NANSEMOND COUNTY, VA - BIOGRAPHIES - Autobiography of David Meade, II
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"Andrew Meade, my paternal grandfather, was an Irish Catholic, born in the
County of Kerry.  Tradition says he left his native country, and went first to
London, then from thence came to New York, about the latter end of the 17th
century.  He resided some years in New York, and then married Mary Latham, of
Quaker parentage, and some time after he removed to Virginia, and settled
permanently at the head of navigation on the Nansemond River. 

'It has never been ascertained that he ever formally renounced the Catholic
faith, though he was many years a representative of his county in the House of
Burgesses, judge of the court, and senior colonel of the militia,  (from his
holding these offices, we may certainly conclude that he had renounced it,
since test-oaths were required of such officers, and he was reputed to be an
honest man.  In this I am further confirmed by the fact that the name of
Colonel Andrew Meade stands first on the list of vestrymen in the year 1743,
when the list I have commences. (Bishop Meade in "The Old Churches and
Families of Virginia," p. 292) executing these offices with advantage to his
adopted country and credit to himself, particularly the two former, for which
he was eminently qualified by education, which was scholastic and supposed to
have been received either in France or Flanders.  He is said to have been a
large man, of great corporeal strength and rather hard featured, but of fine
form.  In the year 1745, he deceased, leaving a character without a stain,
having had the glorious epithet connected with his name, long before he died,
of "The Honest."  

'Anything further than is above related relative to the origin of my
grandfather is chiefly conjecture.  When I was in England, I was much noticed
by the Irish, and very particularly by Lady Forbes and her son, the Hon. Mr.
Forbes, who after the death of his grandfather and father, became Earl of
Grenard.  Counsellor Murphy, an Irish Catholic, a cousin of my father, who had
chambers in the Temple, but, being a Catholic, could not appear at the bar,
was umremitting in his attentions to me.  I do not know from what source I
received the information, but I understood that his brother was in the French
service, and was high in command, under Colonel Lalley, in the East Indies
during the war of 1758, and that his uncle and patron was Colonel Meade, of
the Irish Brigade, and a man of much interest at the Court of Versailles.  The
Clan William coat of arms is the same as ours.  The honors of that house
originated in the reign of George II., and I believe, not very early in it. 

'The many circumstances above noted, relative to Andrew Meade, of America,
being taken into consideration, it is not an improbable hypothesis, that being
unfriendly to William the Third's succession to the throne of England, he was
forced out of his native country, not unhappily for him, as it appears, as his
fortune in America was benign, nor has it been unfortunate for his progeny.

'He left a son, David, and a daughter, Priscilla, who married Wilson Curle, of
Hampton.  David Meade, the son, inherited the paternal estate, and about the
year 1729 or 1730 married Susannah Everard, the older of two daughters of Sir
Richard Everard, Bart., of Broomfield Hall, Much Waltham Parish, in the County
of Essex, England, and Susannah Kidder, his wife, eldest daughter of Dr.
Richard Kidder, Bishop of Bath and Wells. 

"My grandfather, Sir Richard Everard, when a young man, was a captain in Queen
Anne's army, and it is probably was with Sir George Rooke, Admiral of the
British fleet, when he took Gibraltar, as he remained in garrison eighteen
months, being so long against his inclinations stayed there by his sense of
honor altogether, he having but recently married a young wife, and he resigned
his commission immediately upon his return to England.  He was for a few years
proprietary governor of North Carolina, which position he resigned about the
year 1730, soon after all the proprietors, except Lord Granville, sold out to
the crown, not being in any credit at court; for although he had served Queen
Anne as captain in her army, he was probably no friend to Hanoverian
succession.  I have heard my mother say the he, as well as several others of
the Essex Baronets, found it convenient to make himself as little conspicuous
as possible during the rebellion of 1715, at the beginning of George the
First's reign. 

'The Lords Proprietors were all particular friends of Sir Richard, and it has
been understood in the family tha this patrimony had been much reduced by
adventuring in the South Sea bubble, and he accepted from the proprietors the
government of North Carolina to repair his estate.  At his death, he left his
dame all the estate of every kind which he possessed in even of her surviving
their eldest son, as is recorded in her will to be found among my papers.  Her
will appears to have been written before the death of her eldest son, Richard,
who, by death of his father, inherited the title of Baronet.  Hugh, the
younger son, survived his brother, and succeeded to the honors of the family,
but not the estate, as he was disinherited, for what cause is unknown to the
family this day.  He was killed in a naval engagement.  His name is still
continued on the list of English Baronets.  By his death, an ancient family
became extinct in the male line, and in my person is continued in the female,
I being the eldest son of the eldest daughter of Sir Richard Everard.

'Dame Susan Everard, as she is styled in the Testament, left her estate, in
the event of her eldest son's dying without heirs, (which proved to be the
case), to her two daughters, Susannah Meade, and Ann Everard, a spinster, but
who unadvisedly married Lathbury, who held some office in the Tower, and who
dissipated her estate.  By the will, all her jewels and furniture of a house
in London were left to my mother.  the furniture of Broomfield Hall is not
mentioned.  the real property left to the two children consisted of Broomfield
Hall, in the Parish of Much Waltham and County of Essex, a farm, called the
Walnut Tree Farm, in the same county, also a copyhold farm in Hardfordshire,
also the freehold of Heathfield, in Sussex, with a handsome mansion on it,
which is said to be the precise spot on which the Battle of Hastings was
fought, between the Saxon King Harold and William the Norman, and from which
place Lord Heathfield makes his title.  It was afterwards sold by my mother
and her sister.  Also Tower-head farm, in , near the city of Wells, which was
devised solely to my mother, Susannah Meade, and was sold by my father.  On
this farm was built by her grandfather, Dr. Richard Kidder, Bishop of Bath and
Wells, a mansion with a chapel, for his wife's accommodation, in the event of
her surviving him, which did not happen, for they were both killed in bed
together in the Episcopal Palace of Wells, by the fall of a stack of chimneys,
on the night of the great storm of 1703.  Langleys, in Essex, once a royal
residence, afterwards became the seat of the Everards, and was sold by my
maternal grandfather. ' "

"My father, David Meade, some time before his marriage, made an acquaintance
with the family of Sir Richard Everard, who resided at Edenton, the then seat
of government of North Carolina, where an attachment, perfectly romantic, was
mutually formed between my father and the eldest daughter of Sir Richard.

'A century ago, Hampton Roads was the receptacle of nearly all the ships which
loaded within the water of Chesapeake Bay, and the chief part of the trade
from North Carolina with England was through Hampton Roads.  Having
relinquished his government, Sir Richard Everard and his lady and two
daughters became the guests of my grandfather, Meade, he living convenient to
Hampton Roads, where the ship lay in which they had taken their passage to
England.  From some cause or other, the ship was delayed longer than was
expected, which delay proved favorable to my father's views, who had but
little expectation of obtaining the parent's consent to his marriage with
their daughter in Virginia, and he was preparing to accompany the family to
England, when the earnest entreaties of his father, who was distressed at the
thought of being so long and so widely separated from his only son, prevailed
upon the parents of my mother to consent to an immediate marriage.  They, with
the most entire confidence in his honor and affection, put their daughter
under the protection of ther enraptured lover.  No pair ever enjoyed more
happiness in the hymeneal state than they did.  They were both of them very
young when they came together, and with very little experience in mankind,
brought up under the eyes of fond and virtuous parents.

'My father was of handsome person and fine stature.  He lived a monotonous and
tranquil life.  The purity of his heart corresponded with the symmetry of his
person.  He was the most affectionate of husbands, the tenderest of parents,
and the best of masters, and an ingenuous and sincere friend.  Brought up in
his father's house, with such a pattern, he could not be but just, generous
and hospitable.  If it were thought to detract anything from his merits, it
would not be here recorded that he had never studied human nature.  Ever
disposed to believe men to be what they should be, if he detected an
individual deviating from strict probity, he considered him a monster.  Venial
faults excited in  him astonishment, and crime horror.  In fine, he was a
truly virtuous man, but no philosopher.  He deceased in the year 1757, being
then in his 47th year.  ' "

“David Meade, the grandson of Andrew and eldest son of David, was born July
29, old style 1744.  In infancy he was so infirm and sickly that his fond
parents, thinking that a change of climate might improve his health and
prolong his life, determined to send him to England, with a view at the same
time to his education.  Soon after he passed his seventh year he embarked in
Hampton Roads, under the protection of Mr. John Watson, a particular friend of
his father, on board a new schooner, Capt. Bowman.   The other cabin
passengers were the Rev. Miles Seldon, as he became after receiving holy
orders, and Don Ronello, the captain of a galleon from La Vera Cruz, stranded
upon the coast of North Carolina, his secretary, and one officer of the ship. 
The passage was favorable until the last night the passengers remained on
board, when at twelve o’clock, the night being very dark and wind blowing
fresh, the schooner struck upon the Goodwin Sands in the channel, and
continued to strike with such increased violence that it was expected by all
on board that she would every minute go to pieces.  In this dreadful situation
all hands, including the passengers, were on deck, some way or other employed,
except the was-to-be clergyman and his terrified messmate, who remained on
their knees in the cabin from twelve at night until eight in the morning, when
they and the rest of the passengers were taken on shore at Deal by boats from
that place.  The Spanish captain was impressed with the belief that Heaven had
conceded the preservation of the sinners on board to the prayers of the
seamen, not allowing any credit to those of the parson.  

