"Dear Sir: The plan proposed for taking A——d (the outlines of which are communicated in your letter, which was this moment put into my hands without date) has every mark of a good one. I therefore agree to the promised rewards; and have such entire confidence in your management of the business, as to give it my fullest approbation; and leave the whole to the guidance of your judgment, with this express stipulation and pointed injunction, that he (A——d) is to be brought to me alive.
"No circumstance whatever shall obtain my consent to his being put to death. The idea which would accompany such an event, would be that ruffians had been hired to assassinate him. My aim is to make a public example of him; and this should be strongly impressed upon those who are employed to bring him off. The Sergeant must be very circumspect—too much zeal may create suspicion, and too much precipitency may defeat the project. The most inviolable secrecy must be observed on all hands. I send you five guineas; but I am not satisfied of the propriety of the Sergeant's appearing with much specie. This circumstance may also lead to suspicion, as it is but too well known to the enemy that we do not abound in this article.
"The interviews between the party in and out of the city, should be managed with much caution and seeming indifference; or else the frequency of their meetings, etc., may betray the design, and involve bad consequences; but I am persuaded that you will place every matter in a proper point of view to the conductors of this interesting business, and therefore I shall only add that
"G. Washington."
Written communications between Champe and Lee continued. In ten days Champe had added the final touches to his plan for the abduction and so informed Lee, asking that on the third subsequent night a party of dragoons meet him at Hoboken to whom he hoped to deliver Arnold.
Our sergeant was by this time familiar with Arnold's habits and movements. He knew that it was Arnold's custom to return to his home about midnight and to visit the garden before retiring. It was at that time that Champe and the allies he, through Lee's letters, had obtained, planned to seize and gag the renegade and remove him by way of an adjoining alley to a boat, manned by other trusted conspirators, at one of the wharves on the nearby Hudson.
When the appointed day arrived, Washington directed Lee to himself take command of the small detachment of dragoons who were to meet Champe and his prisoner. "The day arrived," quoting Lee again "and Lee with a party of dragoons left camp late in the evening, with three led horses; one for Arnold, one for the sergeant and the third for his associate; never doubting the success of the enterprise from the tenor of the last received communication. The party reached Hoboken about midnight, where they were concealed in the adjoining wood—Lee with three dragoons stationing himself near the river shore. Hour after hour passed—no boat approached. At length the day broke and the major retired to his party and with his led horses returned to camp, where he proceeded to headquarters to inform the general of the disappointment as mortifying as inexplicable."
Deeply concerned as were both Washington and Lee over the failure of the plan, they were also very apprehensive as to Champe's fate, but in a few days one of the sergeant's associates succeeded in getting through to them an anonymous letter explaining the failure of their plans. On the day preceding that fixed for the abduction, Arnold most unexpectedly removed his quarters to another part of the town to facilitate the supervision by him of the embarkation of troops on a special mission to be commanded by him and wholly unforeseen by the conspirators—an expeditionary force made up largely of American deserters. "Thus it happened" Lee explains "that John Champe, instead of crossing the Hudson that night, was safely deposited on board one of the fleet of transports, from whence he never departed until Arnold landed in Virginia! Nor was he able to escape from the British Army until after the junction of Lord Cornwallis at Petersburg, when he deserted; and proceeding high up into Virginia, he passed into North Carolina near the Saura towns, and keeping in the friendly districts of that State, safely joined the army soon after it had passed the Congaree in pursuit of Lord Rawdon.
"His appearance excited extreme surprise among his former comrades, which was not a little increased when they saw the cordial reception he met with from Lieutenant Colonel Lee. His whole story soon became known to the corps, which reproduced the love and respect of officer and soldier, heightened by universal admiration of his daring and arduous attempt.
"Champe was introduced to General Green, who cheerfully complied with the promises made by the commander-in-chief, so far as in his power; and having provided the sergeant with a good horse and money for his journey, sent him to General Washington, who munificently anticipated every desire of the sergeant, and presented him with a discharge from further service lest he might in the vicissitudes of war, fall into the enemy's hands, when if recognized, he was sure to die on a gibbet."
Here ends Lee's account, apparently as first written; but subsequently he seems to have acquired some further information of his sergeant's later life which he appends in a note, as will appear later.
