The Fabulous History Of The Dismal Swamp Company Part 14

After John Page's third term as governor ended, he and Margaret Lowther Page and their children left Richmond in the first week of January 1806. They traveled to Rosewell by way of Westover and Williamsburg, where they stayed with St. George Tucker and his family. Mary Willing Byrd and Lelia Tucker enjoyed Margaret Page's company, but behind her back they pitied her. Mary Willing Byrd said: "I wish her more happiness, than I fear awaits her at Rosewell." Noticing that Margaret Page was pregnant again, Lelia Tucker thought: "Poor Lady! she is in the way to increase her family, already too large for their means of support."

John Page let go of more land in Gloucester County during his last year as governor. His estate shrank to 800 acres, most of it uncultivated. With fifteen slaves over the age of twelve, Rosewell could do little more than produce food to support its inhabitants and some surplus commodities. These seldom commanded cash; the plantation cleared, at most, $500 in a year. In his first summer back at Rosewell, Page mused about Virginians and wealth. He told himself that he could have left his family rich if he had refused to pay his debts, perhaps borrowed still more, and died in debtors' prison after conveying his property to his wife and children. His default would not have harmed them, as he had learned from sixty-three years of living in Virginia: "they would always be respected in proportion to their riches, and...both I and they would have been despised had I left them poor." He refrained from following this course, he believed, only because he had a strong Christian faith, expressed through the Church of England, later the American Episcopal Church. If he had taken no thought for his soul, he could have told his family "that they ought to enjoy their hearts desire in all things and say 'let us eat & drink for tomorrow we die.'" If he were not a Christian, Page concluded, he would not be a republican. He would prefer "a despotic Prince to preserve a greater degree of Order, & security of life & Property." Appeals to morality would be merely "a good Countenance to restrain others from injuring me, and mine, & from interfering too much with me when in pursuit of favorite Gratifications." Only Christian faith had rescued him from such egotistical materialism.

Page recently had heard of a terrible example of the consequences of irreligion. Chancellor George Wythe, still active in court at the age of eighty, was murdered by his sister's grandson, who lived in Wythe's home in Richmond. Wis.h.i.+ng to hasten the day of coming into his inheritance, George Wythe Sweeney put a.r.s.enic in the old man's coffee. Wythe long had been a deist, Page said; this meant that he had raised young Sweeney without Christian morality. The young man wanted money. Nothing restrained him. He forged checks. He killed his guardian. An irreligious Virginia, Page suggested, risked becoming either a despotism or a commonwealth of Sweeneys.

John Page spent the last two years of his life holding a federal patronage appointment under the Treasury Department as commissioner of loans in Richmond. His duties were light, consisting chiefly of signing his name. He borrowed more money to support his family. He wrote to Thomas Jefferson, who gave him the position: "Rosewell is all I have left, of Land, & by Sales & Deaths of Negroes, I have not enough to Work it!" it!" He and his wife worried about the future education of their children, requiring money they did not have. Margaret Lowther Page confided to St. George Tucker: "I am very unhappy." John Page knew. He wrote to Jefferson of "my dear unhappy Wife." He and his wife worried about the future education of their children, requiring money they did not have. Margaret Lowther Page confided to St. George Tucker: "I am very unhappy." John Page knew. He wrote to Jefferson of "my dear unhappy Wife."

In the last summer of John Page's life, Skelton Jones of Richmond, collecting material on the history of Virginia, submitted biographical questions to him. Writing answers took him back to happier times. He recalled the learning and the virtue of his ancestors. His "dear, pure minded and American patriotic" grandfather, Mann Page, creator of the mansion at Rosewell, had "checked the British Merchants from claiming even freight on their goods from England." His father, Mann Page, had received encouragement to pay court to Sir Gregory Page, a baronet in England, in expectation of becoming his heir. "But he despised t.i.tles sixty years ago, as much as you and I do now; and would have nothing to say to the rich silly Knight, who died, leaving his estate and t.i.tle to a sillier man than himself, his sister's son, a Mr. Turner, on condition that he would take the name and t.i.tle of Sir Gregory Page." Family tradition had garbled the story: Sir Gregory Turner was already a baronet in his own right when he inherited Sir Gregory Page's landed estates in 1775, becoming Sir Gregory Page-Turner. But John Page had learned from his father's independent spirit that the Virginia Pages did not sacrifice self-respect for t.i.tles and riches.

John Page fondly described his grandmother, Judith Carter Page, who introduced him to the world of books. He remembered "our highly enlightened Governor Fauquier." From the age of fifteen through the completion of his studies at the college, Page had lived in Williamsburg while Fauquier made the governor's palace a center of learning, science, and music. Page proudly recalled standing by his "Whiggish principles" in openly challenging the Tory governor, Lord Dunmore, while serving on the college's board of visitors and on the king's Council. Page listed public offices he had filled. He said that, if he lived, he would write his memoirs. On Tuesday, October 11, 1808, John Page died. Two months later, Margaret Lowther Page and her children again visited the Tuckers in Williamsburg on their journey from Richmond back to Rosewell.

Within days of her return to the neglected mansion she wrote to St. George Tucker: "To clear the Estate from Debt is my first Object." She lived for another thirty years, apparently spending most of her time in Williamsburg and Richmond. Following the example of Mary Willing Byrd, she brought order to her late husband's tangled affairs. After eight and a half years of effort she wrote to Tucker: "I know it will give you pleasure to learn that I am entirely free from Debt, and have no Extravagance to regret in the Past-nor dread antic.i.p.ation of the privations of the Future." By that time the big brick mansion at Rosewell was "in bad repair." Margaret Lowther Page, a New Yorker, and her children were the last Pages to walk as owners across the black-and-white marble floor of the great hall and climb the mahogany staircase to move among more than a dozen rooms paneled in different woods. At her death, the Page heirs sold the Rosewell estate and the decaying mansion-with its leaking roof, broken windows, and rats-for $12,000.

Henry Lee received a letter from Robert Morris late in the summer of 1801, a reply to "two distressing letters" he had written. Lee was still trying to get repayment of at least part of his $40,000 loan. Morris informed him that his letters had arrived while commissioners of bankruptcy and creditors were going through Morris's papers to make sure they had seized all his a.s.sets before releasing him from the Prune Street prison. His "good wishes," Morris told Lee, "is all that is left in my power. those you have & ever will have." From that day, if not before, Lee's own insolvency or imprisonment became certain.

Lawsuits, foreclosures, insistent creditors attacked him on all sides. Though Lee had been too young to contract debts with British merchants before the Revolutionary War, John Wickham took him to court on behalf of the House of Hanbury, seeking payment of the debts of Matilda Lee's father, Philip Ludwell Lee. In his customary manner Wickham wrote: "You will naturally suppose that no further Indulgence can be granted." But by 1804, Wickham had to report on Lee to his client: "he & all his sureties had become insolvent." Lee sold more and more land in Westmoreland County. The Stratford estate was not his to sell, since he had only a widower's life interest in it. Elsewhere in the county his holdings fell from 2,049 acres to 236. Lee's western purchases, like Morris's, had been indiscriminate. Too much property fit the description of his tracts in the mountains above the Shenandoah Valley: "the situation is very unfavorable, in most places too steep for cultivation; whenever you meet with a level spot, there the soil is very fine, but very few of these spots have I met with that are called General Lee's land."

