Becoming Americans

by Donald Batchelor

  "Rest, husband. I'll go find Friend Shaw," Anne said, and dried her tears. She must let go of her grief, for the moment, and do what she could to save the family.

  Charles Shaw was sitting on a stump by the Creek's edge. He was trying to talk to Sarah Alice, but the child was frightened, and pulled away to cling to Lucy's apron. Anne saw him and rushed over, shaken by her anger. How dare the disgusting old man be playing with her daughter when the child's father lay near death? Why couldn't it be Charles Shaw who was dying!

  Shaw saw her coming and stood up. The Quaker didn't remove his hat, of course. Anne wanted to slap him.

  "Friend Shaw, my husband wishes to speak with you."

  "With me?" the man asked, in surprise.

  Anne wanted to laugh in his face to ridicule the lisp. She wanted to hurt him. To hurt somebody! She strained to be nice to him. It was an effort not to scream and lose her mind.

  "With you, Friend Shaw. Would you come?" She led him into the hot, dank house.

  Anne hadn't realized how hot it was inside the house. She couldn't open the windows, or leave the door ajar—there'd be a draft—but she stood over Richard, and gently waved the feathers of a turkey wing to stir the air.

  "Shaw." Richard's voice was weak.

  "Yeth, Withamth," were the sounds Shaw made with his thick tongue.

  "I'm dying, Shaw. I must make arrangements for my widow and children."

  "God's will be done," Shaw said.

  Anne's grip tightened on the old turkey wing and snapped the dried bone inside.

  "I leave a debt that could make them homeless. You can prevent their ruin, Friend."

  "I'm not a rich man, Williams. Thee knows that for a fact," Shaw spoke defensively.

  "But, in a year you could pay my widow's debt and have my three hundred acres on this side of Deep Creek. "

  Shaw was land-hungry, and he'd approached Richard before about that land. He'd complained that Caswell, and not he, had gotten the other three hundred acres.

  "My widow will be alone and in need. She will be forever grateful, of that I'm sure," Richard said.

  Anne stopped fanning. Richard was offering her hand to the old man! Never! Never! But she must remain calm.

  Quickly, and with few words, the men agreed that, within a year of Richard's death, Shaw would pay the four thousand pipe staves and twelve barrels of tar to his widow, in exchange for those three hundred acres. With the arrangements made, Anne ushered Shaw back outside. She returned to the bedside and sat, finally releasing her fear and anger in torrents of tears and sobs. Richard had no strength to comfort her, as he lay in silence and fading awareness.

  John arrived soon thereafter with William Porten and John Ferebee. Richard revived to tell of the sale terms with Shaw; they would be included in the will. He parceled out his land and his cows and pigs to his children, making Anne his executrix until the youngest child came of age, and giving her the use of the manor house until her death or re-marriage.

  Porten made notes as Richard rambled, then drew up the formal document. Richard made his mark, and his John Biggs, Thomas Nash, and Charles Shaw signed or made their marks as witnesses.

  Anne and Richard were left alone. She was past exhaustion, but sat on the bed, wiping his hot forehead with damp clothes, praying for him and for herself.

  The effort with the men had drained him; now, the pain had a pureness about it. He was beyond pain, and his mind was being led places. He was with Uncle Edward, back in Bristol, the night his uncle had talked of America. Fortunes made in the New World. Richard was to learn farming, to have acres of riches in the popular weed. Adventure! Opeechcot stood tall, grunting in satisfaction at the slow death of the last of those who'd stolen his land.

  "You cursed us," Richard said to the Indian. "From the beginning we were pursued by your spirits."

  "The spirits curse you with tobacco," the savage said. "You stole our sacred plant and killed the trees to grow it. You kill the land for it. Now the land will feed on you."

  Uncle John embraced the boy, John, and Uncle Edward's sons were holding Edward. There was no Joseph to look after his namesake. There'd be no Richard to look after his.

