COLONIAL FOOTPRINTS

COLONIAL FOOTPRINTSBy J. K. Collins

By J. K. Collins

“Ring down the curtain of to-dayAnd give the past the right of way,Till fields of battle red with rustShine through the ashes and the dust,Across the age and burn as plainAs glowing Mars through window pane.How grandly glow like grenadiers,These heroes of a hundred years!”

“Ring down the curtain of to-day

And give the past the right of way,

Till fields of battle red with rust

Shine through the ashes and the dust,

Across the age and burn as plain

As glowing Mars through window pane.

How grandly glow like grenadiers,

These heroes of a hundred years!”

MARY WASHINGTON

Our forefathers were great fighters and excelled the world as makers of history, but unfortunately for us, they were not writers of it. When a duty was done or a great victory gained it seemed not to demand the attention from them that we of the present day think it deserved, but was set aside with perhaps a brief record. It had to make way for new duties demanded by the exigencies of the times.

While they carried the weight of the nation on their young shoulders, they have left us only “shreds and patches” from which to deduce anything like specific exactness of the manners and customs of those early days of our great country. It is, therefore, difficult to elaborate the conditions of the country and particularly the distinctive qualities which made up the social life of those who evolved and produced, to us, the best government in all the world.

The peculiar conditions of early times invest our greatest leaders with additional interest and make the fact of their greatness stand out all the more clearly. Schools were few and travel much restricted. Only aboutthirty families had good libraries. To the women of that day has been ascribed the honor of training the great men of the nation. George Washington was only eleven years old when his father died. His mother daily taught him from a manual of maxims which he preserved and often consulted in after life. A French general, after a visit to Mary Washington, said, “No wonder America produces such great men when they have such mothers.”

Thomas Jefferson’s father died when he was fourteen. His mother was said to have been unusually refined and intellectual, evincing much literary taste in the art of letter-writing. This was the only field open to a woman with literary proclivities at that time. It was from her he inherited his intellect, and in the training of her boy all that was best and noblest in her was brought to bear upon the formation of his character. These two mothers of great men are not exceptions. History records the names of many noble women who have devoted their lives to their children, not only in Virginia, but elsewhere.

Virginians admired the king and the nobility but liked their own rights better. They loved the pride and pomp of aristocracy, but this was only a matter of taste. When it came to losing a freeman’s right they relegated their aristocratic tastes to the background. They loved the solemn ritual of the church. Governor Spottswood describes the Virginians of his time as “living in gentlemanly conformity with the Church of England,” and the famous old chapel, built in 1632, now familiarly called Old Bruton Church, is consecrated by many hallowed associations. Here worshiped the dauntless Spottswood, himself, as well as Lord de Botetourt, Lord Dunmore and many others in a pew elevated from the main floor and richly canopied. And here worshiped many men whose names are indissolubly bound up with the conception of this grand commonwealth. The churchyard is the place of sepulture of some of Virginia’s most distinguished men.

WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE

Nearly all the great Virginians weredescended from the Cavaliers. Washington was the great-grandson of one of them, and Madison, Monroe, the Randolphs, Richard Henry Lee, and others were also descendants of royalists. Virginia succeeded in keeping out the importation of felons. A number of redemptioners, or political prisoners, who were sold by the English government to speculators, were traded in the colonies, but misfortune being their only crime, they became in most cases useful citizens.

The men of that time were fond of sport. Washington was ever an enthusiastic fox hunter. Patrick Henry was devoted to the woods, fields and streams; he also played the fiddle and danced with keenest zest. Social life was ideal at that time. Each plantation was a small principality and they vied with each other in hospitality. It was not unusual for a carriage full of guests to arrive without warning, and the visitors and their retinue were the recipients of the most lordly hospitality for days and sometimes weeks. Card playing was much in vogue, and under great provocation an oath or two was sometimes found to be the only expression that could do the situation justice. It is said Washington swore heartily at General Stephens for losing the battle of Germantown on account of drunkenness.

The dance after supper went without saying, to the music of “the fiddlers three.” It was a delight in which the stately Washington often indulged, with, it may be shrewdly guessed, the belle of the ball for a partner. In the hall of William and Mary College hangs a picture which represents him dancing the minuet with Mary Cary. The Virginia Reel called for the whole company. Flushed and breathless, full of laughter and fun they threaded its mazes in the wee sma’ hours.

“Oh, the instruments are shattered and the strings are snapped in twain,And the fiddles are forgotten and will never play again.But above the stars eternal in their faded pinks and blues,With the powder on their ringlets and the buckles on their shoes,I shall see the beaux and sweethearts in the long procession kneel,And their harps will play the music of the Old Virginia Reel.”

“Oh, the instruments are shattered and the strings are snapped in twain,

And the fiddles are forgotten and will never play again.

But above the stars eternal in their faded pinks and blues,

With the powder on their ringlets and the buckles on their shoes,

I shall see the beaux and sweethearts in the long procession kneel,

And their harps will play the music of the Old Virginia Reel.”

TAZEWELL HALL

William and Mary College, the oldest of the American colleges except Harvard, is situated in the old colonial capital, Williamsburg, sometimes called The Middle Plantation. Before the college was burned the first time it had many rare volumes marked with the coats of arms of royalty and noblemen whose names were connected with its early days. Within its walls were trained the youth of the eighteenth century who were to consecrate their lives to the cause of liberty. The Reverend James Blair was its founder and its first president. He went to London and unfolded his scheme of Christianizing the Indians and educating the youth of America. Queen Mary warmly approved of his plan. King William was equally agreeable and gave an order for two thousand pounds sterling to be used in the erection of the buildings. But when Seymour, the Attorney-General, received the order to draw up the charter and pay the money, he was enraged. The nation was engaged in an expensive war, he said, and needed the money for other and better purposes—why was a college wanted in Virginia, anyhow? Mr. Blair explained its purpose as being that of preparing young men for the ministry, adding that the people of Virginia had souls to save as well as the people of England. The idea struck Seymour as particularlyabsurd and maudlin; his retort, historically recorded, was: “Souls! ⸺ your souls! Make tobacco!”

BASSETT HALL

The Phi Beta Kappa Society, the first fraternal society in this country, was organized at William and Mary December 5th, 1776, and the first meeting was held in the Apollo room at the Raleigh tavern.

Jefferson, the first Democrat, was in 1764, five years after Washington had been happily married to Martha Custis, a gay young student at Williamsburg, or “Devilsburg,” as he wrote of it, in a letter to a friend, expressing himself as being “as happy last night as dancing with Belinda in the Apollo room” could make him.

How close it brings our heroes, to know intimately their youthful loves and pleasures! “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” To the same chum, who seems to be in a like manner transfixed with Cupid’s dart, he writes later: “Have you any glimmering of hope? How does ⸺ do? Had I better stay here and do nothing or go down there and do less? Inclination tells me to go, receive my sentence and be no longer in suspense; but reason says, ‘If you go and your attempt proves unsuccessful you will be ten times more wretched than ever!’——I hear Ben Harrison has been to Wilton. Let me know his success.” Ben Harrison’s success at Wilton, where he was courting Anne Randolph, a cousin of Jefferson, was greater than his own, for she married him and had the honor of being the wife of a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a governor of Virginia. Jefferson’s sweetheart might have sat in like high places if she had only smiled a little more. “Cupid lacks the gift of prophecy and Fame will not tell her secrets till the time comes, for the sweetest lips that ever smiled.” Lucy Grymes, a cousin, is said to have been one of his sweethearts, also beautiful Mary Coles, the mother of Dolly Madison. It is told of Washington that before he arrived at wealth and distinction, he went courting Mary Cary and was asked out of the house by her father, theold colonel, on the ground that his daughter had been accustomed to ride in her own coach.

MONUMENT AT YORKTOWN

The Duke of Gloucester Street in Williamsburg still holds much that is interesting. The foundation of the old Capitol lies at one end and one mile away at the other end still flourishes the old college, William and Mary. The courthouse, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, bids fair to last for generations yet. Across the green stands Tazewell Hall, with its “ghost rooms high up under the eaves.” This was the home of the Randolphs. Bassett Hall is on the other side and is noted as having entertained Lafayette within its walls. Thomas Moore was also entertained here. It was at this house he first saw the fireflies, which he immortalized in his poem on the Dismal Swamp.

“And all night long by her firefly lamp,She paddles her white canoe.”

“And all night long by her firefly lamp,

She paddles her white canoe.”

Martha Washington’s kitchen is yet to be seen not far from Governor Spottswood’s old Powder-Horn. Governor Dunmore’s ice house is still shown to strangers. Dunmore was the last of the royal governors. Patrick Henry, as was fitting, was the first American governor to take hisseat in the vice-regal palace which has now entirely disappeared to make way for a model school.

There are two monuments at Yorktown to commemorate the surrender of Cornwallis, and the old customhouse still stands, with moss-peaked roof, thick walls, massive oaken doors and shutters. It is said to have been the first customhouse erected in America.

In the colonial period, says a popular writer, it was the rendezvous of the gentlemen of the town and country surrounding it. It was there that the haughty young aristocrats took snuff, fondled their hounds and probably talked over the last Assembly ball, and, mayhap, laughed about the conquests made of their colleagues by the bright eyes of the country-side belles.

There still stands an old weather-boarded mansion whose antique roof and fireplaces set across the corners demand for it the reverence inspired in us by a relic of bygone days. Here in the sitting room were drawn up the articles of capitulation and surrender. It was historical long before that, as being the country residence of Governor Spottswood. Here he held his mimic court, entertaining in the most lavish and ostentatious manner his knights of the Golden Horse Shoe. Not far away is the foundation of a curious building said to have been a temple of worship built by Governor Spottswood. The spectacular taste of the governor gives this an appearance of truth which is borne up by the name of the surrounding plantation. It is called Temple Farm.

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