Lee had acquired a reputation for deeding the same property to two different people, for conveying to others land he did not own, for promising to convey t.i.tle yet not sending deeds. An agent for one of his creditors warned in April 1805: "as all t.i.tles of land held under Genl. Lee may be supposed as precarious, these that he cannot shew any evidence of t.i.tle for, must be doubly so." Sometimes Lee took offense at complaints. After receiving seven letters from William Hodgson pressing him to pay, he replied that he did not like to be addressed as if he were a professed cheat. To which Hodgson rejoined that his letters only stated facts without imputing motives; an unpaid creditor remained unpaid whether or not his debtor intended to cheat him. In July 1805, Nathaniel Pendleton wrote: "I would give $250 to have General Lee arrested in Fairfax."

Lee evaded sheriffs for several more years, but by early 1809 he could no longer raise enough cash to fend off his creditors. Yet he did not wish to imitate Robert Morris and give up all his property by declaring himself insolvent. He wrote on March 4: "I am miserable [in]deed, as I must prepare for jail." Just before he surrendered to the sheriff of Westmoreland County, he wrote to Bushrod Was.h.i.+ngton. He said that he was willing to return George Was.h.i.+ngton's four quarter-shares in the Dismal Swamp Company to Was.h.i.+ngton's estate without demanding a refund of payments he had made. He had many reasons for regret, but he had it in his power to clear himself of his most embarra.s.sing failure to pay.

Henry Lee entered the Westmoreland County jail on April 24, 1809. During his brief stay there, he and his wife signed a deed conveying all their "right, t.i.tle and interest" in the Dismal Swamp Company to the estate of George Was.h.i.+ngton. Lee was transferred to the Spotsylvania County jail on May 13. Jailer Thomas Hicks signed a receipt for "the Body of Henry Lee," confined at the suit of Nathaniel Pendleton and others. Virginia law did not require that Lee stay locked in a cell. He moved within Spotsylvania County's equivalent of "prison bounds." After one year, however, he must pay his debt or give up his property and take an oath of insolvency or go into close confinement. Lee waited eleven months before making his choice.

He devoted his time not to sorting out his confused transactions but to writing his memoirs. He filled long sheets of paper with his sprawling, sometimes barely legible handwriting. He was telling his story of the last years of the Revolutionary War in the Carolinas. His main character was twenty-five years old: Light-Horse Harry Lee, commander of Lee's Legion-a special unit of 100 cavalrymen and 180 infantrymen-repeatedly outwitting the forces of Lord Cornwallis. For good measure he added an account of the last invasions of Virginia, with their climax in the surrender of Cornwallis's army to George Was.h.i.+ngton at York Town. George Was.h.i.+ngton Parke Custis, Martha Was.h.i.+ngton's grandson, later said of Lee's behavior in the days of his financial ruin: "The fame and memory of his chief was the fondly-cherished pa.s.sion to which he clung amid the wreck of his fortunes-the hope, which gave warmth to his heart when all around him seemed cold and desolate."

As the first anniversary of Lee's confinement neared, he reluctantly surrendered his property, drawing up a list of his holdings and specifying to which debts they should be applied. His life interest in Stratford Hall he conveyed to his oldest son, Matilda Lee's heir, the last Lee to own the mansion. Henry Lee took the oath of insolvency; Sheriff Edward Henderson and Jailer Hicks released him on Wednesday, March 20, 1810.

Shareholders in the Dismal Swamp Ca.n.a.l Company received from the management repeated calls for money. Each year its sometime president, Thomas Newton, Jr., said that the northern and southern trenches were about to meet at a proper width. But hiring and feeding slave laborers was expensive. Work often stopped as the company ran out of money. The ca.n.a.l made little headway in the summer of 1802. Yet Newton wrote to Governor James Monroe: "I think the boats may pa.s.s through by next summer." Two years later Newton wrote to Governor Page: "I think the boats may pa.s.s through by next summer."

The Dismal Swamp Company also relied on the labor of hired slaves for its lumber business. White men and black men came to an understanding: the blacks turned out enough s.h.i.+ngles; the whites left them to do it in their own way. Workers spent most of each week in the swamp, felling white cedar trees and cutting s.h.i.+ngles. The men were spread out, a few in each camp, sleeping on cedar chips in low, flimsy shanties built on mounds of leftover wood. If they produced their s.h.i.+ngles in five days, they took two days for themselves outside the swamp. Some weeks they took three. Their owners and other whites in and near Suffolk complained that the s.h.i.+ngle-getters had "too much leisure time," which they spent "improperly." The black men's labor in the swamp furnished the company with hundreds of thousands of s.h.i.+ngles each year through a system which lasted for decades.

At a meeting in May 1804 the managers of the Dismal Swamp Company resolved: "The Negroes & etc to be sold." This decision ended all vestiges of the original scheme devised by the elder William Byrd and afterward persuasively presented to the accommodating Governor Francis Fauquier. The partners at last admitted that for years they had not envisioned a self-supporting, growing population of company slaves who would turn the Dismal Swamp into farmland to make shareholders rich. Their true source of profit always had stood fully grown in the swamp. In 1807 the company's hired slaves made 928,700 three-foot cedar s.h.i.+ngles; in 1808 they made 1,285,900. Antic.i.p.ating larger dividends, the partners bought for the company as many quarter-shares as they could. The two-thirds of Anthony Bacon's share which had come to James Bacon were sold to the company. The namesake cousin of William Nelson, Jr.-William Nelson of Caroline and King William counties-had inherited one-third of the share owned by his father, Secretary Thomas Nelson. Writing his will on Christmas Day, 1806, he said that "it is now likely" this share "will be very valuable." He bequeathed it to his four sons. Of these four-twelfths of a share, the company managed to buy one. A subsequent owner of another twelfth replied to an inquiry: "should I be disposed to sell hereafter I shall most certainly give the Company the refusal."

William Nelson, Jr., almost missed the company's meeting in Suffolk on May 10, 1810. He had fallen ill in March, and St. George Tucker had feared that Nelson would die. "The loss of such a friend is to me irreparable. He was my other self." But Nelson's health slowly returned during a stay in York Town in April. He walked along the riverbank, picking up sh.e.l.ls. Back at Westover, he did not yet look well. This was not a good way to turn fifty.

The new managers were eager to make money. Writing to Samuel Gist in 1811, the Reverend John Bracken found Gist ready to help him. The Reverend James Henderson pushed his colleagues to make the company more efficient. It ought to stop allowing partners to serve as managers for life, as William Nelson, Jr., had done. Instead, the company ought to choose a president, who would, with managers' advice, "direct all the Operations of the Company." Henderson felt frustrated by partners'"stinginess & indecision." He urged onward the new Jericho Ca.n.a.l through the swamp, establis.h.i.+ng a narrow water course for cargoes of s.h.i.+ngles, connecting Lake Drummond with the Nansemond River. He looked forward to charging tolls for floating other people's s.h.i.+ngles on the company's ca.n.a.l.