  Chapter Thirteen

  From the nights of late August through the middle of September 1682, a fierce omen lit the sky; a ball and streak of fire the length of which could not be hidden by a fist held at arm's length. To the stricken Williams family, it was a mourner's torch.

  The Year of the Comet was as terrible for the Williamses as was 1667, the Year of the Hurricane. It was hard to accept that, for others, 1682 was a good year. The "cutting" had been effective in bringing higher prices for what remained of the tobacco crop. The fact that their personal actions had effected circumstances was the subject of much talk and speculation.

  Richard Williams died in June. Word was hailed to Uncle John's shallop as it carried him back to Middlesex from the Thorowgoods, and he headed back to Deep Creek and a three-day stay at the modest Williams manor. He revealed his plan for John to eventually become manager of Aunt Mary's property during the incapacity of his own son, Thomas. The frail patriarch asked that Anne agree to let the boy visit often to begin the training. Anne was too numb to be pleased for her son. She only knew that, then, she desperately needed her oldest boy at home.

  Very little commerce passed in the days just after the tumultuous cuttings and riots of 1682. Black crepe was, necessarily, borrowed to drape around the manor and over the oxcart. Anne brought out the heavy black veil she'd worn during mourning for Grandmother and Grandfather Ware, but no mourning gloves were available to distribute to friends, and no mourning rings could be purchased. With Anne's uncertainty as to her ability to survive Richard's debts, his funeral was on a smaller scale than Richard, probably—and certainly, his son John or Uncle John—would have liked.

  Anne cut long curls from Richard's hair before the coffin lid was shut. These precious remnants would become cherished momentos. She gave a length of hair to Uncle John. The old man wept as he held the lockets of his long-dead brother's fine, blonde, baby hair; of the nephew's matching baby hair; and the dark, curly lock from the corpse.

  Barely three weeks later, the family in Deep Creek was delivered a packet and news from Middlesex County. Uncle John, himself, was dead. A lock of his white hair was wrapped in black crepe, a token from the widowed Mary Williams.

  One night in September—after the fire in the sky had passed—Anne gathered her children around the hearth. For months, she'd quietly plaited rings and bracelets from their father's hair as gifts to friends and relatives; to Aunt Mary, she'd sent an intricate bracelet of Richard's black hair, interwoven with the white of Uncle John's. That work of grief complete, the black veil was thrown back from her forehead.

  Would they have their mother sold to Charles Shaw, she asked? Her father still insisted that she marry Shaw, and neither he nor his wife had offered help to the recalcitrant daughter.

  Anne's sons were hesitant.

  John spoke of the dignity of marriage to Shaw.

  "He's not a bad man," John reminded her. "You'll have great status in the community."

  Joseph spoke of fear for Edy and the younger children. "What future can they have, landless?"

  Edy said nothing, nor did Edward. Richard pleaded for his mother not to marry the old man. Anne always remembered that. She continued to say no.

  "I will not marry him!" Anne insisted to Captain Ingolbreitsen when the Captain returned in 1683, having spent a year making deals in the luxury of rich Barbados. He sailed up Deep Creek seeking his friend Richard and the payment of four thousand pipe staves, twelve barrels of tar, and smaller, miscellaneous debts. The staves and tar were already promised in Barbados.

  Anne and John explained Richard's plan to the Captain, and of Shaw's original intention to purchase the land to provide the staves and tar. But Shaw backed out of the agreement when Anne persisted in refusing his proposal of marriage. Certainly, she would not pretend that she had "seen th
e Light" and become a Quaker. Shaw claimed that it had been his firm understanding that this necessary conversion for marriage was part of his arrangement with her dying husband.

  But, Captain Ingolbreitsen reluctantly persisted. He had pressures of his own, and some payment must be made. She might sell Augustus, he suggested. Strong, seasoned slaves demanded a great price. In addition, Ingolbreitsen urged Anne to redouble her efforts to sell the land for the contracted staves and tar. The surplus from the sale of Augustus would only get her through another year.

