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I
Official Port Towns in Virginia
and
Origins of Marlborough

ESTABLISHING THE PORT TOWNS

The dependence of 17th-century Virginia upon the single crop—tobacco—was a chronic problem. A bad crop year or a depressed English market could plunge the whole colony into debt, creating a chain reaction of overextended credits and failures to meet obligations. Tobacco exhausted the soil, and soil exhaustion led to an ever-widening search for new land. This in turn brought about population dispersal and extreme decentralization.

After the Restoration in 1660 the Virginia colonial government was faced not only with these economic hazards but also with the resulting administrative difficulties. It was awkward to govern a scattered population and almost impossible to collect customs duties on imports landed at the planters’ own wharves along hundreds 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 Tob^o 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 Tob^o 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 dec^ed” 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 y^e land shall revert to y^e 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 y^e act for Ports &c. till their Maj^ts pleasure shall be known therein or till y^e 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 of all goods imported or to be exported at & from the same will (considering the present circumstances of the Country) be very injurious & burthensome to the Inhabitants thereof and traders thereunto.”[15] Doubtless dictated by the Board of Trade in London, the recommendation was a defeat for those who, like Fitzhugh, sought by the establishment of towns to break tobacco’s strangle-hold on Virginia.

THE ACT FOR PORTS OF 1705 AND THE NAMING OF MARLBOROUGH

Nevertheless, the town idea was hard to kill. In 1705 Stafford’s port town, along with those in the other counties, was given a new lease on life when still another Act for Ports, introduced by Robert Beverley, was passed. This Act repeated in substance the provisions of its immediate forerunner, but provided in addition extravagant inducements to settlement. Those who inhabited the towns were exempted from three-quarters of the customs duties paid by others; they were freed of poll taxes for 15 years; they were relieved from military mustering outside the towns and from marching outside, excepting the “exigency” of war (and then only for a distance of no more than 50 miles). Goods and “dead provision” were not to be sold outside within a 5-mile radius, and ordinaries (other than those within the towns) were not permitted closer than 10 miles to the towns’ boundaries, except at courthouses and ferry landings. Each town was to be a free “burgh,” and, when it had grown to 30 families “besides ordinary keepers,” “eight principal inhabitants” were to be chosen by vote of the “freeholders and inhabitants of the town of twenty-one years of age and upwards, not being servants or apprentices,” to be called “benchers of the guild-hall.” These eight “benchers” would govern the town for life or until removal, selecting a “director” from among themselves. When 60 families had settled, “brethren assistants of the guild hall” were to be elected similarly to serve as a common council. Each town was to have two market days a week and an annual five-day fair. The towns listed under the Act were virtually the same as before, but this time each was given an official name, the hitherto anonymous town for Stafford being called Marlborough in honor of the hero of the recent victory at Blenheim.[16]

The elaborate vision of the Act’s sponsors never was realized in the newly christened town, but there was in due course a slight resumption of activity in it. George Mason and William Fitzhugh, Jr. (the son of William Fitzhugh of Stafford County) were appointed feoffees in 1707, and a new survey was made by Thomas Gregg. The following year seven more lots were granted, and for an interval of two years Marlborough functioned technically as an official port.[17]

Inevitably, perhaps, history repeated itself. In 1710 the Act for Ports, like its predecessors, was rescinded. The reasons given in London were brief and straightforward; the Act, it was explained, was “designed to Encourage by great Priviledges the settling in Townships.” These settlements would encourage manufactures, which, in turn, would promote “further Improvement of the said manufactures, And take them off from the Planting of Tobacco, which would be of Very Ill consequence,” thus lessening the colony’s dependence on the Kingdom, affecting the import of tobacco, and prejudicing shipping.[18] Clearly, the Crown did not want the towns to succeed, nor would it tolerate anything which might stimulate colonial self-dependence. The Virginia colonists’ dream of corporate communities was not to be realized.

Most of the towns either died entirely or struggled on as crossroads villages. A meager few have survived to the present, notably Norfolk, Hampton, Yorktown, and Tappahannock. Marlborough lasted as a town until about 1720, but in about 1718 the courthouse and several dwellings were destroyed by fire and “A new Court House being built at another Place, all or most of the Houses that had been built in the said Town, were either burnt or suffered to go to ruin.”[19]

The towns were artificial entities, created by acts of assembly, not by economic or social necessity. In the few places where they filled a need, notably in the populous areas of the lower James and York Rivers, they flourished without regard to official status. In other places, by contrast, no law or edict sufficed to make them live when conditions did not warrant them. In sparsely settled Stafford especially there was little to nurture a town. It was easier, and perhaps more exciting, to grow tobacco and gamble on a successful crop, to go in debt when things were bad or lend to the less fortunate when things were better. In the latter case land became an acceptable medium for the payment of debts. Land was wealth and power, its enlargement the means of greater production of tobacco—tobacco again the great gamble by which one would always hope to rise and not to fall. When one could own an empire, why should one worry about a town?

ESTABLISHING COURTHOUSES

The administrative problems that contributed to the establishment of the port towns also called for the erection of courthouses. As early as 1624 lower courts had been authorized for Charles City and Elizabeth City in recognition of the colony’s expansion, and ten years later the colony had been divided into eight counties, with a monthly court established in each. By the Restoration the county courts possessed broadly expanded powers and were the administrative as well as the judicial sources of local government. In practice they were largely self-appointive and were responsible for filling most local offices. Since the courts were the vehicles of royal authority, it followed that the physical symbols of this authority should be emphasized by building proper houses of government. At Jamestown orders were given in 1663 to build a statehouse in lieu of the alehouses and ordinaries where laws had been made previously.[20]

In the same year, four courthouses annually were ordered for the counties, the burgesses having been empowered to “make and Signe agreements w^th any that will undertake them to build, who are to give good Caution for the effecting thereof with good sufficient bricks, Lime, and Timber, and that the same be well wrought and after they are finished to be approved by an able surveyor, before order be given them for their pay.”[21] Such buildings were to take the place of private dwellings and ordinaries in the same way as did the statehouse at Jamestown. It was no accident that legislation for houses of government coincided with that for establishing port towns. Each reflected the need for administering the far-flung reaches of the colony and for maintaining order and respect for the crown in remote places.

THE COURTHOUSE IN THE PORT TOWN FOR STAFFORD COUNTY

Stafford County, which had been set off from Westmoreland in 1664, was provided with a courthouse within a year of its establishment. Ralph Happel in Stafford and King George Courthouses and the Fate of Marlborough, Port of Entry, has given us a detailed chronicle of the Stafford courthouses, showing that the first structure was situated south of Potomac Creek until 1690, when it presumably burned.[22] The court, in any event, began to meet in a private house on November 12, 1690, while on November 14 one Sampson Darrell was appointed chief undertaker and Ambrose Bayley builder of a new courthouse. A contract was signed between them and the justices of the court to finish the building by June 10, 1692, at a cost of 40,000 pounds of tobacco and cash, half to be paid in 1691 and the remainder upon completion.[23]

With William Fitzhugh the presiding magistrate of the Stafford County court as well as cosponsor of the Act for Ports, it was foreordained that the new courthouse should be tied in with plans for the port town. The Act for Ports, however, was still in the making, and it was not possible to begin the courthouse until after its passage in the spring. On June 10, 1691, it was “Ordered by this Court that Capt. George Mason and Mr. Blande the Surveyor shall immediately goe and run over the ground where the Town is to Stand and that they shall then advise and direct M^r Samson Darrell the Cheife undertaker of the Court house for this County where he shall Erect and build the same.”[24]

The court’s order was followed by a hectic sequence that reflects, in general, the irresponsibilities, the lack of respect for law and order, and the frontier weaknesses which made it necessary to strengthen authority. It begins with Sampson Darrell himself, whose moral shortcomings seem to have been legion (hog-stealing, cheating a widow, and refusing to give indentured servants their freedom after they had earned it, to name a few). Darrell undoubtedly had the fastidious Fitzhugh’s confidence, for certainly without that he would not have been appointed undertaker at all. In his position in the court, Fitzhugh would have been instrumental in selecting both architect and architecture for the courthouse, and Darrell seems to have met his requirements. Fitzhugh, in fact, had sufficient confidence in Darrell to entrust him with personal business in London in 1688.[25]

Although several months elapsed before a site was chosen, enough of the new building was erected by October to shelter the court for its monthly assembly. In the course of this session, there occurred a “most mischievous and dangerous Riot,”[26] which rather violently inaugurated the new building. During this disturbance, the pastor of Potomac Parish, Parson John Waugh,[27] upbraided the court while it was “seated” and took occasion to call Fitzhugh a Papist. The court, taking cognizance of “disorders, misrules and Riots” and “the Fatal consequences of such unhappy malignant and Tumultuous proceeding,” thereupon restricted the sale of liquor on court days (thus revealing what was at least accessory to the disturbance).[28] Fitzhugh’s letter to the court concerning this episode mentions the “Court House” and the “Court house yard,” adding to Happel’s ample documentation that the new building was by now in use.

During the November session, James Mussen was ordered into custody for having “dangerously wounded M^r. Sampson Darrell.”[29] This suggests that the sequence of disturbances may have been associated with the unfinished state of the courthouse, which, like the town, symbolized the purposes of Fitzhugh and the property-owning aristocracy. Certain it is that Darrell, publicly identified with Fitzhugh, was violently assaulted and that “a complaint was made to this Court that Sampson Darrell the chief undertaker of the building and Erecting of a Court house for this county had not performed the same according to articles of agreement.” He and Bayley accordingly were put under bond to finish the building by June 10, 1692. By February Bayley was complaining that he had not been paid for his work, “notwithstanding your pet^r as is well known to the whole County hath done all the carpenters work thereof and is ready to perform what is yet wanting.” On May 12, less than a month from the deadline for completion, Darrell was ordered to pay Bayley the money owing, and Bayley was instructed to go on with the work. Nearly six months later, on November 10, Darrell again was directed to pay Bayley the full balance of his wages, but only “after the said Ambrose Bayley shall have finished and Compleatly ended the Court house.”[30]

No description of the courthouse has been found. The Act of 1663 seems to have required a brick building, although its wording is ambiguous. Even if it did stipulate brick, the law was 28 years old in 1691, and its requirements probably were ignored. Although Bayley, the builder, was a carpenter, this would not preclude the possibility that he supervised bricklayers and other artisans. Brick courthouses were not unknown; one was standing in Warwick when the Act for Ports was passed in 1691. Yet, the York courthouse, built in 1692, was a simple building, probably of wood.[31] In any case, the Stafford courthouse was a structure large enough to have required more than a year and a half to build, but not so elaborate as to have cost more than 40,000 pounds of tobacco.

LOCATION OF THE STAFFORD COURTHOUSE

The location of the building is indicated by a notation on Buckner’s plat of the port town: “The fourth course (runs) down along by the Gutt between Geo: Andrew’s & the Court house to Potomack Creek.” A glance at the plat (fig. 2) will disclose that the longitudinal boundaries of all the lots south of a line between George Andrews’ “Gutt” run parallel to this fourth course. Plainly, the courthouse was situated near the head of the gutt, where the westerly boundary course changed, near the end of “The Broad Street Across the Town.” It may be significant that the foundation (Structure B) on which John Mercer’s mansion was later built is located in this vicinity.

In or about the year 1718 the courthouse “burnt Down,”[32] while it was reported as “being become ruinous” in 1720, with its “Situation very inconvenient for the greater part of the Inhabitants.” It was then agreed to build a new courthouse “at the head of Ocqua Creek.”[33] Aquia Creek was probably meant, but this must have been an error and the “head of Potomac Creek” intended instead. Happel shows that it was built on the south side of Potomac Creek. Thus, the burning of the Marlborough courthouse in 1718 merely speeded up the forces that led to the end of the town’s career.

MARLBOROUGH PROPERTY OWNERS

Not only was Marlborough foredoomed by external decrees and adverse official decisions, but much of its failure was rooted in the local elements by which it was constituted. The great majority of lot holders were the “gentlemen” who were so carefully distinguished from “all other of the Inhabitants” in the order to survey the town in 1691. Most were leading personages in Stafford, and we may assume that their purchases of lots were made in the interests of investment gains, not in establishing homes or businesses. Only three or four yeomen and ordinary keepers seem to have settled in the town.

Sampson Darrell, for example, held two lots, but he lived at Aquia Creek.[34] Francis Hammersley was a planter who married Giles Brent’s widow and lived at “The Retirement,” one of the Brent estates.[35] George Brent, nephew of the original Giles Brent, was law partner of William Fitzhugh, and had been appointed Receiver General of the Northern Neck in 1690. His brother Robert also was a lot holder. Both lived at Woodstock, and presumably they did not maintain residences at the port town.[36] Other leading citizens were Robert Alexander, Samuel Hayward, and Martin Scarlett, but again there is little likelihood that they were ever residents of the town. John Waugh, the uproarious pastor of Potomac Parish, also was a lot holder, but he lived on the south side of Potomac Creek in a house which belonged to Mrs. Anne Meese of London. His failure to pay for that house after 11 years’ occupancy of it, which led to a suit in which Fitzhugh was the prosecutor, does not suggest that he ever arrived at building a house in the port town.[37]

Captain George Mason was a distinguished individual who lived at “Accokeek,” about a mile and a half from Marlborough. He certainly built in the town, for in 1691 he petitioned for a license to “keep an ordinary at the Town or Port for this county.” The petition was granted on condition that he “find a good and Sufficient maintenance and reception both for man and horse.” Captain Mason was grandfather of George Mason of Gunston Hall, author of the Virginia Bill of Rights, and was, at one time or another, sheriff, lieutenant colonel and commander in chief of the Stafford Rangers, and a burgess. He participated in putting down the uprising of Nanticoke Indians in 1692, bringing in captives for trial at the unfinished courthouse in March of that year.[38] Despite his interest in the town, however, it is unlikely that he ever lived there.

