Читать книгу The Cultural History of Marlborough, Virginia - C. Malcolm Watkins - Страница 6

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ESTABLISHING THE PORT TOWNS

The dependence of 17th-century Virginia upon the single crop—tobacco—was a chronic problem. A bad crop year or a depressed English market could plunge the whole colony into debt, creating a chain reaction of overextended credits and failures to meet obligations. Tobacco exhausted the soil, and soil exhaustion led to an ever-widening search for new land. This in turn brought about population dispersal and extreme decentralization.

After the Restoration in 1660 the Virginia colonial government was faced not only with these economic hazards but also with the resulting administrative difficulties. It was awkward to govern a scattered population and almost impossible to collect customs duties on imports landed at the planters’ own wharves along hundreds of miles of inland waterways. The royal governors and responsible persons in the Assembly reacted therefore with a succession of plans to establish towns that would be the sole ports of entry for the areas they served, thus making theoretically simple the task of securing customs revenues. The towns also would be centers of business and manufacture, diversifying the colony’s economic supports and lessening its dependence on tobacco. To men of English origin this establishment of port communities must have seemed natural and logical.

The first such proposal became law in 1662, establishing a port town for each of the major river valleys and for the Eastern Shore. But the law’s sponsors were doomed to disappointment, for the towns were not built.[1] After a considerable lapse, a new act was passed in 1680, this one better implemented and further reaching. It provided for a port town in each county, where ships were to deliver their goods and pick up tobacco and other exports from town warehouses for their return voyages.[2] One of its most influential supporters was William Fitzhugh of Stafford County, a wealthy planter and distinguished leader in the colony.[3] “We have now resolved a cessation of making Tob^o next year,” he wrote to his London agent, Captain Partis, in 1680. “We are also going to make Towns, if you can meet with any tradesmen that will come and live[Pg 6] [Pg 7] at the Town, they may have privileges and immunitys.”[4]

Figure 2.—Survey plats of Marlborough as copied in John Mercer’s Land Book showing at bottom, John Savage’s, 1731; and top, William Buckner’s and Theodorick Bland’s, 1691. (The courthouse probably stood in the vicinity of lot 21.)

Some of these towns actually were laid out, each on a 50-acre tract of half-acre lots, but only 9 tracts were built upon. The Act soon lagged and collapsed. It was unpopular with the colonists, who were obliged to transport their tobacco to distant warehouses and to pay storage fees; it was ignored by shipmasters, who were in the habit of dealing directly with planters at their wharves and who were not interested in making it any easier for His Majesty’s customs collectors.[5]

Nevertheless, efforts to come up with a third act began in 1688.[6] William Fitzhugh, especially, was articulate in his alarm over Virginia’s one-crop economy, the effects of which the towns were supposed to mitigate. At this time he referred to tobacco as “our most despicable commodity.” A year later, he remarked, “it is more uncertain for a Planter to get money by consigned Tob^o then to get a prize in a lottery, there being twenty chances for one chance.”[7]

In April 1691 the Act for Ports was passed, the House, significantly, recording only one dissenting vote.[8] Unlike its predecessor, which encouraged trades and crafts, this Act was justified purely on the basis of overcoming the “great opportunity … given to such as attempt to import or export goods and merchandises, without entering or paying the duties and customs due thereupon, much practised by greedy and covetous persons.” It provided that all exports and imports should be taken up or set down at the specified ports and nowhere else, under penalty of forfeiting ship, gear, and cargo, and that the law should become effective October 1, 1692. The towns again were to be surveyed and laid out in 50-acre tracts. Feoffees, to be appointed, would grant half-acre lots on a pro rata first-cost basis. Grantees “shall within the space of four months next ensueing such grant begin and without delay proceed to build and finish on each half acre one good house, to containe twenty foot square at the least, wherein if he fails to performe them such grant to be void in law, and the lands therein granted lyable to the choyce and purchase of any other person.” Justices of the county courts were to fill vacancies among the feoffees and to appoint customs collectors.[9]