Beginning in 1810, the Dismal Swamp Company paid steady dividends to shareholders. That year a quarter-share drew $333. In 1811 a quarter-share drew $500-in 1812, $400; in 1813, $300; in 1814, $600. The estate of George Was.h.i.+ngton, with four quarter-shares, received a dividend of $2,000 in 1811. Before the partners' meeting, Justice Bushrod Was.h.i.+ngton wrote to James Henderson: "The handsome dividend which you antic.i.p.ate in May furnishes a strong evidence of the prosperous state of the Company's affairs & of the good management of those to whom they have been & are committed." He approved of Henderson's proposal to seek a charter of incorporation from the General a.s.sembly. Henderson wished that the partners were less delighted with their dividends. They did not heed his advice to reinvest some of their profits. "Among the Proprietors," he complained, "there are some who would not expend one Dollar to receive 20 per Cent Interest." Their notion of a good report was news of fifty black men working in the swamp, bringing out 20,000 of the 80,000 s.h.i.+ngles coming from the swamp each week to meet a high demand at a price of $16 per 1,000. Years later, warned about "a waste of Timber," their minds had not changed. A new shareholder wrote to Bushrod Was.h.i.+ngton: "Our partners seem to prefer present profit to any advantage in the future.... Our Attention is now exclusively applied to the s.h.i.+ngle-getting."

William Nelson, Jr., again fell ill in the autumn of 1812. He did not recover. Weakened by intestinal disease, he stayed at Westover, asking St. George Tucker to lecture to the law students. Nelson seemed in good spirits, joking as usual. He did not let his daughters, their aunt Anne, or Mary Willing Byrd know that he was near death. As his condition worsened early in the new year, he moved to Williamsburg, staying in the house he had shared with his friend William Short almost forty years earlier. In the first week of March he could not get out of bed. He died on the morning of Monday, March 8. His body was placed, as Lord Botetourt's had been, in the chapel of the college. An obituary in the Richmond Enquirer Enquirer said of Nelson: "He pa.s.sed through life, it is believed, without an enemy; but, at every turn met with those who loved, respected, and esteemed him." said of Nelson: "He pa.s.sed through life, it is believed, without an enemy; but, at every turn met with those who loved, respected, and esteemed him."

Eight months later, Mary Willing Byrd suffered another loss. Her daughter, Anne, died at the age of fifty. Anne Byrd lived at Westover all her life. Judge Nelson's five daughters called her "Mother," later remembering her as "a truly pious well educated dear creature." After her death, the family went into "the deepest dejection." Within a few weeks Mary Willing Byrd was very sick. She wrote her will in December 1813, dividing the contents of her mansion among her children, stepchildren, and grandchildren. William Wirt, gathering material on Patrick Henry, wrote of "poor Mrs. Byrd": "when she dies, adieu to the glories of Westover.... Look at the apparently inexhaustible mines of opulence to which Colo. Byrd was born-and see his family already in decay and ruin: a magnificent prince himself-his children & grand children beggars!" To his surprise, Wirt received from Mary Willing Byrd and the other executors of William Byrd's estate an offer of employment. He had represented them in their litigation with the administrators of Speaker Robinson's estate. Byrd's executors now said that if Wirt could establish in court the estate's claim to two hundred or three hundred city lots in Richmond and to 630,000 acres along the Roanoke River, they would pay him 10 percent of all he recovered. He calculated: "if 100 lots are recovered, I get, at an average, property worth, at least, $50,000. You see this is a pretty splendid bubble." Mary Willing Byrd died in March 1814. She had been a widow for thirty-seven years.

The spring of 1814 was a time of celebration for shareholders in the Dismal Swamp Ca.n.a.l Company. A 20-ton boat made a voyage from Scotland Neck, North Carolina, down the Roanoke River into Albemarle Sound, up the Pasquotank River, through the length of the ca.n.a.l, then down the Elizabeth River to Norfolk. She was the first vessel other than s.h.i.+ngle flats and the like to use the ca.n.a.l. Even after the ca.n.a.l's two ditches had met, much work remained to be done. With the labor of twenty or thirty slaves in summer and half as many in winter, the last segments did not reach a width of 20 feet until 1809. The ca.n.a.l still needed locks. The first were temporary, made of wood. The company borrowed money to continue work, mortgaging future revenue from tolls.

As the ca.n.a.l company began a three-and-one-quarter-mile feeder ditch to Lake Drummond in 1812, the Dismal Swamp Company extended and brought into use its Jericho Ca.n.a.l. Twelve feet wide, four feet deep, and ten miles long, it began near Suffolk, ran southeastward across the company's tract, then turned almost due south to Lake Drummond. James Henderson insisted upon faster progress than the hapless ca.n.a.l company had achieved. Suffering, disease, and deaths among slaves working on the Jericho Ca.n.a.l appeared in stories told by people in Nansemond County for generations-stories of "chain-gangs of slaves": "They say the poor creatures died here in heaps from swamp fever. But that didn't make any difference to their owners. They was made to dig right into the heart of the swamp to get at the juniper trees." Early in the twentieth century, a tourist entering the Dismal Swamp by the Jericho Ca.n.a.l asked her guide, a young white Virginian, why a swamp so filled with color, suns.h.i.+ne, and bird calls was named "dismal." "'There's more to it than shows just at first, ma'am,' he answered. 'There are more sad stories about this swamp than all the suns.h.i.+ne can make bright.'" Among many accounts of the origin of Lake Drummond, one was a tradition begun in Nansemond County: "The black folks around here say that the lake belongs to the devil."

s.h.i.+ngle-getters for the Dismal Swamp Company cut their way into the interior of the swamp. In addition to felling stands of white cedar, they found many large trunks of trees lying on top of one another, covered by water and layers of peat. The great fire of 1806 and other fires left many blackened trees but also "brought to view and into use, more good timber than they injured, by burning the soil down to where numerous trees had lain perhaps for a century concealed, and their existence unsuspected." After twenty-five years of cutting millions of s.h.i.+ngles, the company's workers were felling cedar trees with a diameter of 12 inches. Dismal Plantation lay unused, its fences broken. In October 1813 the managers leased it at a rent of $60 per year to Thomas Bains and Benjamin La.s.siter, who signed with their marks.

The old Dismal Swamp Company came to an end two days before Christmas 1814. The General a.s.sembly pa.s.sed an act of incorporation for the Dismal Swamp Land Company. James Henderson became its president. In the years 1817 to 1825 a quarter-share drew an average annual dividend of $285.

The Dismal Swamp Ca.n.a.l, newly enlarged, reopened on the last day of 1828. Stage coaches used the parallel road. Early in 1830, Isaiah Rogerson announced the opening of his Lake Drummond Hotel adjacent to the ca.n.a.l. A building 128 feet long, it had eight chambers, four in Virginia and four in North Carolina. The bar was "furnished with the choicest wines and liquors of every description." North Carolina law made getting married easier than did Virginia law. For this and other reasons, the Lake Drummond Hotel boasted about the convenience of guests' being able to cross the state line without leaving the building. It was an establishment in the heart of the Dismal Swamp "fully applicable for all the purposes of life, as eating, drinking, sleeping, marrying, duelling, etc., etc., in all its varieties."

Nearing his ninetieth birthday, Samuel Gist bought more farms in Oxfords.h.i.+re, Gloucesters.h.i.+re, and Warwicks.h.i.+re in 1810 and 1811. In subsequent years his annual income from leaseholds was almost 6,000. His stock, consolidated annuities, and other personal property yielded at least another 6,000 each year, apart from investments set aside for his daughters and their husbands. His daughter, Mary, was now the wife of Martin Pearkes, a tobacconist in London. Between July 1810 and February 1812, John Wickham sent Gist more than 2,000 sterling in debtors' remittances from Virginia. The dividend in 1810 on Gist's three quarter-shares in the Dismal Swamp Company was $1,000. He collected it by authorizing the Reverend John Bracken to receive it in return for Gist's securing a bill of exchange Bracken had sent to London for another purpose.

