Brunswick County VA - Fort Christiana; Willim and Mary College Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 4 Transcribed by Kathy Merrill for the USGenWeb Archives Special Collections Project ************************************************************************ USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgwarchives.net *********************************************************************** BRUNSWICK COUNTY AND FORT CHRISTIANA 214 Alexander Spotswood arrived governor of Virginia in the year 1710. He was a man of very enterprising disposition and of great ability. Among the first objects that enlisted his attention was to devise means to counteract the designs of the French and the Indian enemy, who wished to prevent the English from spreading westward. To protect the frontiers from their en- croachments he advised the General Assembly in 1713 to establish a settlement of Germans on the Rapidan River, near the head of the Rappahannock River, and a fort called Fort Christiana, on the Meherrin River, about fifteen miles beyond the most ---------- BRUNSWICK COUNTY AND FORT CHRISTIANA 215 westerly habitations, to guard the south pass of the Blue Ridge. In 1716, he led an expedition across the Blue Ridge Mountains and claimed the Valley of Virginia in the name of King George. In 1720, in accordance with his recommendations, the General Assembly formed the frontiers into two new counties -- one called Spotsylvania, extending northwesterly, so as to include "the northern passage through the high mountains," and the other called Brunswick county, extending southwesterly, so as to include the south pass -- which said counties were to be bounded by the direction of the Governor and Council. Five hundred pounds were to be expended in each county for a church, pillory and stocks. One thousand pounds were to be distributed by the Governor in arms and ammunition among such persons as should go to seat the said counties. The arms were to be stamped with the name of the county. The whole county of Spotsylvania was made into one parish by the name of St. George, and the county of Brunswick into another by the name of St. Andrew. Until the Governor should settle a court in the counties thus formed, the justices of the several counties of Essex, King and Queen, and King William, were to have authority over Spotsylvania, and the justices of Prince George over Brunswick. For ten years the inhabitants of both of the new counties, from the first day of May, 1721, were to be free of taxes. The commission of the peace for the county of Spotsylvania was issed by the Governor the 24th of July, 1722, but the court of Brunswick was not constituted till more than eleven years later. On May 5, 1732, the first court met, and the following persons qualified as justices: Henry Fox, Henry Embry, John Wall, John Irby, George Walton, Richard Burch, Nathaniel Edwards, William Wynn, Charles King and William Maclin. Drury Stith produced his commission and qualified as clerk of the court. Richard Burch qualified as sheriff on March 1, 1732-'3. Clement Read and James Power produced licenses as attorneys, and took the oaths apointed by law. On June 3, 1736, John Scott qualified as attorney and on February 1, 1738-'9, John Chapman qualified as such. At a court held the third day of May, 1739, John Scott, gentleman, claimed the benefit of the act of Assembly which allowed ---------- 216 WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE QUARTERLY. fifty acres of land for every person imported from Great Britain, stating that it was "three years since his importation from Great Britain, and that he never before now had received" his right. Also Marmaduke Johnson, "from Ireland about twenty years ago," claimed his importation right. In May, 1732, about the time of the organization of the court, parts of Surry and Isle of Wight were added to Brunswick on account of the small number of tithables in the same which made the poll tax 'burthensome." This addition was bounded by a straight line to be run from the branch of Nottoway River called Chetacril, between Col. Harrison's Quarter and Matthew Parham's, in the county of Surry, to Meherrin River to the line dividing Surry and Isle of Wight, and from thence down that river to the line dividing that county from North Carolina. Brunswick embraced the site of old Fort Christiana. Spotswood commenced to build this fort in August, 1714. He took great interest in it, and frequently visited it. The fort was built upon a rising ground, and was a five-sided pallisaded inclosure, and had, in place of bastions, five houses which protected one another. Each side of the fort was about one hundred yards long. It was mounted by five cannon, and twelve men constituted the guard. To this place the General Assembly, on the advice of the Governor, confined the trade with all the Indians south of the James, and gave a monopoly of the same, to a company on the condition of their building a school-house and bearing the charges of the fort after two years. As a means of mutual protection the Saponies were induced to settle in a town near the fort; and in charge of the school erected by the Indian Company Spotswood placed Rev. Charles Griffin, to whom he paid fifty pounds annually out of his own pocket. In a very short time Mr. Griffin had over seventy Indian children under his tuition, and the Indians came to have such a warm affection for him that if he had let them do so they would have made him chief of the nation. Spotswood claims that by this happy contrivance of the fort the southern Indians were kept from disturbing the southern frontier, just as the settlement at Germanna kept the northern Indians in salutary fear. In a few years, however, the fort at Christiana was discontinued. Spotswood became involved in factional contests with ---------- BRUNSWICK COUNTY AND FORT CHRISTIANA. 217 the House of Burgesses and the Council about his perogatives. His Indian Company became immensely unpopular because of its monopolistic character, and in 1718 an act was passed repealing their charter. The General Asembly withdrew its support from the fort, and Mr. Griffin was retired to the care of the Indian school at Willam and Mary College. Some reminders of the old fort have remained till the present day. I am told that some of the descendants of Mr. Griffin still reside in Brunswick. The field on the Meherrin in which the fort stood is still known as the "Fort Field." In the neighborhood runs a road called to this day the "Fort Road," and which is mentioned in the county records as early as 1748. Peter Fontaine, Jr., who resided in Lunenburg county, and was surveyor of Halifax, marks the deserted fort in 1752, on a chart at the head of a letter. Tradition says several of the cannon were thrown into an old well. Howe, in his Historical Collections of Virginia, states that one of the cannon lay, in 1847, on a hill near Pennington's Bridge, on the Meherrin. There were two remaining after the war of 1861-'65. N. S. Turnbull, judge of Brunswick county, in a recent letter, writes of these: "One lay for many years in the public road at Col. J. E. Britt's, about two miles west of Lawrenceville. The young Democracy of the county brought it over to Lawrenceville, and it exploded in the celebration they had on the county's going Democratic in the spring election of 1887. The other was kept at the home of Mr. Jack Barner, in Meherrin Parish, where it was fired, as I have been told, for many years over his grave on the Fourth of July." When the editor was in Lawrenceville last summer (1900) he heard of this last remaining cannon, and determined to have it brought to a place of greater safety. Aided by others, he contrived, through the generosity of Judge N. S. Turnbull, to have the cannon shipped from Brodnax's Depot to Williamsburg, where it arrived on the first day of the twentieth century. Spotswood was the patron of both the College and the city. Under his observant eye all the edifices of any importance in Williamsburg, except the Capitol, were constructed: the Palace, the Church, the Octagon Magazine, the James City County Court-house, etc. He supervised the rebuilding of the main College Building after the fire of 1705. He made his will in the ---------- 218 WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE QUARTERLY. Brafferton Building at the time he set out in 1740 for Annapolis to take charge of the expedition against Carthagena. He died after reaching Annapolis June 7, 1740. He left all his library, maps, and mathematical instruments to the College, of which he had been rector and a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors. AUTHORITIES: Campbell's History of Virginia, Rev. Hugh Jones' Present State of Virginia, Spotswood's Letters, Rev. Charled Griffin's Letter in Perry's Historical Collections of Virginia, Diary of Lieut. John Fontaine in 1716, relating a trip of Spotswood and himself to Fort Christiana; Howe's Historical Collections of Virginia, William Byrd's History of the Dividing Line, Brunswick County Records, MSS., Judge N. S. Turnbull; Spotswood's will on record in Orange County Court. ____________