Becoming Americans

by Donald Batchelor

  He re-arranged the pelts beneath his head and wondered why he'd forgotten to speak of his daughters to Uncle John. Maybe, because this was a man's rough country, and Richard was proud of his healthy sons. Sons who would prove themselves, and would build on the wealth and reputation he intended to bequeath. Maybe, it was because his daughters were too special to him: touched him in a tender place he hadn't known existed until they came. The death of Mary, last year, had been a blow that still opened up a hole when he lingered on the thought. The boy they lost had been born dead—bless its tortured soul. At the time, Richard was determined to find the witch who'd cursed his seed. But Anne had calmed him and denied the existence of a curse. It was the stars, she revealed, because the child had been conceived on a night the northeast sky was bombarded with stars that raced through the heavens. She'd heard of many strange results of the stars that night. Anne had always been like the older, wiser one in their marriage.

  Uncle John was only partly right about Anne, though. She'd mended his clothes, but she'd not mended his ways. Uncle John thought that men's ways could be changed. Richard had seen no evidence of it in his life.

  Uncle John was impressed with Richard's new life—as Richard had described it. What would he ask young Joseph? What would Joseph innocently give away? The boy couldn't speak directly of the early years.

  Of when a hundred people or more had crowded into John Biggs's house on his daughter's wedding day.

  Richard could remember his, otherwise, modest father-in-law retelling the story to visitors over the years. His father-in-law displayed a merciful nature in not recalling the ending of that day's celebrations.

  Pigs, chicken, geese, and even a steer had been slaughtered for the wedding feast. Tables were scattered abut the near garden and down between two fingers of the clear, dark-amber creek.

  Grandfather Ware had sent his cook to help the new Sarah Biggs prepare the meal. Sarah Hodges, when widowed, was almost immediately wed to Anne's father. Grandmother Ware's receipt was used for the punch:

  "Three jugs of beer.

  "Three jugs of brandy.

  "Three pounds of sugar.

  "Some nutmegs and cinnamon.

  "Mix well together and when the sugar is melted, drink."

  But, Edward and the Birkenhead boy—who gave Anne and Richard a handsome pewter charger—doubled the brandy portion in the second batch of punch, resulting in near-riotous imbibers.

  Richard didn't remember the incident, but he was reported to have given very harsh words to Mister Ware for that man's own consumption, and for transmission to Richard's Uncle John.

  The Birkenhead girl fell into the creek.

  Mister Ware turned an ankle.

  Edward would always bear the scar he earned in a knife fight with a local youth, that night.

  Anne had been so beautiful that the memory of her made Richard sit up amidst the furs, and squeeze his eyes to hold onto the vision before he lay back and nestled underneath the pelts.

  Chapter Eight

  Anne was awakened by the emptiness in her bed, but then remembered Richard had taken Joseph and gone off to James Town with the pelts. She turned to reach for the baby—stirring with his pre-dawn hunger—but she rose, instead, to place dry wood on the embers, then returned to bed to hold the baby, Richard, to her breast.

  Anne embraced these early hours with a nursing child. These minutes were to warm her heart and plan her day. Today was soap-day, but she'd planned for that way earlier in the week. She knew she'd need busy-work for today that would be successful and rewarding. She knew she'd be lonely for her husband and for Joseph, and she knew that she'd be worrying about her father. Loneliness was part of woman's work; men were bound to tend their traps or hunt, or to go for militia drills, or to just get drunk. But no more would she worry about the loose women of James Town. Richard had sworn to her "never again" and anyway, Joseph was with his father.

  She lay the sleeping child on the bed beside her and peered through the morning glow to her other sleeping children.

  John, the oldest, was snoring in the loft he shared this night with her third son, Edward. Edward had insisted on taking the absent Joseph's place. Edy, her cherished daughter, lay by the bed, clutching at the corn-husk doll she'd not let go of since baby-sister Mary died the year before.

  A knot tightened in Anne's stomach as she recalled the tortuous and prolonged death of her daughter, named by her for the mother she'd never known. The knot rose to her throat when she thought of the possibilities the Court might present to her father on this day in James Town.

  John Biggs lost some friends, and some doors of influence had been closed to him on the day he entered Norfolk Courthouse and failed to remove his hat. It was open declaration of his total conversion. A Quaker doffed his hat to no one but God; considered all his equal—men and women—whom general society ranked above or below themselves according to birth, of course, or to wealth. Anne had heard that there were Quakers who refused to own slaves! She found that thought troublesome and tiresome. Why would her father and these Dissenters go to such lengths and efforts to be controversial and extreme! They were most ostentatious in their dress. Both their men and women were creating a separate fashion of plainness. Their clothes were of the same cut as others, following the general lines of King Charles's thigh-length coats and broadbrimmed hats, but they were devoid of color, ribbons, feathers or unnecessary buttons. The dull grays and browns stood out in any crowd. The Friends insistence on returning to the "thee"s and "thou"s of her grandparent's childhood was, again, almost insulting. The increased courtliness and manners of recent decades—including the general usage of the plural "you"—were some of the few improvements introduced by those of her father's age. Most of that generation was a wild lot, though, and Grandfather Ware still complained that they didn't seem to get much better as they aged.

