University of Virginia Library

Historic Albemarle.

THERE has never been a serious attempt to write the
history of Albemarle; the notices scattered through
biographies, gazetteers, &c., are but broken lights of our
county history; yet none of the Piedmont counties has so
luminous a history; and that of the tidewater counties surpasses
it only in the particular that theirs opens at an earlier
date and with a more stirring prologue. There was less war—
less of the sudden surprise and stealthy ambush so usual at
Jamestown—but a more general interest in the affairs of the
country, a more enlightened statesmanship, and a better political
philosophy.

The first act of our great historic drama had closed at
Jamestown, and the scene had shifted westward toward the
mountains, leaving its stage in ruins by the James; that persevering
essence of history, the development which is usually
called the growth of civilization, was gradually bearing the
people forward to the point at which they would become
weaned from the mother country; in the mountains an apostle
of liberty had been born in 1743, in time for his intellect
to mature before the mother country should lose the touch of
nature which made the parent kingdom and the infant colony
kin; when, in 1744, for reasons of church as well as of state,
the county of Goochland[1] was dismembered by an arbitrary
line drawn from the fork of the James to the Louisa county
line on the one hand, and from the same point "direct to
Brook's Mill," thence to Appomattox river on the other. All
of the old county of Goochland situated north of this line
was named Albemarle after the titular governor of the colony
of Virginia, William Anne Keppel, Earl of Albemarle. He
never resided here, though it would have suited him well to

do so if Horace Walpole may be credited:—"It was convenient,"
wrote Walpole, "for him to be anywhere but in England.
His debts were excessive, though ambassador, groom
of the stole,[2] governor of Virginia and colonel of a regiment
of guards."

The Albemarle of 1744 embraced all of what is now known
as Albemarle, Buckingham, Amherst, Fluvanna, Nelson, and
a part of Appomattox. "In 1769," writes Mr. Jefferson in
his brief autobiography, "I became a member of the Legislature
by the choice of the county in which I live." The Albemarle
which the young Virginian represented had been contracted
until it was co-extensive with the county of Albemarle
as now defined, and the present county of Fluvanna.

While Virginia then was as unlike the Virginia of to-day
as can be imagined, still the growing settlements toward the
Blue Ridge were invaded by the arts of peace which came
from the eastern part of the colony. Occasionally a copy of
the first Virginia paper crept into the scattered community.
It was a dingy sheet; its small space was filled with the
advertisements of the Williamsburg tradespeople and a queer
mixture of personal and foreign news; and yet it was the
link that bound them to the metropolis; it suggested gay scenes
in the Appollo at the Raleigh, and was treasured a great deal
more than the ingenious flotsam and jetsam now known as
the daily paper.

In the first half century of its existence, Albemarle county,
if the voice of history is the voice of truth, was chiefly engaged
in the production of patriots. Lord Dunmore's removal
of the deposits of gunpowder from the magazine at
Williamsburg to the English sloop Madeline, produced no
more excitement anywhere than here. Dr. George Gilmer's
oratory aroused his countymen. A company of 119 volunteers
was soon organized of which he took command. It
marched to Williamsburg to tender its service to the Colonial
Committee of Safety, reaching Walker's Grove (Williamsburg)
July 11, 1775. Lieut. Gilmer was the grandfather of the late

Governor Thomas Walker Gilmer, and was the first of 208 to
sign a document (now the property of the Virginia Historical
Society) renouncing "allegiance to George the Third, King of
Great Britain, his heirs and successors." Thus the annals of
the revolution and of the trying days of disorganization immediately
succeeding, are pregnant with meaning. It was
not a time when the dreams of the Sans-Culotte could be
popular, nor were the spirits of that heroic period such as
would embrace his philosophy of disorganization and annihilation.
"It was a very great race and faced peril without
shrinking, down to the very boys and girls; and what the
long years of the future will remember is this heroic phase,
not the treaties and protocols of American history."[3]

During the second half century, no longer disturbed by
the throb of war drums, the people devoted themselves to
gathering around them the resources and luxuries of refined
life—to the establishment of that patriarchal, feudal existence
in which broad acres and a host of retainers are important
factors. At the height of this system the country gentleman
united in his person the planter, the legislator, and the scholar
and philosopher. The bowers of the Phillises, Belindas, &c.,
were not neglected, and the country dances were invariably
attended, even by such men as Jefferson, who confessed that
he knew the delights of frolicking with a fine girl.