‘Mr. Watson passed with his young companion to Canterbury, where they visited
the Cathedral; thence to London, arriving at night but how great was the young
stranger’s disappointment, when, on looking out of the window, or door, next
morning, he saw nothing but high houses built of materials which were not new
to him, and black streets paved with round stones, instead of houses of gold
and greets paved with diamonds, for his imagination had been thus early highly
excited by fairy tales, such as the Arabian Nights.  He was seized with a
violent fever, which cost his parents no uneasiness (they knew nothing of it
until he was well), but a good deal of money.  Three physicians attended him
many weeks, and part of the time twice a day.  When he had attained to
convalescence he was sent to a boarding school, more for the benefit of the
country air than for tuition.  From thence he was removed to Harrow and had
the good fortune to be placed under Dr. Thackeray, Archdeacon of Surry and
Chaplain to the Prince of Wales, head master of Harrow school.  He was
received by the venerable, worthy Doctor and his pious, charitable, and in
every respect exemplary lady into their family as their adopted son, and for
five years became bound to them by ties much stronger than those of nature,
insomuch that the most affecting event of his whole life was his separation
from them.  At Harrow he made many a school acquaintance, which, if he had
cultivated as long as her remained in England, with a view to the advancement
of his fortune, would not have disappointed his expectations, in all
probability; but, although a boy, and a subject at that time, and surely
without any presentiment of the future destiny that was in reserve for him and
his brethren in America, viz.:  that of being elevated from the humble station
of subject to the eminent distinction of citizen, he neither felt nor
acknowledged any superiority in those school fellows and playmates who,
themselves, were decorated with honorary titles, or whose fathers were titled
men.  He associated upon equal terms with any Lord, Duke, or Sir Harry.   

It may, however, be proper to mention the names of one schoolfellow (several
years over the age), and one other to whom he was under greater obligations
than to any others, for their uniform kindness up to the time he left the
Kingdom.  The Hon. George Forbes, late Earl of Grenard, father to the present
Earl, was, perhaps, the most steady, warm friend he had in England with the
exception of Dr. Thackeray and his wife, who were father and mother to him.
At the house of Lady Forbes he always spent a time, and from my Lady received
all the attention and tenderness of a near relative.  James West, his
bedfellow at Harrow, was the other friend to be noticed.  He was the son of
the member of parliament for St. Albans, nephew to Lady Grantly, Attorney-
General Norton, and brother to Lady Archer, well known for fifty years in a
very gay, elevated life.  Titles were familiar at Harrow, but no more will be
mentioned.  It must not be forgotten the professed scholar and great linguist,
Sir William Jones was at Harrow school at the time he was, and if Dr. Parr was
his friend, the son of Mr. Parr,  the apothecary of Harrow, he was likewise at
school at the same time, and well remembered by him.   The succession of
masters at a school so prominent as that of Harrow-on-the-Hill is no doubt
registered in the records of that institution, but it probably does not set
forth the causes of removal of such as were superseded.

The case of Dr. Cox, the head master immediately before Doctor Thackeray, was
singular and somewhat tragic.  Of the proprietors of Pennsylvania, John and
Richard Penn, who were the last proprietary governors of that province (now
state) were at Harrow school, and it is probable boarded (with many other
boys) at the head master’s.  John, as it was said, contracted a fondness for a
daughter of Doctor Cox, and married her clandestinely.  It was suspected by
the family of Penn and his connections, that the Doctor had connived the
elopement; but whether he did or not, the unfortunate Doctor Cox and his
guiltless daughter became the sad victims of their resentment.  The Doctor was
disgracefully discharged from the honorable station of head master of Harrow
school.  She soon after died of a broken heart, and her father, deprived of
his living and his reputation, did not long survive her.  It is well known in
America that John Penn afterwards married the daughter of Mr. Allen of
Philadelphia.  The pecuniary advantage of Mr. Penn’s marriage with Miss Allen
was probably much greater than the more than the first which he contracted
with Miss Cox:  demonstrably not more honorable, but perhaps less so.  The
above narrative will be found upon inquiry not to be apocryphal.  The humble
subject of this brief biography was present at an arrow shooting at which his
friend West won the prize or arrow, at which time his honored, good, and
venerable head master on account of his age and the many sacerdotal duties
which he had to perform took his farewell of Harrow, leaving the succession to
Doctor Sumner, well known at Eaton, but afterwards better known as head master
of Harrow, having for many ears filled the highest seat in that seminary.  He
acquired for it so high a reputation that the number of boys at it was
augmented from less than two hundred to more than five hundred.  Eaton alone
could boast of a greater number.  After a residence of about five years with
Doctor Thackeray, he was, without the knowledge or even indirect sanction of
his parents, removed  from Harrow to a private school at Dalston, in Hackney
parish, kept by Mr. James Graham, whose son, became a barrister of
considerable eminence.  His brother, Richard Kidder Meade, not long before
arrived at London from Virginia, and was sent with him to Graham’s school.
During a continuance at Dalston of two years or more he made no progress in
classical learning or indeed any other.  Here it may not be amiss to note that
the progress which boys make at public or private boarding schools in learning
the dead languages depends less upon the qualification of the masters to
teach, than upon the capacities of the boys for learning.  From Dalston school
he was removed to Fuller’s academy in London, where, dropping the dead
languages altogether, after having been at Latin and Greek seven years, he
entered upon a new and very different course of learning, viz:  Writing,
ciphering, mathematics, geography, French, grammar, drawing, perspective,
music, etc., etc., of which at the end of three years, he did not take away to
impoverish the academy.  He had a very small smattering of everything he had
attempted to learn, but less of the languages both dead and foreign than of
sciences and the elegant arts.  Thus, but ordinarily qualified for the humble
walks of private life, and without natural talents or acquired knowledge to
move with any credit to himself in public, he left England in the year 1761,
and arrived in his native Virginia some time in June of that year, having had
a passage of about two months on board a ship of a hundred hogshead burden,
commanded by Captain Hooper, bound to New York, and consigned to Mr. Norton of
that town.  A considerable fleet of merchantmen, of which Hooper made one,
came into Chesapeake Bay at the same time under the convoy of the--------, 40
guns, Capt. Norton, and the Postillion, 20 guns, Capt. Jarvis, probably now
Lord St. Vincents----sloops of war.  The forests and the black population of
his native land, after an absence of ten years, were novel, but not by any
means pleasing to him, and nothing was less familiar to him than the persons
of the individuals of his family.  He found two sisters---Mary, married to
George Walker; and Anne, married to Richard Randolph—from whom are now derived
a numerous progeny.  The writer left behind him at Dalston school two
brothers, Richard Kidder, who afterward became aid-de-camp to General
Washington, and Everard, who was aid-de-camp to General Lincoln, and was
afterward raised to the rank of General, and found two at his paternal mansion
born since he left Virginia.  The persons of his sisters were as little known
to him as those of his brothers whom he had never seen.  But although he had
forgotten all persons and things about his birthplace, he recognized a scene
and the persons of the actors in it, to which he had been familiar from having
been a spectator of it for perhaps nearly every day of his life previous to
this going to England; it was two old Negro men upon a pit in the act of
sawing; precisely as when he left them employed, so he found them without any
apparent change in their persons.  The four following years he passed with the
recurrence of little incident, rather monotonous, there being little in the
county of Nansemond, where his mother’s residence was, to attract a youth
brought up to no occupation, accustomed to good company, and inheriting a good
patrimony.  He found society up James River to be more congenial to his age,
temper, and habits, than any his native county could afford him.  Williamsburg
was the metropolis of the colony, and was the resort before the Revolutionary
war, of all the gentry and merchants in the colony, also of the planters, for
the purpose of drawing bills of exchange upon London, Bristol, Liverpool, etc.


