No. III.
Origin of the Names of Parishes.
[The following was furnished at my request by my friend, Mr. Hugh Blair
Grigsby, of Norfolk, to whom I am indebted for many other things in the foregoing
articles.]
My Dear Sir:—Your letter of the 18th was received last evening, and
I hasten to reply at once to your interrogatories.
1. Augusta.—So called from the Princess Augusta, wife of Frederick,
Prince of Wales, who was the eldest son of George II., but died before his
father. The county of Augusta was created in 1738, and Frederick in the
same year, and were thus named after the Prince and Princess of Wales.
2. Dale.—This is a fancy name, probably applied from the local propriety
of the name,—probably from Dale Manor in England, from which
some of the vestry may have emigrated; just as George Mason the first
called the county of Stafford from Stafford in England. (See note to George
Mason's Life in Virginia Convention of 1776.) Thomas Dale was High-Marshal
of Virginia in 1611.
3. Beckford.—The name of a place in England, and a common name
of persons; but I know not its application here. By-the-way, its true
meaning is bec fort, (a strong beak.)
4. South Farnham.—Farnham is the name of a town in Surrey, England,
in which the Bishop of Winchester has a castle. Its products are
hops and corn. It is on the banks of the Wey.
5. Truro.—This is the name of a borough in Cornwall, England, and
is the shipping-port of the tin and copper ore found in its vicinity. Probably
there were mines in the vicinity of Truro parish, in Virginia, or some
of its people came from Truro.
6. Fincastle.—The name of this parish was taken from the county of
Fincastle, which was so called after the country-seat of Lord Botetourt, in
England. Fincastle county was taken from Botetourt in 1774. In October,
1776, the county of Fincastle was divided into Kentucky, Washington,
and Montgomery,—the name of Fincastle having been dropped.
The town of Fincastle, however, which had been incorporated in 1772,
retained the name.
7. Petsworth.—The true name is Petworth, and is the name of a
town in Surrey, England, which contains a church in which the Percys
were buried. If the parish were created before 1630, it was doubtless so
called in honour of Percy, who was for a short time Governor of Virginia,
and was of the noble house of Northumberland. A likeness of Percy (with
his amputated finger) is in our Historical Hall,—having been presented by
Conway Robinson, who saw the original portrait in England. The name
Petso, to which you allude, is only an abbreviation of "Petswo," which
was the old way of recording the word, as Norfolk was written "Norff,"
or "Norfo."
8. Antrim.—This is the name of a parish in the county of Antrim, on
the northeast coast of Ireland, of which Belfast is one of the principal
towns, as also Lisburn and Carrickfergus,—all noted in the history of that
great effort to Saxonize Ireland. It is the head-quarters of the Protestants
and Scotch-Irish. It is an immense county of two hundred and seventy-one
thousand inhabitants. Some descendant of the Scotch-Irish (as were
the Lewises) gave one parish that name.
9. St. James's Northam.—Northam is a common name of a hundred
places in England, (signifying north settlement,) and corresponds with
Southam, Eastham, and Westham.
10. Stratton Major.—Stratton is the name of a town in Cornwall,
England, and individuals took the name from the town. The Strattons
came over to Virginia early and were scattered on the eastern and western
shores of the Chesapeake. It was doubtless named by some minister who
came over from Cornwall. That is to say, the minister suggested the name
to the representative of the county, who proposed it in the House of
Burgesses.
11. Shelburne.—Called after Lord Shelburne, who was prime minister
in England for a short time, and was regarded as friendly to the Americans.
12. Blisland.—This is a common name in England, and is synonymous
with "happy land." It is evidently applied from some local incident long
lost, or from some place in England connected with some of its parishioners.
The word was originally Bliss-land.
13. Saint Bride.—This should have been printed "St. Bride's." It
alludes to the spiritual marriage of St. Catharine, who, according to the
Catholic legends, had the bridal ring placed on her finger by our Saviour
in his childhood. Correggio—I think it is—has given us a superb painting
of the scene. The picture (partly original) is at the house of the late
Miss Ann Herson, a Catholic lady of Norfolk, who died during the yellow
fever, and who was during her life a ministering angel to the poor,—bestowing
her vast wealth freely in the cause of charity. As St. Catharine
was never married
corporeally, she has been called the bride of Heaven,—
that is, Saint Bride. We have a street in Norfolk called Catharine, named
about the time of the erection of the parish of St. Bride.
14. Bromfield.—I overlooked Bromfield in its proper place. The
term "brom," which signifies wild oats, is a common prefix in England;
as, Bromley, Bromwich, Bromgrove, Bromton, (now Brompton,) &c.
There are seven different places in Staffordshire, England, called Bromley,
and in Kent; and it is probable that some Staffordshire colonist or
Kentish man suggested the name Bromfield, as appropriate to the position
of the church in the county of Culpepper.
15. Lynnhaven.—This was so called from the port of Lynn in the
county of Norfolk, England, and before Princess Anne, in which it now is,
was set apart as a distinct county.
16. Overwharton.—This name, like that of Stratton, is that of an English
town in the first place, and, secondly, of an individual. It may have
been called in honour of George Wharton, a native of Westmoreland, in
England, who lost all during the civil wars, and who may have been a friend
to the George Mason—the first of the name—who was a Staffordshire man
and a royalist. Or it may have been called after the Marchioness of
Wharton, who was a daughter of Sir Henry Lee, of Ditchley,—a great
royalist,—and who inherited his wealth. If Stafford had not been settled
by some strong Cavaliers, and the parish had been created after the Revolution
of 1688, I would suppose it was called Wharton in honour of the
author of the celebrated ballad of Lillibulero.
17. Cople.—This should correctly be written Copple. The word is
common in Cornwall and in the mining-counties of England, and means
a vessel used in refining metals. It was common, three hundred years ago,
to name taverns after instruments; as, the "Mortar and Pestle," the "Bell,"
&c. But I know of no place in England so called. If there were any
mines in Westmoremand, the title would be appropriate enough.
18. Westmoreland.—This county was created between the years 1648
and 1653, near a century before any of its Revolutionary men were born;
so the Northern writer cannot say properly that it was so called from its
having produced so many great men in Virginia. The true meaning of
Moreland is "greater land," from the comparative "more," which is used
in the sense of great by Gower, Chaucer, and even as late as Shakspeare, who
says, in King John, Act II. 5th sc., "a more requital." But, if Moreland
is derived from the Celtic word "more," then Moreland signifies great land,
or high land; as, Maccullum More is the Great Maccullum. "Gilmore"
means the henchman of the more or great man. The name of Westmoreland
was given originally without doubt to a scene of high land or a great
stretch of land of some kind, and never had allusion to the men who were
born or died in any place so called.
19. Martin's Brandon.—Brandon was so called from the town of
Brandon, in Suffolk, England. It gives the British title to the Scotch
Duke of Hamilton. It is situated on the river Ouse, and its name was
given, like that of Surrey, Sussex, and Suffolk, from emigrants from those
parts of England. It appears from the appendix of Burke's History, vol.
i. p. 334, that one John Martin brought out a patent from England of five
hundred acres, which was located on the tract, or hundred, called Brandon,
on Chapoke Creek; and, in the early enumeration of the different settlements
or plantations in the Colony, the farm of John Martin was always
called "Martin's Brandon." This was as early, I think, as 1630.