THE PORT TOWN FOR STAFFORD COUNTY

The difficulties confronting the central and local governing bodies in putting the Acts into effect are illustrated by the attempts to establish a port town for Stafford County. Under the act of 1680 a town was to be built at “Peace Point,” where the Catholic refugee Giles Brent had settled nearly forty years before, but there is no evidence that even so much as a survey was made there. The 1691 Act for Ports located the town at Potomac Neck, where Accokeek Creek and Potomac Creek converge on the Potomac River. Situated about three miles below the previously designated site, it was again on Brent property, lying within a tract leased for life to Captain Malachi Peale, former high sheriff of Stafford. On October 9, 1691, the Stafford Court “ordered that Mr. William Buckner deputy Surveyor of this County shall on Thursday next … repair to the Malachy Peale neck being the place allotted by act of assembly for this Town and Port of this County and shall then and there Survey and Lay Out the said Towne or Port … to the Interest that all the gentlemen of and all other of the Inhabitants may take up such Lot and Lots as be and they desire. …” On the same day John Withers and Matthew Thompson, both justices of the peace, were appointed “Feoffees in Trust.” Young Giles Brent, “son and heir of Giles Brent Gent. late of this county dec^ed” and not yet 21, selected Francis Hammersley as his guardian. Hammersley in this capacity became the administrator of Brent’s affairs, and accordingly it was agreed that 13,000 pounds of tobacco should be paid to him in exchange for the 50 acres of town land owned by Brent.[10]

Actually, 52 acres were surveyed, “two of the said acres being the Land belonging to and laid out for the Court House according to a former Act of Assembly and the other fifty acres pursuant to the late Act for Ports.” The “former Act of Assembly” which had been passed in 1667 had stipulated the allotment of two-acre tracts for churches and court houses, which in case the lots “be deserted y^e land shall revert to y^e 1st proprietor. …”[11] For the extra two acres Hammersley was given 800 pounds of tobacco in addition. Of the total of 13,800 pounds, 3450 were set aside to compensate Malachi Peale for the loss of his leasehold.

The order for the survey to be made was a formality, since the plat had actually been drawn ahead of time by Buckner on August 16, nearly two months before; clearly the Staffordians were eager to begin their town. Buckner’s plat was copied by his superior, Theodorick Bland, and entered in the now-missing Stafford Survey Book. John Savage, a later surveyor, in 1731 provided John Mercer with a duplicate of Bland’s copy, which has survived in John Mercer’s Land Book (fig. 2).[12]

On February 11, 1692, the feoffees granted 27 lots to 15 applicants. John Mercer’s later review of the town’s history in this period states that “many” of the lots were “built on and improved.”[13] Two ordinaries were licensed, one in 1691 and one in 1693, but no business activity other than the Potomac Creek ferry seems to have been conducted.[14] Any future the town might have had was erased by the same adverse reactions that had killed the previous port acts. The merchants and shippers used their negative influence and on March 22, 1693, a “bill for suspension of y^e act for Ports &c. till their Maj^ts pleasure shall be known therein or till y^e next assembly” passed the house. In due course the act was reviewed and returned unsigned for further consideration. William Fitzhugh, on October 17, 1693, dutifully read the recommendation of the Committee of Grievances and Properties “That the appointment of Ports & injoyneing the Landing and Shipping of all goods imported or to be exported at & from the same will (considering the present circumstances of the Country) be very injurious & burthensome to the Inhabitants thereof and traders thereunto.”[15] Doubtless dictated by the Board of Trade in London, the recommendation was a defeat for those who, like Fitzhugh, sought by the establishment of towns to break tobacco’s strangle-hold on Virginia.

