The Cultural History of Marlborough, Virginia Part 3

FOOTNOTES:

[42] Stafford County Order Book, 1689-1694, p. 195.

[43] Stafford County Will Book, Liber Z, pp. 168-169.

[44] _A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles_ (Oxford, 1928), vol. 10, pt. 2, p. 18.

[45] EDWARD H. PINTO, _Treen, or Small Woodware Throughout the Ages_ (London, 1949), p. 20.

[46] Stafford County Will Book, Liber Z, pp. 158-159.

THE GREGG SURVEY

In 1707, after the revival of the Port Act, the new county surveyor, Thomas Gregg, made another survey of the town. This was done apparently without regard to Buckner's original survey. Since Gregg adopted an entirely new system of numbering, and since his survey was lost at an early date, it is impossible to locate by their description the sites of the lots granted in 1708 and after.

Forty years later John Mercer wrote:

It is certain that Thomas Gregg (being the Surveyor of Stafford County) did Sep 2^d 1707 make a new Survey of the Town.... it is as certain that Gregg had no regard either to the bounds or numbers of the former Survey since he begins his Numbers the reverse way making his number 1 in the corner at Buckner's 19 & as his Survey is not to be found its impossible to tell how he continued his Numbers. No scheme I have tried will answer, & the Records differ as much, the streets according to Buckner's Survey running thro the House I lived in built by Ballard tho his whole lot was ditched in according to the Bounds made by Gregg.[47]

Whatever the intent may have been in laying out formal street and lot plans, Marlborough was essentially a rustic village. If Gregg's plat ran streets through the positions of houses on the Buckner survey, and vice versa, it is clear that not much attention was paid to theoretical property lines or streets. Ballard apparently dug a boundary ditch around his lot, according to Virginia practice in the 17th century, but the fact that this must have encroached on property a.s.signed to somebody else on the basis of the Buckner survey seems not to have been noted at the time. Rude houses placed informally and connected by lanes and footpaths, the courthouse attempting to dominate them like a village schoolmaster in a cla.s.s of country b.u.mpkins, a few outbuildings, a boat landing or two, some cultivated land, and a road leading away from the courthouse to the north with another running in the opposite direction to the creek--this is the way Marlborough must have looked even in its best days in 1708.

FOOTNOTES:

[47] John Mercer's Land Book, loc. cit. (footnote 12).

THE DEATH OF MARLBOROUGH AS A TOWN

Could this poor village have survived had the courthouse not burned? It was an unhappy contrast to the vision of a town governed by "benchers of the guild hall," bustling with mercantile activity, swarming on busy market days with ordinaries filled with people. This fantasy may have pulsated briefly through the minds of a few. But, after the abrogation of the Port Act in 1710, there was little left to justify the town's existence other than the courthouse. So long as court kept, there was need for ordinaries and ferries and for independent jacks-of-all-trades like Andrews. But with neither courthouse nor port activity nor manufacture, the town became a paradox in an economy and society of planters.

Remote and inaccessible, uninhabited by individuals whose skills could have given it vigor, Marlborough no longer had any reason for being. It lingered on for a short time, but when John Mercer came to transform the abandoned village into a flouris.h.i.+ng plantation, "Most of the other Buildings were suffered to go to Ruin, so that in the year 1726, when your Pet.i.tioner [i.e., Mercer] went to live there, but one House twenty-feet square was standing."[48]

FOOTNOTES:

[48] Pet.i.tion of John Mercer, loc. cit. (footnote 17).

II

_John Mercer's Occupation of Marlborough, 1726-1730_

MERCER'S ARRIVAL IN STAFFORD COUNTY

By 1723 Marlborough lay abandoned. George Mason (III), son of the late sheriff and ordinary keeper in the port town, held the now-empty t.i.tle of feoffee, together with Rice Hooe. In that year Mason and Hooe pet.i.tioned the General Court "that Leave may be given to bring in a Bill to enable them to sell the said Land [of the town] the same not being built upon or Inhabited." The pet.i.tion was put aside for consideration,"

but within a week--on May 21, 1723--it was "ordered That Rice Hooe & George Mason be at liberty to withdraw their pet.i.tion ... and that the Committee to whom it was referred be discharged from proceeding thereon."[49]

This curious sequence remains unexplained. Had the committee informally advised the feoffees that their cause would be rejected, suggesting, therefore, that they withdraw their pet.i.tion? Or had something unexpected occurred to provide an alternative solution to the problem of Marlborough?

Possibly it was the latter, and the unexpected occurrence may have been the arrival in Stafford County of young John Mercer. There is no direct evidence that Mercer was in the vicinity as early as 1723; but we know that he appeared before 1725, that he had by then become well acquainted with George Mason, and that he settled in Marlborough in 1726.