When Champe was with the British in New York, he, according to Lee and as appears above, refused to enlist in the enemy's forces; but there is another account which says that when he arrived in New York "he was placed in the company of Captain Cameron." In the Champe family is the tradition that he wrote to Lee of this:
"I was yesterday compelled to a most affecting step, but one indispensable the success of my plan. It was necessary for me to accept a commission in the traitor's legion that I might have uninterrupted access to his house."
This Captain Cameron, after the termination of the war, married in Virginia and fortunately kept a diary, a part of which was published in The British United Service Journal. From it we learn, through Howe,[120] that Cameron had occasion to traverse the forests of Loudoun with a single servant and—familiar touch—was caught in one of those violent thunderstorms so characteristic of upper Piedmont. Night came on, no habitation or shelter of any kind was discernible to our travellers in that wilderness and, believing themselves in grave peril, they were becoming really alarmed when they saw through the woods a faint light. Riding toward it, they discovered it came from one of the typical log-houses of a frontier clearing and they lost no time in seeking shelter. The owner of the little home received them with true backwoods hospitality. And now quoting from Captain Cameron's journal:
"He would not permit either master or man to think of their horses, but insisted that we should enter the house, where fire and changes of apparel awaited us, he himself led the jaded animals to a shed, rubbed them down and provided them with forage. It would have been affectation of the worst kind to dispute his pleasure in this instance, so I readily sought the shelter of his roof, to which a comely dame bade me welcome, and busied herself in preventing my wishes. My drenched uniform was exchanged for a suit of my host's apparel; my servant was accomodated in the same manner, and we soon afterwards found ourselves seated before a blazing fire of wood, by the light of which our hostess assiduously laid out a well-stocked supper table. I need not say that all this was in the highest degree comfortable. Yet I was not destined to sit down to supper without discovering still greater cause for wonder. In due time our host returned and the first glance which I cast towards him satisfied me that he was no stranger. The second set everything like doubt at rest. Sergeant Champe stood before me; the same in complexion, in feature, though somewhat less thoughtful in the expression of his eye, as when he first joined my company in New York.
"I cannot say my sensations on recognizing my ci-devant sergeant were altogether agreeable. The mysterious manner in which he both came and went, the success with which he had thrown a veil over his own movements, and the recollection that I was the guest of a man who probably entertained no sense of honour, either public or private, excited in me a vague and indefinite alarm, which I found it impossible on the instant to conceal. I started, and the movement was not lost upon Champe. He examined my face closely; and a light appearing to burst all at once upon his memory, he ran forward toward the spot where I sat.
"'Welcome, welcome, Captain Cameron' said he 'a thousand times welcome to my roof; you behaved well to me when I was under your command, and deserve more of hospitality than I possess the power to offer; but what I do possess is very much at your service, and heartily glad am I that accident should have thus brought us together again. You have doubtless looked upon me as a twofold traitor, and I cannot blame you if you have. Yet I should wish to stand well in your estimation too; and therefore I will, if you please, give a faithful narrative of the causes which led both to my arrival in New York, and to my abandonment of the British Army on the shores of the Chesapeake. You are tired with your day's travel; you stand in need of food and rest. Eat and drink, I pray you, and sleep soundly; and tomorrow, if you are so disposed, I will try to put my character straight in the estimation of the only British officer of whose good opinion I am covetous.'
"There was so much frankness and apparent sincerity in this, that I could not resist it, so I sat down to supper with a mind perfectly at ease and having eaten heartily I soon afterwards retired to rest, on a clean pallet which was spread for me on the floor. Sleep was not slow in visiting my eyelids; nor did I awake until long after the sun had risen on the morrow, and the hardy and active settlers, to whose kindness I was indebted, had gone through a considerable portion of their day's labour.
"I found my host next morning the same open, candid and hospitable man that he had shewn himself on first recognizing me. He made no allusion, indeed, during breakfast, to what had fallen from him over night; but when he heard me talk of getting my horses ready, he begged to have a few minutes' conversation with me. His wife, for such my hostess was, immediately withdrew, under the pretext of attending to her household affairs, upon which he took a seat beside me and began his story."
After the war and, it is said, on the personal recommendation of General Washington, Sergeant Champe was appointed to the position of doorkeeper or sergeant-at-arms of the Continental Congress, then meeting at Philadelphia, but obliged, on account of rioting, to remove to Trenton. His name appears on a roll of the 25th August, 1783, as holding that position. Soon afterwards he returned to Loudoun, married and acquired a small holding near what is now Dover, between the later towns of Aldie and Middleburg, close by the present Little River Turnpike. The State of Virginia has erected one of its excellent road markers adjacent to the spot, bearing the following words:
"Here stood the home of John Champ, Continental soldier. Champ deserted and enlisted in Benedict Arnold's British Command for the purpose of capturing the traitor, 1780. Failing in this attempt Champ rejoined the American Army."