The general court held its session in April and October.  The amusements were
balls, sometimes theatricals and races, spring and fall.  In conformity with
an engagement entered into some time previous, with his very intimate and much
valued friends Ryland and John Randolph, the former a fine classical scholar,
master of the French and Italian languages, and eloquent speaker and most
accomplished gentleman, and the latter, his brother, who was the father of the
much celebrated member of Congress of the same name, a worthy man of good
natural parts, not so much cultivated as those of his brother Ryland, and
totally without application.  In conformity with the before mentioned
agreement, the writer left home with the above named gentleman on a tour
northward.  At Hampton he hired a vessel to transport him to the head of the
Chesapeake Bay, and embarked at Mill Creek, July 26th, 1765, and the next day
in the evening arrived at Corotoman, upon the Rappahonnock, the seat of Mr.
Carter.  There Ryland Randolph joined him; John Randolph had preceded them to
Philadelphia, where he was inoculated for small-pox, thence by way of Amboy to
New York.  They were politely received and very handsomely entertained by
General Gage, the commander-in-chief.  They were introduced by letters from
Colonel Byrd, of Westover, and Colonel Fitzhugh, of Maryland.  During the year
1766, it is well known, all British America was violently agitated by an
attempt of Government to impress the stamp duty upon the Colonies.  Deputies
were appointed by the different legislatures to meet at New York for the
purpose of remonstrating against it.  Very few attended that year at New York,
but a pretty full representation of the Colonies and provinces assembled in
Congress the next year in Maryland. 

Of the company, which was very numerous at General Gage’s table, were three
deputies from Massachusetts, viz., General Ruggles, Col. Partridge, and the
distinguished champion of his country’s rights at that time, Mr. Otis, who was
the father, in all probability, of the modern Otis, distinguished not for his
opposition to, but partiality for Britain, and his hospitality to the virtuous
and popular chief, and all others who assisted in the administration of the
Government of the United States.  Mr. Otis, of the year ’65 appeared to be a
modest, sensible man, who was no stranger to good company, of middle stature,
inclining to be fat, and little (if any) over the middle age.  Brigadier
Ruggles was, to appearances, not less than seventy years of age, very tall,
very taciturn, and of aspect neither engaging nor patrician.  Col. Partridge
was a pert little man, with the coat of a gentleman, he was a complete clown
in his manners, and manifested the most entire ignorance of the usages which
prevail in polished societies.  In those days industry and enterprise were
characteristic attributes of New Englandmen, hospitality and good breeding, of
all above vulgar, of the Southern colonies and city, and the population more
refined than it was in any other city, borough or town in North America,
except Charleston, in South Carolina.  There were not more than three or four
close carriages in New York; that of the venerable Chief Justice Horsmanden, a
very old coach, was in their service during the few days they were in the
city.  Neither were there any elegant steamboats in those days, for that
place, which, although affording but humble accommodations, was the best to be
had.   During a short stay at Albany they became acquainted with a Mr.
Prevost, lieutenant in the army, and son or nephew to the first general of
that name.  How near he was related to the redoubtable Sir George, the hero of
Plattsburg, was not worth the while engaging, and now not easily ascertained. 
From Albany they advanced to Lake George, by way of Fort Edward; from Lake
George down the lake to Ticonderoga, on the contracted part of Cham

plain; thence to Crown Point; thence down the lake to St. John’s; thence by
land 18 miles, all a swamp forest, inhabited by no other living thing but
mosquitoes of the highest magnitude, to La Prairie, on the hither bank of the
St. Lawrence river, in sight of land and nine miles from Montreal, the site of
which is a great natural curiosity and very beautiful.  It may be thought
worthy of notice, that in the year 1765, as you advanced up the North or
Hudson river, above Albany, and near the bank of the river, where the only or
most public road ran, the settlements became less frequent by pretty regular
gradations until you got to Stillwater, 18 miles above Albany.  At Stillwater
there were very fine saw-mills, perhaps belong to the Schuyler family, and
except the attendants on the mills, no other inhabitants but an old woman and
a female servant or companion, who occupied a log house of two rooms, where
she entertained travelers.  From thence to Saratoga—about 14 miles—few if any,
settlements; from Saratoga to Fort Edward, about 25 miles—at intervals of
miles were settlements (so recently made that the dry leaves were still
standing on the deadened timber) altogether upon the bottoms of the river.
Fort Edward was built upon a very beautiful bottom of considerable extent upon
the Hudson, well set with green sward of great height, and fit for the scythe.
Upon an eminence on the other side of the river, nearly opposite the fort,
stood a block house, mounting eight cannon.  Fort Edward was a square of
regular sides, with four bastions built of timber and earth.  From thence to
Fort George, on the south end of Lake George, were 14 miles of country without
a settlement; from the south end of the lake to the landing place on the north
being 36 miles.  On neither side was there any human residence except on the
west, about six miles from the landing, an individual in a lived in a small
hut, his only companion a cat.  From the landing place, where at a small block
house a disbanded provincial officer, attended with an ox-cart to hire for
conveyance, to Ticonderoga—only three weeks crossing.  In this short distance
was not kind of settlement, or the appearance of any ever having been, except
the ruins of a saw-mill, which had been erected at the expense of the Crown
for public use.  

Arriving at Ticonderoga some time early in the day, they were politely
received and hospitably entertained by the commander of the fort, a captain.
There they found Sir Adam Gordon, Captain McDonald, of his regiment.  Mr.
Ralph Izard, of South Carolina, father of the present chief general of the
United States, and Mr. John Allen of Philadelphia, who were on their return
from a tour to the Falls of Niagara and lower Canada, as far as Quebec.  Lord
Adam was so obliging as to make them a present of his tent, which, although
very old and full of holes, was the only one the company had, and proved
extremely convenient to those who had the succession to it.  The next morning
(Aug. 23) the embarked in a sail boat with Captain Brown, who commanded at
Crown Point, and arrived at about ten in the forenoon.  The fort at Crown
Point is a pentagon (irregular), with a bastion at each angle, built very
handsomely of hewn timber, and cost the Crown 150,000 pounds.  It was built by
order of Gen. Amherst, and by military men judged a waste of money.  The same
was thought of the expenditure of 25,000 pounds by that general upon a single
bastion of stone at the south end of Lake George as a part of a fort, which,
when completed, was to have been square, with four bastions.  On the morning
of the 25th they embarked in a sail boat, heavy laden with baggage (of which
they very unadvisedly started with too much), for St. John’s and emcamped, the
wind changing to adverse in the afternoon, at a point on the west side of the
lake, opposite to four islands called the “Four Brothers,” nearly where the
lake begins to expand above, being only of the width of a small river forty
miles below Crown Point.  The next morning early they continued their journey
as far as Isle Noir, where they were obliged to stop and continue that night,
one of the part being taken with an ague, which was the second he had had on
the lake.  Here they found shelter in an old cottage inhabited by a German
family, and it was the only settlement from Crown Point thither, with the
exception of one which was said to have been made that summer, or perhaps the
preceding, by a gentleman from Ireland, with several laborers, at the depth of
a bay, commencing at a point opposite the “Four Brothers,” from which point to
that northward which forms the bay is about two miles, and is probably the bay
near which Plattsburg is situated, and same which will be memorable in the
annals of the United States, and immortalize the name of McDonough, who, with
his gallant associates, captured a whole British fleet in it.  

On the 27th landed at St. John’s before midday, hired horses and proceeded
without delay to La Prairie, where they arrived at night, a distance of
eighteen miles.  La Prairie, on the south bank of the St. Lawrence, is higher
up the river than Montreal, and the passage from the former to the latter is
nine miles in an oblique direction.  The river is nearly all the way full of
rocks, visible and invisible, which cause such considerable rapids that it
requires skillful boatmen to conduct passengers safely across.  After three
days spent at Montreal, which they found under the command of Capt. Stabo in
the absence of the chief commander of the military, who, with many other
officers, had gone down to Quebec to receive two regiments, one recently
arrived from Ireland and another that was to embark for England.  Capt. Stabo,
who had the temporary command at Montreal, was known by name and character to
the travelers, and their connections were perfectly known to the Captain, who
had resided some years in Virginia as a merchant or factor for some Scotch
mercantile house.  In his deportment towards them he omitted nothing that was
becoming in him or that could be expected by them.  It is painful here to note
that some years afterward, in a fit of delirium, this gentleman put a period
to his existence.  

