77
Meade, i, 52-54; and see Schoepf, ii, 62-63.
78
Wise, 317-19; Bruce:
79
Bruce:
80
81
Bruce:
82
83
84
Bruce:
85
Fithian, 177.
86
See catalogue in
87
See catalogue in Appendix A to Byrd's
88
See catalogue of John Adams's Library, in the Boston Public Library.
89
Ambler, 9; and see Wise, 68-70.
90
Trustworthy data on this subject is given in the volumes of the
91
Wertenbaker:
92
"One hundred young maids for wives, as the former ninety sent. One hundred boys more for apprentices likewise to the public tenants. One hundred servants to be disposed among the old planters which they exclusively desire and will pay the company their charges." (
93
For the understanding in England at that period of the origin of this class of Virginia colonists see Defoe:
94
Fithian to Greene, Dec. 1, 1773; Fithian, 280.
95
Fithian to Peck, Aug. 12, 1774; Fithian, 286-88; and see Professor Tucker's searching analysis in Tucker, i, 17-22; also see Lee, in Ford:
96
Wertenbaker:
97
For accounts of brutal physical combats, see Anburey, ii, 310
98
Schoepf, i, 261; and see references,
99
After Braddock's defeat the Indians "extended their raids … pillaging and murdering in the most ruthless manner… The whole country from New York to the heart of Virginia became the theatre of inhuman barbarities and heartless destruction." (Lowdermilk, 186.)
100
Although the rifle did not come into general use until the Revolution, the firearms of this period have been so universally referred to as "rifles" that I have, for convenience, adopted this inaccurate term in the first two chapters.
101
"Their actions are regulated by the wildness of the neighbourhood. The deer often come to eat their grain, the wolves to destroy their sheep, the bears to kill their hogs, the foxes to catch their poultry. This surrounding hostility immediately puts the gun into their hands, … and thus by defending their property, they soon become professed hunters; … once hunters, farewell to the plough. The chase renders them ferocious, gloomy, and unsociable; a hunter wants no neighbour, he rather hates them… The manners of the Indian natives are respectable, compared with this European medley. Their wives and children live in sloth and inactivity… You cannot imagine what an effect on manners the great distance they live from each other has… Eating of wild meat … tends to alter their temper… I have seen it." (Crèvecœur, 66-68.) Crèvecœur was himself a frontier farmer. (
102
"Many families carry with them all their decency of conduct, purity of morals, and respect of religion; but these are scarce." (Crèvecœur, 70.) Crèvecœur says his family was one of these.
103
This bellicose trait persisted for many years and is noted by all contemporary observers.
104
Story, in Dillon, iii, 334.
105
The records of Westmoreland County do not show what disposition Thomas Marshall made of the one hundred acres given him by his mother. (Letter of Albert Stuart, Deputy Clerk of Westmoreland County, Virginia, to the author, Aug. 26, 1913.) He probably abandoned it just as John Washington and Thomas Pope abandoned one thousand acres of the same land. (
106
Westmoreland County is on the Potomac River near its entrance into Chesapeake Bay. Prince William is about thirty miles farther up the river. Marshall was born about one hundred miles by wagon road from Appomattox Creek, northwest toward the Blue Ridge and in the wilderness.
107
Campbell, 404-05.
108
More than forty years later the country around the Blue Ridge was still a dense forest. (La Rochefoucauld, iii, 173.) And the road even from Richmond to Petersburg, an hundred miles east and south of the Marshall cabin, as late as 1797 ran through "an almost uninterrupted succession of woods." (
109
John, 1755; Elizabeth, 1756; Mary, 1757; Thomas, 1761.
110
Binney, in Dillon, iii, 284.
111
The ancient trunks of one or two of these trees still stand close to the house.
112
British map of 1755; Virginia State Library.
113
See La Rochefoucauld, iii, 707. These "roads" were scarcely more than mere tracks through the forests. See chap. VII, infra, for description of roads at the period between the close of the Revolution and the beginning of our National Government under the Constitution. Even in the oldest and best settled colonies the roads were very bad. Chalkley's
114
She was born in 1737. (Paxton,