THE ACT FOR PORTS OF 1705 AND THE NAMING OF MARLBOROUGH

Nevertheless, the town idea was hard to kill. In 1705 Stafford’s port town, along with those in the other counties, was given a new lease on life when still another Act for Ports, introduced by Robert Beverley, was passed. This Act repeated in substance the provisions of its immediate forerunner, but provided in addition extravagant inducements to settlement. Those who inhabited the towns were exempted from three-quarters of the customs duties paid by others; they were freed of poll taxes for 15 years; they were relieved from military mustering outside the towns and from marching outside, excepting the “exigency” of war (and then only for a distance of no more than 50 miles). Goods and “dead provision” were not to be sold outside within a 5-mile radius, and ordinaries (other than those within the towns) were not permitted closer than 10 miles to the towns’ boundaries, except at courthouses and ferry landings. Each town was to be a free “burgh,” and, when it had grown to 30 families “besides ordinary keepers,” “eight principal inhabitants” were to be chosen by vote of the “freeholders and inhabitants of the town of twenty-one years of age and upwards, not being servants or apprentices,” to be called “benchers of the guild-hall.” These eight “benchers” would govern the town for life or until removal, selecting a “director” from among themselves. When 60 families had settled, “brethren assistants of the guild hall” were to be elected similarly to serve as a common council. Each town was to have two market days a week and an annual five-day fair. The towns listed under the Act were virtually the same as before, but this time each was given an official name, the hitherto anonymous town for Stafford being called Marlborough in honor of the hero of the recent victory at Blenheim.[16]

The elaborate vision of the Act’s sponsors never was realized in the newly christened town, but there was in due course a slight resumption of activity in it. George Mason and William Fitzhugh, Jr. (the son of William Fitzhugh of Stafford County) were appointed feoffees in 1707, and a new survey was made by Thomas Gregg. The following year seven more lots were granted, and for an interval of two years Marlborough functioned technically as an official port.[17]

Inevitably, perhaps, history repeated itself. In 1710 the Act for Ports, like its predecessors, was rescinded. The reasons given in London were brief and straightforward; the Act, it was explained, was “designed to Encourage by great Priviledges the settling in Townships.” These settlements would encourage manufactures, which, in turn, would promote “further Improvement of the said manufactures, And take them off from the Planting of Tobacco, which would be of Very Ill consequence,” thus lessening the colony’s dependence on the Kingdom, affecting the import of tobacco, and prejudicing shipping.[18] Clearly, the Crown did not want the towns to succeed, nor would it tolerate anything which might stimulate colonial self-dependence. The Virginia colonists’ dream of corporate communities was not to be realized.

Most of the towns either died entirely or struggled on as crossroads villages. A meager few have survived to the present, notably Norfolk, Hampton, Yorktown, and Tappahannock. Marlborough lasted as a town until about 1720, but in about 1718 the courthouse and several dwellings were destroyed by fire and “A new Court House being built at another Place, all or most of the Houses that had been built in the said Town, were either burnt or suffered to go to ruin.”[19]

The towns were artificial entities, created by acts of assembly, not by economic or social necessity. In the few places where they filled a need, notably in the populous areas of the lower James and York Rivers, they flourished without regard to official status. In other places, by contrast, no law or edict sufficed to make them live when conditions did not warrant them. In sparsely settled Stafford especially there was little to nurture a town. It was easier, and perhaps more exciting, to grow tobacco and gamble on a successful crop, to go in debt when things were bad or lend to the less fortunate when things were better. In the latter case land became an acceptable medium for the payment of debts. Land was wealth and power, its enlargement the means of greater production of tobacco—tobacco again the great gamble by which one would always hope to rise and not to fall. When one could own an empire, why should one worry about a town?

ESTABLISHING COURTHOUSES

The administrative problems that contributed to the establishment of the port towns also called for the erection of courthouses. As early as 1624 lower courts had been authorized for Charles City and Elizabeth City in recognition of the colony’s expansion, and ten years later the colony had been divided into eight counties, with a monthly court established in each. By the Restoration the county courts possessed broadly expanded powers and were the administrative as well as the judicial sources of local government. In practice they were largely self-appointive and were responsible for filling most local offices. Since the courts were the vehicles of royal authority, it followed that the physical symbols of this authority should be emphasized by building proper houses of government. At Jamestown orders were given in 1663 to build a statehouse in lieu of the alehouses and ordinaries where laws had been made previously.[20]

In the same year, four courthouses annually were ordered for the counties, the burgesses having been empowered to “make and Signe agreements w^th any that will undertake them to build, who are to give good Caution for the effecting thereof with good sufficient bricks, Lime, and Timber, and that the same be well wrought and after they are finished to be approved by an able surveyor, before order be given them for their pay.”[21] Such buildings were to take the place of private dwellings and ordinaries in the same way as did the statehouse at Jamestown. It was no accident that legislation for houses of government coincided with that for establishing port towns. Each reflected the need for administering the far-flung reaches of the colony and for maintaining order and respect for the crown in remote places.

THE COURTHOUSE IN THE PORT TOWN FOR STAFFORD COUNTY

Stafford County, which had been set off from Westmoreland in 1664, was provided with a courthouse within a year of its establishment. Ralph Happel in Stafford and King George Courthouses and the Fate of Marlborough, Port of Entry, has given us a detailed chronicle of the Stafford courthouses, showing that the first structure was situated south of Potomac Creek until 1690, when it presumably burned.[22] The court, in any event, began to meet in a private house on November 12, 1690, while on November 14 one Sampson Darrell was appointed chief undertaker and Ambrose Bayley builder of a new courthouse. A contract was signed between them and the justices of the court to finish the building by June 10, 1692, at a cost of 40,000 pounds of tobacco and cash, half to be paid in 1691 and the remainder upon completion.[23]

With William Fitzhugh the presiding magistrate of the Stafford County court as well as cosponsor of the Act for Ports, it was foreordained that the new courthouse should be tied in with plans for the port town. The Act for Ports, however, was still in the making, and it was not possible to begin the courthouse until after its passage in the spring. On June 10, 1691, it was “Ordered by this Court that Capt. George Mason and Mr. Blande the Surveyor shall immediately goe and run over the ground where the Town is to Stand and that they shall then advise and direct M^r Samson Darrell the Cheife undertaker of the Court house for this County where he shall Erect and build the same.”[24]

The court’s order was followed by a hectic sequence that reflects, in general, the irresponsibilities, the lack of respect for law and order, and the frontier weaknesses which made it necessary to strengthen authority. It begins with Sampson Darrell himself, whose moral shortcomings seem to have been legion (hog-stealing, cheating a widow, and refusing to give indentured servants their freedom after they had earned it, to name a few). Darrell undoubtedly had the fastidious Fitzhugh’s confidence, for certainly without that he would not have been appointed undertaker at all. In his position in the court, Fitzhugh would have been instrumental in selecting both architect and architecture for the courthouse, and Darrell seems to have met his requirements. Fitzhugh, in fact, had sufficient confidence in Darrell to entrust him with personal business in London in 1688.[25]

Although several months elapsed before a site was chosen, enough of the new building was erected by October to shelter the court for its monthly assembly. In the course of this session, there occurred a “most mischievous and dangerous Riot,”[26] which rather violently inaugurated the new building. During this disturbance, the pastor of Potomac Parish, Parson John Waugh,[27] upbraided the court while it was “seated” and took occasion to call Fitzhugh a Papist. The court, taking cognizance of “disorders, misrules and Riots” and “the Fatal consequences of such unhappy malignant and Tumultuous proceeding,” thereupon restricted the sale of liquor on court days (thus revealing what was at least accessory to the disturbance).[28] Fitzhugh’s letter to the court concerning this episode mentions the “Court House” and the “Court house yard,” adding to Happel’s ample documentation that the new building was by now in use.