Nearby there is a pool of water still known locally as "Champe's Spring."
According to local tradition, he later lived in a log cabin on the old Military Road near the old Ketoctin Baptist Church and on lands afterward owned by Robert Braden. Thence he in turn moved to Kentucky where, it is believed he died in or about the year 1797.
And now we may return to General Lee's narrative for the note he appended thereto:
"When General Washington was called by President Adams to the command of the Army prepared to defend the country from French hostility, he sent to Lieutenant-Colonel Lee to inquire for Champe, being determined to bring him into the field at the head of a company of infantry. Lee sent to Loudoun County, where Champe settled after his discharge from the Army, and learned that the gallant soldier had removed to Kentucky, and had soon after died."
Of the sergeant's children, one son, Nathaniel, was born in Virginia on the 22nd December, 1792, and in 1812 enlisted in Colonel Duncan McArthur's regiment at Dayton, Ohio, that command comprising a part of Hull's Army sent for the relief of Detroit. He was in the battle of Monguagon, was among those captured at Detroit and subsequently, in the regular army, saw further fighting and was with General Arthur's advance-guard when Detroit was reoccupied. After the war he engaged in business in Detroit, was a buyer and seller of real estate and built Detroit's first "Temperance Hotel" of which he acted as landlord and in which he was succeeded by his son William. Later he moved to Onondago, Ohio, where he died on the 13th February, 1870.[121]
CHAPTER XIII
EARLY FEDERAL PERIOD
From the close of the Revolution to the War of 1812, there were at least four outstanding movements in Loudoun: the restoration of the fertility of her soil, the disestablishment of the church, the loss of a substantial part of her area which returned to Fairfax and the erection of large country mansions. The great project of Washington's Potomac Company, involving the extensive improvement of that river for navigation, was not, of course a Loudoun enterprise, although the welfare of her people was greatly affected and such Loudoun men as Joseph Janney, Benjamin Shreve, John Hough, Benjamin Dulaney, William Brown, John Harper, William Ellzey, and Leven Powell were at one time or another, as directors or stockholders, interested in the undertaking.
In the settlement of county, the Virginians from Tidewater had brought with them their improvident methods of farming. From the earliest days, when land was more available than labor, scant attention had been given by the Virginia planter or farmer to the conservation or restoration of the fertility of his soil. A field was planted and replanted to heavy-feeding crops, with perhaps an occasional fallow year intervening; and when the inevitable result registered itself in the falling off of production to a point where the planting of that field became unprofitable, it was abandoned and new ground broken up to be put through the same disastrous course. Rotation of crops and the manuring of the land were seldom, if ever, practiced outside perhaps the Quaker and German Settlements. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, so far had this reckless agriculture gone, that even the fertile lands of the Piedmont were recording the result in no uncertain manner. The yield of corn and wheat to the acre had been steadily declining, followed by an emigration of many of the Loudoun people to Kentucky and elsewhere. It was then that there arose in the county a farmer and leader who, measured by the results of his work, may be considered as the most valuable man to her own interests that Loudoun has thus far produced. John Alexander Binns was the son of Charles Binns, the first clerk of Loudoun and of his wife, Ann Alexander, a daughter of "John Alexander the Eldest of Stafford County. Gent." as he is described in a deed to his daughter in 1760. The son was born probably about 1761, although the exact date seems uncertain. In March, 1781, he was, as we have seen, recommended by the County Court of Loudoun to the governor for appointment as a first lieutenant in the Virginia forces and at the same time his brother, Charles Binns, Jr., later to succeed his father as county clerk, was recommended for a commission as second lieutenant. After the war, John Binns turned his attention to farming and grappled with the problem of restoring the fertility of the soil. He had learned of the use of land plaster (gypsum) and clover for that purpose in the Philadelphia neighborhood, whence it is said the system had been brought from Leipsic in Saxony. As early as 1780 he began his experiments, using not only the land plaster and clover but practicing deeper ploughing and rotating crops. At first he was, of course, ridiculed by his farmer neighbors, for the reluctance of the husbandman to change his methods is an old, old story. But Binns persisted. As he improved one farm and his profits rose, he purchased other worn-out lands from their discouraged owners and in time was profiting handsomely from his intelligence and industry. At length, in 1803, his labors crowned with success and the agricultural wealth of his home county rapidly rising as a result of his long and patient work, he sat himself down to write the story of what he had accomplished. His little book was printed in a very small edition, due probably to the high price and scarcity of paper, and was offered for sale at fifty cents, under the comprehensive title "A Treatise on Practical Farming, embracing particularly the following subjects, viz. The Use of Plaster of Paris, with Directions for Using it; and General Observations on the Use of Other Manures. On Deep Ploughing; thick Sowing of Grain; Method of Preventing Fruit Trees from Decaying and Farming in General. By John A. Binns Of Loudoun County, Virginia, Farmer." It was published at "Frederick-Town, Maryland," and "Printed by John B. Colvin, Editor of the Republican Advocate, 1803." "The little book" writes Rodney H. True "is now hard to find and the first edition, but for the copy preserved by Jefferson and now treasured among the great man's books in the Library of Congress, would well-nigh be lost."