  She wasn't one of them. She never had been. Richard was. All of his friends were. She wasn't, and her children weren't. Already she could sense an attitude in her older boys that was more like her own. They were serious children who looked forward to—and expected—a future of hard work that would be fulfilling and rewarding. They were level-headed. John could cipher and was helping her to teach the younger ones. He and Joseph made their own traps, and had nine pelts of their own in the pile that would be sold today.

  Today was the General Court. The living legend, Old Governor Berkeley, and his Council would decide her father's fate. When King Charles II had come to the throne sixteen years earlier, he'd started off by freeing seven hundred Quakers, but his Parliament wouldn't allow such tolerance, and passed the Conventicle Act in 1664, making it illegal for five or more persons to gather for worship in any form other than that of the Church of England. Virginia's Assembly had made its own laws for suppressing Quakers. Any ship captain caught transporting them was fined one hundred pounds. Richard told Anne that Captain Ingolbreitsen had forfeited his three years income from a ship to maintain his reputation. In addition, fines were levied for non-attendance at church, for unlawful assemblies and a reward of one-half the two-thousand pound fine for non-baptismal of children was given to the informant. Only six months earlier, the General Court had fined her father for that offense to the Crown.

  Most likely, the Court would fine her father again, and possibly, confine him for a few hours in the stocks—an uncomfortable and humiliating position for such a respected man as her father. But that would be better than the cruel treatment in jail that had cost the lives of other Friends.

  Anne's emotions returned to anger at her stepmother Sarah. This woman had brought Quakers into her father's house.

  Sarah Hodges Biggs had been converted by her first husband, and had risen to a position of some respect in her religious community. She hosted Quaker meetings in the home. George Fox, himself, their very founder, had spoken in the house when he passed through on the Carolina leg of his American trip in 1673. Anne blamed Sarah for that visit which had "revealed the light" to her fa
ther. Sarah was a frequent speaker at Friends meetings. The prominence of women in the sect was scandalous to most people, and the idea that her own step-mother….

  Anne stopped herself in mid-thought. Stepmother Biggs had been more than kind to her. It was Sarah who had proclaimed Richard a hero when he arrived in Lower Norfolk County to claim Anne's hand. Sarah Biggs talked to, and at, her husband until the man relented and announced the engagement of his daughter, Anne, to the new planter, Richard Williams.

  Young Richard had arrived to mixed reactions. Knowledge of his part in the smuggling of tobacco and Quakers was widespread. He was both scoundrel and hero.

  The people of Lower Norfolk and Nansemond Counties seldom spoke violently against their numerous Quaker neighbors. These two counties were the most heavily penetrated by the people who called themselves the Society of Friends. Many of these dissenters were wealthy, and their universal reputation for honest dealings made them reliable tools and allies, on occasion.

  No one dared speak too loudly of tobacco smuggling, either. Nearly all of the planters had made attempts to escape the tobacco tax. It was necessary, of course, to publicly condemn such things, but not so loudly as to draw attention. At a recent militia parade, Anne had sarcastically requested that her servant fetch the pot-pourri, when a leading planter declaimed on the "profane disrespect" to His Majesty by the smugglers.

  So, when Richard Williams—at the tender age of twenty years—arrived a free man, bearing his six servants—and the resulting three hundred acres—he was welcomed to the Southern Branch community. With Anne Biggs's handsome dowry, Richard Williams was a potential force. Anne was proud of her new husband. Even now, she looked back on those first years with pride and flickering hope for more years like them.

  She stepped from the bed onto the dirt floor. Soon spring, then summer, would be here, and the damp floor would feel good to her feet.

  ***

  Richard and George Dawes stood by the fire that dried a hollow in the fog that rose and drifted from the river.

  "Tomorrow, Tuesday, will be business; today, I deal with family affairs. Meantime, keep your ears open to the rumors goin' 'round. I'll want to know where we'll get our best prices for them pelts, and you might listen for more about the stirrings against Governor Berkeley. From what I can recall of last night's mood, there may be serious trouble ahead, and we'll need to know if Lower Norfolk will be touched. Where does Captain Carver stand?" He'd like to know where his powerful neighbor stood before he said too much himself.

  George grunted.

  "It's the first day of General Court, and James Town is filled with planters and trappers from up the rivers. They, I think, are the most aggrieved by His Excellency's inaction with regards the Indians."

  "They wouldn't like another man any better, would they, now?" George Dawes said. "Not unless he'd lead them out against the savages and wipe them out. Any trouble they bring on won't touch us, I think. It's the greedy frontiersmen who want more land to lord over, isn't it? Neither Lower Norfolk nor Nansemond have to fear the Indians."

  "No, but we've more taxes to fear if militias are called out to fight," Richard said as he walked off. "And don't get too drunk to guard our pelts," he added.

  Richard walked beneath the budding mulberry trees, along the Great Road by the river, then turned right onto one of the short streets leading to the Back Street.