During the November session, James Mussen was ordered into custody for having “dangerously wounded M^r. Sampson Darrell.”[29] This suggests that the sequence of disturbances may have been associated with the unfinished state of the courthouse, which, like the town, symbolized the purposes of Fitzhugh and the property-owning aristocracy. Certain it is that Darrell, publicly identified with Fitzhugh, was violently assaulted and that “a complaint was made to this Court that Sampson Darrell the chief undertaker of the building and Erecting of a Court house for this county had not performed the same according to articles of agreement.” He and Bayley accordingly were put under bond to finish the building by June 10, 1692. By February Bayley was complaining that he had not been paid for his work, “notwithstanding your pet^r as is well known to the whole County hath done all the carpenters work thereof and is ready to perform what is yet wanting.” On May 12, less than a month from the deadline for completion, Darrell was ordered to pay Bayley the money owing, and Bayley was instructed to go on with the work. Nearly six months later, on November 10, Darrell again was directed to pay Bayley the full balance of his wages, but only “after the said Ambrose Bayley shall have finished and Compleatly ended the Court house.”[30]

No description of the courthouse has been found. The Act of 1663 seems to have required a brick building, although its wording is ambiguous. Even if it did stipulate brick, the law was 28 years old in 1691, and its requirements probably were ignored. Although Bayley, the builder, was a carpenter, this would not preclude the possibility that he supervised bricklayers and other artisans. Brick courthouses were not unknown; one was standing in Warwick when the Act for Ports was passed in 1691. Yet, the York courthouse, built in 1692, was a simple building, probably of wood.[31] In any case, the Stafford courthouse was a structure large enough to have required more than a year and a half to build, but not so elaborate as to have cost more than 40,000 pounds of tobacco.

LOCATION OF THE STAFFORD COURTHOUSE

The location of the building is indicated by a notation on Buckner’s plat of the port town: “The fourth course (runs) down along by the Gutt between Geo: Andrew’s & the Court house to Potomack Creek.” A glance at the plat (fig. 2) will disclose that the longitudinal boundaries of all the lots south of a line between George Andrews’ “Gutt” run parallel to this fourth course. Plainly, the courthouse was situated near the head of the gutt, where the westerly boundary course changed, near the end of “The Broad Street Across the Town.” It may be significant that the foundation (Structure B) on which John Mercer’s mansion was later built is located in this vicinity.

In or about the year 1718 the courthouse “burnt Down,”[32] while it was reported as “being become ruinous” in 1720, with its “Situation very inconvenient for the greater part of the Inhabitants.” It was then agreed to build a new courthouse “at the head of Ocqua Creek.”[33] Aquia Creek was probably meant, but this must have been an error and the “head of Potomac Creek” intended instead. Happel shows that it was built on the south side of Potomac Creek. Thus, the burning of the Marlborough courthouse in 1718 merely speeded up the forces that led to the end of the town’s career.

MARLBOROUGH PROPERTY OWNERS

Not only was Marlborough foredoomed by external decrees and adverse official decisions, but much of its failure was rooted in the local elements by which it was constituted. The great majority of lot holders were the “gentlemen” who were so carefully distinguished from “all other of the Inhabitants” in the order to survey the town in 1691. Most were leading personages in Stafford, and we may assume that their purchases of lots were made in the interests of investment gains, not in establishing homes or businesses. Only three or four yeomen and ordinary keepers seem to have settled in the town.

Sampson Darrell, for example, held two lots, but he lived at Aquia Creek.[34] Francis Hammersley was a planter who married Giles Brent’s widow and lived at “The Retirement,” one of the Brent estates.[35] George Brent, nephew of the original Giles Brent, was law partner of William Fitzhugh, and had been appointed Receiver General of the Northern Neck in 1690. His brother Robert also was a lot holder. Both lived at Woodstock, and presumably they did not maintain residences at the port town.[36] Other leading citizens were Robert Alexander, Samuel Hayward, and Martin Scarlett, but again there is little likelihood that they were ever residents of the town. John Waugh, the uproarious pastor of Potomac Parish, also was a lot holder, but he lived on the south side of Potomac Creek in a house which belonged to Mrs. Anne Meese of London. His failure to pay for that house after 11 years’ occupancy of it, which led to a suit in which Fitzhugh was the prosecutor, does not suggest that he ever arrived at building a house in the port town.[37]

Captain George Mason was a distinguished individual who lived at “Accokeek,” about a mile and a half from Marlborough. He certainly built in the town, for in 1691 he petitioned for a license to “keep an ordinary at the Town or Port for this county.” The petition was granted on condition that he “find a good and Sufficient maintenance and reception both for man and horse.” Captain Mason was grandfather of George Mason of Gunston Hall, author of the Virginia Bill of Rights, and was, at one time or another, sheriff, lieutenant colonel and commander in chief of the Stafford Rangers, and a burgess. He participated in putting down the uprising of Nanticoke Indians in 1692, bringing in captives for trial at the unfinished courthouse in March of that year.[38] Despite his interest in the town, however, it is unlikely that he ever lived there.