Gist began to prepare for his death. He wrote his will. He ordered a vault to be readied for his remains in Wormington's small church. He bought a white marble coffin, which he kept in a case in the stables behind his house in Gower Street. In his eighties Gist thought much about carrying on his family name. Beginning life in a charity school, a kinsman of weavers, he had made the name of Gist feared and respected in the City. He owned more than 4,000 acres in England. He had aspired not just to ama.s.s wealth but also to found a line of Gists, a great family, yet he had no son, no grandchildren, no brother or sister, no nephews or nieces. He did not keep his concern secret. He "sought with great anxiety for any family of his own singular name, in the hope of fixing upon a male inheritor the bulk of his vast property."

The closest male relative of whom he knew was his cousin, James Gist. In 1764, as Samuel prepared to move from Virginia to London, James, at the age of thirty-six, gave up his trade as a weaver and enlisted as a private in the army of the East India Company. He was s.h.i.+pped to Bengal. Perhaps he had married "an European woman" and fathered sons. If so, Samuel Gist wished to make the oldest son heir to the Gist fortune.

But James had died a bachelor in the fall of 1774. His remains were buried in Calcutta. The year after James's death, as Samuel rushed to get the last peacetime s.h.i.+pments of tobacco from Virginia, his uncle, Thomas Gist, James's father, was living in another part of London with Henry Rogers, a kinsman. Thomas Gist, long a weaver, was eighty-seven years old, dependent upon the Rogers family. While working in the City, Rogers learned of James's death in India. At home that evening, he asked Thomas Gist whether he wished to hear what had become of his son. The old man replied: "Oh Harry I shall never hear of him any more." Rogers worked the conversation around to breaking the news of James's death. Long afterward Rogers's children remembered that "Thomas Gist wept much upon receiving the intelligence." Of these events Samuel Gist knew nothing in 1775, or forty years later.

Samuel Gist thought that if James had died leaving no sons, his closest male relative was a second cousin living in Bristol. Josiah Sellick was an accountant, forty-five years old in 1810. He was married; he had a daughter and, more important for Gist's purposes, a son. In the absence of male descendants of James Gist, Samuel Gist bequeathed all his land in England and the bulk of his stock, annuities, and cash to Sellick in trust, and after Sellick's death to his oldest son, and so on in each generation. To this inheritance he attached a condition. Anyone receiving it must adopt "the Surname of 'Gist' and in and by the Surname of Gist only and no other thenceforth for ever continue." Any person eligible to receive the inheritance who refused or neglected to abide by this requirement, Gist wrote, "shall thereupon be considered as dead."

In The Times The Times and the and the Morning Chronicle Morning Chronicle on January 20, 1815, lists of deaths included: "On Monday last, at his home in Gower-street, Bedford-square. Samuel Gist, Esq. in the 91st year of his age." A list of January deaths in the on January 20, 1815, lists of deaths included: "On Monday last, at his home in Gower-street, Bedford-square. Samuel Gist, Esq. in the 91st year of his age." A list of January deaths in the Monthly Magazine Monthly Magazine read: "In Gower-street, Bedford square, 90, read: "In Gower-street, Bedford square, 90, Samuel Gist, esq Samuel Gist, esq. leaving immense wealth." The Gentleman's Magazine The Gentleman's Magazine gave a fuller obituary, adding that Gist "is said to have ama.s.sed more than half a million of money." He had "entered Lloyd's Coffee-house, and was one of its most fortunate adventurers." Josiah Sellick of Bristol looked "likely eventually to possess the bulk of his fortune, which is most unexpected, he having only occasionally had any communication with the deceased." gave a fuller obituary, adding that Gist "is said to have ama.s.sed more than half a million of money." He had "entered Lloyd's Coffee-house, and was one of its most fortunate adventurers." Josiah Sellick of Bristol looked "likely eventually to possess the bulk of his fortune, which is most unexpected, he having only occasionally had any communication with the deceased."

The bequest to Josiah Sellick was not the only surprise in Gist's will. He named as executors his sons-in-law, Martin Pearkes and William Fowke; his attorney, Francis Gregg; and his banker, George Clarke, of Walpole, Clarke & Bourne in Lombard Street. He bequeathed annuities, 50 or 100, to several relatives, and he established a fund for any relatives of his mother or father who might come forward. He ordered payments to the estates of three former a.s.sociates in business-John Hisc.o.x, John Wilkinson, and John Tabb-each of whom had accused him of unjust dealings. To his servants, Gist gave 20 or 30 each, depending upon length of service. To eight charities-the Bristol Infirmary, Christ's Hospital in London, London Hospital, the London Lying-in Hospital, the Welsh Charity School, the Hospital for the Reception of the Blind, the Vaccine Inst.i.tution, and the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children-he bequeathed 100 each. His largest charitable bequest was 10,000 in 3 percent consolidated annuities, the proceeds of which were to be used by the Corporation of the City of Bristol to support six poor men, six poor women, six poor girls, and six or more poor boys attending charity school at Queen Elizabeth's Hospital, as he had done.

Gist's trust was to give each of his daughters 2,000 per year. To receive hers, Mary Pearkes must renounce all claim to the three quarter-shares in the Dismal Swamp Company and to all land and slaves in Virginia vested in her by act of the General a.s.sembly. Gist wrote in his will: "Now I do declare that the same act was obtained only for the purpose of vesting such my Estates in Virginia in the same Mary Anderson (now Mary Pearkes) as being a native of and resident of that State In trust for me and my use and to be disposed of at any future period in the manner I should direct." If his daughter refused to surrender the Virginia property to his executors, "all and every sum and sums of money which she the said Mary Pearkes would have been ent.i.tled to and which I may give her by this my will shall not be paid and in lieu thereof I give to her the sum of one s.h.i.+lling only." A similar condition and threat applied to Elizabeth Fowke if she a.s.serted any claim to the Virginia property. As a further incentive to cooperate with his will, Gist bequeathed to each daughter 1,000 in East India Company stock and 1,000 in Bank of England stock, "recommending it to them to be the last Stock they part with believing it to be the best."

All these bequests left Josiah Sellick-who became Josiah Gist within five weeks of his benefactor's death-with a fortune in trust totaling 153,686 4s. 6d. in personal property and 4,000 acres of farmland bringing in annual rents equal to about 4 percent of their value.

Perhaps those most surprised by Gist's will were more than three hundred black people in Hanover, Goochland, and Amherst counties in Virginia. Having declared that these slaves belonged to him, Gist directed that they be freed. John Wickham had not heard from Gist since 1812, when the United States declared war on Britain. Not long after the war ended in 1815, Wickham learned that Gist was dead and that the will appointed himself and Matthew Toler, son of the late Benjamin Toler, Gist's longtime estate manager in Virginia, to the task of emanc.i.p.ating all Gist's slaves. A codicil to the will said that, if the General a.s.sembly of Virginia deemed it "impolitic and perhaps improper" to fulfill his wish, the slaves were to work his plantations as before, with profits remitted to Mary Pearkes and Elizabeth Fowke until their deaths, thereafter to Josiah Sellick and his heirs.