Mercer's remarkable career began with his arrival in Virginia at the age of 16. Born in Dublin in 1704, the son of a Church Street merchant of English descent--also named John Mercer--and of Grace Fenton Mercer, John was educated at Trinity College, and then sailed for the New World in 1720.[50] How Mercer arrived in Virginia or what means he brought with him are lost to the record. From his own words written toward the end of his life we know that he was not overburdened with wealth:

"Except my education I never got a s.h.i.+lling of my fathers or any other relations estate, every penny I ever got has been by my own industry & with as much fatigue as most people have undergone."[51]

From his second ledger (the first, covering the years 1720-1724, having been lost) we learn that he was engaged in miscellaneous trading, sailing up and down the rivers in his sloop and exchanging goods along the way. Where his home was in these early years we do not know, but it would appear that he had been active in the Stafford County region for some time, judging from the fact that by 1725 he had acc.u.mulated 322 4s. 5-1/2d. worth of tobacco in a warehouse at the falls of the Rappahannock.[52] He certainly had encountered George Mason before then, and probably Mason's uncles, John, David, and James Waugh, the sons of Parson John Waugh, all of whom owned idle Marlborough properties.

Mercer's friends.h.i.+p with the Masons was sufficiently well established by 1725 that on June 10 of that year he married George's sister Catherine.

This marriage, most advantageous to an aspiring young man, was celebrated at Mrs. Ann Fitzhugh's in King George County with the Reverend Alexander Scott of Overwharton Parish in Stafford County officiating.[53] Thus, allied to an established family that was "old" by standards of the time and sponsored socially by a representative of the Fitzhughs, Mercer was admitted at the age of 21 to Virginia's growing aristocracy.

In this animated and energetic youth, the Masons and Waughs probably saw the means of bringing Marlborough back to life. Mercer, for his part, no doubt recognized the advantages that Marlborough offered, with its sheltered harbor and landing, its fertile, flat fields, and airy situation. That it could be acquired piecemeal at a minimum of investment through the provisions of the Act for Ports was an added inducement.

FOOTNOTES:

[49] _JHB, 1712-1726_ (Richmond, 1912), pp. 336, 373.

[50] "Journals of the Council of Virginia in Executive Session 1737-1763," _VHM_ (Richmond, 1907), vol. 14, pp.

232-235.

[51] _George Mercer Papers Relating to the Ohio Company of Virginia_, comp. and edit. by Lois Mulkearn (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1954), p. 204.

[52] John Mercer's Ledger B is the princ.i.p.al source of information for this chapter. It was begun in 1725 and ended in 1732. The original copy is in the library of the Bucks County Historical Society, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, a photostatic copy being in the Virginia State Library. Further footnoted references to the ledger are omitted, since the source in each case is recognizable.

[53] JAMES MERCER GARNET, "James Mercer," _WMQ_ [1]

(Richmond, 1909), vol. 17, pp. 85-98. Mrs. Ann Fitzhugh was the widow of William Fitzhugh III, who died in 1713/14. She was the daughter of Richard Lee and lived at "Eagle's Nest"

in King George County (see "The Fitzhugh Family," VHM [Richmond, 1900], vol. 7, pp. 317-318).

JOHN MERCER AS A TRADER

During 1725 Mercer pressed ahead with his trading enterprises. From his ledger we learn that he sold Richard Ambler of Yorktown 710 pounds of "raw Deerskins" for 35 10s. and bought 200 worth of "sundry goods"

from him. Between October 1725 and February 1726 he sold a variety of furnis.h.i.+ngs and equipment to Richard Johnson, ranging from a "horsewhip"

and a "silk Rugg" to "1/2 doz. Shoemaker's knives" and an "Ivory Comb."

In return he received two hogsheads of tobacco, "a Gallon of syder Laceground," and raw and dressed deerskins. He maintained a similar long account with Mosley Battaley (Battaille) (Appendix C). From William Rogers of Yorktown[54] he bought 12 3s. 6d. worth of earthenware, presumably for resale. The tobacco which he had acc.u.mulated at the falls of the Rappahannock he sold for cash to the Gloucester firm of Whiting & Montague, paying Peter Kemp two pounds "for the extraordinary trouble of y^r coming up so far for it."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 3.--PORTRAIT OF JOHN MERCER, artist unknown. About 1750. (_Courtesy of Mrs. Thomas B. Payne._)]

His sloop was the princ.i.p.al means by which Mercer conducted his business. Occasionally he rented it for hire, once sharing the proceeds of a load of oystersh.e.l.ls with George Mason and one Edgeley, who had sailed the sloop to obtain the sh.e.l.ls. Only one item shows that Mercer extended his mercantile activities to slaves: on February 18, 1726, he sold a mulatto woman named Sarah to Philemon Cavanaugh "to be paid in heavy tobacco each hhd to weigh 300 Neat."

That Mercer was turning in the direction of a legal career is revealed in his first account of "Domestick Expenses" for the fall of 1725 (Appendix D). We find that he was attending court sessions far and wide: "Cash for Exp^s at Stafford & Spotsylvania," "Cash for Exp^s Urbanna,"

the same for "Court Ferrage at Keys." He already was reading in the law, and lent "March's Actions of Slander," "Was.h.i.+ngton's Abridgm^t of y^e Statutes," and "an Exposition of the Law Terms" to Mosley Battaley.

FOOTNOTES:

[54] William Rogers, who died in 1739, made earthenware and stoneware at Yorktown after 1711. See C. MALCOLM WATKINS and IVOR NOeL HUME, "The 'Poor Potter' of Yorktown" (paper 54 in _Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology_, U.S. National Museum Bulletin 249, by various authors; Was.h.i.+ngton: Smithsonian Inst.i.tution), 1967.