Thus the county had made steady progress in its first century;
population was gradually moving further westward,
where one of the eminences was crowned with a great university—a
light set so high that it has been seen of many
since then. It had grown also in material wealth. In less
than a century what was little more than a wilderness was
transformed into a populous and cultivated district. So great
was the development that in 1840 there were in the county—
neat cattle, 15,000; sheep, 21,000; swine, 35,000; wheat,
327,000 bushels; rye, 117,000; Indian corn, 712,000; oats,
216,000; potatoes, 29,000; tobacco, 2,409,000 (pounds);
capital in stores (merchandise), $302,000; capital in manufactories,

$261,000; pupils in school, 786; slaves, 13,809; population,
22,924.

The first court for Albemarle county was held February 8,
1744, with Joshua Fry as president, and five associates, one of
whom was Peter Jefferson. Where the court sat cannot be
determined with certainty, for the records of the county covering
that period have been lost; still the evidence preserved
seems to show that it was at "Mrs. Scott's plantation at
Totier." It is certain that subsequent courts were held there.
The quarters were contracted and inadequate, and the next
year, May 23d, 1745, Samuel Scott proposed a little speculation:
he would build the courthouse at his own expense,
provided he would be allowed to place the edifice on his own
land. The court did not object to this scheme, provided Mr.
Scott would give bond with good security for &500—which
was done, and the courthouse, stocks and pillory were erected
near the James river, on what is now the southern border of
the county. For sixteen years the present hamlet of Warren,
or some spot near by, was the county seat. When, in March,
1761, Buckingham and Amherst (the latter embracing the
present county of Nelson) were cut off from Albemarle, the
courthouse was left on the extreme southern edge of the
county; and it became necessary, as an act of justice to
the people of northern Albemarle, to locate it more centrally.
Milton was then the largest town; there a great
many Scotch merchants had settled and were selling to the
whites (as well as to the Indians who passed en route to Williamsburg
to visit "the great father.") Their goods were, of
course, imported from England. It would have seemed but
natural for Milton to become the county seat, especially
as Fluvanna was then a part of Albemarle. But there lived
at Castle Hill at that time a shrewd and able gentleman
in the person of Dr. Thomas Walker, who owned a large
tract of land which enabled him to take advantage of the opportunity
to speculate in town lots. He offered a site for the
courthouse; the offer was accepted, and the courthouse was
built. In those days of union between church and state it

was not inappropriate that the high priests in the service of
each should meet in a common temple, and it is true that they
did: for the courthouse was in the early history of Charlottesville
the only public place of religious worship. Dr.
Walker gave the land on which the courthouse now stands in
good faith, but it is a singular fact that a legal transfer was
never made. The statutes show that it was represented to
to the legislature that fifty acres of land contiguous to the
courthouse of Albemarle were laid off into lots and streets
for a village, which, it was asserted, "could be of great advantage
to the inhabitants of the county if established into a
town for the reception of traders," and the general assembly
passed a law "establishing these fifty acres into a town to be
known as Charlottesville." The fifty acres were soon divided
into a hundred lots, each of which sold for &3 or $15, or
$1500 for the entire town.

The courthouse was built on its present site, and a tavern
was soon one of the attractions of the place. It is uncertain
just now whether the "Eagle" or the "Swan" was the first
tavern—both were famous in their day, and one of them had
for landlord no less a personage than Jack Jouitt, who conveyed
to the Legislature at Charlottesville intelligence of Tarleton's
approach. The Swan was situated at the corner of
Park and Jefferson streets while the Eagle occupied the site
of the present Farish Hotel. The Swan has disappeared
altogether. About these old hostelries clustered many local
traditions.