Thomas Jefferson, with his restless intelligence, was one of the first to acquire the book. Having studied it and being impressed with Binns' success, he wrote to Sir John Sinclair, the head of the English Board of Agriculture, a letter dated the 30th June, 1803, sending with it
"the enclosed pamphlet on the use of gypsum by a Mr. Binns, a plain farmer, who understands handling his plough better than his pen. he is certainly something of an enthusiast in the use of this manure; but he has a right to be so. the result of his husbandry prooves his confidence in it well found for from being poor, it has made him rich. the county of Loudoun in which he live(s) exhausted & wasted by bad husbandry, has, from his example, become the most productive one in Virginia: and its lands, from being the lowest, sell at the highest prices. these facts speak more strongly for his pamphlet than a better arrangement & more polished phrases would have done. were I now a farmer I should surely adopt the gypsum...."
On the same day, in a letter to Mr. William Strictland, another member of the English Board of Agriculture, Jefferson wrote
"You will discover that Mr. Binns is an enthusiast for the use of gypsum, but there are two facts which prove that he has a right to be so 1. he began poor and has made himself tollerably rich by his farming alone. 2. the county of Loudoun, in which he lives, had been so exhausted & wasted by bad husbandry, that it began to depopulate, the inhabitants going Southwardly in quest of better lands. Binns' success has stopped that immigration. it is now becoming on(e) of the most productive counties of the state of Virginia, and the price given for the lands is multiplied manifold."
Sir John Sinclair in his reply to Mr. Jefferson, whom he addresses as "His Highness, Thomas Jefferson" wrote from Edinburgh under date of the 1st January 1804:
"On various accounts I received with much pleasure, your obliging letter of the 30th June last, which only reached me, at the place, on the 19th November. I certainly feel highly indebted to Mr. Binns, both for the information contained in the pamphlet he has drawn up; and also, for his having been the means of inducing you to recommence our correspondence together, for the purpose of transmitting a paper which does credit to the practical farmers of America.
"As to the Plaster of Paris, which Mr. Binns so strongly recommends, it is singularly, that whilst it proves such a source of fertility to you, it is of little avail in any part of the British Islands, Kent alone excepted. I am thence inclined to conjecture, that its great advantage must arise from its attracting moisture from the atmosphere, of which we have in great abundance in these Kingdoms...."
But it is time to turn to Binns' own record of his work. How desperately poor the yield of grain had become in Loudoun is shown by his statement that some of his unplastered land yielded but five bushels of wheat to the acre and not more than three bushels of corn on a place so worn out, when he took it over in 1793, that his friends thought he "must starve on it." By 1798 he was getting from that farm 151/2 bushels of corn to the acre and the next year, on that corn land, had 27 bushels of heavy wheat per acre. In another place he notes: "I put a parcel of it" (plaster) "on some corn in the hill which produced about 22 bushels, the other part of the field yielding about 12 bushels to the acre."
As an interesting sidelight he indicates that tobacco was being grown around Leesburg at that time. In 1803, as he wrote his book, he expected a crop of 40 bushels of wheat per acre on his farms. And by way of summarizing his work
"There are several places on the Catocton Mountain, that some few years past the corn stalks, when the tops were taken off, were not above three feet high, and which would not produce more than two or three barrels of corn to the acre, and from 5 to 6 bushels of wheat; and perhaps not yield grass enough to the acre to feed a horse for two weeks after the harvest was taken off; but from the use of plaster will now produce from six to eight barrels of corn, and from twenty to twenty-five bushels of wheat per acre; the luxuriant growth of the white and red clover after harvest gives the fields which once looked like a barren waste of country, the appearance of a beautiful meadow."
