THOMAS ANBUREY, AND THE CONVENTION ARMY IN VIRGINIA.

1779.

GENERAL BURGOYNE, of amiable qualities but of no great skill as a commander, having had the misfortune to lose his army at Saratoga, in the month of October, 1777, a convention was agreed upon, stipulating the treatment to be accorded the defeated troops. Thereafter, until exchanged, these Saratoga troops were known among themselves as the Convention Army. The art of saving one’s face is one of the most intricate yet in existence. Young Thomas Anburey, who was perhaps a lieutenant in the Twenty-ninth Regiment of Foot under General Burgoyne, surrendered with his brother officers, and with them was sent first to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and later to Virginia. Anburey, a very cheerful young person, kept a sort of journal of his military and other travels in America, and worked up his notes into the form of letters to a friend. His observations are not profound, but are marked by good sense and ingenuousness, and make much better reading than more pretentious narratives.[E]

After being quartered for more than a year in Massachusetts, Anburey and his friends were sent South, in order to shift the incidence of taxation in the matter of subsistence for so many able-bodied men, numbers of whom (the Hessians, for instance) no doubt had in America their first opportunity of getting at least one square meal a day. “Especially the Germans,” says Anburey, “who seeing in what a comfortable manner their countrymen live, left us in great numbers, as we marched through New York, the Jerseys and Pennsylvania; among the number of deserters is my servant, who, as we left Lancaster, ran from me with my horse, portmanteau, and everything he could take with him.” It was at best a strange spectacle, this of an army of desirable citizens marching captive through an abounding wilderness, and merely on parole.

From Lancaster the Convention Army moved to Frederick Town, in Maryland, where they spent Christmas Day, 1778. The commissary of provisions at Frederick, Mr. McMurdo, was very polite to the officers quartered at his house. Anburey says: “His attention was such that although for this day (which is as much a day of festival as in England), he had been engaged for some time past among his friends and relations, he would stay at home and entertain us with an excellent Christmas dinner, not even forgetting plum pudding. I now experienced what had been often told me, that the further I went to the southward I should find the inhabitants possess more liberality and hospitality.” Anburey’s impressions of the North, of course, were formed rather precipitately at Saratoga.

Charlottesville, almost a frontier town then, was the destination of the Convention Army. “After we left Frederick Town we crossed the Potowmack River with imminent danger, as the current was very rapid, large floats of ice swimming down it; though the river was only half a mile wide, the scow that I crossed over in had several narrow escapes. At one time it was quite fastened in the ice, but by great exertions of the men in breaking it, we made good our landing on the opposite shore, near a mile lower than the ferry.” And the river crossed, hardships only increased on the Virginia side. The roads were bad from a late fall of snow not sufficiently encrusted to bear a man’s weight. The troops were continually sinking in mud up to their knees and cutting their shins and ankles; and after a march of sixteen or eighteen miles over such badly metalled roads, the men often had to sleep in the woods and the officers in any cabin available.

“But on our arrival at Charlottesville no pen can describe the scene of misery and confusion that ensued. The officers of the First and Second Brigade were in the town, and our arrival added to their distress. This famous place we had heard so much of consisted only of a courthouse, one tavern, and about a dozen houses, all of which were crowded with officers. Those of our brigade, therefore, were obliged to ride about the country and entreat the inhabitants to take us in.” The men fared very badly. Instead of sleeping on the snow, under the trees, they went into barracks, hastily covering over a few cabins which had been begun but were left unroofed, and half-filled with snow. The trouble was that Colonel Harvey, to whom Congress had assigned the business of getting quarters ready for the tourists, had in turn placed his brother in charge. Colonel Harvey’s brother said that the army was not expected until the spring. There was no whiskey provided, the stock of provisions was scant, and the quarters were as described of the fretwork description.

“As to the officers, upon signing a parole they might go to Richmond and other adjacent towns to procure themselves quarters. Accordingly a parole was signed, which allowed a circuit of near 100 miles. And after the officers had drawn lots, as three were to remain in the barracks with the men, or at Charlottesville, the principal part of them set off for Richmond, and many of them are at plantations twenty or thirty miles from the barracks. I was quartered, with four other officers of our regiment, at Jones’s Plantation, about twenty miles from the barracks. The face of the country appears an immense forest, interspersed with various plantations, four or five miles distant from each other. On these there is a dwelling house in the centre, with kitchens, smoke-house and outhouses detached, and from the various buildings each plantation has the appearance of a small village. At some little distance from the houses are peach and apple orchards, and scattered over the plantation are the cabins and tobacco houses.” The worm fence was an object of wonder to every foreigner, and yet in a country of abundant timber the most natural thing in the world. Anburey mentions that in the New England settlements (where the holdings were smaller and fences could be made with more particularity) the inhabitants had a saying, “He is making Virginia fences,” used of a man not sober, but able to walk, as it were.