The days of the Revolution drew on, and found Albemarle
more thickly settled. The people had imbibed all the ardor
for freedom so well portrayed to us in the persons of many of
its citizens who then stepped from obscurity into the full light
of history. Charlottesville had been founded, but was a
mere hamlet still, though "famous," as may be gathered from
Anburey, one of the British officers quartered here with the
Saratoga troops. "This famous place we had heard so much
of," he writes in his "Travels," (a rare book), "consisted only
of a courthouse, one tavern and about a dozen houses, all of

which were crowded with officers." The soldiers camped "in
a wood near the town." This wood was on the farm of Mrs.
George Carr. The road leading out of Charlottesville towards
the northwest is to this day called the Old Barracks Road.
This excellent redcoat writes a few sentences about the want
of food, but fills many with sorrowful plaints about the want of
decent drink. "Many officers," is his lugubrious confession,
"to comfort themselves, put red pepper in water to drink by
way of cordial." But all of them did not resort to pepper
and water. "The officers drank freely of an abominable
liquor called peach brandy, which, if drunk to excess, the
fumes raise an absolute delirium, and in their cups were guilty
of deeds which would admit of no apology."

Albemarle of to-day can offer our English cousins a tipple
which even a British officer would not pronounce as bad as
that "peach brandy," nor a red-coated dragoon compare with
the pepper and water his ancestors drank "to comfort themselves."
Here the blood of the vine is shed to some purpose,
and the vintage is not inferior to that

Charlottesville occupies no small place in the annals of
staging in Virginia, and it is to be regretted that some Virginia
Dickens has not given eternal life to our Tony Wellers.
One line of stages ran from Washington by way of Warrenton
and Orange to this point; another from Fredericksburg
by Orange and Gordonsville; another from Richmond—in
short, there was direct connection "by coach" with every
important point in the State.

Albemarle has been the home of many distinguished people.
Jefferson lived at Monticello with Monroe (at Ash Lawn) for
neighbor; Thomas Mann Randolph at Edge Hill, Wilson
Cary Nicholas at Warren, the present home of Mr. John
Coles; Thomas Walker Gilmer at Mount Ayr, Andrew Stevenson
(Minister to England) at Blenheim, Meriwether Lewis
at Locust Hill, Gen. George Rogers Clark, "the Hannibal of
the West," a few miles east of Charlottesville, near Pantops;

William C. Rives at Castle Hill, the home of Mrs. Amélie
Rives-Chanler; Judge Hugh Nelson (Minister to Spain) at
Belvoir — indeed, the list is too long to be printed here.
Joshua Fry also resided for a time in the county.

To this illustrious roll should be added the name of Dr.
Thomas Walker, the founder of Charlottesville; and that of
his distinguished son-in-law, William Wirt. For Wirt was
built the house now known as Rose Hill (a mile north of Charlottesville)
which is now occupied by the Misses Craven. It
is a neighborhood legend that Mr. Wirt often rehearsed his
orations on the quiet and unfrequented banks of the Rivanna
near Pen Park. It is a curious fact that Wirt's old law office
was sold and moved from the premises of Rose Hill to the
nearest county road, and is now occupied by a colored family.

John S. Patton.

[Extract from Martin's Gazetteer of Virginia, published in 1836.]

Piedmont Virginia.

This section is as healthy as any portion of the world, the
water is excellent and plentiful throughout; the lands fertile,
producing in abundance all the staples of the State; easily recovered
when exhausted, and always susceptible of high improvement
by judicious management; the farms are smaller
than in the Tidewater district; the people are industrious and
intelligent, and from James River to the Potomac perhaps are
the best farmers in the State. Mr. Jefferson pronounced that
portion of this section which lies under the Southwest Range
of mountains, to be the garden spot of America; and General
Washington, when written to by Sir John Sinclair to recommend
to him some spot for a residence in America, after passing
in review the whole Union, pronounced a residence somewhere
on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge, between the
Potomac and the James, to combine most advantages, and be
the most desirable.