Читать книгу A Portrait of Old George Town - Grace Dunlop Peter - Страница 8

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GEORGE TOWN flourished and became more and more a busy port. Its population in 1800 was 2,993; by 1810 it was 4,948. Its wharves were thronged with vessels sailing across the seas laden with the "precious weed" and with wheat brought in from plantations for the "flouring mills" in great Conestoga wagons painted red and blue drawn by six-horse teams adorned with gay harness and jingling bells. Also, there was a thriving coastwise trade, up to old Salem and Newburyport where the clipper ships were built, and down to the West Indies. These ships brought back sugar, molasses, and rum, and from the old country came clothing, and furniture, and all sorts of luxuries, for the thriving merchants were building comfortable homes and furnishing them in elegance and taste.

General Edward Braddock, after a brilliant military career under Prince William of Orange, in Holland, had been made a major-general and put in charge of troops in Virginia against the French. He landed his troops in Alexandria, marched them up to where the ferry crossed to George Town, where they divided, part going through Virginia, and he, with the remainder, crossing the Potomac to George Town from whence he continued on his fateful march to Fort Duquesne, where he met his terrible defeat and lost his life.

He had come from Perthshire in old Scotland, so, of course, had received a warm welcome in this Scottish town. And thus he had written back to England to George Anne Bellamy, the gifted actress, in 1755: "For never have I attended a more complete banquet or met better dressed or better mannered people than I met on my arrival in George Town, which is named after our gracious Majesty." If only he had mentioned in whose house the banquet was or the names of some of these agreeable people he met!

James Truslow Adams, in his fascinating book, The Epic of America, speaks over and over again of the culture of the pre-Revolutionary towns along the Atlantic seaboard, and what a high point it had reached. No better example could be found than this old town with its families who had come from well-to-do circumstances, not, as was the case with so many settlers of the new country, in order to escape trouble. They came mostly from Scotland; witness the names as time goes on. Indeed, to such an extent, that the little settlement had first of all been called New Scotland.

One of the very first to establish himself in the business of exporting tobacco, was Robert Peter, who is often spoken of in old records as "George Town's pioneer business man," and also as "The merchant prince and land owner." As a young man of about twenty he had come from Crossbasket near Glasgow, first to Bladensburg and thence to George Town, and in 1752 established himself in business, and in 1790 became its first mayor. He represented the firm of John Glassford & Company of North Britain, Glasgow, well known both in England and in Scotland. So much of the tobacco trade flowed into the Scottish city that the wealthy merchants there who dealt in it were known as the "Virginia Dons," and to this day there is in the old port of Glasgow a Virginia Street.

James Dunlop, a cousin of Robert Peter, also had come from his home Garnkirke, near Glasgow, first to New York, then to George Town about 1783 and established himself in this same lucrative exporting business. He did a great deal of business in Dumfries, Virginia, near Fredericksburg.

These old letters give a picture of the times: