University of Virginia Library

ROBERT DINWIDDIE.

The period of the accession of Robert Dinwiddie as the executive of
the Colony of Virginia, was one of anxiety and momentous presage in
its history, and the dignity of Lieutenant-Governor at this critical exigency
was conferred on him in royal recognition of the singular ability,
zeal and fidelity exhibited by him in previous positions of governmental
trust. The Dinwiddie is an ancient Scotch family of historic mention.
On the "Ragman's Roll," A. D. 1296, appears the name of Alleyn
Dinwithie, the progenitor, it is said, of the Dinwiddies who were long
seated as chief proprietors on lands called after them, in the parish of
Applegarth, Annandale, Dumfries-shire. The immediate ancestors of
Governor Dinwiddie were denizens of Glasgow, and had been, for some

generations probably, merchants in honorable esteem, as was his father,
Robert Dinwiddie. His mother was of an old Glasgow family of the
same calling. She was Sarah, the daughter of Matthew Cumming, who
was Baillie of the city in 1691, 1696 and 1699. The son, Robert Dinwiddie,
was born in 1693, at Germiston, his father's seat.

He was disciplined in the counting house, and was probably for a time
a merchant in Glasgow. He was appointed, December 1, 1727, a collector
of the customs in the Island of Bermuda, which position he held
under successive commissions, until April 11, 1738, when, in acknowledgment
of his vigilance and zeal in the discharge of official duty,
in the detecting and exposing a long practiced system of fraud in the
collection of the customs of the West India Islands, he received the appointment
of "Surveyor General of the customs of the Southern ports
of the Continent of America."

He was named, as his predecessor had been, a member of the respective
Councils of the American Colonies. This mandate was recognized by
Governor Gooch, of Virginia (in which colony Dinwiddie appears to
have fixed his chief residence), but was resisted by the Councillors, who,
jealous of interference with their prerogatives, refused to allow him to sit
with them, and transmitted a remonstrance to the King for his exclusion.
The controversy was decided by the Board of Trade in May, 1742, advising
that the royal purpose should be enforced, in opposition to claims
dangerous because they were new. Dinwiddie was specially commissioned,
August 17, 1743, with the designation of "Inspector General,"
to examine into the duties of the Collector of Customs of the Island of
Barbadoes, and, in the discharge of this trust, exposed to the English
Government an enormous defalcation in the revenues there. In 1749,
he appears to have resided in London as a merchant, engaged in trade
with the colonies. He was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia,
July 20, 1751, and with his wife Rebecca (nee Affleck) and two
daughters, Elizabeth and Rebecca, arrived in the Colony November 20th
following. He was warmly welcomed with expressions of respect and
regard, but in a little while gave offence by declaring the dissent of the
King to certain acts which his more insinuating predecessor, Gooch, had
approved. Governor Dinwiddie finding that the regulations governing
the patenting of lands were but little regarded, and that a practice had
long prevailed of securing the possession and use of lands by warrants of
survey without the entering of patents, by which more than a million
of acres of land were unpatented, and the royal revenue from the quitrents
of two-shillings annual tax upon every fifty acres, seriously defrauded—with
the advice of the Council, in an endeavor to correct the
abuse, and by the exaction of a fee of a pistole (about $3.60 in value)
on every patent issued, incurred yet greater animosity. The House of
Burgesses unavailingly remonstrated against this exercise of the royal prerogative,
and, in 1754, sent Peyton Randolph (then Attorney-General