On the 31st they took passage in a sloop for Quebec—the 1st and 2nd of
September dropping down the river and on the 3d, early in the morning, they
landed at Quebec.  On the next morning they waited on General Murray, Governor
of Canada.  The General’s residence was about a mile from the wall of the
city, upon the Heights of the conquest of Quebec (having command of the troops
left for the defense of the city) he defeated Count Levis.  The mansion was
unfinished and of timber.  It commanded a view of the city east, the plains
and distances not very limited south, west and north to the little river
Charles, two hundred feet deep, and in a valley just beneath a most charming
view.  They went to the Montmorency, a lovely stream two hundred feet higher,
nine miles over an open country, the whole of it well set in green sward,
unmixed with any other grass, almost as high as wheat near harvest time, and,
like wheat, waving in the wind.  General Murray, the Governor, was a gentleman
of the most easy, affable manners, of engaging conversation, of education
suitable to his noble birth, and with more than ordinary fluency of speech.
He more-over manifested by the general tenor of his practice all the
hospitality of an Irishman or Southern American of the United States in so
remarkable a degree that it may be questioned whether any person of elevated
public station equaled him in the British Colonies in that particular, except
Sir William Johnson, whose way of life at his residence on the Mohawk, above
Albany, is far-famed, although in one respect subject to animadversion and
censure.  Gen. Murray, the generous and spirited civil ruler of Canada, was
justly and little less so with the British merchants of Quebec, of whom a
large proportion of his countrymen of Scotland:  the effect of a cause, which,
to his honor, rendered him obnoxious to the military; in the estimate of which
is included only the officers, by whom the native French Canadians had been
greatly oppressed, and would have continued to be, but for the humane and
generous interference of the Governor, who offered them all the protection
which his high civil authority qualified him to give.   The object of the
travelers being to see as much of the city and its vicinity as their short
visit would admit of, they found it inconvenient to accept of General Murray’s
very polite and hospitable invitation to make his habitation their lodging
house; but they could not decline the acceptance of another memorial of his
polite attention to them, vis.:  every morning during their short continuance
at Quebec, at the same hour, immediately after breakfast, a servant with
saddle horses handsomely caparisoned, which they made use of to ride about the
neighboring country.  Nor was that all.  They were accompanied in their
excursions by a young Mr. Murray, a kinsman of the General and of his
household; sometimes likewise by his father; (Mr. Murray, the son was married
to a young Frenchwoman), and every day after they returned from their morning
ride and had dressed for dinner, the General’s post chaise attended at their
lodgings to carry them to the house where they were engaged to dine.  At
Quebec they one day participated in a good dinner given by General Burton,
commander of the military in Canada, to the officers of two regiments, one
just arrived from Ireland, the other about to embark for England, to which
they, as strangers, were invited.  A very obvious difference appeared between
the manners of the officers just landed and those about to embark.  Of the
former some were very polite gentlemen, of the latter scarcely any.  

On the 7th, in the morning, they departed form Quebec in their calashes—an
open carriage drawn by one horse, driven by a Canadian who sits before.  The
distance from thence by land is 180 miles—nearly the same by water—and it is
divided in three stages at each of which the traveler gets fresh horses.  The
road is all the distance near the river bank, and the country is mostly open;
the habitation little, if any more than two hundred yards apart, the tenures
being seigniories to inferior land holders.  Within a few miles distance were
churches near the bank of the St. Lawrence and many more crosses’ passed the
Three Rivers where there was a town at the confluence of them with the St.
Lawrence, was, perhaps, the third in the province and contained one or two
religious houses, etc.  The district is sandy, producing very indifferent
grass, differing widely in the particular from the rest of Canada, which is as
fine a grass country as it is possible any other part of the world can be.  In
the district of Three Rivers no hay was made; and, although the store has the
effect of fable, yet the truth of it is not to be controverted that the
inhabitants fed their cattle upon a fish called “tom cod” which were taken out
of holes made on the ice with a scooping net and heaped up in stacks.  Late in
the evening of the 10th they arrived at Montreal.  The site of the city is
very fine, being between the foot of a small mountain and the river—so narrow
is the space as to have been then nearly filled up by buildings.  Should the
city become hereafter extensive it must embrace two small mountains—the one
mentioned and its twin sister—the mountain to the north of it and touching at
its base.  

From the summit of the northernmost of these mountains the spectator has a
bird’s-eye view of the town, river and country in its vicinity, and a prospect
the most extensive, variegated and magnificent that can be imagined, watered
by the copious st. Lawrence, which divides here into three broad streams,
which for the Isle of Montreal south, and of Jesus north, and these several
channels are studded with innumerable islands of various sizes.  To the south
east the plain and prospect is bounded by mountains about twenty-five miles
distant.  To the north or north west, forty miles up the river, an avenue
formed by mountains on each side, closes at a point as far as the eye can
reach and down the river the same but unbounded at the extremity.  Montreal
was surrounded by a stone wall—perhaps not so high or so well built as that of
Quebec at the upper town adjoining the plains or heights of Abraham.  Neither
had a ditch or was intended as a defense against artillery.  Captain Claus, of
the Royal Americans, son-in-law of Sir William Johnson, and deputy
superintendent of Indian affairs, invited them to a congress of Indian chiefs
from several nations upon the lakes (the town then being full of Indians).
The Intendant introduced the travelers to each of them individually as
brethren of the long knife, who had come from the south almost a thousand
miles to visit Canada—with whom they shook hands.  Some of the chiefs were
standing, but more sitting upon the carpet on the floor.  

The Intendant, after the ceremony of introduction of the long knives or
Virginians, opened the congress with a speech or talk, to which several of the
chiefs replied, some sitting, some standing.  The Indian orators generally
looked to the floor whilst speaking, seldom (if ever) raising their eyes.  The
sitting orators looked between their knees at the carpet.  Among the chiefs
was a white man of fair complexion, with light hair, not grey, although
perhaps sixty years of age.  He had been taken when very young from a Dutch
family near Albany; brave in war and wise in counsel, he was much respected
and honored amongst the nations.  He spoke standing, longer and with more
animation than the other orators.  Altogether is was a very poor specimen of
Indian eloquence.  But if, after reading Logan’s speech in Mr. Jefferson’s
notes and the account of his manner, the travelers were disappointed in their
expectations of seeing and hearing something at this Montreal congress
correspondent with the manner in which Logan deliver his speech, they at least
had reason to admire the politeness of those savages as it was interpreted to
them by Captain Claus.  Each orator without a single exception opened his talk
with a compliment to the traveling long knives, in terms which would have done
credit to the most refined people, in which nothing was said superfluous, and
nothing omitted in what was said.

They left Montreal on the 15th of September, and by way of St. John’s and Lake
Motte Island, where they were stayed wind bound two nights and a day, during
which time the old tent presented them by Lord Adam Gordon was put to good
use.  Left the isle early the following morning and arrived the following
night at Crown Point.  At this time (1765), the only mode of crossing the
lakes was in public bateaux rowed by four soldiers and steered by a corporal. 
This, a matter of a grace which was obtained by means of orders from the
commander-in-chief at New York, and was, as well as my be supposed, not less
expensive than hand boats would have been, could such have been had, but all
here was then wilderness, from Crown Point to Ticonderoga, where they remarked
the famous French lines which were in the seven years war so gallantly
defended by the Marquis Montcalm, with 4,000 men against the British General
Abercrombie with 17,000.  the events of the disastrous day were detailed to
the travelers by officers who served in that assailing army.  It is a well
known historical fact that the brave and accomplished Lord Howe, a colonel,
fell dead the day before the attack of the French lines, and soon after the
army had landed at the north end of Lake George, from a shot fired by some
concealed enemy, as he was rapidly advancing through the woods at the head of
his division.  A night of horrors succeeded to the next day’s defeat.  We have
much in British story of glorious naval victories, and but little of
disgraceful defeats of British armies by land.  Arrogant boasters!  Take a
retrospective view of the many defeats of your armies in America!  But very
particularly that of the lines of Ticonderoga.  Advert to the genuine history
of your defeat, your great loss and your humiliation there.  In Europe the
infamous convention of seven, when and where your Duke of Cumberland, the
senior prince of the blood, and son to your monarch of that day, surrendered
and army of 40,000 men to the French General.  Look on the results of your
many attempts at invasion of France during that war.  Also the events of your
last French war, and that you are waging now with America, are so recent as to
be in the recollection of everybody.  Britains, the fresh waves of Erie and
Champlain, and the salt billows of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans will be, as
long as they remain lakes and oceans, monuments of the courage, skill and
glory of the American navy, and of the insolence, humiliation, and disgrace of
the vain sustainers of the British flag.  Will not every true American heart
palpitate with emotions of patriotic exultation whenever the transactions of
Chippeway, Fort Erie, and Plattsburg recur to their minds, and must not the
honest, ingenuous, and modest Englishman (for such and many such there are,)
blush at the dereliction of every feeling of humanity and sentiment of
national honor in the British Government and in very many individuals in the
infamous tools of that government, on a retrospection of the enormities
committed under the sanction of three peers of high rank in the British army;
at the River Raisin, at Hampton and many other places, and the ungenerous and
dishonorable and dastardly violation of natural rights, at Valparaiso in
Chili, besides many previous instances of the infraction of the law of
nations? Britains!  Powerful domineering nation, feared, not loved (perhaps
hated) by neighboring states, particularly commercial states!  Infant America
has already shorn your laurels—may she in her more mature age bend you to a
standing among nations below mediocrity.  