Another lot owner was Captain Malachi Peale, whose lease of the town land from the Brents had been purchased when the site was selected. He also was an important figure, having been sheriff. He may well have lived on one of his three lots, since he was a resident of the Neck to begin with. John Withers, one of the first feoffees and a justice of the peace, was a lot holder also. George Andrews and Peter Beach, somewhat less distinguished, were perhaps the only full-time residents from among the first grantees. After 1708 Thomas Ballard and possibly William Barber were also householders.

Thus, few of the ingredients of an active community were to be found at Marlborough, the skilled craftsmen or ship’s chandlers or merchants who might have provided the vitality of commerce and trade not having at any time been present.

HOUSING

It is likely that most of the houses in the town conformed to the minimum requirements of 20 by 20 feet. They were probably all of wood, a story and a half high with a chimney built against one end. Forman describes a 20-foot-square house foundation at Jamestown, known as the “House on Isaac Watson’s Land.” This had a brick floor and a fireplace large enough to take an 8-foot log as well as a setting for a brew copper. The ground floor consisted of one room, and there was probably a loft overhead providing extra sleeping and storage space.[39] The original portion of the Digges house at Yorktown, built following the Port Act of 1705 and still standing, is a brick house, also 20 feet square and a story and a half high. Yet, brick houses certainly were not the rule. In remote Stafford County, shortly before the port town was built, the houses of even well-placed individuals were sometimes extremely primitive. William Fitzhugh wrote in 1687 to his lawyer and merchant friend Nicholas Hayward in London, “Your brother Joseph’s building that Shell, of a house without Chimney or partition, & not one tittle of workmanship about it more than a Tobacco house work, carry’d him into those Arrears with your self & his other Employees, as you found by his Accots. at his death.”[40] Ancient English puncheon-type construction, with studs and posts set three feet into the ground, was still in use at Marlborough in 1691, as we know from the contract for building a prison quoted by Happel.[41] No doubt the houses there varied in quality, but we may be sure that most were crude, inexpertly built, of frame or puncheon-type construction, and subject to deterioration by rot and insects.

FURNISHINGS OF TWO MARLBOROUGH HOUSES

Like George Mason, George Andrews ran an ordinary at the port town, having been licensed in 1693, and he also kept the ferry across Potomac Creek.[42] He died in 1698, leaving the property to his grandson John Cave. From the inventory of his estate recorded in the Stafford County records (Appendix A) we obtain a picture not only of the furnishings of a house in the port town, but also of what constituted an ordinary.[43] We are left with no doubt that as a hostelry Andrews’ house left much to be desired. There were no bedsteads, although six small feather beds with bolsters and one old and small flock bed are listed. (Flock consisted of tufted and fragmentary pieces of wool and cotton, while “Bed” referred not to a bedframe or bedstead but to the tick or mattress.) There were two pairs of curtains and valances. In the 17th century a valance was “A border of drapery hanging around the canopy of a bed.”[44] Curtains customarily were suspended from within the valance from bone or brass curtain rings on a rod or wire, and were drawn around the bed for privacy or warmth. Where high post bedsteads were used, the curtains and valances were supported on the rectangular frame of the canopy or tester. Since George Andrews did not list any bedsteads, it is possible that his curtains and valances were hung from bracketed frames above low wooden frames that held the bedding. Six of his beds were covered with “rugs,” one of which was “Turkey work.” There is no indication of sheets or other refinements for sleeping.