of the Colony and ultimately distinguished as the first President of the
Continental Congress) to England, as its agent, with a salary of £2500,
and bearing a petition to the King for relief from the fee. The decision
of the Board of Trade was virtually in favor of Governor Dinwiddie,
though their instructions were at first singularly indefinite. This difference,
when harmony in Council and concert in action were so essential,
was unfortunate. The aggrandizing policy in North America of the
French—who asserted their claim to the whole Mississippi Valley, in
virtue of primal rights of discovery and occupation under the explorations
of Marquette, La Salle, and others—was a constant menace to
English colonization. In every treaty between the two competing
powers, the territorial limits of France had been left undecided. To
that fatal treaty between Charles I. and Louis XIII., by which "was
restored to France, absolutely and without demarcation of limits, all the
places possessed by the English, in New France, Lacadie and Canada,
particularly Port Royal, Quebec and Cape Breton," holds McPherson,
may be ascribed the subsequent troubles with France. From 1690, the
colonies from New Hampshire to Georgia were engaged in almost unremitting
hostilities with the savages on their borders, instigated by the
French in the North and the Spaniards in the South. The intent of the
French to link their possessions in Louisiana and on the St. Lawrence
by a chain of forts on the Ohio, was manifest. Governor Dinwiddie,
viewing with alarm their encroachments, at the close of October, 1753,
dispatched Major George Washington, then only twenty-one years of
age, to M. Le Gardeur de St. Pierre, the Commandant of the fort on
the Ohio, to demand by whose authority an armed force had crossed the
lakes, and to urge a speedy and peaceable departure. The mission, accomplished
under many hardships, was ineffectual, and Governor Dinwiddie
immediately instituted the most energetic and widespread efforts
for defense. His vigilance, zeal and activity were signal. Though suffering
from the debilitating effects of a stroke of paralysis, his personal
activity for the public good would have been creditable to one of physical
capacity the most favored. He promptly reported the impending
danger to the English government, and to the Executives of the several
Colonies, urging immediate and effectual measures of resistance, and
praying their assistance. He had but meager response in America, but
in the course of the year 1754 was aided with a grant of £20,000, arms
and ordnance stores from Great Britain. The money was ordered to be
reimbursed from the export duty of two shillings per hogshead on
tobacco. The English Ministry perceiving, from the unfortunate events
of 1754, that expedients were fruitless, and that no effective conjoined
action of the American Colonies could be hoped for, determined on an
offensive policy by sea and land, and early in 1755, Admirals Boscawen
and Mostyn were sent with a powerful fleet into the North American
seas, to intercept the reinforcements of France; and General Braddock,
with the appointment of Commander-in-chief, was sent to Virginia with
two regiments from the regular army. This last was a succor which had
been persistently solicited by Governor Dinwiddie, but which now, unfortunately,
availed not. However, the disastrous defeat of Braddock
inspired the colonists with such alarm that their reviving martial spirit
found expression in the organization of companies for defense. Their
ardor was stimulated from the pulpit, and several of such stirring appeals
from the eloquent Samuel Davies, "the father of the Presbyterian
Church in Virginia," are incorporated in his published sermons. The
Assembly voted £40,000 for the service, and the Virginia regiment was
enlarged to sixteen companies, and the command given to Washington.
He had scarcely completed a tour of inspection of the mountain outposts
before he was called to arrest the horrors of a savage invasion of the
frontiers of Augusta County. The terror inspired by the atrocities committed,
influenced the Assembly, in 1756, to direct the building of a line
of forts from the Potomac River through the Alleghany Mountains to
the borders of North Carolina. The construction of these, with the constantly
demanded service of the Virginia troops in the protection of the
frontiers from the Indians, debarred them for a time from participation
in the campaigns in the North against the French, and the futile expedition
under Major Andrew Lewis against the Indian towns on the west of
the Ohio, known as the Sandy Creek expedition, was the most pretentious
offensive operation of the Colony during the year. Among the officers
in this expedition were Captains Peter Hog, William Preston, John
Smith, Archibald Alexander, Obadiah Woodson, James Overton, and
David Stewart, Commissary. It was accompanied by a party of friendly
Cherokees under Captain Richard Pearis.

The Earl of Loudon arrived in America in July, with the appointment
of Governor of Virginia, and a commission as Commander-in-chief of
the British forces in America, but he was never in the Colony, and Dinwiddie
continued in the control of its affairs. He appears to have so
met the varied and onerous duties of his trust as to have commanded
repeatedly the thankful commendation of the colonial clergy and Assembly,
and of the English Ministry.

The year 1757 was as uneventful in Virginia as its predecessor had
been, and at its close, Governor Dinwiddie, worn out with fatigue, was
at his own request relieved from his arduous station. He sailed for
England in January, 1758, after receiving voted testimonials of the
regard of the Council and of the municipal authorities of Williamsburg,
the seat of government. By the Council, also, he was charged with the
delivery to the great Pitt, then at the head of the English Ministry,
of an address of thanks for his generous course towards the colonies, and
with the negotiation of some important interests of Virginia.