Another lot owner was Captain Malachi Peale, whose lease of the town land from the Brents had been purchased when the site was selected. He also was an important figure, having been sheriff. He may well have lived on one of his three lots, since he was a resident of the Neck to begin with. John Withers, one of the first feoffees and a justice of the peace, was a lot holder also. George Andrews and Peter Beach, somewhat less distinguished, were perhaps the only full-time residents from among the first grantees. After 1708 Thomas Ballard and possibly William Barber were also householders.

Thus, few of the ingredients of an active community were to be found at Marlborough, the skilled craftsmen or ship’s chandlers or merchants who might have provided the vitality of commerce and trade not having at any time been present.

HOUSING

It is likely that most of the houses in the town conformed to the minimum requirements of 20 by 20 feet. They were probably all of wood, a story and a half high with a chimney built against one end. Forman describes a 20-foot-square house foundation at Jamestown, known as the “House on Isaac Watson’s Land.” This had a brick floor and a fireplace large enough to take an 8-foot log as well as a setting for a brew copper. The ground floor consisted of one room, and there was probably a loft overhead providing extra sleeping and storage space.[39] The original portion of the Digges house at Yorktown, built following the Port Act of 1705 and still standing, is a brick house, also 20 feet square and a story and a half high. Yet, brick houses certainly were not the rule. In remote Stafford County, shortly before the port town was built, the houses of even well-placed individuals were sometimes extremely primitive. William Fitzhugh wrote in 1687 to his lawyer and merchant friend Nicholas Hayward in London, “Your brother Joseph’s building that Shell, of a house without Chimney or partition, & not one tittle of workmanship about it more than a Tobacco house work, carry’d him into those Arrears with your self & his other Employees, as you found by his Accots. at his death.”[40] Ancient English puncheon-type construction, with studs and posts set three feet into the ground, was still in use at Marlborough in 1691, as we know from the contract for building a prison quoted by Happel.[41] No doubt the houses there varied in quality, but we may be sure that most were crude, inexpertly built, of frame or puncheon-type construction, and subject to deterioration by rot and insects.

FURNISHINGS OF TWO MARLBOROUGH HOUSES

Like George Mason, George Andrews ran an ordinary at the port town, having been licensed in 1693, and he also kept the ferry across Potomac Creek.[42] He died in 1698, leaving the property to his grandson John Cave. From the inventory of his estate recorded in the Stafford County records (Appendix A) we obtain a picture not only of the furnishings of a house in the port town, but also of what constituted an ordinary.[43] We are left with no doubt that as a hostelry Andrews’ house left much to be desired. There were no bedsteads, although six small feather beds with bolsters and one old and small flock bed are listed. (Flock consisted of tufted and fragmentary pieces of wool and cotton, while “Bed” referred not to a bedframe or bedstead but to the tick or mattress.) There were two pairs of curtains and valances. In the 17th century a valance was “A border of drapery hanging around the canopy of a bed.”[44] Curtains customarily were suspended from within the valance from bone or brass curtain rings on a rod or wire, and were drawn around the bed for privacy or warmth. Where high post bedsteads were used, the curtains and valances were supported on the rectangular frame of the canopy or tester. Since George Andrews did not list any bedsteads, it is possible that his curtains and valances were hung from bracketed frames above low wooden frames that held the bedding. Six of his beds were covered with “rugs,” one of which was “Turkey work.” There is no indication of sheets or other refinements for sleeping.

Andrews’ furniture was old, but apparently of good quality. Four “old” cane chairs, which may have dated back as far as 1660, were probably English, of carved walnut. The “old” table may have had a turned or a joined frame, or possibly may have been a homemade trestle table. An elegant touch was the “carpet,” which undoubtedly covered it. Chests of drawers were rare in the 17th century, so it is surprising to find one described here as “old.” A “cupboard” was probably a press or court cupboard for the display of plates and dishes and perhaps the pair of “Tankards” listed in the inventory. The latter may have been pewter or German stoneware with pewter mounts. The “couch” was a combination bed and settee. As in every house there were chests, but of what sort or quality we can only surmise. A “great trunk” provided storage.

Andrews’ hospitality as host is symbolized by his lignum vitae punchbowl. Punch itself was something of an innovation and had first made its appearance in England aboard ships arriving from India early in the 1600’s. It remained a sailor’s drink throughout most of the century, but had begun to gain in general popularity before 1700 in the colonies. What is more remarkable here, however, is the container. Edward M. Pinto states that such lignum vitae “wassail” bowls were sometimes large enough to hold five gallons of punch and were kept in one place on the table, where all present took part in the mixing. They were lathe-turned and usually stood on pedestals.[45] George Andrews’ nutmeg graters, silver spoons, and silver dram cup for tasting the spirits that were poured into the punch were all elegant accessories.

Another resident whose estate was inventoried was Peter Beach.[46] One of his executors was Daniel Beach, who was paid 300 pounds of tobacco annually from 1700 to 1703 for “sweeping” and “cleaning” the courthouse (Appendix B). Beach’s furnishings were scarcely more elaborate than Andrews’. Unlike Andrews, he owned four bedsteads, which with their curtains and fittings (here called “furniture”) varied in worth from 100 to 1500 pounds of tobacco. Here again was a cupboard, while there were nine chairs with “flag” seats and “boarded” backs (rush-seated chairs, probably of the “slat-back” or “ladder-back” variety). Eight more chairs and five stools were not described. A “parcel of old tables” was listed, but only one table appears to have been in use. There were pewter and earthenware, but a relatively few cooking utensils. An “old” pewter tankard was probably the most elegant drinking vessel, while one candlestick was a grudging concession to the need for artificial light. The only books were two Bibles; the list mentions a single indentured servant.

THE GREGG SURVEY

In 1707, after the revival of the Port Act, the new county surveyor, Thomas Gregg, made another survey of the town. This was done apparently without regard to Buckner’s original survey. Since Gregg adopted an entirely new system of numbering, and since his survey was lost at an early date, it is impossible to locate by their description the sites of the lots granted in 1708 and after.

Forty years later John Mercer wrote:

It is certain that Thomas Gregg (being the Surveyor of Stafford County) did Sep 2^d 1707 make a new Survey of the Town.... it is as certain that Gregg had no regard either to the bounds or numbers of the former Survey since he begins his Numbers the reverse way making his number 1 in the corner at Buckner’s 19 & as his Survey is not to be found its impossible to tell how he continued his Numbers. No scheme I have tried will answer, & the Records differ as much, the streets according to Buckner’s Survey running thro the House I lived in built by Ballard tho his whole lot was ditched in according to the Bounds made by Gregg.[47]

Whatever the intent may have been in laying out formal street and lot plans, Marlborough was essentially a rustic village. If Gregg’s plat ran streets through the positions of houses on the Buckner survey, and vice versa, it is clear that not much attention was paid to theoretical property lines or streets. Ballard apparently dug a boundary ditch around his lot, according to Virginia practice in the 17th century, but the fact that this must have encroached on property assigned to somebody else on the basis of the Buckner survey seems not to have been noted at the time. Rude houses placed informally and connected by lanes and footpaths, the courthouse attempting to dominate them like a village schoolmaster in a class of country bumpkins, a few outbuildings, a boat landing or two, some cultivated land, and a road leading away from the courthouse to the north with another running in the opposite direction to the creek—this is the way Marlborough must have looked even in its best days in 1708.

THE DEATH OF MARLBOROUGH AS A TOWN

Could this poor village have survived had the courthouse not burned? It was an unhappy contrast to the vision of a town governed by “benchers of the guild hall,” bustling with mercantile activity, swarming on busy market days with ordinaries filled with people. This fantasy may have pulsated briefly through the minds of a few. But, after the abrogation of the Port Act in 1710, there was little left to justify the town’s existence other than the courthouse. So long as court kept, there was need for ordinaries and ferries and for independent jacks-of-all-trades like Andrews. But with neither courthouse nor port activity nor manufacture, the town became a paradox in an economy and society of planters.

Remote and inaccessible, uninhabited by individuals whose skills could have given it vigor, Marlborough no longer had any reason for being. It lingered on for a short time, but when John Mercer came to transform the abandoned village into a flourishing plantation, “Most of the other Buildings were suffered to go to Ruin, so that in the year 1726, when your Petitioner [i.e., Mercer] went to live there, but one House twenty-feet square was standing.”[48]

---

II
John Mercer’s Occupation of Marlborough, 1726-1730

MERCER’S ARRIVAL IN STAFFORD COUNTY

By 1723 Marlborough lay abandoned. George Mason (III), son of the late sheriff and ordinary keeper in the port town, held the now-empty title of feoffee, together with Rice Hooe. In that year Mason and Hooe petitioned the General Court “that Leave may be given to bring in a Bill to enable them to sell the said Land [of the town] the same not being built upon or Inhabited.” The petition was put aside for “consideration,” but within a week—on May 21, 1723—it was “ordered That Rice Hooe & George Mason be at liberty to withdraw their petition ... and that the Committee to whom it was referred be discharged from proceeding thereon.”[49]

This curious sequence remains unexplained. Had the committee informally advised the feoffees that their cause would be rejected, suggesting, therefore, that they withdraw their petition? Or had something unexpected occurred to provide an alternative solution to the problem of Marlborough?

Possibly it was the latter, and the unexpected occurrence may have been the arrival in Stafford County of young John Mercer. There is no direct evidence that Mercer was in the vicinity as early as 1723; but we know that he appeared before 1725, that he had by then become well acquainted with George Mason, and that he settled in Marlborough in 1726.

Mercer’s remarkable career began with his arrival in Virginia at the age of 16. Born in Dublin in 1704, the son of a Church Street merchant of English descent—also named John Mercer—and of Grace Fenton Mercer, John was educated at Trinity College, and then sailed for the New World in 1720.[50] How Mercer arrived in Virginia or what means he brought with him are lost to the record. From his own words written toward the end of his life we know that he was not overburdened with wealth:

“Except my education I never got a shilling of my fathers or any other relations estate, every penny I ever got has been by my own industry & with as much fatigue as most people have undergone.”[51]

From his second ledger (the first, covering the years 1720-1724, having been lost) we learn that he was engaged in miscellaneous trading, sailing up and down the rivers in his sloop and exchanging goods along the way. Where his home was in these early years we do not know, but it would appear that he had been active in the Stafford County region for some time, judging from the fact that by 1725 he had accumulated £322 4s. 5½d. worth of tobacco in a warehouse at the falls of the Rappahannock.[52] He certainly had encountered George Mason before then, and probably Mason’s uncles, John, David, and James Waugh, the sons of Parson John Waugh, all of whom owned idle Marlborough properties.

Mercer’s friendship with the Masons was sufficiently well established by 1725 that on June 10 of that year he married George’s sister Catherine. This marriage, most advantageous to an aspiring young man, was celebrated at Mrs. Ann Fitzhugh’s in King George County with the Reverend Alexander Scott of Overwharton Parish in Stafford County officiating.[53] Thus, allied to an established family that was “old” by standards of the time and sponsored socially by a representative of the Fitzhughs, Mercer was admitted at the age of 21 to Virginia’s growing aristocracy.

In this animated and energetic youth, the Masons and Waughs probably saw the means of bringing Marlborough back to life. Mercer, for his part, no doubt recognized the advantages that Marlborough offered, with its sheltered harbor and landing, its fertile, flat fields, and airy situation. That it could be acquired piecemeal at a minimum of investment through the provisions of the Act for Ports was an added inducement.

JOHN MERCER AS A TRADER

During 1725 Mercer pressed ahead with his trading enterprises. From his ledger we learn that he sold Richard Ambler of Yorktown 710 pounds of “raw Deerskins” for £35 10s. and bought £200 worth of “sundry goods” from him. Between October 1725 and February 1726 he sold a variety of furnishings and equipment to Richard Johnson, ranging from a “horsewhip” and a “silk Rugg” to “½ doz. Shoemaker’s knives” and an “Ivory Comb.” In return he received two hogsheads of tobacco, “a Gallon of syder Laceground,” and raw and dressed deerskins. He maintained a similar long account with Mosley Battaley (Battaille) (Appendix C). From William Rogers of Yorktown[54] he bought £12 3s. 6d. worth of earthenware, presumably for resale. The tobacco which he had accumulated at the falls of the Rappahannock he sold for cash to the Gloucester firm of Whiting & Montague, paying Peter Kemp two pounds “for the extraordinary trouble of y^r coming up so far for it.”

His sloop was the principal means by which Mercer conducted his business. Occasionally he rented it for hire, once sharing the proceeds of a load of oystershells with George Mason and one Edgeley, who had sailed the sloop to obtain the shells. Only one item shows that Mercer extended his mercantile activities to slaves: on February 18, 1726, he sold a mulatto woman named Sarah to Philemon Cavanaugh “to be paid in heavy tobacco each hhd to weigh 300 Neat.”