  This had been the "New Town" for nearly fifty years. It was here that most of the substantial, brick houses were being built—at the insistence of Governor and King—in hopes of creating a city, whereby trade and taxes might be better controlled. Most Virginians weren't enthusiastic about the idea, and certainly, there were numerous places better suited for human habitation than this mosquito-infested, low-lying island with unhealthy wells. Lower Norfolk County had deeper rivers and sweet water.

  Mulberry trees lined this street, too. They were another example of the various and repeated attempts by the Governor—at the prodding of King Charles—to diversify the crops and industry of the colony. Governor Berkeley had planted these trees in his first term, before the Commonwealth time, when he'd begun pressing for silk production. But the planters clung to tobacco as their mainstay, and the life of Virginia was centered around a weed that King James had once tried to outlaw. Taxes and minister's salaries were paid in tobacco. Wealth was tobacco. Power, success were tobacco.

  Richard wanted it. He wanted it, and he knew he couldn't have it. His land was not tobacco land. With the new acreage he'd get on this trip, he could farm for, maybe, ten more years. Probably five. Five years to come up with the way to make his fortune and to provide for his Virginia children. Uncle John would be telling Joseph of the richness of plantation life. Plantation life in sweet-scented Gloucester County.

  The fire was roaring at Goodwife Henderson's ordinary when Richard entered. Uncle John and Joseph were already quaffing their morning ale.

  "Poppa!" Joseph called to him. The abandoned son of last evening was grinning ear to ear.

  "Poppa, Uncle John took me to the church this morning! It's beautiful, and it looks so old. And then he took me by the State House where Grandfather's trial will be and we went down to where they were building the fort, and he showed me the cemetery where all those first settlers are buried, and we…."

  "Wait!" Richard pleaded. "Might we start with, 'Good morning?'"

  "Good morning, Nephew. It pleases me greatly to see your boy take such interest in the early days of Virginia, and how we are building. He says he wants to build, too. Didn't you, Boy?"

  "Yes, Poppa! Good morning, Poppa. Yes! I want Lower Norfolk to have fine buildings and streets. Uncle John said the future of Virginia is up to the children."

  "That it is, my son. And it's a good thing it's so," Richard said. "We adults have had little time to think of the future of Virginia, these last twenty-five or thirty years."

  "Nephew, I was expecting to see you in the church, this morning, praying for your father-in-law."

  "That might be a little odd, Uncle, praying with a priest for protection of a Quaker. I'd better place my words and money with Harry Edwards, the informer," Richard said.

  "The informer?"

  When his uncle asked the question, Richard knew he had over-spoken. But, so what?

  "Edwards informed on my father-in-law in last June's session of the Court. Edwards was given half the hefty fine assessed Father Biggs for not having his youngest children baptized."

  "Poor little souls." Uncle John's hand went to his chest.

  "Those noisy little souls are my in-laws, Uncle, and good playmates to my children." Richard spoke with a touch of anger.

  "I'm sorry, Richard. I've no personal quarrel with these people. Indeed, they're very few of them in my county. But I've lived to see how extremes of religious differences can sunder a community of brothers and neighbors. We are blessed, here in Virginia, with little of it, but our home in England has been torn apart repeatedly in my own lifetime in disputes with Catholics, Puritans, and all the little foppish sects that come and go. In truth, a man may risk his soul to damnation, for all I care, but why must they be so silly and persistent in their arrogance!"

  "I'm sure I don't know, Uncle. " Richard looked for the serving wench to bring his tankard.

  "Poppa, some men were in here before you came. They were talking about a war against the Indians. Will we have a war, Poppa?" Joseph asked. "Will they slay us as they did in the old days?"

  "I don't know, Son. What say you to that, Uncle?" He waved at the girl to bring him drink.

  "I pray not," his uncle said.

  "Your Uncle John prays not, Joseph. Our Lord Governor prays not. Still, many people, maybe most, are praying that there will be war. I think even the Indians are praying for that. We'll soon see whose prayers will be answered. Anyway, there's no reason for us to worry, down in Lower Norfolk."

  A silence fell over the table as the two men caught themselves falling into a path of conversation and passion th
at neither wanted to pursue. Talk returned to the wonders Joseph was experiencing, and his two family members watched parts of themselves and of their loved ones appearing in the child's face and mannerisms.

  Then the Williamses walked from Goodwife Henderson's up the Back Street, then over to the Great Road past the cemetery, to the State House.

  Richard could see why Joseph was impressed. The State House, and the four large, brick houses it adjoined, stretched on for well over two hundred feet, facing southward over respected ruins of the earliest settlement, then looked down to the river. The line of heavy brick walls rose for two full stories and was topped by a steep, gabled roof of slate. This southern face looked out with windows of diamond-paned glass that sparkled as the rising sun reflected from the James. Tall brick chimneys flanked a two-story north wing of the Courthouse, while tall, center chimneys punctuated the wider, adjacent houses. The State House and two of the residences had tower-like porches with upstairs rooms. To Joseph it was grand. To Richard and his uncle, the sight was a reminder of sights they'd seen on many streets of Bristol. They saw their past. Joseph dreamed of the future.