And upon sanitation he has this to say:
"... These circumstances made me anxious to cleanse my stables, stockyards, cow-pens, hog-pens, wood-yards and ash-heaps by the first June. This rule I have always followed ever since I began to farm for myself, and can say that my family have never experienced an intermittent or remittent" (fever) "unless attacked with them from home first, and upon their return they have immediately left them. In my travels where ever I have discovered those kind of fevers, I have always observed either dirty, filthy stables, hog-pens or water standing in their cellars or ponds of water not far off; I have also observed those places most liable to dysentaries...."
In contrast to present-day views, he was wholly opposed to growing rye on Loudoun lands, believing that it impoverished the soil and that wheat yielded more in bushels; that rye destroyed grass and clover and injured orchards. He approved the growing of wheat and oats in orchards to maturity and strongly recommended the use of plaster in them.
The result of Binns' work was acclaimed throughout Virginia. His methods became known as the "Loudoun system" and the term became as significant and popularly familiar as the "Norfolk system" of farming in England. Of his work and his book True says:
"In spite of the fact that 'it is not written in a scholastic style,' few books have been written in which more sound practical agriculture is crowded into so small a space. Binns' chapter on the life history of the Hessian fly stands as a piece of careful observation that might have done credit to Dr. Thomas Say himself. The three fundamental supports on which agriculture prosperity in Loudoun County rests were never more clearly or soundly appreciated: gypsum, clover and deep plowing. This was the background of the famous 'Loudoun System' which came to be recognized as the progressive practice for that part of the country a hundred years ago."[122]
Binns died in 1813. His will, dated the 11th January in that year, was offered for probate on the 1st November following. In it he makes provision for freeing his slaves after a certain period. As he left his estate to his wife and nieces, it is surmised that no children survived him. The family, however, is still represented in Loudoun. Captain John A. Tebbs, U.S.M.C., is a descendant of Charles Binns, Jr., the younger brother of our agronomist.
It is difficult to escape the conclusion that religious thought and observance were at a low ebb in Virginia in the latter part of the eighteenth century. It was an age of transition, in some respects not unlike that of today. Old ties were being broken, tradition and old-time loyalties no longer received their former adherence. No small responsibility attaches to that negligent and selfish minority of the clergy of the colonial church and to an equally reprehensible element in the early Federal days for remissness in their duties; and their culpable behavior tends to attract more attention than the loyal devotion of the majority of their brethren. It was inevitable that the established church should be regarded as a part of the repudiated British government and when its civil powers and ecclesiastical predominance were taken from it and much of its property ruthlessly confiscated, there ensued a period of confusion in religious matters, with an unfortunate colouring of vindictive animosity on the part of other communions. Concurrently the spread of Methodism took from the older church many of its erstwhile adherents. Indeed, for a disconcertingly long period after its "erection" in 1758, Leesburg appears to have had no building devoted to religious purposes, services, when held, having been at the courthouse. Cresswell, in his journal, confirms this as does the first Shelburne Vestry book and also an advertisement in Leesburg's 'True American' of the 30th December, 1800: "The Reverend Mr. Allen" it reads "intends to perform divine service in the Court House, on the 4th January, at half past eleven o'clock; he also proposes preaching every fortnight from that date." This situation was repaired between 1780 and 1785, when the Methodists, organized as a separate denomination in 1784, erected their stone church on Cornwall Street with galleries around three of its sides and with its interesting old-fashioned sounding board, which church came to be endowed with many associations until its needless destruction about 1901. Then, in 1804, the "Presbyterian Society of Leesburg," which had probably existed since 1782, was more formally organized as a church by the Rev. James Hall, D.D., of Concord, North Carolina, at that time the Moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly. The erection of the present quaint old brick church on Market Street, the oldest church building now standing in Leesburg, had already been begun in 1802 and was completed in 1804. It was dedicated in May, 1804, by Dr. Hall. Its first pastor was the Rev. John Mines, who served until 1822 and the first Elders were Peter Carr, Obadiah Clifford, and John MacCormack. Through the courtesy of the Presbyterians, their neighbors of the Episcopal faith held their services from time to time in this old church until the erection of the first Saint James Church on Church Street in 1812, long delayed because of conflicting views as to whether the new building should be in town or country.