That Mercer was turning in the direction of a legal career is revealed in his first account of “Domestick Expenses” for the fall of 1725 (Appendix D). We find that he was attending court sessions far and wide: “Cash for Exp^s at Stafford & Spotsylvania,” “Cash for Exp^s Urbanna,” the same for “Court Ferrage at Keys.” He already was reading in the law, and lent “March’s Actions of Slander,” “Washington’s Abridgm^t of y^e Statutes,” and “an Exposition of the Law Terms” to Mosley Battaley.

SETTING UP HOUSEKEEPING

Mercer’s domestic-expense account is full of evidence that he was preparing to set up housekeeping. He bought “1 China punch bowl,” 10s.; “6 glasses,” 3s.; “1 box Iron & heaters,” 2s. 6d.; “1 p^r fine blankets,” 1s. 13d.; “Earthen ware,” 10s.; “5 Candlesticks,” 17s. 6d.; “1 Bed Cord,” 2s.; “3 maple knives & forks,” 2s.; “1 yew haft knife & fork & 1 p^r Stilds [steelyards?],” 1s. 10½d.; “1 p^r Salisbury Scissors,” 2s. 6d.; and “1 speckled knife & fork,” 5d.

In addition, he accepted as payment for various cloth and materials sold to Mrs. Elizabeth Russell the following furniture and furnishings:

At the time of this purchase, the only house standing at Marlborough was that built by Thomas Ballard in 1708. It was inherited by his godson David Waugh,[55] who now apparently offered to let his niece Catherine and her new husband occupy it. Mercer later referred to it as “the House I lived in built by Ballard.”[56] From his own records we know that he moved to Marlborough in 1726. He did so probably in the summer, since on June 11 he settled with Charles McClelland for “cleaning out y^e house.” Unoccupied for years and small in size, it was a humble place in which to set up housekeeping, and indeed must have needed “cleaning out.” It also must have needed extensive repairs, since Mercer purchased 1500 tenpenny nails “used about it.”

Throughout 1726 Mercer acquired household furnishings, made repairs and improvements, and obtained the necessities of a plantation. On February 1 he acquired “3 Ironbacks” (cast-iron firebacks for fireplaces) for £8 4s. 2d., as well as “2 p^r hand Irons” for 15s. 5d., from Edmund Bagge. From George Rust he bought “3 Cows & Calves” for £7 10s., a featherbed for £3 10s., and an “Iron pot” for 5s.

His reckoning with John Dogge opens with a poignant note, “By a Child’s Coffin”: Mercer’s first-born child had died. On the same account was “an Oven,” bought for 17 shillings. Dogge also was credited with “bringing over 10 sheep from Sumners” (a plantation at Passapatanzy, south of Potomac Creek). Rawleigh Chinn was paid for “plowing up & fencing in my yard” and for “fetching 3 horses over the Creek.” Also credited to Chinn was an item revealing Mercer’s sporting enthusiasm: “went on y^e main race ... 15/.”

From Alexander Buncle, Mercer acquired one dozen table knives, three chamber-door locks, two pairs of candle snuffers, and two broad axes. His account with Alexander McFarlane in 1726, the credit side of which is quoted here in part, is a further illustration of the variety of hardware and consumable goods that he required:

Mercer’s comments, added three years later to this record, signify the complexities of credit accounting in the plantation economy: “In July 1729 I settled Accounts w^th M^r M^cFarlane & paid him off & at the same time having Ed Barry’s note on him for 1412^l Tob^o (his goods being extravagantly dear) I paid him 1450^l Tob^o to M^r Thos Smith to ball^ns accts.”

Another of Mercer’s accounts was with Edward Simm. From Simm, Mercer acquired the following in 1726:

ACQUIRING LAND AND BUILDING A NEW HOUSE

Mercer’s first actual ownership of property came as a result of his marriage. In 1725 he purchased from his wife Catherine 885 acres of land near Potomac Church for £221 5s. and another tract of 1610 acres on Potomac Run for £322.[57] His occupancy of the Ballard house, meanwhile, was arranged on a most informal basis, three years having been allowed to pass before he paid his first and only rent—a total of 12 shillings—to his uncle-in-law David Waugh.

In January 1730 the following appears under “Domestick Expenses”: “To bringing the frame of my house from Jervers to Marlbro ... 40/.” Associated with this are items for 2000 tenpenny nails, 2000 eightpenny nails, and 1000 sixpenny nails, together with “To Chandler Fowke for plank,” “To J^no Chambers &c. bring board from Landing,” and “To John Chambers & Robt Collins for bringing Bricks & Oyster Shells.”

In the same month the account of Anthony Linton and Henry Suddath includes the following:

Clearly, the Mercers had outgrown the temporary shelter which the little Ballard house had given them. Now a new house was under construction, with the steps plainly indicated. To obtain timber of sufficient size to frame the house it was necessary to go where the trees grew. The nearest thickly forested area was north of Potomac Creek and Potomac Run. The appropriate timbers apparently grew on property owned by Mercer but occupied by the widow of James Jervis (or “Jervers”). Not only did the trees grow there, but we may be sure that there they were also felled, hewn, and cut, and the finished members fitted together on the ground to form the frame of the new house. It was a time-honored English building practice to prepare the timbers where they were felled, shaping them, drilling holes for “trunnels” (wooden pegs or “tree nails”), inscribing coded numbers with lumber markers, and then knocking the prefabricated members apart and transporting them to the building site.[58]

Oystershells and bricks for the chimney were brought from Cedar Point and Boyd’s Hole, south of Marlborough, by Chambers and Collins. Shells were probably burned at the house site to make lime for mortar. Chambers was paid 12 pence a day for 32½ days’ work spread over a period from October 1730 to February 1731. Hugh French had been paid for 1000 bricks on August 24, 1730, while James Jones, on October 3, 1730, was recompensed three shillings for “9 days of work your Man plaistering my House & making 2 brick backs.”

The new house was thus brought to completion early in 1731. That it was a plain and simple house is apparent from the small amount of labor and the relatively few quantities of material. It appears to have had two fireplaces only and one chimney. Although the house was wooden, there is no evidence that it had any paint whatsoever, inside or out.

FURNISHING THE HOUSE

Other than a child’s chair and a bedstead costing 10 shillings, purchased from Enoch Innes in 1729, little furniture was acquired before 1730. Listed in “Domestick Expenses” for 1729-1730 are minor accessories for the new house, such as HL hinges, closet locks, a “scimmer,” a pair of brass candlesticks, milk pans, pestle and mortar, “½ doz plates,” a “Cullender,” a candlebox, earthenware, and a pepperbox, together with several handtools.

MERCER’S VARIED ACTIVITIES AND INTERESTS

The agricultural aspects of a plantation were increasingly in evidence. In 1729 Rawleigh Chinn was paid for “helping to kill the Hogs,” “pasturage of my cattle,” and “making a gate.” Edward Floyd was credited with £4 6s. 7½d. for “Wintering Cattle, taking care of my horse & Sheep to Aug. 1729.” John Chinn seems to have been Mercer’s jockey, for as early as 1729 he was entering the races which abounded in Virginia, and “went on y^e race w^th Colt 1729.”

In this early period we find considerable evidence of a typical young Virginian’s fondness for gaming and sport. One finds scattered through Mercer’s account with Robert Spotswood such items as “To won at the Race ... 8.9” and “To won at Liew at Col^o Mason’s ... 7.3.” (Loo was an elegant 18th-century game played with Chinese-carved mother-of-pearl counters.) Mercer participated in several sporting events at Stafford courthouse, for court sessions continued, as in the previous century, to be social as well as legal and political occasions. This is illustrated in a credit to Joseph Waugh: “By won at a horse race at Stafford Court and Attorney’s fee ... £1.”; on the debit side of Enoch Innes’s account: “To won at Quoits & running with you ... 1/3”; and in Thomas Hudson’s account, where four shillings were marked up “To won pitching at Stafford Court.”

Mercer’s diversions were few enough, nevertheless, and it is apparent that he devoted more time to reading than to gaming. In 1726 he borrowed from John Graham (or Graeme) a library of 56 volumes belonging to the “Hon^ble Col^o Spotswood”[59] (Appendix E). Ranging from the Greek classics to English history, and including Milton, Congreve, Dryden, Cole’s Dictionary, “Williams’ Mathematical Works,” and “Present State of Russia,” they were the basis for a solid education. That they included no lawbooks at a time when Mercer was preparing for the law is an indication of his broad taste for literature and learning.

Marlborough, we can see, was occupied by a young man of talent, energy, and creativity. He alone, of the many men who had envisioned a center of enterprise on Potomac Neck, was possessed of the drive and the simple directness to make it succeed. For George Mason and the Waughs, Mercer was the ideal solution for their Marlborough difficulties.

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III
Mercer’s Consolidation of Marlborough, 1730-1740

MERCER THE YOUNG LAWYER

The 1730’s opened a golden age in the Virginia colony. There was an interval of peace in which trade might flourish; there were new laws which favored the tobacco planter and led to the building of resplendent mansions along Virginia’s shores. John Mercer wasted no time in grasping the opportunities that lay about him. With shrewd foresight he made law his major objective, thus raising himself above most of his contemporaries. At the same time he began an extensive purchasing of property, so that within a decade he was to become one of the major landed proprietors in the colony. Planting and legal practice each augmented the other in Mercer’s prosperity, which was assured by a classic combination of energy, ability, and outgoing personality. As with many successful men, Mercer had an eye for meticulous detail; the documents he left behind were a treasury of methodically kept records.

His Ledger B reveals that as early as 1730 his legal career was becoming firmly established. It records fee accounts, charges for drawing deeds, writing bonds, and representing clients in various courts. In that year he “subscribed to Laws of Virginia” through William Parks, the Williamsburg printer and stationer, and began to build up a substantial law library, which was augmented by the purchase of 40 lawbooks from Robert Beverley.

DIFFICULTIES IN ACQUIRING MARLBOROUGH

On October 13, 1730, Mercer obtained title from David Waugh to the Ballard house and lots on the basis of the “Statute for transforming uses into possessions.” At the same time he acquired the three lots originally granted to John Waugh, while nine months later he was given the release of the three lots inherited by George Mason from his father.[60] Mercer’s foothold in Marlborough was now secure.

Following these developments, he “employed the County Surveyor to lay off the several Lots he had purchased,” which led to the discovery of the previously mentioned disparities and conflicts between the Buckner survey of 1691 and the missing Gregg survey of 1707. For some reason the town now lacked feoffees, so Mercer “applied to the County Court of Stafford on the tenth day of June one thousand seven hundred and thirty-one and the said Court then appointed Henry Fitzhugh Esquire and James Markham Gent. Feofees of the said Town.” Mercer stated that he “proposed making great Improvements ... and wanted to take up several other Lots to build on.” The court thereupon ordered John Savage, the county surveyor, to make a new survey, “having regard to the Buildings and Improvements then standing”—a significant instruction, intended no doubt to permit the reconciling of conflicting titles with respect to what actually was built.[61]

The new survey was laid out July 23, 1731, “in the presence of the said Feoffees,” and drawn with the same plan and numbering as Buckner’s, except that an additional row of lots was applied along the western border of the town, compressing slightly the former lots as planned by Buckner and pushing them eastward (fig. 2). This extra row, we have reason to believe, was added with “regard to the Buildings and Improvements then standing.”

At the time of the survey, the feoffees told Mercer “that he might proceed in his Buildings and Improvements on any the said Lots not before granted,” promising that they would at any time make him “any Title they could lawfully pass.” A proposal by Fitzhugh to give title to any lots already purchased or any which Mercer might take up under terms of the Port Act of 1705 was discouraged by Mercer’s lawyer, Mr. Hopkins, who took the view that, since the three surveys conflicted, the deeds would not be good. Accordingly, Fitzhugh and Mercer applied for an “amicable Bill,” or suit in chancery, in the General Court, in order “to have Savage’s or any particular Survey established.” The request was shelved, however, and still was unanswered in 1748.

The extra row of lots and the court’s instructions to Savage to make his survey with “Regard to the Buildings and Improvements then Standing” seem to be correlated. Savage made a significant notation on his survey plat: “The lots marked 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, & 21 joining to the Creek are in possession of Mr. John Mercer who claims them under Robinson, Berryman, Pope & Parry, & under Ballard & under John Waugh dec^ed, all w^ch he says have been built on and saved.” On the Buckner plat the lots bearing these numbers comprise a block of six in the southwest corner of the town, extending up from the creek in two 3-tiered rows (fig. 2). The plat included the lots near the head of the “gutt” where the courthouse appears to have stood, as well as the land on which Structure B (the foundation of Mercer’s mansion) was excavated. The lots appear in the same relationship on Savage’s survey, except that the new row bounds them on the west.

