considerable preferment in
the navy, it is not to be expected, as there are always so many gaping
for it here who have interest, and he has none. And if he should get to
be master of a Virginia ship, (which it is very difficult to do,) a
planter that has three or four hundred acres of land, and three or four
slaves, if he be industrious, may live more comfortably and have his
family in better bread, than such a master of a ship can. He must not be
too hasty to be rich, but go on gently and with patience as things will
naturally go. This method without aiming at being a fine gentleman
before his time, will carry a man more comfortably and surely through
the world than going to sea, unless it be a great chance indeed. I pray
God keep you and yours.
"Your loving brother,
"JOSEPH BALL."[458:A]
At length the mother's affectionate opposition prevented the execution
of this scheme. George Washington now devoted himself to his studies,
especially the mathematics and surveying.
The marriage of his brother, Lawrence Washington, with Miss Fairfax,
introduced George to the favor of Thomas Lord Fairfax, proprietor of the
Northern Neck, who gave him an appointment as surveyor. He was now
little more than sixteen years of age. After crossing the Blue Ridge,
the surveying party, including George Fairfax, entered a wilderness
where they were exposed to the inclemency of the season, and subjected
to hardship and fatigue. It was in the month of March, in the eventful
year 1748; snow yet lingered on the mountain-tops, and the streams were
swollen into torrents. The survey-lands lay on the Shenandoah, near the
site of Winchester, and beyond the first range of the Alleghanies, on
the south branch of the Potomac, about seventy miles above Harper's
Ferry. This kind of life was well fitted to train young Washington for
his future career: a knowledge of topography taught him how to select a
ground for encampment or for battle; while hardy exercise and exposure
invigorated a frame naturally athletic, and fitted him to endure the
privations and encounter the dangers of military life. He now became
acquainted with the temper and habits of the people of the frontier, and
the Indians; and grew familiar with the wild country which was to be the
scene of his early military operations. His regular pay was a doubloon
(seven dollars and twenty cents) a day, and occasionally six pistoles
(twenty-one dollars and sixty cents.)
Appointed by the president of William and Mary College, in July, 1749, a
public surveyor, he continued to engage in this pursuit for three years,
except during the rigor of the winter months. Lord Fairfax had taken up
his residence at Greenway Court, thirteen miles southeast of the site of
Winchester. A graduate of Oxford, accustomed to that society in England
to which his rank entitled him, fond of literature, and having
contributed some numbers to the _Spectator_, this nobleman, owing to a
disappointment in love, had come to superintend his vast landed
possessions, embracing twenty-one large counties, and live in the
secluded Valley of the Shenandoah. Here Washington, the youthful
surveyor, was a frequent inmate; and here he indulged his taste for
hunting, and improved himself by reading and conversing with Lord
Fairfax.
FOOTNOTES:
[453:A] Sparks' Writings of Washington, ii. 478; Irving's Washington, i.
59.
[453:B] At Bath, in Virginia.
[454:A] Sparks' Writings of Washington, ii. 481.
[454:B] Foote's Sketches, 219.
[456:A] Chalmers' Hist. of Revolt of Amer. Colonies, ii. 199.
[458:A] Bishop Meade's Old Churches, etc.