Mary Pearkes and Elizabeth Fowke, with their husbands, sent a pet.i.tion to the General a.s.sembly in 1815. They said they thought their father's bequests to them were "very inadequate to their reasonable expectations, considering his very great estate." They were unhappy that the bulk of his wealth "has pa.s.sed into the hands of strangers." Mary and Martin Pearkes denied that the property in Virginia belonged to Gist. Nevertheless, the sisters a.s.sented to Gist's will and asked the General a.s.sembly to decide whether it would free the slaves. Gist had arranged his bequests so that if the slaves were freed each sister received 500 per year in lieu of profits from the plantations and the Dismal Swamp Company.

Gist apparently did not know that after 1806 Virginia law required any black person freed from slavery to leave the state within a year. Those who did not leave could be sold back into slavery, though this provision sometimes went unenforced. Gist knew that slaves would not be freed unless he provided for their support. To this end he left all his property in Virginia, "including my proportion of the Great Dismal Swamp," in trust to John Wickham and Matthew Toler, with instructions that its proceeds be devoted to support of these newly freed people, to schools for them, and to instruction in Christianity as taught by the Church of England. Manumission of his slaves, Gist wrote, was to occur within a year of his death.

John Wickham agreed to support the pet.i.tion of Gist's daughters and to help win manumission for the slaves. The task of fulfilling the rest of Gist's instructions he entrusted to his son, William F. Wickham. John Wickham's friends in the General a.s.sembly told him that the slaves would not be freed unless delegates and senators believed that these black people would leave the state. Sponsors of enabling legislation hinted that Gist's slaves might join the colony for free blacks established by British abolitionists in Sierra Leone. A law freeing Gist's slaves on condition of their departure from the state pa.s.sed the General a.s.sembly on February 26, 1816.

In a series of removals from 1818 until 1831, most of the freed blacks settled in southern Ohio, on tracts purchased with money from sales of Gist's land in Virginia. In May 1818 one of his quarter-shares in the Dismal Swamp Company was bought by the new Dismal Swamp Land Company, another by the younger Fielding Lewis, and the third by the College of William and Mary. These three quarter-shares sold at auction for a total of $10,849.87. The buyers paid cash.

Gist's slaves gained their freedom more slowly than he had directed partly because the General a.s.sembly's act left his Virginia estate subject to suits. The chief litigants were relatives of William Anderson and relatives of the widow of Gist's stepson, Joseph Smith. The Andersons believed that Gist had cheated his daughter's first husband. The Rooteses believed that Gist had stolen the patrimony of his wife's sons by her first marriage. He had grown rich through his unscrupulousness, then devised a will by which they would receive no land, no cash, and no slaves. His only bequest to any kinsman of his wife's was a gold watch. What did he mean that gift to suggest? In John Marshall's Circuit Court, William Anderson's legatees, represented by William Wirt and others, eventually won a judgment of more than $17,000 against Gist's Virginia estate at the expense of Gist's legatees, the free blacks.

In later years the black people who moved to Ohio underwent hards.h.i.+ps and complained of injustices at the hands of William F. Wickham's agents. Stories gathered around Gist's bequest. At best, they said, his trustees had not disbursed proceeds of his Virginia estate as he had directed. At worst, Gist's freed former slaves and their descendants, rightful heirs to all his vast fortune in England and America, had been denied their rich legacy by the Wickhams, John Marshall, and other Virginians.

In London, Samuel Gist's heirs sued one another in the Court of Chancery. Suits by Josiah Gist, formerly Josiah Sellick, against Gist's daughters overlapped suits by Mary Pearkes, joined by her sister and brother-in-law, against Martin Pearkes and Gist's attorney Francis Gregg. In the end, Gist's wishes prevailed. The Bristol accountant Josiah Gist became a landed gentleman, moving to his seat at Wormington. He was succeeded by his son, renamed Samuel Gist Gist. Nine years after Samuel Gist's death, his namesake was married to Marianne Westenra, daughter of Baron Rossmore of Monaghan. The baron's son and heir was married to Anne Douglas-Hamilton, illegitimate daughter of the eighth Duke of Hamilton. The son of Samuel Gist Gist and Marianne Westenra Gist-Samuel Gist-inherited the Gist estate.

Long afterward, tourists with an interest in Gothic architecture visited the church dedicated to St. Catherine in Wormington. It was a mixture of elements, mostly fourteenth-century Perpendicular but with eighteenth-century additions, a Tudor arch, fragments of medieval stained gla.s.s, and an Anglo-Saxon or Norman crucifix. Beyond its narrow nave, in the chancel, stone tablets on the wall commemorated Gists. One blue stone read: "Sacred to the Memory of Samuel Gist, Esqr. Patron of Church and Lord of Manor, who died Jany 15, 1815, Aged 92 Years." This inscription was not quite accurate, but hardly any visitors would know. Nor would connoisseurs of architecture care that they stood not far from Gist's marble coffin. They saw heraldic devices on hatchments in the church. Among these were the three blue fleurs-de-lis and three silver swans in the arms of the House of Gist, with its motto: Benigno numine Benigno numine-Beneficent by divine will.

Four weeks after Samuel Gist's death, Sally Meade Byrd died. Since 1800 she and her husband had lived in Ohio. Early in their life together, David Meade worried about his daughter and her husband, "whose prospects have not been very promising since the bankruptcy of Mr. Morris." But in 1800, "thro' the interest of his friends in Philadelphia," Charles Willing Byrd was appointed secretary of the Northwestern Territory. In the fall of 1802 he reported to President Jefferson that Governor Arthur St. Clair, a Federalist, was obstructing his work and preventing him from appointing Republicans to territorial offices. Jefferson removed St. Clair. The following year Ohio became a state, and Jefferson rewarded Byrd with an appointment as judge of the United States District Court. In 1814, by Mary Willing Byrd's will, Charles and Sally Byrd's three sons, as well as the boys' male first cousins, became joint owners of their grandmother's quarter-share in the Dismal Swamp Company. Three years after Sally Byrd's death, Charles Willing Byrd was married to Hannah Miles.

David and Sarah Meade lived contentedly at Chaumiere des Prairies. With "refined courtesy" David Meade received guests in an octagonal wainscotted drawing room. He still wore a square-cut coat with big cuffs, long vest, knee breeches, and black or white stockings in the fas.h.i.+on of the days when he had published an acrostic love poem to Miss Waters. Sarah Meade wore stays, a long-waisted dress with ruffles, and a white ap.r.o.n and cap. She greeted guests in "a very mild and pleasant" way. She entertained them by expertly playing her pianoforte "with the cheerfulness of a girl of 16."

Among the Meades' forty slaves were cooks, dining room servants, footmen, a coachman, a butler, valets, housemaids, and the people whose labor carried out David Meade's fanciful designs for his gardens and grounds. With shaded avenues, bridges over streams, a lake with an artificial island reached by an arched white bridge, a Grecian temple along the lakesh.o.r.e called the Temple of the Naiads, Chaumiere des Prairies occupied Meade for thirty years. He wrote: "I may with confidence a.s.sume that my gardens containing forty acres including ten acres of native wood are more extensive than any other in the United States."