We know that the Robinson-Berryman-Pope-Parry lot was the same lot originally granted to Robert Alexander in 1691, numbered 19 on Buckner’s plat. It was granted to its later owners according to the Gregg survey in 1707, and was then described as “being the first Lott known in the Survey Platt by number 1.” From Mercer we have learned already that Gregg made “his number 1 in the corner at Buckner’s 19.” The other five lots were claimed under Ballard and John Waugh. Waugh was granted one lot in 1691—Buckner’s number 20—and acquired two more in 1707. All three appear to have been in the corner block of six lots. In any case, these six lots equal the number of lots known to have been granted the above-listed lot holders. Both of Ballard’s lots were granted in 1707. His lot number 19 (Gregg survey), where Mercer first lived, is described as “bounding Easterly with a lott surveyed for Mr. John Waugh Westerly with a Narrow street Northerly with a lott not yet surveyed, Southerly with the first main Street which is parallel with Potomac Creek.” We do not know which of Waugh’s lots is meant, nor do we know Gregg’s street plan, except that it was at odds with Buckner’s. But it is probable that Ballard’s lot (Gregg’s number 19) was the same as Buckner’s number 21, that the crosstown street on Gregg’s plat lay to the south of the lot rather than to the north of it, as on Buckner’s plat, and that one of Waugh’s lots lay to the east of it.[62]

Assuming that the two acres for the courthouse were located near the head of the “gutt” and that Ballard’s lot 19 was approximately the same as Buckner’s 21, it is apparent that Ballard’s lot must have overlapped the courthouse lots in the confusion between the two surveys. Since Mercer was living on Ballard’s lot, he probably infringed on the courthouse property. Even though the courthouse had been burned and abandoned, the two acres assigned to it were required to revert to the original owner, as provided in the Act of 1667, concerning church and courthouse lands. In this case, the courthouse land, having been “deserted,” had reverted to the heir of Giles Brent.

Mercer’s embarrassment at this state of affairs must have been great. However, the addition by Savage of a whole new row of lots along the westerly border of the town created new acreage, sufficient both to reconcile the conflict and to provide compensatory land to satisfy the Brents. Unfortunately, the Savage survey, as we have noted, was not made official, and Mercer was forced to continue his questionable occupancy of properties whose titles were in doubt.

What is most significant to us in all this is the inference that the courthouse, the Ballard house which Mercer occupied, and the Structure B foundation were all in close proximity.

LARGE PROPERTY ACQUISITIONS

Mercer’s next purchase of Marlborough property was on July 28, 1737, when he bought the three lots granted in 1691 to George Andrews from Andrews’ grandson, John Cave. Meanwhile, he began large-scale acquisitions of lands elsewhere. By 1733 he had acquired an aggregate of 8096 acres in Prince William County. In addition, he obtained a “Lease for three Lives” on three large tracts belonging to William Brent, adjoining Marlborough, so that he controlled virtually all of Potomac Neck.[63]

Thus, after 1730 we find Mercer’s fortune already well established and increasing. No longer a youthful trader plying the Potomac in his sloop, he was now a gentleman planter and influential lawyer. He lived in a new house, owned some parts of Marlborough, and was building “improvements” on others. Almost overnight he had become a landed proprietor.

SUCCESS AT LAW AND CONFLICTS WITH LAWYERS

The source of Mercer’s newly made wealth is easily discovered. His ledger shows an income from legal fees in 1730 amounting to £291 10s. 1½d. In 1731 the figure climbed to £643 18s. 2d., then leveled off to £639 11s. 2½d. the following year. For a young man still in his twenties and self-trained in the law, this was a remarkable achievement. His success perhaps is attributable to a single event that stemmed from youthful brashness and vigorous outspokenness. Early in 1730, in a daring gesture on behalf of property owners and taxpayers, he protested against privileges granted in an act passed by the Assembly the previous year “for encouraging Adventurers in Iron Works.” Presented in the form of a proposition, the protest was read before the Stafford court by Peter Hedgman. The reaction to it in Williamsburg, once it had reached the ears of the Assembly, was immediate and angry. The House of Burgesses

Resolv’d That the Proposition from Stafford County in relation to the Act past in the last Session of this Assembly for encouraging Adventurers in Iron Works is a scandalous and Seditious Libel Containing false and scandalous Reflections upon the Legislature and the Justices of the General Court and other Courts of this Colony.

Resolv’d That John Mercer the Author and Writer of that paper and Peter Hedgman one of the Subscribers who presented the same to the Court of Stafford County to be certified to the General Assembly are guilty of a high Misdemeanour.

Order’d That the said John Mercer and Peter Hedgman be sent for in Custody of the Serjeant at Arms attending this House to answer their said Offence at the Bar of this House.[64]

Mercer and Hedgman made their apologies to the House, received their reprimands, and paid their fines. But this protest, so offensive to the dignity of the lawmakers, had its effect in forcing amendments to the act, particularly in removing the requirement for building public roads leading from the ironworks to the ore supplies and shipping points. To those living in Stafford, particularly in the neighborhood of the proposed Accokeek Ironworks, near Marlborough, this concession must have elevated Mercer to the level of a hero.[65]

Mercer’s frank disposition led him into other difficulties during the first years of his practice. His insistence on the prompt payment of debts and his opposition to stays of execution following suits had won him enemies at Prince William court. Charges of improper legal activities were brought against him; these were investigated at Williamsburg, with the result that on June 13, 1734, he was suspended from practicing law in Virginia for a period of six months.[66]

TEMPORARY RETIREMENT, THE ABRIDGMENT, AND GUARDIANSHIP OF GEORGE MASON

Deprived temporarily of his principal livelihood, Mercer set out to write an Abridgment of the Laws of Virginia. The task completed, he petitioned the General Court on April 23, 1735, for “leave to Print an Abridgment compil’d by him of all the Laws of this Colony & to have the benefit of the Sale thereof.” On the same day he petitioned for a renewal of his license, which was granted with the exception of the right to practice in Prince William, where he was to remain persona non grata generally thereafter.[67]

Soon after these events his brother-in-law and old acquaintance, George Mason, drowned. Mercer was designated co-guardian of 10-year-old George Mason IV, who came to live at Marlborough. Young George later grew up to be the master of Gunston Hall and, as the author of the Virginia Bill of Rights, to stand among the intellectuals whose ideas influenced the Revolution and the framing of the Constitution. In these formative years, young George Mason surely must have been affected by the strong legal mind and cultivated tastes of his uncle.[68]

On October 14, 1737, the Virginia Gazette carried the following advertisement:

This Day is Published

An Exact Abridgment of the Laws of VIRGINIA, in Force and Use, to this present time. By

John Mercer.

At long last, after innumerable delays, the Abridgment was in print. From a financial point of view it was a conspicuous failure. Too few Virginians, apparently, were sufficiently interested to buy it.

DOMESTIC FURNISHINGS AND SERVANTS

During this eventful decade of the 1730’s Mercer acquired the things needed for the proper maintenance of his house and properties. One requisite was Negro servants. From Pat Reyant he bought “a Girl named Margaret” for 43 pounds of tobacco in 1730. In 1731 he bought Deborah, Phillis, Peter, Nan, and Bob. The following year he obtained Lucy, Will, and George, and, in 1733, Nero. His purchases increased as his landholdings increased. In 1736 he bought five slaves, three of whom he aptly named Dublin, Marlborough, and Stafford.

To help feed his slaves during this early period, Mercer apparently depended in part upon Stafford’s wealth of natural resources. At least we find a record of wild game entered on the same page and under the same heading as his “Negroes” account in the ledger. There it is noted that he purchased 42 ducks from Natt Hedgman on November 19, 1730, and 20 ducks from Rawleigh Chinn the same day, paying for them in powder and shot. Two swans and a goose, as well as venison, appear on the list. Payment for these was made in powder, shot, and wool.

He continued, meanwhile, to equip his house. From John Foward (or Foard), a London merchant, he bought a “frying pan” and “2 doz. bottles,” “1 tomahawk,” “2 stock-locks,” “1 padlock,” “2 best padlocks,” “1 drawingknife,” “9 p^r hinges,” “3 clasp knives,” and “1 gall. Maderas.” In April 1731, he bought from Captain Foward:

Also in 1731 he bought “6 rush bottom Chairs” for 17 shillings and a spinning wheel for 10 shillings from William Hamitt. The “writing desk” which he had bought in 1725 apparently needed extensive and expensive repairs, for in March 1731 there appears an item under “Domestick Expenses,” “To W^m Walker for mending Scoutore £1.” (Scoutore was one of many corrupt spellings of escritoire, a slant-top desk.) William Walker was a Stafford County cabinetmaker and builder, about whom we shall hear much more.

One of the most active accounts was that of Nathaniel Chapman,[69] who directed the newly established Accokeek Ironworks. In 1731 he sold Mercer several hundred nails of different descriptions, a variety of hoes, ploughs, wedges, door latches, and heaters for smoothing irons. One item is “By putting a leg in an old Iron Pott”; another is “By Col Mason p^d for mending a snuff box. 2.6” (Appendix F).

In 1732 he paid Thomas Staines £1 for “a Cradle,” “two Bedsteads,” and “a weekes work.” From John Blane, during the same year, he purchased 2500 tenpenny nails and the same quantity of eightpenny nails. He also bought from Blane 4 “basons,” a porringer, 100 needles, 2 penknives, a gross of “thread buttons,” and a pair of large “Scissars.” Again, in 1732 he obtained from William Nisbett a quantity of miscellaneous goods, including 10 parcels of earthenware and a pewter dish weighing 4 to 5 ounces. He also settled with Samuel Stevens for “your share in making a Canoe.”

TOBACCO WAREHOUSES

The Tobacco Act of 1730 provided for the erection of public tobacco warehouses, and Marlborough was selected as one of the sites.[70] In 1731 Mercer’s account with John Waugh included “Timber for 2500 boards @25/.£3.2.6” and “Posts & Ceils for two Warehouses, 12 shillings.” In April 1732 he settled accounts with Captain Henry Fitzhugh for “building a Warehouse & Wharf & 6 prizes” at 3000 pounds of tobacco, or £15. The prizes probably were “incentive awards” for the workmen. Included in Fitzhugh’s account were “3 days work of Caesar & Will,” ten shillings, and “4319 very bad Clapboards at ½^d y^e board.” On March 25 he paid Anthony Linton for 1820 clapboards, allowing him eight shillings for “sawing of Boards.” The warehouses were in operation in 1732, as we learn from Mercer’s “Account of Inspectors,” but they suffered the fate of all official enterprises at Marlborough, for in 1734 “the same were put down, as being found very inconvenient.”[71] The actual date of their termination was November 16, 1735, when a new warehouse was scheduled for completion at the mouth of Aquia Creek.[72] The expression “put down” does not seem to mean that the warehouses were torn down, but that they were officially discontinued. He apparently, however, continued to use them for his own purposes.

PERSONAL ACTIVITIES

During the 1730’s Mercer recorded a minimum of recreational activities. Those that he did list are representative of the society of which he was a part. Making wagers was a favorite amusement. For example, he was owed £7 16s. by “Col^o George Braxton To a Wager you laid me at Cap^t Rob^t Brooke’s house before M^r James Reid, Will^m Brooke &c. Six Guineas to one that Col^o Spotswood would not during the Reign of K. George that now is, procure a Commission as Chief or Lieu^t Gov^r of Virginia.” In 1731 he paid William Brent “By a pistole won of me about Hedgman’s wrestling with and throwing Fra^s Dade. £1.1.12.” He also paid £2 10s. to James Markham “By [my] part on the Race on Stotham’s horse.” There are other scattered references to wagers on horseraces.

Mercer had become a vestryman in Overwharton Parish as early as 1730, and appears to have been made responsible for all legal matters pertaining to that church. His account, shown in detail in Appendix G, is of interest in showing that violations of moral law were held accountable to the church and that fines for convictions were paid to the church. Mercer, representing the parish, collected a portion of each fine as his fee.

Most of his energies now seem to have been divided between the law and the substantial responsibilities for managing his plantations. The increasing extent of tobacco cultivation is revealed in the tobacco account with “M^r Jonathan Foward, Merchant in London” (presumably John Foward, mentioned earlier), extending from 1733 to 1743. This account lists shipments of 129 hogsheads of tobacco, totaling £643 1s. 11d. (if we include a few extraneous items, such as “To an over charge in Lemons” and “To a Still charg’d never sent”). Several similar accounts involve proceeds from tobacco. In 1734 and 1738, for example, he shipped 54 hogsheads to William Stevenson, another London merchant, for £207 7d. on the ships Triton, Snake, Brooks, and Elizabeth.

Marlborough’s full transition to a seat of tobacco-planting empire is now clearly discernible. In so becoming, it was typical of the consolidation of wealth, property, and power in Virginia as the mid-century approached. Land had become both a substitute for tobacco in lean years and the means for paying off debts. The same land in better years yielded crops to its new owners, so that a relatively few dynamic men were able to amass great wealth and form a ruling aristocracy. The varieties of talents in men like Mercer—who, besides being a planter, was an accomplished lawyer and able administrator—placed them in the ascendancy over their less able fellows. The vigor and ability with which such men were endowed fostered the remarkable class of leaders of the succeeding generation, who had so much to do with founding the nation.

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IV
Marlborough at its Ascendancy, 1741-1750

TRAVEL

On April 12, 1741, Mercer was admitted to practice at the General Court in Williamsburg.[73] His trip there on that occasion was typical of the journeys which took him at least twice yearly to the capital. On the first day of this Williamsburg trip he rode “To Col^o Taliaferro’s,” a distance of 19 miles. The following day “To Caroline Court” (18 miles), the next “To M^r Hubbard’s” (30 miles), then as far as “M^r J^no Powers” (24 miles), and finally “To Furneas & Williamsburg” (30 miles). The route was usually to West Point, or Brick House on the opposite shore in New Kent County, and thence either directly to Williamsburg, or by way of New Kent courthouse. Stopovers were made either at ordinaries or at the houses of friends.[74]

Mercer’s travels, summarized in the journal that he kept in the back of Ledger B from 1730 until his death in 1768, were prodigious. In 1735, for example, he journeyed a total of 4202 miles and was home only 119 days. This pace had slackened considerably in the period we are now considering, but, nevertheless, he was not at home more than 218 days out of any one year of the decade 1741-1750. This energetic and restless moving about was common among the leading planters, but in Mercer’s case it seems to have reached its ultimate. Practicing law, playing politics, acquiring property, and becoming acquainted with people led him all over Virginia.