  "The debt is owed, it will be paid," John assured the Captain. And, indeed, by the time of Captain Ingolbreitsen's visit the next spring, Anne—as executrix of Richard's estate—had sold those three hundred acres to the brash Major John Nichols, who had Ingolbreitsen's pipe staves and tar waiting on the wharf by the Great Bridge. Richard's debt was satisfied, and Anne was left with the one hundred acres of land at the head of Deep Creek where the manor house and outbuildings sat; land enough to keep them fed and clothed, but not land for a future.

  Three hard years followed. In the spring of 1686 Anne gave-in to the pressures from her father and from Sarah, and to the subtle pressures from her oldest sons and a daughter who, at age sixteen, was needful of a dowry. Two years quitrents had gone unpaid; another year and the Crown would reclaim the land. There were no other options.

  Anne Williams sat in the long silence of the next Friend's Meeting before she spoke, convincingly, of her conversion. She wed Charles Shaw and began to resent her family for the sacrifice. She cried at the wedding, but they were tears of frustration, resignation, and relief. John Biggs wept at the ceremony, too. His were tears of joy.

  Anne's marriage to Shaw was a large Quaker affair. Even Uncle Timothy, who had recently wed the widow of Nansemond's County Clerk and moved—or fled for a final time—to Virginia, was there. His preoccupation, then, was in pursuing claims for inherited property of his wife's that had been seized by Carolina's Governor Sothel.

  It was a new experience, ruling a man. Charles Shaw thrived when her initial coldness turned to contempt and rage. He did her bidding—he was anxious for her bidding—but she loathed him. She drank great amounts of her whorled loosestrife-and-wine potion before the wedding night. The marriage had to be consummated, but she would have no knowledge or memory of the act. It would not happen again.

  Charles Shaw's bride insisted immediately after the wedding that the house be enlarged. A daughter-in-law—the former Catherine Dean—had moved in when John, too, was wed in '86 and, although that young couple would be moving to Middlesex County when John reached his majority, Joseph, also, was engaged to wed and would be bringing his bride home. Shaw agreed to build another room, but of simple, log construction. Still, after John and Catherine left for Middlesex, the house had two mistresses when Joseph brought his wife, Mary, there in 1687. A shed was added to the length of the house in the rear, giving some added space for the eight people.

  Anne's husband, although he was the brunt of private jokes, was regarded as a martyred hero by the Quaker community: spiritual nobility. Anne felt like a martyr in that marriage; but—and surely, God works his wonders in mysterious ways, she knew—within two years—in 1688—the Quaker, Charles Shaw, was dead and underground. His death was soon followed by that of Anne's troublesome Quaker uncle, Timothy, and that of her willful stepmother, Sarah. Sarah Biggs and her oldest, sweet, son Jabez, both died from a fever that swept the county, killing slaves, the old, and the weak. Sarah and Jabez came down with it while tending to their neighbors' Negroes.

  The first thought in Anne's head when she heard that awful news was, "just desserts," Sarah being openly and willfully opposed to the institution of slavery as she was. Sarah had even prevailed upon John Biggs to free his slave, Molly! Anne prayed forgiveness for the vengeful thought, but as to that point, God's will was that these Africans be baptized and put to use! Increasing numbers of ships loaded with Africans were arriving in Virginia. Maybe God had finally taken payment for Sarah's willfulness. The courts were persecuting willful women in New England!

  With Shaw gone, Anne was freed of the dull clothes and the showy "theeing and thouing." She was welcomed back by her Anglican friends, while her Father mourned and pleaded with her to come to meeting, or to let some Quaker women "sit with her" until the Light returned. The relationship with her father cooled again.

  ***

  Anne cried at her third wedding, too, but the tears lit happy eyes. She felt like a fourteen-year-old bride, not a forty-year-old. James Fewox made her beautiful and free. But, when she wed Fewox, her father and the other Biggses stood in stony silence. John Biggs and his Quaker family held back, apart from Anne and her children, as though she weren't his blood. He stood with his and Sarah's children: John, Thomas, Katherine, Elizabeth, Phoebe, Dorothy, and Jean.