In 1826, David Meade at the age of eighty-two, and Sarah Meade at the age of about seventy-seven, took in their granddaughter, Mary Willing Byrd Randolph, and her daughters. Her husband, Patrick H. Randolph, had proven irresponsible, and her father, Judge Byrd, rejected her, saying that if the Meades sent her to him, he would send her back. David Meade could hardly believe the transformation in "the son of the splendid dignified & highly polished Colo. Byrd of Westover." Charles Willing Byrd had not "cohabited" with his wife for some time. He spoke of resigning his judges.h.i.+p. And, "most extraordinary," Meade said, "He and His youngest Son William have joined the Shaker community in Marion County." Upon reaching the society at Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, William S. Byrd, twenty years old, obeyed Shaker teachings about property. He arranged for his sister, Evelyn, to receive dividends from "my dismal swamp interest, which is likely to become much more valuable than it has been."

William Wirt completed his study of Patrick Henry in September 1817, and the book was published in November. He began gathering material in 1805, asking for written recollections by those who remembered Henry during the Revolution. Wirt had thought about writing a series of biographical volumes, but the first one gave him so much trouble that he did not try another.

In his years of intermittent work on Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry, Wirt made his name, as Henry had done, in the practice of law. In 1807 he served as a prosecutor in the trial of former Vice President Aaron Burr on charges of treason. John Wickham and others won the case for the defense, but Wirt won new fame. William and Elizabeth Wirt moved to Richmond in 1810, a sign that he had reached the top rank of the Virginia bar.

Looking at letters from old men describing Henry and at doc.u.ments from Henry's day, Wirt complained about the difficulties of his task. The old men's memories disagreed with one another and sometimes with official records and newspaper accounts. Thomas Jefferson at first thought that Speaker Robinson and his allies had tried to enact a loan office "in 1762, or a year sooner or later," rather than in 1765. Wirt wished to write expansively, letting his imagination and his rhetoric flow freely, but he felt constrained by the requirements of a chronological narrative and by the limits of evidence. He called it the "business of stating facts with rigid precision, not one jot more or less than the truth." "[W]hat the deuce," he protested, "has a lawyer to do with truth." He fretted that political partisans would find fault with him for either excessive praise or excessive censure of Henry. He feared that literary men would think his book trivial.

When Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry was published, it fell short of a biography. Wirt called it "these crude sketches," which he intended to be didactic-"a discourse on rhetoric, patriotism and morals." He dedicated the book to the young men of Virginia. With his political story, containing his attempts to reconstruct Henry's speeches and to describe their effect on listeners, Wirt celebrated Virginia's leaders of the American Revolution, holding them up for emulation. He wrote to a friend about the General a.s.sembly in 1808: "you will see how wofully the legislative council has fallen since the days of Pendleton, Wythe, Henry, Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, etc." His book invited young men to take such great men as their exemplars. In an essay published in 1814 he wrote: "Were not these men, giants in mind and heroism? Compared with them, what is the present generation, but a puny race of dwarfs and pigmies?" In his portraits of society Wirt drew on his imagination to dramatize the difference between colonial Virginia and democratic Virginia. was published, it fell short of a biography. Wirt called it "these crude sketches," which he intended to be didactic-"a discourse on rhetoric, patriotism and morals." He dedicated the book to the young men of Virginia. With his political story, containing his attempts to reconstruct Henry's speeches and to describe their effect on listeners, Wirt celebrated Virginia's leaders of the American Revolution, holding them up for emulation. He wrote to a friend about the General a.s.sembly in 1808: "you will see how wofully the legislative council has fallen since the days of Pendleton, Wythe, Henry, Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, etc." His book invited young men to take such great men as their exemplars. In an essay published in 1814 he wrote: "Were not these men, giants in mind and heroism? Compared with them, what is the present generation, but a puny race of dwarfs and pigmies?" In his portraits of society Wirt drew on his imagination to dramatize the difference between colonial Virginia and democratic Virginia.

The foils for both of Wirt's contrasts-of great revolutionaries with modern politicians and of the old colonial order with modern life-were the "aristocrats" of the days before the Stamp Act. Wirt embodied the rule of "aristocrats" in his version of the colonial capital. In Williamsburg, "fas.h.i.+on and high life" prevailed: Governor Fauquier lived in "royal state"; the burgesses followed "stately modes of life" in houses of "costly profusion." Amid this "general elegance" there abruptly appears Patrick Henry, an awkward man in threadbare clothes. On his first page Wirt portrayed Henry's parents living "in easy circ.u.mstances...among the most respectable inhabitants of the colony." Yet, for dramatic and didactic purposes, Henry must be a man of the people. Describing his book, Wirt wrote: "It was from the body of the yeomanry, whom my correspondent represents as looking askance at those above them, that Mr. Henry proceeded." Wirt's correspondent was Thomas Jefferson. Alert to the possibility of criticism, Wirt suspected that "the descendants of our landed aristocracy" might resent strictures on their ancestors which he had borrowed from Jefferson. Wirt meant nothing personal. He only used those dead "aristocrats" to edify young men entering public life. His closest friends in Virginia were descendants of colonial "aristocrats."

Thomas Jefferson knew the difference between aristocrats in Britain or France and the men who ran the Council and the House of Burgesses in his youth. He acknowledged to Wirt that in politics during the contest with the British ministry after the Stamp Act was repealed, "the old leaders of the house being substantially firm, we had not after this any differences of opn in the H. of B. on matters of principles." Jefferson's chief concern was "the spirit of favoritism" pervading John Robinson's speakers.h.i.+p and alliances. The proposed loan office in 1765 epitomized for Jefferson the evils of the old system. He remembered and described for Wirt a withering speech Patrick Henry had made against the proposal, with the result that "it was crushed in its birth." In fact, the loan office pa.s.sed the House of Burgesses but was rejected by the "aristocrats" on the Council. As a convenient word for the method by which Virginia was governed in Speaker Robinson's day and for the men who governed it, Jefferson chose "aristocracy," and William Wirt followed his example. Francis Lightfoot Lee, praising John Adams as a "genuine" republican, turned the tables by writing: "Jefferson in my opinion, is a very good Aristocrat."

Patrick Henry's son-in-law, Spencer Roane, who had been three years old when Henry spoke against the loan office and the Stamp Act, described for Wirt his father's admiration of Henry: "That a plain man, of ordinary though respected family, should beard the aristocracy by whom we were then cursed and ruled, and overthrow them in the cause of independence, was grateful to a man of my father's Whig principles." Roane treated the election of Henry rather than Secretary Nelson to the governors.h.i.+p in 1776 as a triumph over "the aristocracy." Roane explained to Wirt that Patrick Henry had not really become a Federalist in his last years but had remained "a true and genuine Republican." Only his "debility" and the "seductions" of a Federalist aristocrat, Henry Lee, with his offer of tracts in the Land of Eden, had made Henry temporarily weak.