A representative sample from the journal covers the period of September and October 1745. It will be noted that the days of the week are indicated alphabetically, a through g, as in the calendar of the Book of Common Prayer. The mileage traveled each day is entered at the right.

[He remained at Williamsburg until November 6.]

Such itineraries were punctuated by periods of staying at Marlborough, but even then there were day-long journeys to Stafford courthouse, to church, or to a survey. The courthouse, which succeeded that at Marlborough, was situated on the south side of Potomac Creek, about three miles upstream from the old site. Mercer almost invariably took the 10-mile-long land route through the site of the present village of Brook, along the Fredericksburg road past Potomac Church, then along the headwaters of Potomac Run on a now-disused road leading to Belle Plains. Just before reaching the courthouse, which stood on a rise of land some distance back from the creek, he passed “Salvington,” the mansion of Joseph Selden.[83] Near the water, and in sight of the courthouse, stood the house of John Cave, whose grandfather in 1707 had bought his land from Sampson Darrell, undertaker of the Marlborough courthouse.[84] Near it, on a foundation still visible, Cave built the warehouse that bore his name, and through him passed much of the tobacco that Mercer raised locally. Occasionally, when he had business to do at Cave’s, Mercer would return home by water, as he did on August 14, 1746:

VEHICLES

During the 1740’s Mercer’s travels were often by chaise or chariot. We learn from Ledger G that he bought “a fourwheel Chaise” from Charles Carter[85] [Pg 29]
[Pg 30]in September 1744, a significant step in emulating the manners and ways of Virginia’s established aristocrats. Three years later he purchased “a Sett of Chaisewheels” from Francis Hogans, a Caroline County wheelwright, and in June 1748 he discounted as an overcharge the cost of “a Chaise worth nothing” in his account with the English mercantile firm of Sydenham & Hodgson.[86] A “chaise” could have been one of several types of vehicles, but it was probably “a carriage for traveling, having a closed body and seated for one to three persons,” according to Murray’s A New Oxford Dictionary.

In 1749 Mercer bought a “chariot” from James Mills of Tappahannock for £80. Doubtless an elegant piece of equipage, this was, we learn from Murray, “a light four-wheeled carriage with only back seats, and differing from the post-chaise in having a coach-box.” In November 1750 he paid John Simpson, a Fredericksburg wheelwright, 10 shillings for “wedging & hooping the Chariotwheels” and 9 shillings for “mending 3 fillys & 3 Spokes in D^o.”[87]

At the same time he bought a “p^r Cartwheels” for £2 and a “Tumbling Cart” for £1 6s. from Simpson. Murray tells us that a “tumble cart” or a “tumbril cart” was a dung cart, designed to dump the load.

TOBACCO CASK BRANDS

Hogsheads and casks of tobacco were branded with the symbols or initials of the original owners. Many of the brands are recorded explicitly in the ledger. Mercer, at the beginning of his career, used a symbol M. As his plantations multiplied, however, three symbols were adopted, based on his own two initials. Tobacco casks from Bull Run were marked I^B.M. Those from Sumner’s Quarters bore the brand I^S.M, while the “Home Plantation” at Marlborough had casks marked I^C.M (fig. 8).

The interpretation of these symbols warrants some digression. In the 17th century, and indeed in the 18th century also, the triangular cipher to indicate the initials of man and wife was commonly used to mark silver, pewter, china, delftware, linens, and other objects needing owners’ identifications. The common surname initial was placed at the top, the husband’s first-name initial at the lower left, and the wife’s at the lower right. This arrangement was used consistently in the 17th century. In the 18th century, however, variations began to appear in the colonies, although not, apparently, in England. Silver made in New York and Philadelphia during the 1700’s presents the initials reading from left to right, with the husband’s at the lower left, the wife’s at top center, and the surname initial at the lower right. The large keystone of the Carlyle house in Alexandria, built in 1751, bears a triangular arrangement of John and Sarah Carlyle’s initials: J^S.C.[88]

Like Carlyle, Mercer used initials in this fashion, but also, as we have seen, in two other combinations in which “J. M.” remains constant, the upper center initial having a subordinate significance. “S” signifies Sumner’s Quarters, and “B,” Bull Run Quarters. “C” on seals and brands having to do with Marlborough apparently refers to Catherine, honoring her as Mercer’s wife and mistress of the home plantation. The possibility that “C” stands for Cave’s warehouse may be dismissed as being inconsistent with the other two marks, the tobacco from Sumner’s Quarters having also been shipped through Cave’s, and that from Bull Run Quarters having been stored at the Occaquan warehouse.[89]

John Withers also used the left-to-right arrangement, I^H.W, although Henry Tyler, a planter whose account is mentioned in Mercer’s Ledger, used the conventional three-letter cipher, H^T.M. These marks occurred on casks transmitted to Mercer as payments, and are recorded in Ledger G (fig. 7).

TOBACCO EXCHANGE

Tobacco, before being transferred to another owner, was examined by official inspectors. Mercer kept a special “Inspector’s Notes” account where he kept track of fees due the inspectors. Direct payments of tobacco were made in transactions with William Hunter and Charles Dick, the Fredericksburg merchants from whom Mercer bought most of his goods and supplies. To others, however, payments were made in a complexity of tobacco notes, legal-fee payments, and plain barter. Tobacco shipped overseas was usually handled by Sydenham & Hodgson. Also involved with tobacco transactions in England were two Virginia merchants, Major John Champe, a distinguished resident of King George County who lived at Lamb’s Creek plantation, and William Jordan, of Richmond County, both of whom arranged for purchases of books, furniture, and other English imports for Mercer.

The following are excerpts from Sydenham & Hodgson’s account in Ledger G:

Revealed in this account are the hazards of shipping goods overseas in the 18th century. A partnership apparently figured in the second loss at sea, however, as the following entry in Ledger G shows:

Between 1747 and 1750 Mercer lost a total of 107 hogsheads of tobacco. Over and above this, however, he shipped overseas tobacco to the amount of £385 11s. 7d., during the same period.

CLIENTS

Mercer’s success was gained despite the failures of a great many persons to pay the fees they owed him. In 1745 he listed 303 “Insolvents, bad & doubtful debts.” That matters were no worse may be attributed to a high average of responsible clients. Among them were such well-known Virginians as Daniel Dulaney, William and Henry Fitzhugh, William Randolph, Augustine, John, and Lawrence Washington, Gerard Fowke, Richard Taliaferro, John and Daniel Parke Custis, Andrew and Thomas Monroe, George Tayloe, George Lee, George Wythe, and William Ramsay.

CLOTHING

By the early 1740’s Mercer was in a position to surround himself with symbols of wealth and prestige. Clothes, a traditional measure of affluence, were now a growing concern for himself and his family. Between 1741 and 1744, the ledger reveals, he purchased from William Hunter a greatcoat, women’s stockings, women’s calf shoes, morocco pumps, a “fine hat,” three felt hats, two dozen “plaid hose,” two pairs of men’s shoes, one pair of “Women’s Spanish Shoes,” and “2 p^r Calf D^o.” In 1744 and 1745 he bought from Charles Dick two pairs of “women’s coll’^d lamb gloves,” two pairs of silk stockings, “1 velvet laced hood,” a “laced hat,” a “Castor” (i.e., beaver) hat, “fine thread stockings,” silk handkerchiefs, a “flower’d pettycoat,” worsted stockings, and buckskin gloves. From Hugh MacLane, a Stafford tailor, he obtained a suit in 1745.

The rise in Mercer’s wealth and prestige is reflected in his patronizing Williamsburg tailors, beginning in 1745 when he settled with George Charleston for a tailor’s bill of £6 10s. In 1748 he paid Charleston four shillings for “Collar lining a Velvet Waistcoat.” In 1749 he purchased a “full trimm’d velvet Suit” from Charles Jones, the work and materials totaling £7 7s. 4¼d., while in 1750 he spent £11 2s. 1½d. on unitemized purchases from the same tailor. In that year he bought also from Robert Crichton, a Williamsburg merchant, “a flower’d Velvet Waistcoat, £5.” As the decade advanced, Mercer played with increasing consciousness the role of wealthy gentleman, as his choice of tailors shows.

MATERIALS

Textile materials, as seen under “General Expenses” and in the accounts of Hunter and Dick, ran the gamut of the usual imported fabrics, as well as rare, expensive elegancies. An alphabetical list of the materials mentioned in these accounts, with definitions, is given in Appendix I.

From this list we gain an impression of great diversity and refinement in the materials used for clothing and interior decoration, as well as of a tremendous amount of sewing, embroidering, and making of clothes at home, probably typical of most of the great plantations in the middle of the century.

WEAVING

In addition to fine imported materials, there were needed blankets, work clothes for slaves, and fabrics for other practical purposes. To these ends Mercer employed several weavers in various parts of Virginia. In 1747 William Threlkeld wove 109 yards of woolen cloth at fourpence a yard. During that year and the next, John Booth of King George County wove an indeterminate amount for a total of £2 4d. In 1748 John Fitzpatrick wove 480 yards of cotton at fourpence a yard, and William Mills wove 30 yards of “cloath.” Much of the work appears to have been done in payment for legal services.

Weaving and spinning evidently were done at Marlborough, as they were at most plantations. In 1744 Mercer recorded under “General Charges” that he had sold a loom to Joseph Foxhall. In 1746 he bought a spinning wheel from Captain Wilson of Whitehaven, England, purchasing three more from him in 1748. Wool cards also appear in the accounts. In January 1748 Mercer charged William Mills with “3 months Hire of Thuanus the Weaver, £3,” which suggests that Thuanus was an indentured white servant (his name does not occur on the list of slaves) employed at Marlborough and hired out to Mills, a Stafford County weaver.

PERSONAL ACCESSORIES

In contrast to the elegancies of dress materials and clothing, Mercer left little evidence of jewelry, toilet articles, or other personal objects. In Ledger G we find “2 horn combs” bought for fivepence, an ivory comb for tenpence, two razors, two strops, snuff-boxes, bottles of snuff, “a smelling bottle,” and “buck-handled” and silver-handled penknives. From John Hyndman, a Williamsburg merchant, Mercer acquired a set of silver buckles for £1 10s., and from William Woodford he bought “a gold watch, Chain & Swivel” for the not-trifling sum of £64 6s. 3d.

Like most successful men, Mercer had his portrait painted. During the General Court sessions held in the spring and fall of 1748 in Williamsburg, he lodged with William Dering, the dancing master and portrait painter. Dering lived in the house still standing on the capitol green, now known as the Brush-Everard house. In Dering’s account we find: “by drawing my picture, £9.2.9.”[90]

FOOD AND DRINK

Good food and drink played an important part in Mercer’s life, as it did in the lives of most Virginia planters. In the ledger accounts are found both double-refined and single-refined sugar, bohea tea, coffee, nutmegs, cinnamon, mace, and chocolate. Most meats were provided by the plantation and thus are not mentioned, while fish were caught from the plantation sloop or by fixed nets. However, Thomas Tyler of the Eastern Shore sold Mercer a barrel of drumfish and four and one-half bushels of oysters, while Thomas Jones, also of the Eastern Shore, provided a barrel of pork for 47s. 6d. in 1749. Earlier there appeared a ledger item under “General Charges” for 1775 pounds of pork.

Molasses was an important staple, and Mercer bought a 31-gallon barrel of it from one “Captain Fitz of the Eastern Shore of Maryland” in 1746 and 30 gallons the next year, charging both purchases to his wife. In 1750 he received 88 gallons of molasses and 255 pounds of “muscovy sugar” from Robert Todd. Muscovy sugar was the same as “muscavado” sugar, the unrefined brown sugar of the West Indies, known in Spanish as mascabado.

Beverages and the fruits to go with them were bought in astonishing quantities between 1744 and 1750. Major Robert Tucker, a Norfolk merchant, exchanged a “Pipe of Wine” worth £26 and a 107½-gallon hogshead of rum valued at £22 in return for Mercer’s legal services. Again as a legal fee, Mercer received 55 gallons of “Syder” from Janet Holbrook of Stafford and bought 11 limes from John Mitchelson of York for 12 shillings. From William Black he purchased “11 dozen and 11 bottles of Ale” at 13 shillings, and from John Harvey “5?₁₂ dozen of Claret” for £11 6d. “Mark Talbott of the Kingdom of Ireland E^sq” sold Mercer a pipe of wine for £3 3s.

LIFE OF THE CHILDREN

During the 1740’s Mercer’s first four surviving children, George, John Fenton, James, and Sarah Ann Mason Mercer,[91] were growing up, and the accounts are scattered through with items pertaining to their care and upbringing. There are delightful little hints of Mercer’s role as the affectionate father. On May 17, 1743, “By Sundry Toys” appears in Hunter’s account; an item of “1 horses 1^d” in Dick’s account for 1745 was undoubtedly a toy. Most charming of all the entries in the latter account is “1 Coach in a box 6^d. 4 Toys. 8^d, 2 Singing birds.” The birds may have occupied a birdcage and stand bought from George Rock, the account for which was settled a year later.