This first Saint James Church "was built of brick and quite small, the windows not arched and there was a yard in front. This church was torn down in 1836 and a new one, much wider and larger built, the foundation brought more to the front. It was enlarged in 1848, the vestibule built over the remainder of the yard, bringing the front of the church even with the street."[123] This building continued to be used until the present Saint James Church of gray stone on the corner of Cornwall and Wirt Streets was completed in 1897.
To the diversity in origin of the county's population frequent reference has been made. The inhabitants of the southern part were far more in sympathy in political philosophy, in manner of living, in agricultural practices and in traditional background with the people of Fairfax than were they with, perhaps, the majority of the heterogeneous population of upper Loudoun. Also their leaders belonged to the class which has ruled in Tidewater Virginia since its English beginnings and they none too willingly faced the prospect, after the Revolution, of dividing their authority with and perhaps losing their dominance to the upper-country people. In 1782 they sought to create a new county coextensive with Cameron Parish; failing in that, a compromise was reached in 1798 by which the erstwhile area of Loudoun, south of Sugar Land Run, was returned to Fairfax—"All that part of the County of Loudoun" reads the act of division "lying between the lower boundary thereof and a line to be drawn from the mouth of Sugar Land Run, to Carter's Mill on Bull Run, shall be and is hereby added to and made a part of the County of Fairfax."[124] This action had the immediate result of greatly strengthening the political power of the Quakers, Germans and Scotch-Irish in the remaining part of the county and correspondingly diminishing the influence of the descendants of the old Tidewater aristocracy there.
In the year 1787 Colonel Leven Powell laid out the town of Middleburg on the road running to Ashley's Gap, for his purpose devoting fifty acres on the southerly edge of the 500 acre tract of land he had purchased from Joseph Chinn in 1763;[125] the town, of course, obtaining its name from the position it occupied approximately halfway between the major towns of Alexandria and Winchester as well as halfway between the courthouses of Loudoun and Fauquier. The first trustees were Francis Peyton, William Bronaugh, William Heale, John Peyton Harrison, Burr Powell, Josias Clapham, and Richard Bland Lee.[126]
The much older town of Waterford did not receive formal legislative sanction until 1801. Then by the fifth section of an act of the Legislature, the place is recognized as already in existence: "the lots and streets as the same are already laid off at the place known by the name of Waterford." The first trustees were James Moore, James Griffith, John Williams, and Abner Williams. Section 7 of the act further provided "that as soon as Mahlon Janey and William Hough, shall lay off into lots with convenient streets, so much of their lands not exceeding ten acres adjoining the said town of Waterford, the same shall thence-forth constitute and be deemed and taken as a part of the said town."[127]
The next year another old settlement was, in its turn, given legislative acknowledgment. Hillsborough, somewhat belatedly, was "established" on twenty-five acres already divided between a score or more of owners: Mahlon Hough, Thomas Purcell, the representatives of John Jenny (sic), deceased, Thomas Leslie, Thomas Hepburn, Joseph Tribby, Josiah White, John Foundling, Edward Conrod, Mahlon Roach, Thomas Stevens, Thomas Hough, Samuel Purcell, John Wolfcaile, Richard Matthews, James Prior, John Stevens, Richard Copeland, and Mahlon Morris. The first trustees were Mahlon Hough, Thomas Purcell, Thomas Leslie, Josiah White, Edward Conrod, Mahlon Roach, and Thomas Stevens.[128]
In 1810 Aldie makes its appearance. It was laid out by Charles Fenton Mercer, a great Loudoun figure in his day,[129] on a part of his plantation to which he had given the name of Aldie in tribute to Aldie Castle in Scotland, the seat of that Mercer family from which he believed himself descended. The act of establishment describes the town's location as "thirty acres of land lying on the westerly extremity of the Little River Turnpike road, in the county of Loudoun, the property of Charles F. Mercer, as soon as the same shall be laid off into lots with convenient streets." The Little River Turnpike road had been extended to that point but a few years before. The town's first trustees were named as Israel Lacey, William Cook, Matthew Adams, John Sinclair, James Hexon, David Gibson, Charles F. Mercer, and William Noland.[130]
Bluemont, under its earlier name of Snickersville which it bore until the year 1900, was established in 1824. As early as 1769 Edward Snickers had obtained a grant from John Augustine Washington of 624 acres at this point and before and after that time had acquired other lands in the neighbourhood. He it was who, according to our local tradition, conveyed the first bushel of wheat easterly across the Blue Ridge and gave his name not only to the village but to the gap through the Blue Ridge and, on the other side, to the historic ferry across the Shenandoah which he owned for many years. He was born about 1735, married Elizabeth Toliaferro about 1755 and died in 1790. In 1806 a postoffice had been established at the little village with Lewis Stevens acting as postmaster. When the town came to be formally "established" in 1824, its location was described as being upon "ten acres at the entrance of Snickers Gap, of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the county of Loudoun, property of Amos Clayton, Martha Clayton, William Woodford and others, as soon as the same shall be laid off into lots with convenient streets and alleys." The first trustees were James Cochran senior, Craven Osburn, Mordecai Throckmorton, Stephen Janney, Doctor E. B. Brady, Amos Clayton, and Timothy Carrington.[131]
The above list, with Leesburg, is the roll of earlier incorporated towns of the county. Hamilton (1875), Lovettsville (1876), Purcellville (1908), and Round Hill (1900), as the dates indicate, were not formally organized until much later. The pleasant little village of Lincoln remains unincorporated.
As the eighteenth century neared its end, an increasing number of representatives of the Tidewater gentry came to Loudoun and with their neighbours already living there, built far more pretentious homes than the county had theretofore known. As has been stated in the preface, to tell something of the stories of these old estates was the original incentive to the writing of this book; but those stories, involving as they do their share of romance, tragedy and drama, must in their more extensive narration, be left for a later volume. It is appropriate however, in this place, to very briefly comment on a few of these old plantations.
Among the newcomers, in this post-revolution period, was Colonel Burgess Ball, a great-grandson of that dignified old aristocrat Colonel William Ball of Millenbeck on the Rappahannock, in Lancaster County, who had come to Virginia in 1657. During the Revolution Burgess Ball had served on the staff of General Washington, his first cousin, then as a captain in the Continental Line and later had raised and equipped a Virginia regiment at his own expense and served with it as lieutenant colonel. After the war, his health broken and his generous fortune seriously impaired by his expenditures for military purposes and by his extravagant hospitality at his home, Travellers Rest in Spotsylvania County, he in 1795, was obliged to seek refuge in what was still known in Tidewater as the Loudoun wilderness. On the 4th November, 1795, he purchased for £1741 (the proceeds of his back pay for military services it is said) from Abraham Barnes Thomson Mason, only acting executor and trustee under the will of Thomson Mason, a tract of 247 acres including the Great Spring and running to the Potomac. Here Colonel Ball either built a rustic lodge for his home or, as has been surmised, occupied and improved the old home of Francis Aubrey, calling his estate Springwood. On that same 4th November, 1795, there was purchased in trust for Colonel Ball from Stevens Thomson Mason by William Fitzhugh, Mann Page, and Alexander Spotswood "three of the trustees appointed by an Act of General Assembly to sell certain lands devised by James Ball deceased to his grandson Burgess Ball for his life," another tract of 147 acres about two miles north of the Great Spring for £441, current money of Virginia. Other adjacent tracts were purchased by Colonel Ball or by his trustees until he controlled a very large estate from the Great Spring to the Limestone Run of the most fertile land in the county.[132] Far from his old military companions, he kept up a correspondence with them in his distant abode and many of them visited him there from time to time; for whether surrounded by the refinements of Travellers Rest or the wilderness of Springwood, Colonel Ball's lavish hospitality was a part of the very man himself. He died on the 7th March, 1800, and was buried just outside the graveyard surrounding the old chapel above Goose Creek on the hill above the Great Spring. This first Springwood dwelling was not on the site of the present mansion but is believed to have been on the south side of the present road on what is now a part of the Big Spring estate, in recent years known as Mayfield. The existing Springwood residence was built by George Washington Ball, later Captain C.S.A., grandson of Colonel Burgess Ball, between 1840 and 1850. Louis Philippe is said to have been an overnight guest there and, during the Civil War, General Lee, a cousin of Captain Ball who had served on his staff, held a military conference in the present dining room. The estate was acquired in 1869 by the late Francis Asbury Lutz of Washington who substantially remodelled the mansion very soon thereafter. Since then it has been in the possession of the Lutz family, its present occupants being Mrs. Samuel S. Lutz, her son-in-law and daughter, Judge and Mrs. J. R. H. Alexander and the latter's two sons.
The genesis of Raspberry Plain, just north of Springwood, has already been given. As shewn in Chapter VII, the property had been originally acquired from Lord Fairfax by Joseph Dixon in 1731 and he had sold the farm which he had improved with a dwelling, orchard, etc., to Aeneas Campbell in 1754. Campbell, as we have seen, was Loudoun's first sheriff. He maintained the county jail and the ducking-stool at his home while he held that office. He sold the place in 1760 to Thomson Mason. So far the residence, long since vanished, was near the large spring, now a part of Selma. Mason is said by T. A. Lancaster, Jr., to have built a new house about 1771 (on the site of the present beautiful home). He then conveyed it to his son Stevens Thomson Mason, subsequently confirming his action in his will. Later, according to local tradition, another Mason descendant, Colonel John Mason McCarty was living there when he killed his cousin, General A. T. Mason in the famous duel in 1819, perhaps as a tenant, for the county records show that in 1830 the estate, then of about 250 acres, was conveyed by the executors of General Mason's will to George, John, Peter and Samuel Hoffman of Baltimore for $8,500. It remained in the Hoffman family for over eighty-five years and until sold by the Hoffman heirs on the 29th April, 1916, to Mr. John G. Hopkins who built the present imposing brick edifice of colonial architecture. The estate was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. William H. Lipscomb of Washington in 1931 and, until Mrs. Lipscomb's death, was the scene of many a gay and picturesque hunt breakfast given in honour of the Loudoun Hunt of which Mr. Lipscomb was Master.
Ludwell Lee, a son of Richard Henry Lee, built Belmont in 1800 and lived there until his death in 1836. He rests in its garden. Soon after he died the estate was acquired by Miss Margaret Mercer who, born in 1791, was the daughter of Governor John Francis Mercer of Cedar Park, Maryland. Miss Mercer conducted a school for young ladies at Belmont until her death in 1846. She was a woman of broad education with pronounced views on the abolition of negro slavery and she it was who built the nearby Belmont Chapel on a part of her estate. After passing through the hands of many owners the property was purchased in 1931 by Colonel Patrick J. Hurley, Secretary of War under President Hoover, and since then he and Mrs. Hurley have made it their country home. For several years he has invited the Loudoun Hunt to hold its annual horse show there.
Across the highway Thomas Ludwell Lee, cousin to Ludwell Lee, about the same time built his home Coton, naming it after an English home of the earlier Lees. On Lafayette's visit to America in 1825, he was a guest of Ludwell Lee and a great festival, in honor of his visit, was staged at both Belmont and Coton. It is said that after nightfall a double line of slaves, each holding aloft a flaming torch, was stationed between the two mansions to light the way of the celebrants as they passed from one house to the other. The original mansion has long since disappeared save for parts of its foundations. A second mansion was later erected on another part of the estate and in turn was destroyed by fire. The present stone dwelling, the third to bear the name, was erected by Mr. and Mrs. Warner Snider, the present owners of the estate, in 1931.
George Carter, great-grandson of Robert Carter, the "King Carter" of early Colonial days, received in 1800 from his father, Councillor Robert Carter of Naomi Hall, a tract of 6,000 acres south of Leesburg, a small part of the vast Carter holdings. Upon this land during the ensuing two years he built Oatlands, the most pretentious and elaborate of the Loudoun homes of that day. George Carter did not marry until attaining the discreet age of sixty years when he took as his bride Mrs. Betty Lewis, a widow, who had been a Miss Grayson. Both George Carter and his wife are buried in the gardens of Oatlands. The estate was acquired in 1903 by the late William Corcoran Eustis of Washington and is now the country home of his widow under whose care both residence and extensive gardens retain their justly celebrated charm and beauty. Mrs. Eustis, a daughter of the late Levi P. Morton, at one time Governor of New York and later Vice-President of the United States, has long been the Lady Bountiful of Loudoun. None of the county's residents has ever equalled her benefactions to its poor and to its public institutions of every kind.
Rokeby, on the old Carolina Road south of Leesburg, so long the home of the Bentley family, also belongs to this period. It acquired its claim to fame during the War of 1812 when, in 1814, President Madison, in expectation of the capture of Washington, sent many of the more valuable Federal archives, including the Declaration of Independence and, it is said, the Constitution of the United States, to Leesburg for safekeeping whence they were removed to Rokeby and stored for two weeks in its vaults. It is now the home of Mr. and Mrs. B. F. Nalle who, upon its purchase by them many years ago, made great changes in the old building.