Wirt believed that the purposes of his book justified his pa.s.sing lightly over Henry's "aberrations," such as collaborating with Federalists and ama.s.sing land and money. Wirt asked Jefferson: "Will not his biographer then be excused in drawing the veil over them and holding up the brighter side of his character, only, to imitation?" Jefferson's answer, given to others, not to Wirt, was no. He said: "it is a poor book, written in bad taste, & gives so imperfect an idea of Patrick Henry, that it seems intended to show off the writer writer, more than the subject of the work." John Randolph of Roanoke, no democrat, wrote: "I have seen, too, a romance, called the Life of Patrick Henry-a wretched piece of fustian." Spencer Roane, on the other hand, praised Wirt's book. The public attention it received was generally favorable, and it went through many editions. St. George Tucker encouraged his friend during the years that Wirt did research in hours taken from the practice of law. Tucker tried to re-create Henry's oratory for Wirt. Nevertheless, Tucker doubted that anyone could capture in prose the dead leaders of Virginia. And he thought that few would care to read an attempt. "Who knows any thing of Peyton Randolph once the most popular man in Virginia, Speaker of the House of Burgesses, & President of Congress, from its first a.s.sembling to the day of his Death?" Unlike Wirt, Tucker did not have to rely on doc.u.ments and other people's reminiscences for his knowledge of men such as John Blair, General Thomas Nelson, Jr., and Beverley Randolph. "I knew them all well, nay intimately intimately. Yet for the soul of me, I could not write ten pages of either, that would be read by one in fifty." Tucker admired the great men of his youth in Williamsburg. He agreed that their virtues deserved emulation. He wrote to Wirt: "I think it much to be regretted that such men as I have mentioned above should descend to the Grave, and be forgotten, as soon as the Earth is thrown upon their Coffins. But so it is, my friend."

In the autumn of 1803, after the birth of her daughter, Elizabeth Wirt read Gothic novels-fiction in the vein of Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto The Castle of Otranto and Ann Radcliffe's and Ann Radcliffe's A Sicilian Romance A Sicilian Romance and and The Mysteries of Udolpho The Mysteries of Udolpho-tales of dark castles with abandoned chambers and underground pa.s.sageways, eerily lit rooms hiding ancient ma.n.u.scripts revealing guilty family secrets, halls in which perturbed spirits of the dead walk by night as ghosts.

William Wirt was traveling between Richmond and Norfolk in the first week of November. He stopped for the night at Westover on Wednesday, November 8, not long before sunset. He turned his horse and gig out of the road, pa.s.sing through the first gate. For more than a mile his gig rolled through an oak grove. Around the trees the ground was a smooth, clean turf. Beyond a second gate, he entered a broad lane lined with rail fences. Emerging from the oak grove, he saw the last sunlight glinting in the windows of the Byrd mansion. On his left lay the vast expanse of Westover's famous meadows. To his right he had a view of the James River, a sloop moored near the house, and, in the distance on the south bank, the gardens and house of Mayc.o.x.

Two rows of uniform, whitewashed log cabins facing each other across a street were the quarters of Mary Willing Byrd's slaves. Close to the house lay the garden, with its statuary and ponds. A circular road pa.s.sing stables and other buildings took Wirt's gig to the ornate north door of the mansion. Mary Willing Byrd, her daughter and granddaughters, and Judge Nelson were away on a pleasure trip. Wirt was met by a dignified old black man wearing a wig. He was Jack White, who had been body servant to Mary Willing Byrd's husband during the war against the French and the Indians. Her husband, in the last years before he killed himself, used to say that Jack White "on different occasions saved me from the grave." Now, family legend said, her husband's spirit returned nightly to the room in which he had died, "there to sit by the fire and meditate." Jack White took care of Wirt's needs. At night, Wirt had the house to himself.

Trying to do some work before going to bed, Wirt needed a few of Judge Nelson's law books. The bookcase was upstairs, where not all rooms were in use. Since sunset the wind had picked up. Wirt heard shutters rattle.

Almost every occupied room in the mansion had portraits hanging along the walls. In his movements Wirt could see likenesses of Mary Willing Byrd, of her late husband, of her mother Ann s.h.i.+ppen Willing, of Judge Nelson, of Elizabeth Byrd, who had married, in turn, James Parke Farley, John Dunbar, and Henry Skipwith. There were several portraits of old Colonel William Byrd, whose expression suggested that he was enjoying a joke not understood by the onlooker. His body lay buried in the garden just outside the west end of the house. One of the portraits from Queen Anne's time showed that fierce rake, old Colonel Byrd's first father-in-law, Colonel Daniel Parke, who had been murdered by the queen's subjects in Antigua.

Judge Nelson was not a systematic man, but Wirt found the law books and made his way back downstairs. As he worked, the wind roared and sighed around the house. The last thing he did that night was to write a letter to his wife. He never could resist making a little fun. Had he not just won celebrity by writing a volume of fun, The Letters of the British Spy? The Letters of the British Spy? He wrote to Elizabeth Wirt: "I have been about a mile and a half up the stairs to look for a couple of law books. It reminds me of the old castles you are reading about. I dare say it is as full of ghosts as any of them-& as the family is all gone, & left the house to them, I suppose we shall have a carousal tonight-Maybe old Colo. Byrd will come & give me a little more information about the dismal swamp against the next edition of the British Spy." He wrote to Elizabeth Wirt: "I have been about a mile and a half up the stairs to look for a couple of law books. It reminds me of the old castles you are reading about. I dare say it is as full of ghosts as any of them-& as the family is all gone, & left the house to them, I suppose we shall have a carousal tonight-Maybe old Colo. Byrd will come & give me a little more information about the dismal swamp against the next edition of the British Spy."

PROLOGUE.

1 Thomas Moore, Thomas Moore, Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems (London, 1806), 3840, 21n; Thomas Moore to Anastasia Moore, Nov. 7, 28, Dec. 2, 1803, (London, 1806), 3840, 21n; Thomas Moore to Anastasia Moore, Nov. 7, 28, Dec. 2, 1803, The Letters of Thomas Moore The Letters of Thomas Moore, ed. Wilfred S. Dowden (Oxford, 1964), I, 5055; Frederick Horner, The History of the Blair, Banister, and Braxton Families The History of the Blair, Banister, and Braxton Families (Philadelphia, 1898), 108109; Benson J. Lossing, "Tom Moore in America," (Philadelphia, 1898), 108109; Benson J. Lossing, "Tom Moore in America," Harper's New Monthly Magazine Harper's New Monthly Magazine, LV (Sept. 1877), 537541; entries of March 1617, 1853, Diary of Benson J. Lossing, LS 1116, CSmH; Norfolk Herald Norfolk Herald, Oct. 6, 1803; Hoover H. Jordan, Bolt Upright: The Life of Thomas Moore Bolt Upright: The Life of Thomas Moore (Salzburg, 1975), I, 9295; Howard Mumford Jones, (Salzburg, 1975), I, 9295; Howard Mumford Jones, The Harp That Once-A Chronicle of the Life of Thomas Moore The Harp That Once-A Chronicle of the Life of Thomas Moore (New York, 1937), 6870; Therese Tessier, (New York, 1937), 6870; Therese Tessier, La poesie lyrique de Thomas Moore La poesie lyrique de Thomas Moore (Paris, 1976), 90. (Paris, 1976), 90.

I: THE LAND OF PROMISE.

1 Great Dismal Swamp: [William Wirt], Great Dismal Swamp: [William Wirt], The Letters of the British Spy The Letters of the British Spy (Richmond, 1803), 34. (Richmond, 1803), 34.2 "a sly"..."partsx": [James Kirke Paulding], "a sly"..."partsx": [James Kirke Paulding], Letters from the South Letters from the South (New York, 1817), I, 2129. See also Kevin J. Hayes, (New York, 1817), I, 2129. See also Kevin J. Hayes, The Library of William Byrd of Westover The Library of William Byrd of Westover (Madison, 1997), 3103; Margaret Beck Pritchard and Virginia Lascara Sites, (Madison, 1997), 3103; Margaret Beck Pritchard and Virginia Lascara Sites, William Byrd II and His Lost History: Engravings of the Americas William Byrd II and His Lost History: Engravings of the Americas (Williamsburg, 1993), chap. 2; Peter Martin, (Williamsburg, 1993), chap. 2; Peter Martin, The Pleasure Gardens of Virginia: From Jamestown to Jefferson The Pleasure Gardens of Virginia: From Jamestown to Jefferson (Princeton, 1991), 6477; C. Allan Brown, "Eighteenth-Century Virginia Plantation Gardens: Translating an Ancient Idyll," in Therese O'Malley and Marc Treib, eds., (Princeton, 1991), 6477; C. Allan Brown, "Eighteenth-Century Virginia Plantation Gardens: Translating an Ancient Idyll," in Therese O'Malley and Marc Treib, eds., Regional Garden Design in the United States Regional Garden Design in the United States (Was.h.i.+ngton, 1995), 125162; Mark R. Wenger, "Westover: William Byrd's Mansion Reconsidered" (M. Arch. Hist. thesis, University of Virginia, 1980); Daniel D. Reiff, (Was.h.i.+ngton, 1995), 125162; Mark R. Wenger, "Westover: William Byrd's Mansion Reconsidered" (M. Arch. Hist. thesis, University of Virginia, 1980); Daniel D. Reiff, Small Georgian Houses in England and Virginia: Origins and Development through the 1750s Small Georgian Houses in England and Virginia: Origins and Development through the 1750s (London, 1986), 241246. (London, 1986), 241246.3 effects of the plague: [William Byrd], effects of the plague: [William Byrd], A Discourse Concerning the Plague A Discourse Concerning the Plague (London, 1721). (London, 1721).4 "a great"...Profitable": William Byrd, "a great"...Profitable": William Byrd, The Writings of "Colonel William Byrd of Westover in Virginia Esqr.," The Writings of "Colonel William Byrd of Westover in Virginia Esqr.," ed. John Spencer Ba.s.sett (New York, 1901), 72. ed. John Spencer Ba.s.sett (New York, 1901), 72.5 a pet.i.tion: [William Byrd], "To the Kings most Excellent Majty," [1729], BR Box 256(29), CSmH. a pet.i.tion: [William Byrd], "To the Kings most Excellent Majty," [1729], BR Box 256(29), CSmH.6 "the old...Company": B. Henry Latrobe to James Wood, Feb. 14, 1798, "the old...Company": B. Henry Latrobe to James Wood, Feb. 14, 1798, The Virginia Journals of Benjamin Henry Latrobe The Virginia Journals of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, ed. Edward C. Carter II et al et al. (New Haven, 1977), II, 364.7 "old Colo. Byrd": William Wirt to Elizabeth Wirt, Nov. 8, 1803, William Wirt Papers, MdBHi. "old Colo. Byrd": William Wirt to Elizabeth Wirt, Nov. 8, 1803, William Wirt Papers, MdBHi.8 city of Richmond: Sarah S. Hughes, city of Richmond: Sarah S. Hughes, Surveyors and Statesmen: Land Measuring in Colonial Virginia Surveyors and Statesmen: Land Measuring in Colonial Virginia ([Richmond], 1979), 135. ([Richmond], 1979), 135.9 south of the James: H. R. McIlwaine, ed., south of the James: H. R. McIlwaine, ed., Legislative Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia Legislative Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia, 2d ed. (Richmond, 1979), 8081; H. R. McIlwaine, ed., Executive Journals of the Council of Virginia Executive Journals of the Council of Virginia (Richmond, 1928), III, 49, 80, 107, 131133, 136; William L. Saunders (Richmond, 1928), III, 49, 80, 107, 131133, 136; William L. Saunders et al. et al., eds., Colonial Records of North Carolina Colonial Records of North Carolina (Raleigh, 1886), I, 357358, 740; Michael L. Nicholls, "Origins of the Virginia Southside, 17031753: A Social and Economic Study" (Ph.D. diss., College of William and Mary, 1972), 7279. (Raleigh, 1886), I, 357358, 740; Michael L. Nicholls, "Origins of the Virginia Southside, 17031753: A Social and Economic Study" (Ph.D. diss., College of William and Mary, 1972), 7279.10 "no...Dismall": Entry of May 24, 1710, "A Journall of the Proceedings of Philip Ludwell and Nathll Harrison," "no...Dismall": Entry of May 24, 1710, "A Journall of the Proceedings of Philip Ludwell and Nathll Harrison," VMHB VMHB, V (July 1897), 9; Saunders et al. et al., eds., Colonial Records of North Carolina Colonial Records of North Carolina, I, 735746.11 "our land...innocence": William Byrd to Earl of Orrery, Feb. 2, 1727, "our land...innocence": William Byrd to Earl of Orrery, Feb. 2, 1727, The Correspondence of the Three William Byrds The Correspondence of the Three William Byrds, ed. Marion Tinling (Charlottesville, 1977), I, 358. Most of the sources for a description of the Dismal Swamp are listed in the bibliography of Paul W. Kirk, Jr., ed., The Great Dismal Swamp The Great Dismal Swamp (Charlottesville, 1979). See also Gerald F. Levy, "Atlantic White Cedar in the Great Dismal Swamp," in Aimlee D. Laderman, ed., (Charlottesville, 1979). See also Gerald F. Levy, "Atlantic White Cedar in the Great Dismal Swamp," in Aimlee D. Laderman, ed., Atlantic White Cedar Wetlands Atlantic White Cedar Wetlands (Boulder, 1987), 5768. Other sources, primarily ma.n.u.scripts, are cited below. (Boulder, 1987), 5768. Other sources, primarily ma.n.u.scripts, are cited below.12 "no difference"..."men": John Urmston to the Secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, July 7, 1711, Saunders "no difference"..."men": John Urmston to the Secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, July 7, 1711, Saunders et al. et al., eds., Colonial Records of North Carolina Colonial Records of North Carolina, I, 770, 767.13 "Borderers": Byrd, "Borderers": Byrd, Writings of Byrd Writings of Byrd, ed. Ba.s.sett, 47.14 "The Inhabitants...admiration": George Burrington to Board of Trade, Feb. 20, 1732, Saunders "The Inhabitants...admiration": George Burrington to Board of Trade, Feb. 20, 1732, Saunders et al. et al., eds., Colonial Records of North Carolina Colonial Records of North Carolina, III, 337338.15 "the disputed bounds": Hugh Jones, "the disputed bounds": Hugh Jones, The Present State of Virginia The Present State of Virginia, ed. Richard L. Morton (Chapel Hill, 1956 [orig. publ. London, 1724]), 89. See also A. Roger Ekirch, "Poor Carolina": Politics and Society in Colonial North Carolina, 17291776 "Poor Carolina": Politics and Society in Colonial North Carolina, 17291776 (Chapel Hill, 1981), 436. (Chapel Hill, 1981), 436.16 "The fire...streets": John Perceval to William Byrd, Oct. 15, 1720, "The fire...streets": John Perceval to William Byrd, Oct. 15, 1720, Correspondence of the Byrds Correspondence of the Byrds, ed. Tinling, I, 330.17 "the opinion of mankind": Malachy Postlethwayt, "the opinion of mankind": Malachy Postlethwayt, The Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce The Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, 4th ed. (New York, 1971 [orig. publ. London, 1774]), II, "South Sea Company." "Five hundred...paper!": [Lewis Saul Benjamin], The South Sea Bubble The South Sea Bubble (Boston, 1923), 148. See also entries of June