The Cultural History of Marlborough, Virginia. C. Malcolm Watkins
of miles of inland waterways. The royal governors and responsible persons in the Assembly reacted therefore with a succession of plans to establish towns that would be the sole ports of entry for the areas they served, thus making theoretically simple the task of securing customs revenues. The towns also would be centers of business and manufacture, diversifying the colony’s economic supports and lessening its dependence on tobacco. To men of English origin this establishment of port communities must have seemed natural and logical.
The first such proposal became law in 1662, establishing a port town for each of the major river valleys and for the Eastern Shore. But the law’s sponsors were doomed to disappointment, for the towns were not built.[1] After a considerable lapse, a new act was passed in 1680, this one better implemented and further reaching. It provided for a port town in each county, where ships were to deliver their goods and pick up tobacco and other exports from town warehouses for their return voyages.[2] One of its most influential supporters was William Fitzhugh of Stafford County, a wealthy planter and distinguished leader in the colony.[3] “We have now resolved a cessation of making Tobo next year,” he wrote to his London agent, Captain Partis, in 1680. “We are also going to make Towns, if you can meet with any tradesmen that will come and live[Pg 6] [Pg 7] at the Town, they may have privileges and immunitys.”[4]
Some of these towns actually were laid out, each on a 50-acre tract of half-acre lots, but only 9 tracts were built upon. The Act soon lagged and collapsed. It was unpopular with the colonists, who were obliged to transport their tobacco to distant warehouses and to pay storage fees; it was ignored by shipmasters, who were in the habit of dealing directly with planters at their wharves and who were not interested in making it any easier for His Majesty’s customs collectors.[5]
Nevertheless, efforts to come up with a third act began in 1688.[6] William Fitzhugh, especially, was articulate in his alarm over Virginia’s one-crop economy, the effects of which the towns were supposed to mitigate. At this time he referred to tobacco as “our most despicable commodity.” A year later, he remarked, “it is more uncertain for a Planter to get money by consigned Tobo then to get a prize in a lottery, there being twenty chances for one chance.”[7]
In April 1691 the Act for Ports was passed, the House, significantly, recording only one dissenting vote.[8] Unlike its predecessor, which encouraged trades and crafts, this Act was justified purely on the basis of overcoming the “great opportunity … given to such as attempt to import or export goods and merchandises, without entering or paying the duties and customs due thereupon, much practised by greedy and covetous persons.” It provided that all exports and imports should be taken up or set down at the specified ports and nowhere else, under penalty of forfeiting ship, gear, and cargo, and that the law should become effective October 1, 1692. The towns again were to be surveyed and laid out in 50-acre tracts. Feoffees, to be appointed, would grant half-acre lots on a pro rata first-cost basis. Grantees “shall within the space of four months next ensueing such grant begin and without delay proceed to build and finish on each half acre one good house, to containe twenty foot square at the least, wherein if he fails to performe them such grant to be void in law, and the lands therein granted lyable to the choyce and purchase of any other person.” Justices of the county courts were to fill vacancies among the feoffees and to appoint customs collectors.[9]
THE PORT TOWN FOR STAFFORD COUNTY
The difficulties confronting the central and local governing bodies in putting the Acts into effect are illustrated by the attempts to establish a port town for Stafford County. Under the act of 1680 a town was to be built at “Peace Point,” where the Catholic refugee Giles Brent had settled nearly forty years before, but there is no evidence that even so much as a survey was made there. The 1691 Act for Ports located the town at Potomac Neck, where Accokeek Creek and Potomac Creek converge on the Potomac River. Situated about three miles below the previously designated site, it was again on Brent property, lying within a tract leased for life to Captain Malachi Peale, former high sheriff of Stafford. On October 9, 1691, the Stafford Court “ordered that Mr. William Buckner deputy Surveyor of this County shall on Thursday next … repair to the Malachy Peale neck being the place allotted by act of assembly for this Town and Port of this County and shall then and there Survey and Lay Out the said Towne or Port … to the Interest that all the gentlemen of and all other of the Inhabitants may take up such Lot and Lots as be and they desire. …” On the same day John Withers and Matthew Thompson, both justices of the peace, were appointed “Feoffees in Trust.” Young Giles Brent, “son and heir of Giles Brent Gent. late of this county deced” and not yet 21, selected Francis Hammersley as his guardian. Hammersley in this capacity became the administrator of Brent’s affairs, and accordingly it was agreed that 13,000 pounds of tobacco should be paid to him in exchange for the 50 acres of town land owned by Brent.[10]
Actually, 52 acres were surveyed, “two of the said acres being the Land belonging to and laid out for the Court House according to a former Act of Assembly and the other fifty acres pursuant to the late Act for Ports.” The “former Act of Assembly” which had been passed in 1667 had stipulated the allotment of two-acre tracts for churches and court houses, which in case the lots “be deserted ye land shall revert to ye 1st proprietor. …”[11] For the extra two acres Hammersley was given 800 pounds of tobacco in addition. Of the total of 13,800 pounds, 3450 were set aside to compensate Malachi Peale for the loss of his leasehold.
The order for the survey to be made was a formality, since the plat had actually been drawn ahead of time by Buckner on August 16, nearly two months before; clearly the Staffordians were eager to begin their town. Buckner’s plat was copied by his superior, Theodorick Bland, and entered in the now-missing Stafford Survey Book. John Savage, a later surveyor, in 1731 provided John Mercer with a duplicate of Bland’s copy, which has survived in John Mercer’s Land Book (fig. 2).[12]
On February 11, 1692, the feoffees granted 27 lots to 15 applicants. John Mercer’s later review of the town’s history in this period states that “many” of the lots were “built on and improved.”[13] Two ordinaries were licensed, one in 1691 and one in 1693, but no business activity other than the Potomac Creek ferry seems to have been conducted.[14] Any future the town might have had was erased by the same adverse reactions that had killed the previous port acts. The merchants and shippers used their negative influence and on March 22, 1693, a “bill for suspension of ye act for Ports &c. till their Majts pleasure shall be known therein or till ye next assembly” passed the house. In due course the act was reviewed and returned unsigned for further consideration. William Fitzhugh, on October 17, 1693, dutifully read the recommendation of the Committee of Grievances and Properties “That the appointment of Ports & injoyneing the Landing and Shipping