From Ticonderoga they continued to retrace the same route they came, to the
landing place at the north end of Lake George, and up the lake 36 miles to the
south end, Fort George, formerly Fort William Henry, memorable for its siege
early in the war by the Marquis Montcalm, governor of Canada, about which time
the war carried on in America, under the auspices of Britain, was unsuccessful
and disastrous; and at this place it was the year after that Provincial powers
retrieved the sinking reputation of British troops, and gave a turn to the
fortunes of the war by the defeat of the Baron Dieskau, whose army was routed
and himself slain by American militia, under the command of that brave,
intrepid officer, Sir Wm. Johnson.  

Lodging one night at a settler’s house near the fort, when on their way
forward, they were disturbed by a noise in a shed, from which their apartment
was separated by a partition of thin boards; but with the ceasing of the
noise, being fatigued with their journey of the preceding day, they soon
composed themselves to sleep.  The next morning, upon looking out of the door,
they say a very large but poor wolf, which the settler had killed on the shed,
when they heard the noise at their heads.  The wolf was in pursuit of poultry,
and had god his fore paws into a barrel after a cock, which had retreated to
the bottom of it.  Near the road from the lake to Fort Edward, on the Hudson,
is a pond of standing water, then called the “Bloody Pond,” where it is said
St. Luke de Cour, a Canadian officer, commanding a party of Indians in the
French service, massacred a number of adverse troops, who were escorting
wagons to the lake.  On this day’s ride they saw upon the roadside, between
the forts George and Edward, a moose deer, which trotted and galloped along a
ridge of woods which ran parallel with the road three miles in the course they
traveled.  It moved along as heavily as an ox.  They arrived at Albany the
23d, at night, where they spent only one whole day and part of another, and
then proceeded down the river, as they had come up, in an Albany sloop, to New
York.  Spent five or six days there—four or five in Philadelphia.  On their
way down Chesapeake Bay, called at Col. Wm. Fitzhugh’s at Rousby Hall, eight
miles up the Potomac, and on the 20th of October arrived at Corotoman, the
residence of their friend, Mr. Carter, afterwards of Shirley, on James River. 
Here the trio separated.  Mr. Ryland Randolph and his brother John proceeded
home by land, and the subject of this biographical sketch down the bay, and
arrived at his mother’s, in Nansemond County, very late night, Oct. 22, 1765. 
The two or three succeeding years were passed in the same unvaried routine
that the four preceding years had been.  The chief source of enjoyment he
derived from the society of his friends up the James River, was principally
that of Curles, the seat of Mr. Richard Randolph, who married the eldest of
his three sisters.  His friends Ryland and John Randolph were inmates there,
and several very agreeable females were the members of the household; but
although he had a heart not destitute of susceptibility of the tender passion
which nature and sentiment dispose the sexes to feel for each other, and the
neighborhood of Curles, including that seat, abounded with as much beauty,
fashion and rank as any part of Virginia (if not more), there was wanting
something in them individually that was essential to excite such sentiments in
him as to secure his exclusive affections.  Although he was not so vain as to
believe he could have had his choice, at the same time he did not affect so
much humility as to think that his pretensions were not in every quarter good.
Before he left England, though then very young, he had been betrayed by
example and opportunity into very blamable excesses in one or two instances,
but the consequences tainted neither mind nor body—to the former, on the
contrary, they proved salutary.  He had naturally a warm and romantic
disposition.  He was a great builder of castles in the air; but conscious as
he was, that he had neither face, figure nor accomplishments to qualify him
for an epitome of a romance, here he prudently determined to fall in love and
marry somewhat after the fashion of the people.  Nevertheless he was
fastidious in the choice of his object.  With all the insight of folly and
fault which his character was loaded, it could not be denied that he led as
regular a life as any young man; that his manners were tolerably mild, that he
deported himself towards rich and poor uniformly with civility, towards the
latter particularly in such a manner as to induce them to believe that he felt
no kind of superiority over them.  That he was chaste and sober, and an avowed
enemy of gaming, and free from all great vices which disturb the order and
peace of society, and stamp the seal of Satan upon the perpetrator. Facts may
have been inadvertently but not deliberately stated in this record, which,
perhaps may not stand the test of rigid criticism, but as the foregoing
history, so what follows shall be written in the spirit of truth.  Candor is
therefore constrained to confess that the subject of it is not entitled to the
credit of positive virtues which he had not claim to.  He was content with
very little that was his duet—the extreme humble merit of negative virtues.
With that small stock he however passed within the narrow sphere of his action
as a young man of good morals, and many gentlemen, the most distinguished for
wealth, talents and worth, were not backward in admitting him to their most
intimate acquaintance, and in some instances to favor him with their
friendship; and in one of the most amiable of this or any other country
manifested so much partiality for him—not so evident to him as others who were
their common friends, as to induce an opinion that he (then in so declining a
state of health that he deceased in May, 1767) wished to commit his protection
his daughter, an only child.  

The motives to his union in hymeneal bonds to that daughter were pure,
altogether disinterested and honorable.  On the 12th of May, 1768, he married
Sarah Waters, the daughter of William Waters of the city of Williamsburg, very
soon after which event, on the death of the old Lieutenant-Governor Farquier
and the arrival in Virginia of the new Governor-in Chief, Lord Baron Botetourt
(who succeeded Lord Amherst, then Sir Jeffrey, the first Chief governor, who
had for a long time resided at the seat of his government), feeling a little
youthful ambition to become a member of the most splendid general assembly (as
it was justly expected to be) that ever convened in the British Colonies and
Provinces, he offered himself as a candidate for the representation of
Nansemond county in that approaching assembly, and was elected first Burgess. 
The Assembly met in may 1769.  He had been for some time previous afflicted
with a tertian fever and ague, which had not left him, and he went up to the
seat of government with an additional top pressure to that of fever and ague. 
It was of a different nature, but not less heavy upon the mind of a young man
upon the eve of making his debut as an actor upon the first theater of
America.  The disease was painful to his body, never having before spoken in
any public assembly and being charged with the presentation of several persons
from his county.  Under such uncomfortable circumstances he was not displeased
at being commanded by the high authority of the representative of Majesty to
divest himself of his honorable representative character and return to an
humble station in private life.  The Virginia Assembly was dissolved by His
Excellency the Governor, and the young representative of Namsemond County was
completely cured of his ambition.  Lord Botetourt opened his first and only
Assembly by the delivery of a pretty long speech in the Council Chamber, to
which the house was convoked by message from His Excellency.  The Governor’s
deportment was dignified and his delivery solemn.  It was said by those who
heard and seen George III speak and act on the throne of England, that His
Lordship on the throne of Virginia was true to his prototype.  He spoke very
slow, with long pauses.  His costume was of the ordinary fashion of the day,
but handsome and rich; the coat of a light red color, of gold thread tissue.
From the palace in Williamsburg to the capitol was about three-quarters of a
mile.  When His Lordship went down the meet the Assembly it was in much
greater state than any Governor of Virginia had ever before displayed.  The
chariot he rode in was a superbly finished one, presented to him by William,
Duke of Cumberland, uncle to George the Third, and was intended for his state
carriage, the Virginia arms being substituted for the royal English.  During
the ten days’ sitting of this Assembly the time of the house was chiefly taken
up in the debate upon the important subject of the disagreement between the
mother country and the colonies, and terminated in a number of spirited
resolves, which the official duty of the Governor required him to express is
disapprobation of.  This he did in very angry terms; and, being informed of
what was passing in the house, he then exercised his most extreme authority,
hastened down to capitol and from the Council Chamber sent a message down by
the clerk of the Council to demand the attendance of the members.  The house
not having completed the passage of the resolutions, the clerk who appeared in
the lobby of the Assembly was for some time refused admittance, buy he did not
wait very long before doors were opened to him and his message delivered.  The
members, without delay obeyed the summons and repaired to the Council Chamber,
where they were received by His Excellency and his Council.  He was dressed in
a suit of plain scarlet.  The speaker advanced toward him, the members
following.  At the usual distance form the person of the representative of
Majesty the speaker stopped.  A solemn pause of a minute or two ensued, when
the Governor, with an assumed stern countenance and with considerable power,
addressed the speaker and members of the house in following brief speech:  

“GENTLEMEN—I have heard your resolves and I augur their ill effects.  You have
made it my duty to dissolve you, and you are accordingly dissolved.  

Notwithstanding this act of official duty was so properly performed by this
representative of majesty, it may be questioned whether it was altogether
consonant with the judgment and feelings of His Lordship, and indeed it may be
pronounced that it was not, unless he was a most consummate dissembler, which
it would be unjust to his memory to believe; as the subject of this sketch
heard some time after the dissolution of the Assembly, at Mr. Tristero
Nicholas’ in Williamsburg, in the presence of several gentleman, the Governor
declared that he should write to Lord Hillsborough(who was then seventy years
old)’ who was then in the American Department of State, and assure him that
unless the obnoxious acts of Parliament were repealed, he should desire to be
recalled from his government.  Lord Botetourt had rendered himself extremely
popular in Virginia by his affable deportment towards all those, without
distinction of standing in life, with whom he had any communication, either
officially or casually, and died in 1771, very much and very generally
lamented.