  The couple slowly paraded past the assemblage in their matching finery; finery that raised questions in many minds. Who was this James Fewox that had so suddenly appeared and wooed the new Widow Shaw, placing her back into colorful and vain clothes, even giving her a feathered fan with a looking-glass for a wedding present?

  James Fewox had given Anne the wedding dress, too. It had belonged to his late wife. The dress and his suit were first worn when that couple attended a ball given by Lord Culpeper when he returned to govern Virginia, late in the Year of the Comet. It was only worn once, for James's wife, too, had died in 1682. To Anne, that was a sign, she said, and she loved him more. Six years later, the dress was still splendid. The first Mistress Fewox had been a larger woman than was Anne. That allowed for alterations to update it. The extra material was cut and sewn as fashionable ruffles at the top of her chemise, draping over the low-cut bodice. Ruffles of the same brocade were sewn to the hem of her lemon-colored petticoat. At the elbows, loose ruffles sewn to the bodice sleeve fell below her elbows, hiding the plain sleeves of the chemise. The long-waisted bodice was fastened down the length with lemon-colored ribbon-knots. Anne beamed, knowing that she was beautiful to James. She looked to her father as she and James paraded. Her Quaker father smiled love, and her eyes filled. She wished her father had shown his love when she needed it.

  John Biggs didn't look at the groom, but James Fewox caught the women's eyes and turned their heads. No one guessed his age within ten years. Fewox was still a determined cavalier. He'd borrowed a gentleman's great periwig that towered on his head, parted in the middle, with clusters of powdered curls falling over the front of each shoulder. This new, grand periwig updated his dress to some degree, even though his coat and vest hung nearly straight to below the knees—almost no shaping at the waist. From one of the low, flapped pockets there drooped a scarlet handkerchief, and from the other stuck a silver comb, which accompanied the borrowed wig. James held to the fashion of tying his cravat at the neck and fastening it with a ribbon bow. These clothes—and the dress Anne wore—were left from a more prosperous time. Still, they were among the bestdressed in the church.

  "Fewox's suit dates back before the comet," John whispered in a sneer to Joseph, when the couple passed.

  John Williams knew the latest fashion; felt it to be part of his duty as manager of an estate and manor such as his Aunt Mary's. John's coat was fitted to the waist, skirts full and stiffened, but gathered into pleats in a fan-shaped form from buttons on the hips. Two slits in the skirt, one at each hip, flared the unbuttoned coat. The brocade vest beneath was buttoned from the neck to the waist and, thus revealed, fell nearly to the hem of the coat.

  John Biggs, his children, and their Quaker friends had stood about the yard in sad-colored clumps of russet, brown, or gray. The suits of the men remained in the style of the late King Charles II, their drab, cloth doublets shaped like the former king's silken coat. Their low-crowned, broad-brimmed hats were neither trimmed nor cocked. The Quaker women were only slightly less restrained than their men, but it was a drabness and point of contention from which Anne was glad to be rid. The clothes she had remaining from her Quaker ma
rriage were serviceable and well made though, as was the furniture.

  From the first, John and Joseph knew more about the man, Fewox, than anyone did, but they'd kept closed-mouthed outside the family. John had reported to Joseph and his mother of the man's reputation in Middlesex County, where Fewox had lived until six months before the wedding.

  Fewox was about the same age as their father would have been, maybe a little older. He'd come to Virginia in 1655 with two brothers, all unwilling to live in the zealous Commonwealth. The oldest Fewox brother had done well, and returned to England after the death of Charles II and the succession of the King's brother, James II. The youngest Fewox brother had died of the flux, leaving substantial debts to his London factor, who—after the elaborate funeral costs had been settled—sold his plantation to the Randolph family. James Fewox had prospered, thanks to the dowry and inheritance of his first wife. This unfortunate woman had died delivering a stillborn girl, leaving their son Robert in the hands of James and a revolving set of servants which the father won and lost. In his first six months in Lower Norfolk, Robert Fewox and Anne Shaw's son, Richard Williams, became fast friends.