Andrews’ furniture was old, but apparently of good quality. Four “old” cane chairs, which may have dated back as far as 1660, were probably English, of carved walnut. The “old” table may have had a turned or a joined frame, or possibly may have been a homemade trestle table. An elegant touch was the “carpet,” which undoubtedly covered it. Chests of drawers were rare in the 17th century, so it is surprising to find one described here as “old.” A “cupboard” was probably a press or court cupboard for the display of plates and dishes and perhaps the pair of “Tankards” listed in the inventory. The latter may have been pewter or German stoneware with pewter mounts. The “couch” was a combination bed and settee. As in every house there were chests, but of what sort or quality we can only surmise. A “great trunk” provided storage.

Andrews’ hospitality as host is symbolized by his lignum vitae punchbowl. Punch itself was something of an innovation and had first made its appearance in England aboard ships arriving from India early in the 1600’s. It remained a sailor’s drink throughout most of the century, but had begun to gain in general popularity before 1700 in the colonies. What is more remarkable here, however, is the container. Edward M. Pinto states that such lignum vitae “wassail” bowls were sometimes large enough to hold five gallons of punch and were kept in one place on the table, where all present took part in the mixing. They were lathe-turned and usually stood on pedestals.[45] George Andrews’ nutmeg graters, silver spoons, and silver dram cup for tasting the spirits that were poured into the punch were all elegant accessories.

Another resident whose estate was inventoried was Peter Beach.[46] One of his executors was Daniel Beach, who was paid 300 pounds of tobacco annually from 1700 to 1703 for “sweeping” and “cleaning” the courthouse (Appendix B). Beach’s furnishings were scarcely more elaborate than Andrews’. Unlike Andrews, he owned four bedsteads, which with their curtains and fittings (here called “furniture”) varied in worth from 100 to 1500 pounds of tobacco. Here again was a cupboard, while there were nine chairs with “flag” seats and “boarded” backs (rush-seated chairs, probably of the “slat-back” or “ladder-back” variety). Eight more chairs and five stools were not described. A “parcel of old tables” was listed, but only one table appears to have been in use. There were pewter and earthenware, but a relatively few cooking utensils. An “old” pewter tankard was probably the most elegant drinking vessel, while one candlestick was a grudging concession to the need for artificial light. The only books were two Bibles; the list mentions a single indentured servant.

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 assigned 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 class of country bumpkins, 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.

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 flourishing plantation, “Most of the other Buildings were suffered to go to Ruin, so that in the year 1726, when your Petitioner [i.e., Mercer] went to live there, but one House twenty-feet square was standing.”[48]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] William Waller Hening, The Statutes at Large Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia (New York, 1823), vol. 2, pp. 172–176.

[2] Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 471–478.

[3] William Fitzhugh was founder of the renowned Virginia family that bear his name. As chief justice of the Stafford County court, burgess, merchant, and wealthy planter, he epitomized the landed aristocrat in 17th-century Virginia. See “Letters of William Fitzhugh,” Virginia Magazine of History & Biography (Richmond, 1894), vol. 1, p. 17 (hereinafter designated VHM), and William Fitzhugh and His Chesapeake World (1676–1701), edit. Richard Beale Davis (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, for the Virginia Historical Society, 1963).

[4] VHM, op. cit., p. 30.

[5] Robert Beverley, The History and Present State of Virginia, edit. Louis B. Wright (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1947), p. 88; Philip Alexander Bruce, Economic History of Virginia, 2nd ed. (New York: P. Smith, 1935), vol. 2, pp. 553–554.

[6] Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia (hereinafter designated JHB) 1659/60–1693, edit. H. R. McIlwaine (Richmond, Virginia: Virginia State Library, 1914), pp. 303, 305, 308, 315.

[7] “Letters of William Fitzhugh,” VHM (Richmond, 1895), vol. 2, pp. 374–375.

[8] JHB 1659/60–1693, op. cit. (footnote 6), p. 351.

[9] Hening, op. cit. (footnote 1), vol. 3, pp. 53–69.

[10] Stafford County Order Book, 1689–1694 (MS bound with order book for 1664–1688, but paginated separately), pp. 175, 177, 180, 189.

