West Virginia. Otis K. Rice
areas of Europe. Large numbers of Germans and Scotch-Irish responded to their offers, but they also attracted English, Welsh, Dutch, and other nationalities. About thirty-five percent of the population of Jefferson and Berkeley counties at the time of the French and Indian War was English, but Germans and Scotch-Irish each accounted for about thirty percent. Martinsburg and Shepherdstown were centers of German population. There were also so many Germans along the South Branch of the Potomac and Patterson Creek that a Moravian missionary, who visited the area in 1748, declared that in order to reach the people a minister should be fluent in both German and English.3
Although some historians have claimed that land speculators impeded the advance of the frontier generally in America, it appears that their influence in the Valley of Virginia and the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia was, on the whole, favorable, especially before the French and Indian War. By 1750 a population pressure had built up in the Valley of Virginia, and both speculators and settlers were seeking new lands that might drain off surplus numbers. By then about eight thousand persons lived in the Eastern Panhandle.
The success of the Valley and upper Potomac speculators stemmed in part from the excellence of their lands, for both crops and grazing, and from their charges of only three pounds per hundred acres, compared with the five to ten pounds asked for less desirable lands in Maryland and Pennsylvania. The Virginia speculators also extended easy credit terms and took care of legal detail, often at a distant courthouse. These services were important to immigrants who had little or no cash and were often unfamiliar with either the English language or legal technicalities.
The Fairfax Proprietary. The grants in the lower Shenandoah and upper Potomac valleys, including all of those in West Virginia, lay within a tract claimed by an English nobleman, Thomas, Sixth Lord Fairfax. The Fairfax claim originated in a patent made in 1669 by King Charles II to seven supporters of the royal family in its long struggle with Parliament. By 1719, through inheritance and purchase, the entire property had come into the hands of Lord Fairfax, who claimed all the territory between the headsprings of the southern fork of the Rappahannock River and the highest branch of the Potomac. Known as the Northern Neck, it embraced some 5,282,000 acres.
In 1733, shortly after settlers began to move into present West Virginia, Lord Fairfax petitioned the Crown to proclaim his rights and to restrain Virginia from making further grants within the area that he claimed. Three years later, commissioners representing both Fairfax and Virginia were selected to run the boundary, but Virginia held that the Fairfax line extended westward only to the mouth of the Shenandoah and included only 2,033,000 acres. Fairfax, however, proposed a compromise by which the Crown, on April 6, 1745, confirmed his rights. It defined his tract as extending to the headsprings of the Rapidan River and to the westernmost spring of the North Branch of the Potomac, where in 1746 the famous Fairfax Stone was erected. Fairfax recognized all grants already made by Virginia in the area. He retained extensive properties, including all ungranted lands in present Jefferson, Berkeley, Morgan, Hardy, Hampshire, and Mineral counties and substantial parts of Grant and Tucker counties.
Although the frontier, with its abundance of land, was not conducive to the perpetuation of European forms of land tenure, Fairfax did not hesitate to introduce a feudal system into his princely estate. He laid off his land into large manors, such as the South Branch Manor with 55,000 acres and Patterson Creek Manor with 9,000 acres. The majority of his tenants obtained tracts of from about one hundred to three hundred acres under the old plan of lease and release. They made a down payment, known as composition money, and each year thereafter, on Saint Michaelmas Day, they paid a quitrent varying with the size and value of their holdings. Probably not more than ten percent of those who acquired lands from him held them in fee simple.
The system of tenure introduced by Fairfax apparently did not deter settlers from making contracts with him. By 1747 homesteads extended for sixty miles along the South Branch and along much of Patterson Creek. Families such as the Heaths, Van Meters, Hornbacks, Hites, Harnesses, Armentrouts, Inskeeps, McNeals, Renicks, Shobes, and Cunninghams, which would in time become prominent, either acquired their lands from Fairfax or became his tenants after the resolution of his dispute with Virginia.4
Cultural Influences. Pioneers in the lower Shenandoah and upper Potomac valleys escaped much of the crudeness and prolonged reversion to primitive conditions that characterized most of the Appalachian frontier. As elsewhere, religion and education suffered acutely from the erosive effects of the frontier experience. On the other hand, strong family ties and national consciousness, such as that which prevailed among the Germans, helped preserve moral and ethical standards. The requirement that Virginia speculators settle families rather than individuals had a salutary effect and cannot be ignored in any assessment of the significance of the land speculator west of the Blue Ridge.
A quarter of a century in which they remained unmolested by the Indians and favorable geographical conditions also contributed to the preservation of social and economic forms. Like the Bluegrass region of Kentucky and the Nashville Basin of Tennessee, the limestone soils of the Shenandoah and upper Potomac valleys provided unsurpassed grazing lands and promoted a diversified plantation-type agriculture. As early as 1747 Moravian missionaries reported barns along the South Branch large enough to accommodate religious gatherings. In 1762 the Virginia General Assembly incorporated the towns of Mecklenburg and Romney. By the time of the American Revolution, plantations, including Adam Stephen's Bower, Horatio Gates's Traveler's Rest, and Samuel Washington's Harewood, were common in the lower Shenandoah Valley.
Taking advantage of their opportunities, residents of the Shenandoah and upper Potomac valleys transformed a naturally favored land into one of milk and honey. Andrew Burnaby, a British traveler, declared in 1760 that they had “what many princes would give half their dominions for, health, content[ment], and tranquillity of mind.”5
1William J. Hinke, trans. and ed., “Letters Regarding the Second Journey of Michel to America, February 14, 1703, to January 16, 1704, and His Stay in America till 1708,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 24(June 1916): 295-97, 301-302.
2Charles H. Ambler and Festus P. Summers, West Virginia, the Mountain State, 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1958), 107, which quotes Minutes of the Philadelphia Synod of the Presbyterian Church.
3WilliamJ. Hinke and Charles Kernper, eds., “Moravian Diaries of Travels Through Viginia,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 11(January 1904): 226.
4For the changing relationships between social classes on the Virginia frontier, see Albert H. Tillson, Jr., Gentry and Common Folk: Political Culture on a Virginia Frontier, 1740-1789 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1991).
5Andrew Burnaby, Travels Tltrough the Middle Settletnents in North-America, in the Years 1759and 1760, with Observationson the Stateofihe Colonies(London: Printed for T. Payne, 1775), 33.
3
At the Vortex of Imperial Conflict
Tension in the Ohio Valley. Unlike the peaceful advance of settlement into the Valley of Virginia, occupation of trans-Allegheny West Virginia proceeded amid considerable peril. French and Indian claimants contested nearly every move by the Virginia settlers into the area. The claims of both England and France to the Ohio Valley, of which trans-Allegheny West Virginia was a part, rested upon principles recognized by international usage. England based her claims upon the discovery of the New River by Batts and Fallam, an extensive fur trade in the region, and settlements along remote tributaries of the Ohio, such as the New and the Greenbrier. France asserted rights emanating from the alleged visit of La Salle in 1669, far-flung trading operations, and settlements in the Illinois country.
In 1742, during King George's War, two Virginians, John Howard and John Peter Sailing, perhaps in anticipation of the opening of trans-Allegheny lands, set out for the western country. Howard, who apparently lived on the South Branch of the Potomac, and Sailing, then living on the New River, ascended the South Branch and moved westward by way of the New and Coal rivers. At Peytona, on the Coal River, they observed outcroppings of coal.