“1 french horn” and “3 trumpets” are listed in the Dick account. The horn was probably used in hunting; the three trumpets were bought perhaps for the three boys. Mercer’s library contained one book of music entitled The Musical Miscellany, which may have furnished the scores for a boyish trio of trumpets. Music and dancing were a part of the life at Marlborough, and in 1745 an entry under “General Charges” reads “To DeKeyser for a years dancing four children £16,” while in the following year ninepence was paid William Allan “for his Fidler.” In 1747 “Fiddle strings” were bought from Fielding Lewis in Fredericksburg for 2s. 4½d.

From the ledger we also learn much about the children’s clothing: child’s mittens and child’s shoes, boy’s pumps, boy’s shoes, girl’s shoes, boy’s collared lamb gloves, two pairs of “girl’s clock’d Stocking,” “2 p^r large boys Shoes 6^l 2 p^r smaller 5/ ... 1 p^r girls 22^d, 1 p^r smaller 20^d,” boy’s gloves, and “Making a vest and breeches for George” in October 1745. In 1748 Captain Wilson brought from England “a Wig for George,” worth 12 shillings. George then had reached the age of 15 and young manhood. Hugh MacLane, the Stafford tailor, was employed to make clothes for the three boys—a suit for George, and a suit, vest, coat, and breeches each for James and John.

That the children were educated according to time-honored methods is revealed in the “General Expenses” account for May 1743, where “1 hornbook 3^d” is entered. The hornbook was an ancient instructional device consisting of a paddle-shaped piece of wood with the alphabet and the Lord’s Prayer printed or otherwise lettered on paper that was glued to the wood and covered for protection with thin sheets of transparent horn. Elaborate examples sometimes were covered with tooled leather, or were made of ivory, silver, or pewter. The mention of hornbooks in colonial records is a great rarity, although they were commonplace in England until about 1800.

The Mercer children were taught by private tutors. One, evidently engaged in England, was the Reverend John Phipps, who was paid a salary of £100 annually and, presumably, his board and lodging. Mercer noted in his journal on November 18, 1746, that “Mr Phipps came to Virginia.” That Mr. Phipps left something to be desired was revealed years later in the letter written in 1768 by John to George Mercer, who was then in England, asking him to find a tutor for his younger children: “... the person you engage may not pretend, as M^r Phipps did that tho’ he undertook to instruct my children he intended boys only, & I or my wife might teach the girls. As I have mentioned M^r Phipps, it must remind you that a tutor’s good nature & agreeable temper are absolutely necessary both for his own ease & that of the whole family.”[92]

In 1750 George entered the College of William and Mary. He had a room at William Dering’s house, and the account of “Son’s Maintenance at Williamsburg” provides an interesting picture of a well-to-do college-boy’s expenses, chargeable to his father. Such items as “To Cash p^d for Lottery Tickets” (£7 10s. 6d.), “To Covington the Dancing Master ... 2.3,” “To W^m Thomson for Taylor’s work” (£1 9s. 6d.), “To p^d for Washing” (£1 1s.), and “To Books for sundrys” (£22 4s. 7½d.) show a variety of obligations comparable to those sometimes encountered on a modern campus. The entire account appears in Appendix J.

BUILDING THE MANOR HOUSE

As early as 1742 the ledger shows that Mercer was building steadily, although the nature of what he built is rarely indicated. Hunter’s account for 1742 lists 2500 tenpenny nails and 1000 twenty-penny nails, while in the following year the same account shows a total of 4200 eightpenny nails, 5000 tenpenny, 2000 fourpenny, and 1000 threepenny nails. The following tools were bought from Hunter in 1744: paring chisel, 1½-inch auger, ¾-inch auger, socket gouge, broad axe, adze, drawing knife, mortice chisel, a “square Rabbit plane,” and “plough Iron & plains.” In Charles Dick’s account we find purchases in 1745 of 16,000 flooring brads, 4000 twenty-penny nails, 2000 each of fourpenny, sixpenny, eightpenny, and tenpenny brads, and 60,000 fourpenny nails.

Beginning in 1744 Mercer made great purchases of lumber. Thomas Tyler of the Eastern Shore sold him 2463 feet of plank in that year, and in 1745 made several transactions totaling 5598 feet of 1-, 1½-, and 2-inch plank, as well as 23,170 shingles. In 1746 Charles Waller of Stafford sold Mercer 5193 feet of 1-, 1¼-, and 1½-inch plank. In the same year James Waughhop of Maryland provided “4000 foot of Plank of different thicknesses for £12,” and in May 1749, “2300 foot of 1½ Inch Plank at 7/.” Mercer made several similar purchases, including 14,700 shingles, from Robert Taylor of the Eastern Shore.

Where all these materials were used is a matter for conjecture. We know that Mercer made “Improvements” to the extent of “saving” 40 lots under the terms of the Act for Ports and Towns, and that a great deal of construction work, therefore, was going on. One building was probably a replacement for a warehouse, for a laconic entry in his journal on New Year’s day of 1746 notes that “My warehouses burnt.” These were doubtless the buildings erected in 1732 and officially vacated in 1735. That at least one eventually was rebuilt for Mercer’s own use is known from an overseer’s report of 1771 (Appendix M).

The windmill, the foundations of which still remain in part near the Potomac shore, was probably built in 1746. Mercer’s cash account for that year includes an item of 2s. 6d. for “Setting up Mill,” which apparently meant adjusting the millstones for proper operation. In August he paid Nathaniel Chapman £22 19s. 8¾d. “in full for Smith’s work.” A windmill, with its bearings, levers, lifts, and shafts, would seem to have been the only structure requiring such a costly amount of ironwork.

The most elaborate project of all, however, is clearly discernible in the ledger. In 1746 Thomas Anderson,[93] in consideration of cash and legal services, charged for “making & burning 40^m Stock bricks” at 4 pounds 6 pence per 1000. In the same year David Minitree, described by Mercer as a “Bricklayer,” came to Marlborough from Williamsburg. Minitree was more than an ordinary bricklayer, however, for he had worked on the Mattaponi church, and later, between 1750 and 1753, was to build Carter’s Grove for Carter Burwell.[94]

The credit side of Minitree’s account in Ledger G is as follows:

The last item, in particular, is clear indication that an architectural project of importance was underway and that Mercer had set about to make Marlborough the equal of Virginia’s great plantations. Only “part of my house” was built by Minitree, yet his bill was more than five times the total cost of Mercer’s previous house, completed in 1730!

Since it was customary in Virginia to make bricks on the site of a new house, utilizing the underlying clay excavated from the foundation, Minitree, as well as Anderson, made his bricks at Marlborough before using them. Mortar for laying bricks was made of lime from oystershells. In 1747 and 1748, we learn from the ledger, 61½ hogsheads of oystershells were bought from Abraham Basnett, an “Oysterman,” payment having been made in cash, meat, and brandy. “Flagstones &c ” were obtained in 1747 through Major John Champe at a cost of £36 4s. 6d. These may have been the same stones brought up as “a load of stone” by “Boatswain Davis” of Boyd’s Hole in Passapatanzy in October 1747 for £4 5s. 5d.

Early in 1748 a new set of developments concerning the house took place. Major William Walker of Stafford, revealed in the journal and the ledgers as an old acquaintance of Mercer’s, then became the “undertaker,” or contractor, for the house. Walker was a talented man who had started out as a cabinetmaker, a craft in which his brother Robert still continued. Whiffen (The Public Buildings of Williamsburg) shows that he both designed and built a glebe house for St. Paul’s Parish, Hanover County, in 1739-1740, and the steeple for St. Peter’s Church in New Kent the latter year. Also in 1740 he built a bridge across the Pamunkey for Hanover County. At the same time that he was engaged on Mercer’s mansion, he undertook in March 1749 to rebuild the burned capitol at Williamsburg. He died 11 months later before bringing either of these major projects to completion.[95]

Walker’s carpenter was William Monday. Mercer settled with Monday in March 1748 for a total bill of £126 16s. 2½d., but with a protest addressed to himself in the ledger: “By work done about my House which is not near the value as by Maj^r Walker’s Estimate below, yet to avoid Disputes & as he is worth nothing I give him Credit to make a full Ballance.”

Meanwhile, William Bromley, a joiner, had gone to work on the interior finish. Like Minitree and Walker, Bromley represented the highest caliber of artisanship in the colony. Eighteen years later Mercer referred to Bromley, “who,” he said, “I believe was the best architect that ever was in America.”[96] Bromley employed several apprentices, among them an Irishman named Patterson.[97] For the interval from July 9, 1748, to December 25, 1750, Bromley was paid £140 1s. ½d., almost entirely for wages. The payment included “3 p^r hollows & rounds / 6 plane irons / 1 gallon Brandy.” For the same period Andrew Beaty, also a joiner, received £113 5s. 1½d. On June 19, 1749, Mercer noted in his journal, “Beaty’s apprentice came to work.” These men were specialists in framing woodwork and in making paneling, doors, wainscoting, and exterior architectural elements of wood.

The opulence of the building’s finish is indicated by a charge on Walker’s account for “his Carver’s work 69 days at 5/, £17. 15....” Previously, while Minitree was still working on the house, an item had been entered in August 1747, “To Cash paid for cutting the Chimneypiece ... 6.3.” A chimneypiece was usually the ornamental trim or facing around a fireplace opening, although in this instance the overpanel may have been meant.

Jacob Williams, a plasterer, worked 142½ days for a total of £22 4s. 4d., while his helper Joseph Burges was employed 43 days for £5 7s. 6d. Walker charged £3 8s. 11d. for “his Painters work about my house,” and a purchase of “42 gallons of Linseed Oyl” was recorded in the general charges account. Three books of goldleaf, which Mercer had obtained from George Gilmer, the Williamsburg apothecary, were charged, together with paint, to Walker.

In May 1750, a charge by George Elliot, “Turner, Stafford,” was recorded, “By turning 162 Ballusters at 6^d, £4.1....” Another item, for supplying “341½ feet Walnut Plank at 2^d,” settled in October, may have been for the wood of which the balusters were made.

Thomas Barry, “Bricklayer,” carried on the work that Minitree had not completed. His account for 1749 follows:

Expensive stone was imported for the house by Captain Roger Lyndon, master of the Marigold, whose account occurs in the ledger:

It is interesting to note that bricks, probably carried from England as ballast, were brought by Captain Lyndon.

Not all the hewn stone was fashioned in England. William Copein, a Prince William County mason, and Job Wigley were employed together in 1749 to the amount of £2 8s. In 1750 Copein was paid by Mercer for 64 days of work at 3s. 1d. per day, totaling £9 17s. 4d. Copein was another accomplished craftsman, the marks of whose skill still are to be seen in the carved stone doorways of Aquia Church in Stafford County and in the baptismal font at Pohick Church in Fairfax.

The design of the house will be considered in more detail later in the light of both archeological and documentary evidence. It is already quite clear, however, that the new mansion was remarkably elaborate, reflecting the workmanship of some of Virginia’s best craftsmen. The most significant clues to its inspiration are found in the titles of four books which Mercer purchased in 1747. These are listed in the inventory of his books in Ledger G as follows:

“Hoppne’s Architecture.” This was probably The Gentlemans and Builders Repository on Architecture Displayed. Designs Regulated and Drawn by E. Hoppus, and engraved by B. Cole. Containing useful and requisite problems in geometry ... etc, (1738). Edward Hoppus was “Surveyor to the Corporation of the London Assurance.” He also edited Salmon’s Palladio Londonensis. We find no writer on architecture named Hoppne and assume this was a mistake.

“Salmon’s Palladio Londonensis.” Palladio Londonensis: or the London Art of Building, by William Salmon, which appeared in at least two editions, in 1734 and in 1738, had a profound influence on the formal architecture of the colonies during the mid-century.

“Palladio’s Architecture.” The Italian Andrea Palladio was the underlying source of English architectural thought from Christopher Wren down to Robert Adam. Under[Pg 38]
[Pg 39] the patronage of Lord Burlington, this book was brought out in London in an English translation by Giacomo Leoni under the title The Architecture of A. Palladio; in Four Books. It had appeared in three editions prior to this inventory, in 1715, 1721, and 1742, according to Fiske Kimball (Domestic Architecture of the American Colonies and of the Early Republic; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1924, p. 58). Mercer probably owned one of these. “Langley’s City & Country Builder.” City and Country Builder’s and Workman’s Treasury of Design by Battey Langley, 1740, 1745. This was another copybook much used by builders and provincial architects.

All four of these books were listed in succession in the ledger and bracketed together. Next to the bracket are the initials “WB,” to indicate that the books had been lent to someone who bore those initials. In this case it is virtually certain that the initials are those of William Bromley, to whom the books would have been of utmost importance in designing the woodwork of the house.

Door hardware was purchased from William Jordan in June 1749, according to an item for “Locks & Hinges” that amounted to the large sum of £13 8s. 8d.