The Legislature, at its first convocation by his successor, after his decease,
unanimously voted as a testimony of respect to his memory, a marble pedestrian
statue, to be erected in the capitol, which vote was carried handsomely into
effect, and an admirable specimen of statuary produced by the first artist of
London, preserving a very striking likeness of His Lordship.  It was some
years afterward. In a very mutilated condition, removed to the College of
William and Mary by the late very worthy and respectable Bishop Madison,
President of that ancient university, and now stands in the center of the walk
in front of the building, as much a monument of the barbarousness which
prevailed, or at least that there was very little disposition to
discountenance, and no authority to reprove or curb, as a monument and
likeness of a deceased former magistrate who had merited the good will and
affection of a prosperous colony.  The Earl of Dunmore succeeded to the
government of Virginia at the death of Lord Botetourt.

Oblivion would be the mildest fate his memory could find in American annals,
but American annals will not, it is probably, be so favorable to it.  The
administration of the Virginia government closes when the Revolutionary war
commences, but not his flagitious existence.  Good histories of that war are
extant, particularly those by which are Tarleton’s, Lee’s and Audburg’s.
Towards the last year of 1774, which was the eve of the commencement of the
Revolutionary War in America, having previously purchased a seat upon the
Powhatan, or as it has been illy named, modernly, James River, he took his
departure from Nansemond county.  The reversion of the patrimonial seat, with
about 2,000 acres of land on the west side of the creek, which was the south
side of the Nansemond River, and all the rest of the tract on the east side of
the town of Suffolk (about the same number of acres), on which were grist and
saw mills, he sold to his brother Andrew, and removed with his household,
consisting of his mother, his wife and one son—David.  Here it may be well to
state what might more properly have been done sooner, that of his four
brothers, namely, Richard Kidder, Andrew, John and Everard—Everard the third
from himself, married Mary Thornton before he had completed his eighteenth
year, Richard Kidder married Elizabeth Randolph, and Andrew, at about 20,
married Susanna Stith.  John died at 17 years of age, about the year 1771.
Maycox, in Prince George County, the estate he purchased on James River,
consisted of 600 acres of very poor land; a few acres only on the baniks were
good and some more improvable.  The site of the house was not inferior to the
best on that river, where many are good.  The mansion and grounds about it
will be found much too favorably described in an annual quarto publication of
the Boston Historical Society, communicated by the Rev. John Spooner.*
Maycox, which is on the opposite side of the river to Westover and south of
it,  is memorable in the early settlements of Virginia.  There are very strong
indications of an Indian village having in times long prior to the first
landing of the Europeans on the northern continent, been there, or otherwise
that it was the resort of great numbers of them at certain seasons for the
benefit of mussels, the shells of which are found in masses two feed deep upon
the surface, the top of it converted into soil.

The following is the description above referred to:  “Horticulture is not
generally in vogue, though there are some gardens that do not yield to the
best in the United States.  In connection with this may be mentioned the
pleasure grounds of David Meade, Esq., of Maycox in this county.  These
grounds contain about 12 acres, laid out on the bank of James River in a most
beautiful and enchanting manner.  Forest and fruit trees are here arranged as
if nature and art had conspired together to strike the eye most agreeably.
Beautiful vistas, which open as many pleasing view of the river; the land
thrown into many artificial hollows or gentle swellings with the pleasing
verdure of the turf, and the complete order in which the whole is preserved,
altogether tend to form it one of the most delightful rural seats that is to
be met within the United States, and do honor to the taste and skill of the
proprietor who is the architect.”---From Mass. Hist. Society Collections, Vol.
3, p. 90

It was also the theater of much bloodshed at the time of a general massacre of
the white inhabitants, by the natives, when Captain Maycox, or Maycock, the
original patentee from whom the place took its name, lost his life amongst the
number who perished by the tomahawk.  Westover, opposite, on the north bank,
was the well-known seat of two in succession of the name of Byrd, who were in
their day the most distinguished and wealthiest men in North America.  The
first Colonel William Byrd was born in Virginia and held a very considerable
estate, that part of which included the ground which Richmond occupies and all
below to Gilles Creek and above to Westham, a distance of more that eight
miles upon the river, and form the lower line of the Falls plantation tract on
the opposite side of the river to Richmond, a distance up it of twenty-five
miles, including what was then called Rocky Ridge, now Manchester, derived by
some kind of title from an Captain Stag, as appears from family records.
Westover was a royal grant.  One hundred and fifty thousand acres on Dan River
were given him by government for running the dividing line between Virginia
and North Carolina in 1727, associated with several others of the Virginia
Governor’s council as commissioners and other in that character of North
Carolina, running from the sea to the east side of the Blue Ridge of
mountains.  


It appears by Colonel Byrd’s journal of the line, that all the commissioners
deserted him, the greater part, including the Carolinians, before they crossed
the Roanoke River or soon after.  At Lower Lauratown, upon the Dan, he took up
a great main thousand acres, and below, several miles above and several below
the confluence of the Stanton and the Dan, several thousand more, besides the
above mentioned tracts.  It was said he had others.  The elder Colonel Byrd
was educated in England, where, with a very fine person and mind richly
endowed by nature, his literary acquirements were so great, that for wealth,
talents, rank, influence there was not at that time in the British Colonies an
individual to rival him.  As much above all others was his interest at the
British Court.  He had made early and intimate acquaintance of several English
noblemen, distinguished by their worth, talents, prowess and influence, of
whom there are at this time portraits in the dining room at Westover by
Kneller (some, if not all,) of the great Captain, John, Duke of Argyle, the
earl of Halifax, the Earl of Oxford, Lord Orrery, Sir Charles Wager, the
Admiral, and the Chancellor, Lord Egmont, which were probably presented to him
as tokens of their friendship.  With some of them and other men of high rank
he corresponded from the time of his return to Virginia to the time of his
death, which was, as appears from the inscription on his monument (erected
over his grave in the center of the kitchen garden at Westover), in the year
1750, then 70 years of age.  In the library was a large trunk of manuscripts,
of which were his correspondence with his English friends, and miscellaneous
writings, chiefly in prose.  He had married two wives, the first pretty early
in life, the last at 50 years of age.  By the first wife, who was the daughter
of General Parks, Governor of the Leeward Islands (the governor was murdered
by the gentleman of Antiqua on account of his amours), he had two daughters;
by his second wife, a lady of Essex in England, with whom he received a
considerable fortune, he had a son (the late Colonel Byrd of Westover) and
three daughters.  William Byrd, the only son of the great man of that name,
was at his first setting out in life distinguished by his good origin, ample
fortune, elegant manners and handsome person.  Before he had reached his
majority he went to England, where, it appears, he engaged in all the
gayeties, prodigalities and dissipation to which young men of rank and fortune
were addicted.  An inordinate love of the sea was thought to be his most
predominant passion.  This, it would seem, was constitutional and hereditary
in him, for his father, with more prudence (probably) and certainly with more
erudition, had manifested the like strong propensity.  Among the vices to
which the younger Colonel Byrd was exposed, and in which he was engaged, was
the terrible vice of gambling, a vice to which young men of fashion and
opulence in all countries and in all ages have been prone.  This vice being so
repugnant to reason and good sense and to the precepts of religion and sound
ethics, is yet unaccountably engaged in by many a young man of talents and
fortune (if he has fortune) night after night at a gaming table with professed
gamesters and desperate, moneyless adventurers.  The least evil which he can
have to expect, except the loss of time (which under certain circumstances,
may chance to be one of great magnitude) will be to give expensive clothing
and dieting to a parcel of unprincipled libertines who have no others means of
subsistence but what they draw, often unfairly, from the purses of
inconsiderate, honorable young men of fortune who are seduced by the example
of their fellows to a pursuit which is reproved by their own cool judgment as
dangerous to their own tranquility and utterly condemned by their consciences
as immoral.  Every youth should reflect on the inevitable consequences of the
practice of this vice—namely poverty, want, misery and often suicide.  