The administration of Governor Dinwiddie had been a peculiarly
trying one. His disputes with the Assembly, and his difficulties with
Washington, have, through the prejudicial representations of some
writers, left an unpleasant impression on the American mind, which has
been allowed to veil virtues which would otherwise have commanded
undivided esteem and regard. An attempt has been made to stigmatize
his memory with the crime of dishonesty in the charge of misappropriation
to his own use of funds intrusted to him for the public service—a
calumny which rests alone upon the unsupported allegations of his
enemies. In all public expenditures he appears to have acted in conjunction
with, and by authority of, a committee appointed by the
colonial Council, and his reports of the disposition of the funds received
from England were systematically regular. It should not be forgotten
that the government of Virginia was bestowed on him as the meed of
singular integrity and vigilance in previous stations; that he was the
warm friend of religion, and, withal, entirely tolerant of all mere differences
of creed; that he sought the enforcement of morality, and was the
patron of knowledge and of education. The library of the ancient seat of
learning, William and Mary College, until its destruction by fire, during
our late internecine war, preserved many tokens of his generosity, each
marked with his armorial book-plate. Another memorial still exists in
Virginia—the silver mace presented by him to the corporation of Norfolk
in 1754, an engraving of which is presented in this work. The
faithful services of Governor Dinwiddie appear to have been duly recognized
in Great Britain; and Chalmers, the authoritative colonial annalist,
warmly and repeatedly commends his "vigilant" and "able" administration
in Virginia. James Abercromby, the agent of the Colony in
Virginia, whose letter-books are in the possession of the present writer, in a
letter dated London, March 6, 1758, to Richard Corbin, Receiver-General
of the Colony, a member of the Council, and the friend and patron of
Washington, says, "Your good opinion of your late Governor is fully
confirmed by the kind reception he has met with from the Ministry." He
makes use of similar expressions also to John Blair, President of the
Council, and who was the Acting Governor of the Colony until the arrival,
on the 7th of June, 1758, of Governor Fauquier.

Abercromby also makes frequent later acknowledgments of essential
aid received by him from Governor Dinwiddie, in his solicitations of the
English Ministry in behalf of the Colony. These services, and many
others for his personal friends in Virginia, were continuously rendered by
the amiable and benevolent old man when his infirmities had become such
that all physical exertions were painful. He died at Clifton, Bristol,
whither he had gone for the benefit of the baths, July 27, 1770, and
was interred in the parish church there with much "pomp and circumstance."

The curious bill of his funeral expenses is given in the Dinwiddie
Papers, Vol. I., published by the Virginia Historical Society. The
honorable and stainless record of Governor Dinwiddie was publicly
attested.

John Dinwiddie, a brother of the Governor, a merchant on the Rappahannock
River, married a granddaughter of George Mason, and a
sister, Mary, the Rev. Andrew Stuart, of Pennsylvania. Their descendants
in the honored names of Fowke, Phillips, Johnston, Ficklen,
Mason, Peyton, Stuart and others, are quite numerous in the United
States. To the campaign of 1758, under Forbes, Virginia contributed
2,000 men, in two regiments, with Washington in chief command as
Colonel of the first, and Wm. Byrd (the third of the name in lineal
succession in Virginia) of the second. These troops nobly sustained the
reputation which they had valorously earned in the ill-fated expedition
of Braddock, and it was largely due to their bravery, admits Chalmers,
that the French were driven from Fort Duquesne, which was taken possession
of November 25th, repaired, and re-named Fort Pitt, in compliment
to the Prime Minister.

In a preliminary engagement with the French of a reconnoitering party
under Major Grant, a detachment of one hundred and sixty-two Virginians,
in command of Major Andrew Lewis, gallantly participated.
Of their number, sixty-two were killed and two wounded; and of the
eight officers present, five were slain, a sixth wounded and the seventh
captured. Captain Thomas Bullitt, the remaining officer (Major Grant,
the commanding officer, having fallen into the hands of the enemy),
with fifty Virginians, defended the baggage with great valor, and was
instrumental in saving the remnant of the force. The war was prosecuted
at the North with vigor, and in the succeeding summer of 1759,
Niagara and Crown Point fell into the possession of the British crown,
and on the 18th of September, Quebec surrendered to the gallant Wolfe.
The treaty of Fontainebleau, in November, 1762, put an end to the war
(which it is estimated had cost the British empire the loss of the lives of
more than twenty thousand adults), and the English were supreme in
North America.