Anburey was twice at Richmond, once in the winter and once in the summer of 1779. The neighboring gentlemen were very hospitable, and would not let him leave until he had visited the whole circle. He speaks especially of Warwick and “Tuckahoe.” The proprietor of “Tuckahoe” was threatened with the burning of valuable mills because an English officer had been made welcome. It was an idle threat. On the way to Richmond, by the road through Goochland Courthouse, Anburey met that perennial, the celebrated roundabout directions: “If perchance you meet an inhabitant and enquire your way, his directions are, if possible, more perplexing than the roads themselves, for he tells you to keep the right-hand path, then you’ll come to an old field; you are to cross that, and then you’ll come to the fence of such a one’s plantation; then keep that fence, and you’ll come to a road that has three forks; keep the right-hand fork for about half a mile, and then you’ll come to a creek; after you cross that creek you must turn to the left, and there you’ll come to a tobacco house; after you have passed that you’ll come to another road that forks; keep the right-hand fork, and then you’ll come to Mr. Such-a-One’s ordinary, and he will direct you.” The fact of such directions as these, and the use made of them, are to be explained when we remember that the backwoodsman carries a map in his head, whereas the cockney’s brain is damaged by the use of maps.

In the woods the Convention officer came upon a track for quarter-racing. “Near most of the ordinaries there is a piece of ground cleared in the woods for that purpose, where there are two paths, about six or eight yards asunder, which the horses run in. I think I can, without the slightest exaggeration, assert that even the famous Eclipse could not excel them in speed, for our horses are some time before they are able to get into full speed; but these are trained to set out in that manner the moment of starting. It is the most ridiculous amusement imaginable, for if you happen to be looking another way, the race is terminated before you can turn your head; notwithstanding which, very considerable sums are betted at these races. Only in the interior parts of this province are these races held, for they are much laughed at and ridiculed by the people in the lower parts, about Richmond and other great towns. At Williamsburg is a very excellent course for two, three or four-mile heats.”

On his summer trip to Richmond, Anburey was struck by the numbers of peach orchards in full fruit—“it is deemed no trespass to stop and refresh yourself and your horse with them”—and by the sight of a family leaving a most comfortable house and good plantation to set out for Kentucky over the mountains. The summer of 1779 apparently was a good peach season, and a bad season in the item of forest fires. “The town of Richmond, as well as the plantations around for some miles, has been in imminent danger; as the woods have been on fire, which for some time past has raged with great fury, and that element seemed to threaten universal destruction; but, providentially, before it had done any material damage there fell a very heavy rain, which, nevertheless, has not altogether extinguished it [July 14, 1779]. During the summer months these fires are very frequent, and at Charlottesville I have seen the mountains on a blaze for three or four miles in length. They are occasioned by the carelessness of waggoners.”

During the winter of 1779 the Convention Army at Charlottesville lost heavily by desertion. “I should observe that this desertion is among the British troops. For what reason it is impossible to say, the Americans shew more indulgence to the Germans, permitting them to go round the country to labor, and being for the most part expert handicraftsmen, they realize a great deal of money exclusive of their pay.”

The officers made themselves pretty comfortable. They put up a coffee house, a theatre and a cold bath. Anburey made, or had made, a drawing entitled “Encampment of the Convention Army at Charlottes Ville, in Virginia, after they had surrendered to the Americans.” In this interesting print it is difficult to distinguish the theatre, but the coffee house is easily found.

September, 1780, when orders came to move to the North again, the officers were loath to go. They had understood that they were to remain at Charlottesville until exchanged. Several of them “had laid out great sums in making themselves comfortable habitations; for the barracks became a little town, and there being more society, most of the officers had resorted there. The great objection to residing at them on our first arrival, was on account of the confined situation, being not only surrounded, but even in the woods themselves. The proprietor of the estate will reap great advantages, as the army entirely cleared a space of six miles in circumference around the barracks. After we quitted the barracks, the inhabitants were near a week in destroying the cats that were left behind, which impelled by hunger had gone into the woods. There was reason to suppose they would become extremely wild and ferocious and would be a great annoyance to their poultry.”

The Convention Army, crossing the “Pignet Ridge, or more properly, the Blue Mountains,” at Wood’s Gap, moved to Winchester, and thence, recrossing the Ridge at Williams’s Gap, proceeded to Frederick Town, and so to New York to take ship.

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