DOMESTIC FURNISHINGS

As the mansion progressed, so did the acquisition of furnishings suitable to its elegance. As early as 1742, doubtless in anticipation of the new house, Mercer had bought from Hunter a “lanthorn,” three porringers, two cotton counterpanes at 27s., a plate warmer for 7s. 6d., a half-dozen plates for 3s. 6d., a half-dozen deep plates for 6s., a dozen “Stone Coffee cups” for 18d., a dozen knives and forks for 3s., two tin saucepans at 4d. each, and “4 Dishes, 19½ lib.” (obviously large pewter chargers). In 1743 he bought “5 gallon Basons 4/7” and “2 pottle Basons at 2/4” (for toilet use), “1 Soop Spoon 1/,” and “1 Copper Chocolate pot 7/6 & mull Stick 6^d,” “2 blew & W^t Jugs 2/” (probably Westerwald stoneware), and “1 Flanders Bed Bunt, 25” (colored cotton or linen used for bedcovers).

In 1744 Mercer acquired from Charles Dick 4 candlesticks for a penny each, 2 pairs of large hinges, a “hair sifter,” “2 kitchen buck hand knives,” 12 cups and saucers for 2s., “1 milkmaid 2^d” (probably a shoulder yoke), and “1 bucket ½^d.” In 1745 a 5-gallon “Stone bottle” for 3s. 6d., “1 doz. butcher knives,” a hearthbroom, six spoons for a shilling, a pair of scissors, “8 Chamberdoor Locks w^th brass knobs £2,” and “1 Sett finest China 35/, 2 punch bowls ... 2.7” were purchased.

The following year Mercer paid a total of £23 for a silver sugar dish, weighing 8 oz., 5 dwt.; one dozen teaspoons and tray, 8 oz., 7 dwt.; a teapot and frame, 26 oz., 8 dwt. This lot of silver probably was bought at second hand, having been referred to as “Pugh’s Plate p^d Edw^d Wright as by Rec^t.” He paid John Coke, a Williamsburg silversmith, £1 6s. for engraving and cleaning it. In the meanwhile, in 1745, he had sold Coke £6 worth of old silver. He also sold a quantity of “old Plate” for £15 17s. 3d. to Richard Langton in England through Sydenham & Hodgson. In 1747 he made a large purchase of silver from the silversmith William King[99] of Williamsburg:

In March 1748, Mercer settled with Captain Lyndon for the following:

The following June he bought a marble table from William Jordan and in October “4 looking Glasses,” which Jordan obtained from Sydenham & Hodgson.

Meanwhile, William Walker’s brother Robert made 14 chairs for Mercer, on which William’s carver spent 54 days. The total cost was £30 8s. The quality of Mercer’s furniture is illustrated further by a purchase in 1750 from Lyonel Lyde,[100] a London merchant, of £43 13s. worth of “Cabinet Ware from Belchier.” Belchier was a leading London furniture maker, whose shop in 1750 was located on the “south side of St. Paul’s, right against the clock.” Sir Ambrose Heal, in The London Furniture Makers, illustrates a superb japanned writing cabinet in green and gold chinoiserie made by Belchier in 1730.[101] Belchier also supplied Shalstone Manor, the Buckinghamshire estate of Henry Purefoy, with a table-desk in 1749 (fig. 13).[102]

The ledger notes other occasional purchases of furniture during this period. In 1746 Mercer paid cash “for oysters & a bedsteed,” in the amount of 10s. 6d. In September 1748, he bought “an Escritoire” from tutor John Phipps, for which he paid £5.

LIGHTING DEVICES

Artificial lighting for the manor house receives sparse mention. The four candlesticks bought in 1744 for a penny each were probably of iron or tin for kitchen use. Candlesticks purchased earlier probably remained in use, sufficing for most illumination. It is a modern misconception that colonial houses were ablaze at night with lamplight and candlelight. Candles were expensive to buy and time-consuming to make, while lamps rarely were used before the end of the century in the more refined areas of households. The principal use of candles was in guiding one’s way to bed or in providing the minimum necessary light to carry on an evening’s conversation. During cold weather, fireplaces were a satisfactory supplement. In general, early to bed and early to rise was the rule, as William Byrd has shown us, and artificial light was only a minor necessity.

Nevertheless, some illumination was needed in the halls and great rooms of colonial plantation houses, especially when guests were present—as they usually were. The three sconce glasses which Captain Lyndon delivered to Mercer in 1748 were doubtless elegant answers to this requirement. These glasses were mirrors with one or more candle branches, arranged so that the light would be reflected and multiplied. On special occasions, these, and perhaps some candelabra and a scattering of candlesticks to supplement them, provided concentrations of light; for such affairs the use of ordinary tallow candles, with their drippings and smoke, was out of the question. A pleasant alternative is indicated by the purchase in April 1749 of “11½ lib. Myrtle Wax att 5d ... 14.4½” and “4 lib Beeswax 6/” from Thomas Jones of the Eastern Shore. Similar purchases also are recorded. Myrtle wax came from what the Virginians called the myrtle bush, better known today as the bayberry bush. Its gray berries yielded a fragrant aromatic wax much favored in the colonies. In making candles it was usually mixed with beeswax, as was evidently the case here. A clean-burning, superior light source, it was nonetheless an expensive one. Burning in the brackets of the sconce glasses at Marlborough, heightening the shadows of the Palladian woodwork and, when snuffed, emitting its faint but delicious fragrance, it must have been a delight to the eyes and the nostrils alike.

NEGROES

Negroes played an increasingly important part in the life of Marlborough, particularly after the manor house was built. Between 1731 and 1750 Mercer purchased 89 Negroes. Most of these are listed by name in the ledger accounts. Forty-six died in this period, while 25 were born, leaving a total of 66 Negroes on his staff in 1750. In 1746 he bought 6 men and 14 women at £21 10s. from Harmer & King in Williamsburg. The new house and the expanded needs for service were perhaps the reasons for this largest single purchase of slaves.

There is no indication that Mercer treated his slaves other than well, or that they caused him any serious difficulties. On the other hand, his frequent reference to them by name, the recording of their children’s names and birth dates in his ledger, and the mention in his journal of new births among his slave population all attest to an essentially paternalistic attitude that was characteristic of most Virginia planters during the 18th century. Good physical care of the Negroes was motivated perhaps as much by self-interest in protecting an investment as by humane considerations, but, nonetheless, we find such items in the ledger as “To Cash p^d Doctor Lynn for delivering Deborah.”

That discipline served for the Negroes as it usually did for all colonials, whether the lawbreaker were slave, bondsman, or free citizen, is indicated by an entry in the Dick account: “2 thongs w^th Silk lashes 1/3.” One must bear in mind that corporal punishment was accepted universally in the 18th century. Its application to slaves, however, usually was left to the discretion of the slave owner, so that the restraint with which it was administered depended largely upon the humanity and wisdom of the master.

The use of the lash was more often than not delegated to the overseer, who was hired to run, or help run, the plantation. It was the overseer who had a direct interest in eliciting production from the field hands; a sadistic overseer, therefore, might create a hell for the slaves under him. It is clear from Mercer’s records that some of his overseers caused problems for him and that at least one was a brutal man. For October 1747 a chilling entry appears in the account of William Graham, an overseer at Bull Run Quarters: “To Negroes for one you made hang himself. £35.” Entered in the “Negroes” account, it reappears, somewhat differently: “To William Graham for Frank (Hanged) £35 Sterling. £50. 15.” This is one of several instances on record of Negroes driven to suicide as the only alternative to enduring cruelties.[103] In this case, Graham was fined 50 shillings and 1293 pounds of tobacco.

We do not know, of course, whether other Negroes listed as dead in Mercer’s account died of natural causes or whether cruel treatment contributed to their deaths. In the case of a homesick Negro named Joe, who ran away for the third time in 1745, Mercer seems reluctantly to have resorted to an offer of reward and an appeal to the law. Even so, he declined to place all the blame on Joe. Joe had been “Coachman to Mr. Belfield of Richmond County” and in the reward offer Mercer states that Joe

... was for some time after he first ran away lurking about the Widow Belfield’s Plantation.... He is a short, well-set Fellow, about 26 Years of Age, and took with him several cloaths, among the rest a Suit of Blue, lined and faced with Red, with White Metal Buttons, Whoever will secure and bring home the said Negroe, shall receive Two Pistoles Reward, besides what the Law allows: And as I have a great Reason to believe, that he is privately encouraged to run away, and then harboured and concealed, so that the Person or Persons so harbouring him may be thereof convicted, I will pay to such Discoverer Ten Pistoles upon Conviction. This being the third Trip he has made since I bought him in January last, I desire he may receive such Correction in his Way home as the Law directs, when apprehended.[104]

Whether Joe received the harsh punishment his offense called for is not recorded. However, in 1748 Mercer accounted for cash paid for “Joe’s Lodging & burial £3. 10.,” suggesting that Joe enjoyed death-bed care and a decent burial, even though he may have succumbed to “such correction ... as the law directs.”

As has already been suggested, his overseers seem to have given Mercer more trouble than his slaves. One was Booth Jones of Stafford, about whom Mercer confided in his ledger, “By allowed him as Overseer tho he ran away about 5 weeks before his time was out by w^ch I suffered more damage than his whole wages. £3. 11.” Meanwhile, in 1746 William Wheeland, an overseer at Bull Run Quarters, “imbezilled” 40 barrels of corn.

James Savage was one of the principal overseers and seems to have been in charge first at Sumner’s Quarters and then at Bull Run Quarters. John Ferguson succeeded him at the former place. William Torbutt was also at Bull Run, while Mark Canton and Nicholas Seward were overseers at Marlborough.

The outfitting of slaves with proper clothes, blankets, and coats was an important matter. It called for such purchases as 121 ells of “ozenbrigs” from Hunter in 1742. “Ozenbrigs” was a coarse cloth of a type made originally in Oznabruck, Germany,[105] and was traditionally the Negro field hand’s raiment. Many purchases of indigo point to the dying of “Virginia” cloth, woven either on the plantation or by the weavers mentioned earlier. Presumably, shoes for the Negroes were made at Marlborough, judging from a purchase from Dick of 3¼ pounds of shoe thread. The domestic servants were liveried, at least after the mansion was occupied. William Thomson, a Fredericksburg tailor, made “a Coat & Breeches [for] Bob, 11/.” Bob was apparently Mercer’s personal manservant, who had served him since 1732. Thomson also was paid £4 16s. 2d. for “Making Liveries.” The listing of such materials as “scarlet duffel” and “scarlet buttons” points to colorful outfitting of slaves.

SAILING, FISHING, HUNTING

Water transportation was essential to all the planters, most of whom owned sloops. We have seen that Mercer used a sloop for his earliest trading activities before he settled at Marlborough, and it is apparent that in the 1740’s either this same sloop or another which may have replaced it still was operated by him. Hauling tobacco to Cave’s warehouse, picking up a barrel of rum in Norfolk or a load of lumber on the Eastern Shore were vital to the success of the plantation. To equip the sloop, 14 yards of topsail, ship’s twine, and a barrel of tar were purchased in 1747. Mercer had two Negroes named “Captain” and “Boatswain,” and we may suppose that they had charge of the vessel. Such an arrangement would not have been unique, for many years after this, in 1768, Mercer wrote that “a sloop of M^r Ritchie’s that came around from Rapp^a for a load of tobacco stopped at my landing; his negro skipper brought me a letter from M^r Mills....”[106]

That there was considerable hunting at Marlborough is borne out by repeated references to powder, shot, gunpowder, and gunflints. Fishing may have been carried on from the sloop and also in trap-nets of the same sort still used in Potomac Creek off the Marlborough Point shore. In 1742 purchases were made of a 40-fathom seine and 3 perch lines, and in 1744 of 75 fishhooks and 2 drumlines.

BOOKS

In Ledger G, Mercer listed all the books of his library before 1746. He then listed additions as they occurred through 1750 (Appendix K). This astonishing catalog, disclosing one of the largest libraries in Virginia at that time, reveals the catholicity of Mercer’s tastes and the inquiring mind that lay behind them. Included in the catalog are the titles of perhaps the most important law library in the colony.

The names of all sorts of books on husbandry and agriculture are to be found in the list: “Practice of farming,” “Houghton’s Husbandry,” “Monarchy of the Bees,” “Flax,” “Grass,” and Evelyn’s “A Discourse of Sallets.” Mercer’s interest in brewing, which later was to launch a full-scale, if abortive, commercial enterprise is reflected in “London Brewer,” “Scott’s Distilling and Fermentation,” “Hops,” and the “Hop Gardin,” while “The Craftsman,” “Woollen Manufacture,” and “New Improvements” indicate his concern with the efficiency of other plantation activities.

He displayed an interest in nature and science typical of an 18th-century man: “Bacon’s Natural History,” “Gordon’s Cosmography,” “Gordon’s Geography,” “Atkinson’s Epitome of Navigation,” “Ozamun’s Mathematical Recreations,” “Keill’s Astronomy,” and “Newton’s Opticks.” Two others were “Baker’s Microscope” and “Description of the Microscope &c.” It may be significant that in 1747 Mercer bought three microscopes from one “Doctor Spencer” of Fredericksburg, the books on the subject and the instruments themselves possibly having been intended for the education of the three boys.

“150 Prints of Ovid’s Metamorphosis” appears, in addition to “Ovid’s Metamorphosis and 25 Sins,” for which Mercer paid £8 6s. to William Parks in 1746. “Catalog of Plants” and “Merian of Insects” are other titles related to natural science.

Many books on history and biography are listed—for example, “Life of Oliver Cromwell,” “Lives of the Popes,” “Life of the Duke of Argyle,” “Hughes History of Barbadoes,” “Catholick History,” “History of Virginia,” “Dr. Holde’s History of China,” “The English Acquisitions in Guinea,” “Purchas’s Pilgrimage.”