[11] “Mills,” VHM (Richmond, 1903), vol. 10, pp. 147–148.

[12] John Mercer’s Land Book (MS., Virginia State Library).

[13] JHB, 1742–1747; 1748–1749 (Richmond, 1909), pp. 285–286.

[14] Stafford County Order Book, 1689–1694, pp. 184, 357.

[15] Hening, op. cit. (footnote 1), vol. 3, pp. 108–109.

[16] Ibid., pp. 404–419.

[17] “Petition of John Mercer” (1748), (Ludwell papers, Virginia Historical Society), VHM (Richmond, 1898), vol. 5, pp. 137–138.

[18] Calendar of Virginia State Papers and Other Manuscripts, 1652–1781, edit. William P. Palmer, M.D. (Richmond, 1875), vol. 1, pp. 137–138.

[19] JHB, 1742–1747; 1748–1749 (Richmond, 1909), pp. 285–286.

[20] Hening, op. cit. (footnote 1), vol. 2, pp. 204–205.

[21] JHB, (1659/60–1693), op. cit. (footnote 6), p. 28.

[22] Ralph Happel, “Stafford and King George Courthouses and the Fate of Marlborough, Port of Entry,” VHM (Richmond, 1958), vol. 66, pp. 183–194.

[23] Stafford County Order Book, 1689–1694, p. 187.

[24] Ibid., p. 122.

[25] William Fitzhugh and His Chesapeake World (1676–1701), op. cit. (footnote 3), p. 241.

[26] Stafford County Order Book, 1689–1694, p. 194.

[27] Ibid., p. 182.

[28] In Virginia recurrent English fears of Catholic domination were reflected at this time in hysterical rumors that the Roman Catholics of Maryland were plotting to stir up the Indians against Virginia. In Stafford County these suspicions were inflamed by the harangues of Parson John Waugh, minister of Stafford Parish church and Chotank church. Waugh, who seems to have been a rabble rouser, appealed to the same small landholders and malcontents as those who, a generation earlier, had followed Nathaniel Bacon’s leadership. So seriously did the authorities at Jamestown regard the disturbance at Stafford courthouse that they sent three councillors to investigate. See “Notes,” William & Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine (Richmond, 1907), 1st ser., vol. 15, pp. 189–190 (hereinafter designated WMQ) [1]; and Richard Beale Davis’ introduction to William Fitzhugh and His Chesapeake World, op. cit. (footnote 3), pp. 35–39, and p. 251.

[29] Stafford County Order Book, 1689–1694, p. 167.

[30] Ibid., pp. 194, 267, 313.

[31] Hening, op. cit. (footnote 1), vol. 3, p. 60; Edward M. Riley, “The Colonial Courthouses of York County, Virginia,” William & Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine (Williamsburg, 1942), 2nd ser., vol. 22, pp. 399–404 (hereinafter designated WMQ [2]).

[32] Petition of John Mercer, loc. cit. (footnote 17).

[33] Executive Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia (Richmond, 1930), vol. 2, p. 527.

[34] Stafford County Order Book, 1689–1694, p. 251.

[35] John Mercer’s Land Book, loc. cit. (footnote 12); William Fitzhugh and His Chesapeake World, op. cit. (footnote 3), p. 209.

[36] Ibid., pp. 76, 93, 162, 367.

[37] Stafford County Order Book, 1689–1694, p. 203; William Fitzhugh and His Chesapeake World, op. cit. (footnote 3), pp. 209, 211.

[38] Ibid., pp. 184, 230; John Mercer’s Land Book, op. cit. (footnote 12); William Fitzhugh and His Chesapeake World, op. cit. (footnote 3), p. 38.

[39] Henry Chandlee Forman, Jamestown and St. Mary’s (Baltimore, 1938), pp. 135–137.

[40] William Fitzhugh and His Chesapeake World, op. cit. (footnote 3), p. 203.

[41] Happel, op. cit. (footnote 22), p. 186; Stafford County Order Book, 1689–1694, pp. 210–211.

[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.

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

[48] Petition of John Mercer, loc. cit. (footnote 17).