But to return to the subject from this not unapt digression.  Gaming, as
followed in the higher circles of society, Mr. Byrd gave into this as a
fashionable amusement merely—avarice being then, and ever after, a passion
alien to his breast.  Much more than was true, it is probably, was said of the
excess to which he carried that fatal propensity whilst in London.  The habit
thus acquired him to the last period of his life.  A story was current in
Virginia for fifty years, and may yet be so, that at one of the most noted
gaming tables at the west end of the town he lost ten thousand pounds at a
single sitting to the Duke of Cumberland.  It may or may not have been so;
neither the verity or falsity of it were ever proved by any kind of evidence. 
It must, however, be admitted by all who can be at all qualified to form an
opinion upon the premises, that it is highly probably he lost a very large sum
of money one night in company with the Duke who, it was well known, gamed
much), nor is it unlikely that a great part was to him.  It appears that Mr.
Byrd, while in England, dressed and gamed much, to which may be added another
heavy item of expenditure, which altogether had generated a debt, which
probably did not of itself along lay the foundation of his subsequent
insolvency, but it is not unlikely, contributed some little towards it.  Soon
after he returned to Virginia, it may be presumed, he was advanced to the
woolsack there, that is, he became a member of the governor’s council, with
nearly, if not quite, all the powers and privileges of a peer in England,
being of the upper government, and one of the judges of the Supreme Court, of
Judicature, from which there was no appeal but to the King in Council.  He
early married his first wife, a daughter of Secretary Carter, by whom he had
one daughter and four sons.  Mr. Byrd continued with the army, first under the
command of Lord Lowden, and afterwards under that of Sir Jeffrey Amherst,
during which time it has been said, he supported a table as costly as that of
the commander-in-chief, and it is fairly to be presumed that it was in that
way he involved his fortune more than any other.  The colony of Virginia
raised two regiments for the service in 1755.   Mr. Byrd was appointed to the
command of one of them and the then Major Washington to the other, probably as
the senior officer.  Colonel Washington, long before the close of the war,
marring Mrs. Custis, a rich widow, resigned his command, as Col. Byrd had the
command of both regiments, in which position he appears to have continued to
the end of the war.  About the year 1760 he married a second wife in
Philadelphia, Mary Willing, of the well-known family of that name, long
established in the city, by whom he had five daughters and three sons, with
whom, as well as with those of his first marriage (except Captain Byrd, of the
British army, the eldest of the latter who died in France early in life), and
both the parents, the subject of this sketch maintained a uniform, very
intimate and grateful intercourse from the early commencement of it until it
was interrupted by the decease of the two senior members and a considerable
part of the junior individuals of that family.  


At the breaking out of the American Revolutionary war Col. Byrd adhered so
long to the old government as to render himself unpopular in Virginia.  The
violent acts of Lord Dunmore at length excited his indignation, and if his
country could have been prevailed upon to put as much confidence in him as to
have given him as high a military command as his rank, his honor and  his high
claims to preferment entitled him, he no doubt would have reinstated himself
in the forfeited good opinion of it, and it the field of his operations had
been sufficiently extensive he would have promoted its triumphs.  Col. Byrd
was in some respects the superior of General Washington, and in none his
inferior.  Let no man presume to appreciate distinguished characters, or dare
to detract from their merit, unless they have been personally acquainted with
them, have witnessed their conduct in private life, and in all life’s
relations have communed much with them.  Competency to judge of the essential
qualifications that go to make up the hero or great man should also be
considered.  Many an ordinary man has been elevated to a high position through
popular favor, while many a truly great man has been permitted to remain in
obscurity through personal modesty on his part, and ignorance on the part of
the people.  The friends of Col. Byrd in the convention of Virginia proposed
him for the command of the State line, with rank of Major General, but he had
forfeited the confidence of the people and their representatives.  He was
rejected, and on the first day of January, 1777, resigned to his successors
all his claims to temporal enjoyments and temporal honors, leaving behind him
a widow who possessed a mind of powers superior to the generality of her sex,
and a most generous benevolent and charitable heart.  Mrs. Byrd, surviving
three of her daughters, deceased in March, 1814, aged about 74 or 75 years.
There were three sons and five of the most amiable daughters in the world.
Before the death of Col. Byrd, R. K Meade was deprived of his wife, who died
December, 1775, nor was she survived much more than a year by her brother,
John Randolph, the father of the member of Congress of the same name, who
distinguished himself by his adherence to the Republican party or
administrators of the Government, and afterwards by a most intemperate
opposition to the same.  


R. K. Meade, after the death of his wife, and having no children, being
actuated by the most virtuous motives that ever actuated the mind of man,
engaged first as a volunteer in the service of his country and raised a
company, or rather was placed at the head of a company of Virginia ordered the
raising of two regiments, he was appointed captain in the Second Regiment
under Colonel Woodford, and in a very short time raised his company in the
winter of 1776-7.  The Second Regiment was ordered to join the army, then on
the Delaware, in Jersey, under the command of the commander-in-chief.   Before
it left Virginia, he received his appointment of aide-de-camp to General
Washington, and thereon without delay he repaired to headquarters.  In his
station of aide he preformed all the active duties of it better, perhaps, than
any other of the General’s family.  He was a handsome man, of athletic form
and constitution—from his early years was fond of manly and hardy sports; was
a good horseman, and was the best mounted aid-de-camp in the army.  At the
battle of Monmouth he escaped being made prisoner by the fleetness of the
horse he rode, as he related to it himself.  Being sent with orders to Major
General Lee, when either going or returning, he fell in with a general officer
and his suite, and was so near to them as to be in gunshot.  He was sensible
of the danger he was in, but confiding in the powers of his horse, he soon
found himself out of their reach; but having a swamp to cross, his horse got
so immersed in it as not to be able to extricate himself from captivity; he
found himself under the necessity of dismounting, and abandoning the horse,
which relieved from so great a load, with great exertion plunged out and
fortunately recovered, was instantly remounted. Audbury, a British officer of
the Saratoga Convention troops, in a history of some campaigns of that war,
printed in two volumes octavo, narrated the above adventure to this effect:
That the General and suite which R. K. Meade was so near being taken by, was
no less a person than Sir Harry Clinton, the British commander-in-chief and
his suite; that an officer in it desired the General to permit him to shoot at
the American, which, to Sir Harry’s immortal credit, was generously, nobly and
gloriously refused.  The events of the Revolutionary War of North America are
well recorded by different historians.  From these histories, it does not
appear that the aide-de-camp, Captain Meade, was in any way distinguished from
his associate aides.  It will not be to his discredit to have it remembered
that he was particularly intimate with and had a friendship for General
Alexander Hamilton, who, as a member of General Washington’s military family,
in the quality of aide-de-camp, entering the service when he was scarcely out
of his majority, continued tha that station until just before the siege of
Little York, in Virginia.  He there performed not only the humble duties of
his office of aide-de-camp, but the more important one of counselor.  His
fame, however, was founded more, and no doubt properly, upon the share he had
in the administration of the civil government of the United States after its
independence was acknowledged by the peace of Paris.  More credit was due to
him probably for the share he had in the conduct of the war than was known to
the American public or the word in general.  It was been said that Hamilton
had withdrawn from the General’s family before the capture of Earl Cornwallis,
at York.  It was presumed, upon some authority not to be despised, the he
joined the French and American armies before the siege of that place not in
the best of humor with the General.  He nevertheless was there appointed to
some honorable command, and it is a well-known historical fact that he was at
the head of the American party which stormed and carried one of the British
redoubts, while a French party, with more difficulty and some loss, carried
another.  If any inference was at this time drawn from the circumstance of
Hamilton’s going to York without any commission and rather a malcontent, and
his appointment to a position of importance in any manner unfavorable to the
General, it was, no doubt by the very disaffected, who were not disposed to
join the grateful multitude in its enthusiastic admiration and almost
adoration of General Washington who became almost unaccountably popular, with
little of that affability, address, or art which is generally considered
essential to make one a popular hero.  He was brave and prudent and active of
body, but without one great essential in an accomplished commander, namely,
decision; nor was he recommended by much experience.  He was an honest
statesman, though as chief magistrate, deficient in personal suavity and
address. He had sound judgment, and was scarcely rivaled by any one in his
conduct of private affairs.  Without ambition, and probably actuated by a
sincere desire to promote the public weal, his powers of mind were not doubt
ever at their utmost stretch to attain his end.  He seems to have been
ordained by heaven to achieve great things in arms without great military
talents, without great native genius, without classical learning, and with but
little knowledge of the sciences.  He sustained the State he had freed, by his
civil administration.  Without impertinently and maliciously prying into every
recess to detect some venial frailty incident to human nature, as the
slanderous adversaries of Mr. Jefferson have, to their shame, done it may be
said of General Washington that his life and manners were correct and his
morals irreproachable, to judge ordinarily form his general deportment.  He
was distinguished among the gentry of Virginia for punctuality in all his
pecuniary engagements; was of acknowledged probity and honor, to which may be
added that he was pre-eminently discreet in the management of his private
affairs, at all seasons, not only in times of calm, but when his own as well
as the public interests were in jeopardy.  Of a saturnine temperament, he was
reserved and austere, and better endowed by nature and habit for an Eastern
monarch, than a republican general.  

He was as exempt from the great vices and minor merit as a majority of the
frail descendants of our first parents; but, at the same time, it must be
admitted that he was a man of sterling virtues.  It may be objected, perhaps,
that the person who guides the registry pen of this family record, writes
under the influence of prejudice, or some base passion, a suspicion to which
all those who dare to attempt to stem any popular torrent of error and
credulity will be subjected; but it is to be noted that these pages are not
intended and never will be exposed to public inspection, and intended only for
the amusement and, peradventure, the edification of the house of Meade (which
has no pretension to celebrity, but so far from it has been sunk into
obscurity), but more particularly the progeny of the subject of this brief
biography.  The writer indignantly disclaims any affinity to the spirit of
detraction, but he dares to record what he believes upon sufficient grounds to
be the truth, although it should, by gaining credit within a very limited
circle, and there, in opinion, tarnish the romantic luster with which a name
has been varnished by popular belief.  He can have no motive whatever for
detracting from the good qualities and accomplishments which have been
attributed to General Washington.  He surely has not in the foregoing pages
betrayed any disposition to conceal them.  He could not possibly envy his high
fame, for he was conscious that his own powers of mind and very humble
acquirements were of so mean a grade as to render emulation folly in the
extreme.  He was moreover personally acquainted with him at least a dozen
years before the breaking out of the Revolutionary War, and not less so with
the greater part of the worthies who representing Virginia associated with him
in the first and subsequent sessions of Congress, of which number were the
venerable Col. Richard Bland, Mr. P. Randolph, then Attorney General, and
first president of Congress, Mr. Wythe, and Mr. Jefferson; with these,
although much the junior, except of the last, and may others of distinction,
he had lived many years in a reciprocation of fellowship and equality, except
in years, talents and in some cases, of  fortune, and in some, of virtue.  He
is so much of a republican and philosopher, as to claim no political or
physical superiority, or to acknowledge his inferiority on account of power or
pageantry.  He detests envy and detraction, but loves truth.  He rejects the
policy of encouraging false estimates of character and events, by giving them
coloring and varnish, not, perhaps, out of nature, but contrary to fact, and
altogether inapplicable to the subject.  Such a course is useless, improper,
and calculated to generate doubt, and absolutely to destroy the confidence
which we ought to have in the verity of history and biography, which is
necessary to render it greatly useful to posterity, by mending their manners
and morals, and rendering mankind happier through the experience of past
times.  Yet it was thought necessary during the progress of the Revolutionary
War, to the success of it, as indeed there was some reason for believing it
was, that men should appear to have embraced the popular and romantic
sentiment that Heaven had given Washington as a precious, inestimable boon to
America, a man endowed with all the attributes of the hero, preordaining him
for the savior of his country.  Surely no true patriot would, during the
continuance of the war, whatever might have been his real creed, have been so
imprudent as publicly to have controverted the popular sentiment then, but
since the great object of the war has been fully attained, and the whole
generation by which it was achieved nearly passed away, very few individuals
who were agents in the stupendous undertaking now surviving, the obligation
has long ceased to restrain a full expression of sentiment upon the character
of the chief of those agents.  It is, perhaps, a duty we owe to posterity, to
contribute our mite toward elucidating facts which have occurred in our own
time and the observed traits in the characters of famous contemporaries;
private memoirs are generally more faithful records than history and
biographies sanctioned by printing presses and public approbation.  But,
returning to R. K. Meade, a subject more interesting to the writer.  The
history of R. K. Meade’s participation in the Revolutionary War involved an
historical fact, which is probably not to be found in any of the histories of
that war, and exhibits the character of Sir H. Clinton in colors variant from
those in which he was painted by H. Lee, in his memoirs, and in which he was
generally viewed by the public.  During the suspension of Major Andre’s fate,
in the interval between his capture and execution, frequent letters were
exchanged between the two commanders- in-chief , upon the subject of that
accomplished officer’s case.

At this time the American army was occupying different encampments in Jersey,
not remote from the city of New York, where were the chief British forces
under the commander-in-chief.  The American General, watching with more than
ordinary solicitude the movements at New York, as an expedition was
apprehended from thence up the North River against West Point, and it was of
the highest importance that General Washington should receive correct
information of the destination oof the armament then preparing in New York,
also the moment it should sail.  In this state of things at the American camp,
the unfortunate Andre then had his trial and condemnation as a spy, and R. K.
Meade was sent with a flag and a letter directed to Sir Henry Clinton,
commander-in-chief of the British army in New York.   A blunt, ingenuous,
honest-hearted lieutenant of the navy was sent to receive the flag and the
letter.  The lieutenant, upon receiving the letter and looking at the
superscription, pronounced without hesitation or reflection that it was not
directed properly for General Ralston, not Clinton, commanded in New York, by
which he disclosed a secret which General Washington considered of the utmost
importance to him.  General Washington moved with the army, or a considerable
detachment, first up the North River, immediately after the return of the
conference of the British lieutenant of the navy and R. K. Meade.  The honest
lieutenant, with much appearance of feeling, several times repeated his
inquiries of R. K. Meade, whether he thought they would hang Major Andre.
“And will they?” says he, repeating the question for the second or third time,
“hang that d---d fine fellow Andre?”  And being reluctantly answered in the
affirmative, after a pause and as sigh:  “Well then,” says he, “if you do hang
Andre, the world will know what a d—d blockhead Sir Harry Clinton is.”  

R. K Meade left the army before the peace of Paris in 1783, and settled
permanently in Frederick County, State of Virginia, where he spent and
agricultural and very retired life, beloved by all who were acquainted with
him, esteemed and respected by his neighbors and every one that had ever heard
of his worth.  The gout had been long his principal complaint, but had been
confined to his extremities; at length it assaulted his vitals, and on the---
day---of 1781, his decease deprived his family of the best husband, parent and
master that was ever born in this world.  Three sons and four daughters were
the fruit of his second marriage with the widow of Wm. Randolph.  Her maiden
name was Mary Grymes, the daughter of Benjamin Grymes.  His first wife was
Elizabeth Randolph, daughter of the first Richard Randolph of Curles, in
Henrico County, and aunt to John Randolph, who has much distinguished himself
in public life.  

This may be a proper place here in the family record to notice the other
brothers of David Meade, the primary subject of it.  Everard Meade, the third
son of his father, as well as the two older, spent a considerable part of his
minority at school in England, and returned to Virginia about the year 1764.
When not quite eighteen years of age he clandestinely formed a hymeneal
connection with Mary Thornton, abou this own age, the daughter of a gentleman
who was a member of a numerous and very respectable family, by which wife he
had tow sons and a daughter, who died before him.  He afterwards married the
widow of Benjamin Ward, by who he had two sons, and deceased.  His widow is
yet living, January 7, 1820.  Andrew the fourth brother, died, leaving a
widow, a most estimable woman, the daughter of Buckner Stith of Brownswick,
with two sons and three daughters.  John, the fifth son, deceased a minor,
being about seventeen years old, 1772.  

David Meade, the subject of this record, having resided at Maycox, in Prince
George County, for twenty-two years, removed in the summer of 1796 to the now
State of Kentucky, having landed with a numerous family from boats at
Limestown, now Maysville, on the morning of the 4th of July, and permanently
settled on a small tract of land previously purchased by his eldest son,
David, at the head spring of Jessamine Creek, a lateral branch of the Kentucky
River, then Fayette (now Jessamine) County, being a portion of the former
taken from it in 1797.  The name of Jessamine was derived from that of an
unfortunate girl, the daughter of a Scotch-man, a staymaker in the then
capital of Virginia, who became a patentee of a tract of land lying at the
head of a lateral branch of the Kentucky, having on it a copious spring, which
from his daughter’s name he called Jessamine Spring, which gave name to the
creek from which the county was named.  Such was the origin of the name of the
fertile county of Jessamine  the unfortune Jesse (or Jessamine) Douglas whom
remorse and a laudable sense of shame for having yielded to the importunities
of her lover, prompted to commit suicide.  

At the precise period of recording this, he, David Meade, has resided in
tranquil retirement thirty years with a numerous household, at his seat of
Chaumiere des Prairies, where his days have been engaged in the wholesome and
agreeable, and, he trusts, innocent occupation of the improvement of his
grounds after the mode of horticulture, calculated more to please the eye,
than to result in the acquirement of what the world generally deems the more
substantial goods of life. 

Thus ends the Autobiography of David Meade II. The story of David Meade II's
life in Virginia and Kentucky, as well as observations of some of our founding
fathers comprises about half of the book, edited by Henry Peet in 1883,
titled, "The Chaumiere Papers, Containing Matters of Interest to the
Descendants of David Meade, of Nansemond County, VA." My fifth great-
grandfather was David Meade II, who went from British subject to American
citizen during his lifetime. 


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