There are 25 titles under “Physick & Surgery,” reflecting the planter’s need to know the rudiments of medical care for his slaves and family. Art, architecture, and travel interested him also, and we find such titles as “Noblemen’s Seats by Kip,” “Willis’s Survey of the Cathedrals,” “8 Views of Scotland,” “Perrier’s Statues,” “Pozzo’s Perspective,” “100 Views of Brabant & Flanders,” “History of Amphitheatres.” There was but one title on music—“The Musical Miscellany,” mentioned previously. “Report about Silver Coins” was probably an English report on the exchange rate of silver coinage in the various British colonies.

Mercer kept abreast of English literature of his own and preceding generations: “Swift’s Sermons,” the “Spectator” and the “Tatler,” “Pope’s Works,” “Turkish Spy,” “Tom Brown’s Letters from the Dead to the Living,” “Pamela,” “David Simple,” “Joseph Andrews,” “Shakespeare’s Plays,” “Ben Jonson’s Works,” “Wycherley’s Plays,” “Prior’s Works,” “Savage’s Poems,” “Cowley’s Works,” and “Select Plays” (in 16 volumes), to mention but a few. The classics are well represented—“Lauderdale’s Virgil,” “Ovid’s Art of Love,” “Martial” (in Greek), as well as a Greek grammar and a Greek testament. There were the usual sermons and religious books, along with such diverse subjects as “Alian’s Tacticks of War,” “Weston’s Treatise of Shorthand” and “Weston’s Shorthand Copybook,” and “Greave’s Origin of Weights, &c.” He subscribed to the London Magazine and the Gentleman’s Magazine, and received regularly the Virginia Gazette.

While most of Mercer’s books were for intellectual edification or factual reference, a few must have served the purpose of sheer visual pleasure. Such was Merian’s magnificent quarto volume of hand-colored engraved plates of Surinam insects, with descriptive texts in Dutch. The 18th-century gentleman’s taste for the elegant, the “curious,” and the aesthetically delightful were all satisfied in this luxurious book, which would have been placed appropriately on a table for the pleasure of Mercer’s guests.[107]

THE PETITION

Although overseeing the construction of his mansion, buying the furniture for it, and assembling a splendid library would have been sufficient to keep lesser men busy, Mercer was absorbed in other activities as well. On May 10, 1748, for example, he recorded in his journal that he went “to Raceground by James Taylor’s & Wid^o Taliaferro’s,”[108] traveling 50 miles to do so. On December 13, 1748, he went “to Stafford Court & home. Swore to the Commission of the Peace,” thus becoming a justice of the peace for Stafford County.

In the meanwhile, years had gone by, and no action had been taken on the suit in chancery brought in the 1730’s to establish Savage’s survey of Marlborough as the official one. During this time, Mercer had continued to build on various lots other than those he owned, “relying on the Lease and Consent of [the feoffees], at the Expense of above Fifteen Hundred Pounds, which Improvements would have saved forty lots.” Finally, “judging the only effectual way to secure his Title would be to procure an Act of General Assembly for that purpose,”[109] Mercer applied to the Stafford court to purchase the county’s interest in the town, to which the court agreed on August 11, 1747, the price to be 10,000 pounds of tobacco. Since this transaction required legislative approval, Mercer filed with the House of Burgesses the petition which has served so often in these pages to tell the history of Marlborough.

Mercer argued in the petition that the county had nothing to lose—that it “had received satisfaction” for at least 30 lots, some of which he might be obliged to buy over again; that, considering the history of the town, no one but himself would be likely to take up any other lots, the last having been subscribed to in 1708; and that his purchase of the town would be not to the county’s disadvantage but rather to his own great expense. He was willing to accept an appraisal from “any one impartial person of Credit” who would say the town was worth more, and to pay “any Consideration this worshipful House shall think just.”

He pointed out that the two acres set aside for the courthouse were excluded and that they “must revert to the Heir of the former Proprietor, (who is now an Infant).” He did not indicate in the petition that he himself was the guardian of William Brent, infant heir to the courthouse property. It is most significant, therefore, that in asking for favorable action he added, “except the two acres thereof, which were taken in for a Courthouse, as aforesaid and which he is willing to lay of as this worshipful House may think most for the Benefit of Mr. William Brent, the Infant, to whom the same belongs, or to pay him double or treble the worth of the said two acres, if the same is also vested in your Petitioner.” (Italics supplied.) Plainly, Mercer had much at stake in obtaining title to the courthouse land. This supports the hypothesis that the Gregg survey of 1707 infringed on the courthouse land, that Ballard’s lot 19 on the Gregg survey overlapped it, and that Mercer’s first two houses, and now his mansion, were partly on land that rightfully belonged to his ward, William Brent. Mercer apparently had so built over all the lower part of Marlborough without regard to title of ownership, and had so committed himself to occupancy of the courthouse site, that he was now in the embarrassing position of having to look after William Brent’s interests when they were in conflict with his own. Likely it is that he had depended too much on acceptance of the still-unauthorized Savage survey to correct the previous discrepancies by means of its extra row of lots.

Still further indication that the courthouse land was at issue is found in the proceedings that followed the petition. In these, there are repeated references to Mercer’s having been called upon to testify “as the Guardian of William Brent.” Clearly, the legislators were concerned with the effect the acceptance of the petition would have on Brent’s interests. If Mercer, as seems likely, was building his mansion on the courthouse land, the burgesses had reason to question him. In any case, the House resolved in the affirmative “That the said Petition be rejected”.[110]

This setback was only temporary, however. The wider problems of Marlborough had at least been brought to light, so that by the time the next fall session was held Mercer’s 18-year-old suit to have Savage’s designated the official survey finally was acted upon:

“At a General Court held at the Court House in Williamsburg the 12th October 1749” the John Savage survey of 1731 was “Decreed & Ordered” to be “the only Survey” of Marlborough. The problem of overlapping boundaries occasioned by the conflicts between the first two surveys was solved neatly. Mercer agreed to accept lots 1 through 9, 22 and 25, and 33, 34, 42, and 43, “instead of the s^d 17 lots so purchased.” The new lots extended up the Potomac River shore, while the “s^d 17 lots” were those which he had originally purchased and had built upon. Since he had “saved” these 17 lots by building on them, according to the old laws for the town, “it is further decreed & ordered that the said Town of Marlborough grant & convey unto the s^d John Mercer in fee such & so many other Lotts in the said Town as shall include the Houses & Improvm^ts made by the said John Mercer according to the Rate of 400 square feet of Housing for each Lot so as the Lots to be granted for any House of greater Dimensions be contiguous & are not separated from the said House by any of the Streets of the said Town.”[111]

Thus, Mercer’s original titles to 17 lots were made secure by substituting new lots for the disputed ones he had occupied. This device enabled the feoffees to sell back the original lots—at £182 per lot—with new deeds drawn on the basis of the Savage survey. The final provision that lots be contiguous when a house larger than the minimum 400 square feet was built on them, and that the house and lots should not be separated by streets from each other, guaranteed the integrity of the mansion and its surrounding land. No mention was made here, or in subsequent transfers, of the courthouse land. Presumably it was conveniently forgotten, Mercer perhaps having duly recompensed his ward.

HEALTH AND MEDICINE

Three weeks before his petition was read in the House, Mercer became ill. On October 26, 1748, he noted in his journal, “Very ill obliged to keep my bed.” This was almost his first sickness after years of apparently robust health. Such indispositions as he occasionally suffered had occurred, like this one, at Williamsburg, where conviviality and rich food caused many another colonial worthy to founder. In this case, anxiety over the outcome of his petition may have brought on or aggravated his ailment. In any event, he stayed throughout the court session at the home of Dr. Kenneth McKenzie, who treated him. On November 3 he noted that he was “On Recovery,” and two days later “went out to take the air.” The following appears in his account with Dr. McKenzie:

From William Parks, on another occasion, he bought “Rattlesnake root,” which was promoted in 18th-century Virginia as a specific against the gout, smallpox, and “Pleuritick and Peripneumonic Fevers.”[112] Twice he bought "British oyl," a favorite popular nostrum sold in tall, square bottles, and on another occasion “2 bottles of Daffy’s Elixir.”[113] In 1749 he settled his account with George Gilmer, apothecary of Williamsburg, for such things as oil of cinnamon, Holloways’ Citrate, “Aqua Linnaean,” rhubarb, sago, “Sal. Volat.,” spirits of lavender, and gum fragac. The final item in the account was for April 22, 1750, for “a Vomit.” The induced vomit, usually by a tartar emetic, was an accepted cure for overindulgence and a host of supposed ailments. That inveterate valetudinarian and amateur physician, William Byrd, was in the habit of “giving” vomits to his sick slaves.[114]

In November and December 1749 Mercer sustained his first long illness, during which he was attended by “Doctor Amson.” “Taken sick” at home on November 13, he evidently did not begin to recover until December 11. Whatever improvement he may have made must have received a setback on the last day of the year, when he recorded in his journal: “Took about 60 grains of Opium & 60 grains of Euphorbium by mistake instead of a dose of rhubarb.”

RELIGION AND CHARITIES

Mercer’s religious observances were irregular, although usually when he was home he attended Potomac Church. At the same time he continued as a vestryman in Overwharton Parish (which included Potomac and Aquia churches). On September 28, 1745, the vestry met to decide whether to build a new Aquia church or to repair the old one. They “then proceeded to agree with one William Walker, an Undertaker to build a new brick Church, Sixty Feet Square in the Clear, for One Hundred and Fifty Three Thousand Nine Hundred and Twenty Pounds of Transfer Tobacco.”[115] In October Mercer entered in Ledger G, under the Overwharton Parish account, “To drawing articles with Walker.” In December he charged the parish with “2 bottles claret” and “To Robert Jackson for mending the Church Plate.” Jackson was a Fredericksburg silversmith.[116]

The following March, the proprietors of the Accokeek Ironworks petitioned the Committee on Propositions and Grievances with an objection to the vestry’s decision to rebuild, claiming that “as the said Iron-Works lie in the Parish aforesaid, and employ many Tithables in carrying on the same, they will labour under great Hardships thereby....”[117] The petition was rejected, but nothing seems to have been done on the new church until three months after Walker’s death in February 1750, when Mourning Richards was appointed undertaker.[118]

Mercer’s charities in this decade form a short list. His only outright gift was his “Subscription to Protestant working-Schools in Ireland. To my annual Subscription for Sterling £5.5.” In 1749 he did £12 3s. worth of legal work for the College of William and Mary, which he converted into “Subscriptions to Schools” of equal value; in other words, he donated his services.

CATHERINE MERCER’S DEATH AND ANN ROY’S ARRIVAL

On April 1, 1750, Mercer went to Williamsburg for the spring session and stopped en route to visit his friend Dr. Mungo Roy at Port Royal in Caroline County. He remained at Williamsburg until the seventh, except for going on the previous day to “Greenspring” to be entertained by Philip Ludwell in the Jacobean mansion built a century earlier by Governor Berkeley. Again stopping off at Port Royal, he returned home on May 10. He remained there until June 15, when he made the laconic entry in his journal: “My wife died between 3 & 4 at noon.” What time this denotes is unclear.

Following this loss—Catherine Mercer was only 43—Mercer remained at home for five days, then visited his sister-in-law Mrs. Ann Mason. The next night he stayed with the pastor of Aquia Church, Mr. Moncure, then returned to Marlborough and remained there for nearly a month. Meanwhile, he purchased from Fielding Lewis, at a cost of £3 18s. 7½d., “sundrys for mourning.” William Thomson, the Stafford tailor, made his mourning clothes. The preparations for the funeral must have been elaborate; it was not held until July 13.

At the end of July Mercer went to Williamsburg, thence to Yorktown, and from there to Hampton and Norfolk by water on an “Antigua Ship,” returning to Hampton on August 5 on a “Negro Ship,” evidently having caught passage on oceangoing traders. The younger children remained in Williamsburg with George and a nurse. On September 8 he went to Port Royal and stayed “at Dr. Roy’s.” He returned home on the 10th, then went back to Port Royal on the 14th, staying at Dr. Roy’s until the 20th, attending Sunday church services during his visit. He returned home again on the 23rd, only to visit Dr. Roy once more on the 28th. The October court session drew him to Williamsburg, where he remained until November 7. While there, he purchased the following from James Craig,[119] a jeweler:

On November 8 he returned to Dr. Roy’s. On the 10th he added a characteristically sparse note to his chronicle, “Married to Ann Roy.”

The period for mourning poor Catherine was short indeed. But the mansion at Marlborough needed a mistress, and Mercer’s children, a mother. A new chapter was about to open as the decade closed. From the meticulous records that Mercer kept, it has been possible to see Mercer as a dynamic cosmopolite, accomplishing an incredible amount in a few short years. His constant physical movement from place to place, his reading of the law and of even a fraction of his hundreds of books in science, literature, and the arts, his managing of four plantations, attending two monthly court sessions a year at Williamsburg, looking after the legal affairs of hundreds of clients, concerning himself with the design and construction of a remarkable house and selecting the furnishings for it—all this illustrates a personality of enormous capacity.

Marlborough was now a full-fledged plantation. Although the legacy of an earlier age still nagged at Mercer and prevented him from holding title to much of the old town, he had, nevertheless, transformed it, gracing it with the outspread grandeur of a Palladian great house.

FOOTNOTES: