I
THE FIVE COLONIES
THE settlement of Virginia is a tale too often told to repeat. Whoever may have been the first to reach the shores, it is with the coming of Admiral Newport that history chiefly concerns itself, heading as he did, a company from London, aboard the Sarah Constant, Goodspeed, and Discovery. They set their stakes about fifty miles above the mouth of the river which they called the James, and set about speedily at Jamestown to meet the requirements of living, as best they might, and here achieved the first successful settlement of the white man on the North American continent, making of the spot one to which all Americans turn with instinctive reverence and faith—the spirit of the undertaking there embyronic of what the spirit of the nation was to be.
As the colony grew, the pioneers setting up homes pushed inland along the Virginia rivers through Tidewater, the York, the James, and the Rappahannock, later into Piedmont. On they moved into the mountains of the Blue Ridge and the far country beyond, with Williamsburg, Norfolk, and Alexandria the leading ports of the colony, and Richmond, Charlottesville, Staunton, and Winchester making a later appearance.
Settlement was first accomplished in Maryland with the arrival of Leonard Calvert in the Ark and the Dove, in which he came westward, as sent by his brother Cecilius Calvert (Lord Baltimore), with perhaps twenty gentlemen and two hundred working men and servants, largely English, to take possession of lands for which he held royal grant. In 1634 he sailed into the smooth waters of the Potomac, and pushed his way up the river to what is now Blackiston's Island, where he set up a cross at Saint Clements, later to fall back, however, seventeen miles down the Potomac near its mouth, to the site he chose for his capital; he called it Saint Mary's.
Much of the life of the colonist centered about the rivers. Along the James in Virginia, were scattered the homes of the planters, recalling the names of the Randolphs, the Byrds, the Carys, the Pages, too many to tell. William Randolph settled at Turkey Island, his descendants to scatter throughout the State along the river to Varina, to Tuckahoe, to Dungeness, and later, one of them along with Peter Jefferson to go to the mountain fastness of Albemarle, and open up the country where the Coles, the Rives, and others are found to this day. Williamsburg, settled in 1632, built itself rapidly and took a leading place in the life of the colony. It became the seat of the royal government, where William and Mary College was established, and where around its Palace Green and along Duke of Gloucester Street and elsewhere, homes of much excellence and finish were to arise, with furniture in keeping, to furnish fine background for the hospitalities they were to extend.
On the York, and on the Rappahannock at Corotoman, where lived King Carter, king of many lands; at Fredericksburg where Washington himself lived as a boy and where notables took quarter at the Rising Sun Tavern; at Rosegill, Sabine Hall, Mount Airy, and elsewhere were homes of splendor and charm, the master, himself, as well as his lady, a lover of fine trees, rare shrubbery and blooming flowers. There too, doorways flung wide, opening into paneled halls and showing furniture of distinction, either local-made or pieces of foreign importation, influencing that type which we seek in the South today.
On the Virginia side of the Potomac, with Alexandria as a center of trade and shipping, although each plantation maintained its separate wharf, as time progressed, little towns sprung up. On down the river, the homes of the planters increased, the list indeed a royal one, with the Washingtons first in Westmoreland on the Northern Neck, and George and Martha later at Mount Vernon; farther inland the Fairfaxes, George Mason among his books at Gunston Hall, and lower still, overlooking the river, Stratford, the home of the Lees. On the Maryland side, Marshall Hall; near by old Port Tobacco, Rosehill, Habre de Venture, home of Thomas Stone, the signer; La Grange, built by Doctor Thomas Craik; Mulberry Grove, home of the Hansons; Mount Victoria, Hard Bargain, Tudor Hall, Porto Bello, and Clocker's Fancy might be found.
Annapolis, having shaken itself into a dreamy existence on the banks of the Severn, with its quaint and winding streets, rare shops and homes of affluence, built in finest English style, where the Pacas, the Hammonds, the Chases vied with each other in the elegance of their surroundings, became the center of business and social life of the colony. It was to lead in the making of Maryland furniture for years.
Maryland, a royal colony in close touch with the mother country, imported rare pieces which were often used for examples, and perhaps, more than any of the colonies, clung to the English ideas in furniture making. Life was lived at the best, and fine furniture was a necessity. Throughout the State might be mentioned other manor houses and settlements contributing to the general need: between the Patuxent and the Potomac, in Calvert and Anne Arundel Counties, Tulip Hill, overlooking the bay; Belair, with its wealth of fine furniture and other spots through Prince George, and the upper bay counties and finally, Baltimore, the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Kent County, Queen Annes, Talbot, Caroline, Dorchester, Wicomico, Somerset, Worcester, each with its share.
In Virginia, the Eastern Shore jutting almost into Maryland, Accomac and Northampton Counties, early opened up, where many relics of the past survive today, seems almost a part of it. Hand in hand, the two colonies, Virginia and Maryland—Leah and Rachel, they were called—moved together, bound by mutual ties of blood, descent and marriage, defense and material interest in commerce and shipping, with the Potomac, the theatre of mutual business and social pleasure, a dividing line that served rather to bring together than to set them apart.
That certain piece of land in 1663, lying between Florida and Virginia, was granted by Charles II of England to Lord Clarendon and a number of noblemen, and they proceeded to set up a proprietary government. English settlers from Virginia had already established themselves on the north of it, at Albemarle, at the mouth of the Chowan River in North Carolina, and in 1670 the earliest settlement of the southern part of this territory was effected on the banks of the Ashley and Cooper Rivers, under William Sale, to be moved in 1680 to the site of what is now the city of Charleston, South Carolina. There, with such inviting climate and fertile soil, newcomers were easily lured.
Governed though they were under one proprietary government, the two colonies remained separate and distinct, and grew in spite of difficulties between the people and proprietors, bent on serving selfish ends. The colony to the south, although much augmented in its population, was much retarded in its growth, due to dissatisfaction felt by the people with the governors sent them by the proprietors and the attempted enforcement of the laws of trade. Happily, in 1729, the two colonies were constituted each a royal colony—North and South Carolina. Complete separation was then established.
The population of this southernmost colony, South Carolina, soon assimilating itself, was composed of Englishmen of standing, English, Scotch and Irish dissenters, Dutch, Huguenots, Swiss, Quakers and Belgians. Too remote from the more northerly centers of population, she worked out her own fate largely alone, and cultivated her interest in England and the West Indies with the same interest if not more, than did those at Williamsburg or Annapolis, and maintained close relationship with the West Indies from whom so much of her population was derived.
Commerce, it has been said, was of noble origin in South Carolina. Despite the threat of pirates and the constant fear of Indians and Spanish and French to contend with on her borders, the colony on the Ashley prospered as the West Indian planters from early days cast their lot more and more within it, and the migration of French Huguenots, a steady and valuable one, continued. Due to the presence of many negroes, the plantations established within themselves such a highly organized plan as to create a system baronial in its sweep of power and influence. Plantation owners were often merchants and traders as well, and after the proprietary lord had been ordered to move his "Towne of Tradd" from Albemarle Point to the opposite peninsula, settlement throve and commerce walked with a high head through the winding streets of old Charles Town, building itself up into a rich city, with money enough not only to import luxuries but to attract high-class craftsmen as well.
A little more than one hundred years after the founding of the colony of North Carolina, her population numbered three hundred thousand people. They were English, Scotch, Swiss, Irish, and Moravians, and the mixing of these races has had a tendency to influence the design of furniture which they produced outside the larger settlements. In Mecklenburg County, and in and around New Bern and Edenton, as well as Raleigh, there is much extant of a highly picturesque past, showing remains of elegance in architecture and woodwork of unsurpassed artistry reflected in the making of furniture, which speaks for itself. It is recalled that at New Bern, John Hawks, from the Isle of Wight, and James Coor, whose work has been compared favorably with that of McIntyre, the master carver of Salem, did some of the carving and influenced, of course, the makers of furniture there, where unusual pieces are found today.
Contributing largely to the settlement of Virginia and North Carolina, and reaching into South Carolina, was an inland migration composed largely of Germans and Scotch-Irish, who took up their abode from time to time, as fancy moved them, in various settlements. Down through the Shenandoah Valley they came, on through the country of Winchester, Harrisonburg, Lexington, and southward toward Charlotte, even into South Carolina, carving out a destiny of their own, creating at times a unique civilization and leaving numberless witnesses behind in customs and traditions, old houses and furniture with marks of their own making upon them, as testified to in inventories and records. Much of this furniture, often pieces of worth, was made by the many cabinetmakers who made their way in and out of the various settlements in search of trade, as the small towns arose along the old post road.
A group of Germans, in America seeking opportunity for freedom in the exercise of their religion, followers of John Hus, established in 1753 a Moravian colony at Salem (now Winston-Salem), in North Carolina, where they constituted themselves on arrival into a community, made laws unto themselves, and put their imprint on much that remains to us today, and particularly on the types of furniture which have been found.
Georgia was the last to be established of the English colonies, the first settlement made at Savannah, in 1733, under James Oglethorpe. The early colonists were Germans, Scotch, Swiss, Portuguese, and English, but the majority after 1752 came from the Virginia Cavaliers. Lord Oglethorpe came over with the idea in his mind in setting up a buffer State by way of protection of Carolina from the French and the Spanish, to the south and west, and in making the colony a retreat for those suffering religious oppression in England, and for others desiring to free themselves of debt, with various schemes for them proposed. Silk raising was to be cultivated as a means of livelihood, but all this gave way in time, and Georgia finally yielded largely to the same influences surrounding the other colonies. More closely tied up with the English, however, the majority of the furniture of worth found there has proved to have been imported, not only from the home country but from New England as well.