Becoming Americans

by Donald Batchelor

  The Church people in Chowan and Currituck, along with scattered, likethinkers in the other precincts, began to tire of being regulated by a Quakerdominated Assembly. Now the threat grew worse, as the Friends had growing numbers of allies in these new settlers who were meeting and plotting. There were scattered meeting houses for dissenters and Quakers, but still no Anglican Church.

  For their seven years of indenture, James and Anne Fewox lived in a log cabin that was fifteen feet square. There was no window, and the door opened north, giving sight to a dreary, moss-laden cypress standing at the edge of a black juniper swamp.

  "Swamp rat," Anne often thought. She'd spent most of her life living within smelling-distance of a swamp. Only at Ware Manor was the dry smell of freshturned sod undiluted by the musky smell or rotting vegetation. She arrived in Bath County subdued and withdrawn, recovering from the attack of melancholia and that horrible year of 1696. She entered her barren years sitting in the dark cabin, pondering sad thoughts and memories.

  But the seven years passed quickly for the old couple, and by the time their contract was filled, in 1704, Anne Fewox felt younger than she had in a decade. True to his word, William Glover—now Acting Governor—made their old land along the Scuppernong River available, and she returned, with James and Robert, to their collapsing hut.

  Anne's youngest son, Richard, was married to the beautiful Jean Fortescue, the daughter of a French Huguenot settler. They and their one daughter, Elizabeth, had lived near the Fewoxes in Bath County. Richard had turned from cooperage to join the growing and profitable production of tar.

  John was still in Middlesex, although he sometimes visited Albemarle for business. The Dean land came to him—through his wife—when the whole Dean family was taken by the yellow fever. John and Catherine Williams had only the one sickly boy, William, and John had "a desperate air about him," James had told Anne.

  Joseph and Mary had finally given her healthy grandsons. James, a name thought to please Anne, was born in 1700, and Stephen, named for a grandfather of his mother, was born the next year. Anne had given the parents her dower rights to Deep Creek. She had to see her grandchildren. Family was all there was in life, she'd decided.

  Edy sailed into and out of their lives when she was with Carman aboard his ship. When Carman anticipated a particularly long or perilous voyage, he brought Anne's beloved daughter home to her.

  Edward, Anne's pet, had married Pathelia Dobbins from Chowan County and had bought land west of Fewox's on the Scuppernong. He was waiting when his mother returned to Bull bay.

  Sarah Alice had disappeared into the world of the Virginia elite. She had remarried, into the Harrison family this time, and had moved to Surry County. No one had heard from her in Carolina, but John had reported that she was quite the grand hostess.

  Life was, finally, good for Anne. She lived simply and had no ambitions. James arranged some occasional gaming, but they subsisted with the furs he and Robert trapped, and the payments he received from pirates returning to haul their keels in the Scuppernong. Food was plentiful. She felt safe. James had stopped gambling, but she saw him for what he was. At least, she was back on land she could lay some claim to, and the morning sun rose on her face, again.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sarah Alice Harrison sat in her coach at Williamsburgh's College Creek Landing. Dappled shade fell from a tall poplar tree. It's supple, new leaves rustled like the green damask of her dress. She peered up into the branches, looking for the bird whose droppings had just spotted her driver.

  Joseph's boat should be arriving soon. She knew how early he'd have been up and about, and Major Dorsey had told her how long it ought take to sail from Deep Creek to Williamsburgh's James River access on College Creek. The elegant Mistress Harrison was pleasantly anxious. She seldom saw her brother Joseph. She did see John, on occasion, at large gatherings of Virginia's great planters; John was still manager for their ancient Great-aunt Mary. But Joseph—although doing very well for himself, Sarah Alice was proud to say—was not of the Harrison's planter class. She'd never met his nine-year old son Stephen before, but she was curious to see another result of union between her well-deserving brother and the swamp-woman, Mary. Amazingly, the boy's older brother, James—whom she'd met a year earlier—seemed untainted by that "swamp blood." She preferred her brother John's little dandy, William.

  Sarah Alice recognized the tilted head of her brother as his small boat slid alongside the College Creek dock. The coachman helped her from the carriage and she walked with dainty haste.

  Joseph lifted his boy onto the boards, tossed him the rope, and ran for his sister. He ran but to the shore before he stopped to lean against a tree. He was forty-three years old, and reminders of his age sometimes came as sharp pains shooting down his right leg. Sometimes the leg collapsed beneath him. Sarah Alice reached out and embraced her second brother as warmly as possible, being careful not to get powder on him, nor his moisture onto her.

  Stephen looked up at this wondrous chatting woman who was his Aunt Sarah Alice Harrison. She was thirty-four years old, he heard her reminding his father. Stephen had never seen an old woman that was pretty, before. He thought her strange, and he thought it strange that this pretty old woman spoke like Sister Mary, all high-pitched, and giggly.

  "All my wigs—save the best one—are packed for the trip to England," his aunt said, "and that one's in the shop today being curled and powdered for tonight."

  They joined her in the coach and rode away from the creek, destined for the Harrison's leased town house in Williamsburgh. Stephen stopped listening and studied the woman's shiny green dress that stood away from her body like the bowl of a funnel from its stem. When his aunt forgot herself in conversation with his father, she moved to reveal whalebone hoops underneath the dress that held it out. Stephen had never seen a like thing before, and he tried to imagine his mother dressed in such a funny garment.

  "Well, you've had luck with husbands, so far, Little Sister. Let's hope your luck will continue," Joseph said.

  "Joseph!"

  His aunt seemed genuinely shocked, and Stephen started listening again.

  "I'm sorry, my dear," Joseph said, and laughed. "I don't mean good luck in their dying, but good luck in your being mated with men of means who could treat you well, and whose families saw to it that you continued to be well-treated after the untimely partings. May they rest in peace."

  After the brief silence, his aunt went on.

  "And you certainly don't mean the good luck of bearing them both weak, sickly, doomed children. I bear that cross with the Queen," Sarah Alice said, in a proud manner that told Stephen it was a line she often used. Queen Anne had lost all seventeen of her children before or at birth, in infancy, or—most recently, with the Duke of Gloucester—in adolescence.

  "If I am presented to the Queen, I shall mention our commonality of bereavement," Sarah Alice said.

  "Is Major Dorsey so connected to the Court?" Joseph asked in awe. He had no wish to speak of sickly children. He was cursed with a weak-minded daughter, and his son James was in bed now. Again. His oldest son was as sickly as his brother Edward had been.

  "Well, not so very, not now," Sarah Alice said, "but his brilliance will be noticed in the war. I'll not be surprised should he rise to the heights of Churchill."

  Was she identifying, now, with Sarah Churchill, the Queen's off-and-on best friend, Joseph wondered aloud?

  Sarah Alice laughed and slapped her brother's knee with her fan. Stephen noticed that the patch adorning the middle of her right cheek had fallen into her lap, but he said nothing.

  A great blue heron, which had followed them from the marsh at the landing, leaned to one side and soared back towards the creek. The coach left the marsh, too, and left the enclosure of dense scrub oak onto the dusty, open path that led from the landing to the city.

  Stephen saw the ruins first. The west wall and separate parts of two others were all that remained of the Wren Building: the College of
William and Mary.

  Sarah Alice saw her nephew staring at the rubble. She started to tell him about it, as she had his older brother James when James had visited the previous year.

  "I was here in Williamsburgh, that night," she began.

  "I know," Stephen said. "James told me all about it. About the fire, and when the melted lead fell from the roof onto a professor, and that the old building was designed by some noble friend of King William, and how bright you said the sky was from the fire, and that you said it was started by Colonel Hill who was staying at President Blair's apartment—one of those with a bad firebox."

  Sarah Alice looked to her brother. This child was nothing like the other boy! She refused to further acknowledge the boy's presence, and spoke directly to Joseph.

  "It was dreadful," she said, and told the coachman to stop before the ruined pride of Virginia.

  "It was in the evening. I'd gone to bed…." She saw that Joseph knew the story, too.

  "Finally, after five years, they're at work repairing the Wren Building, and Commissary Blair is talking about additional buildings."

  True enough, a crowd of workmen was clearing debris, and masons were already repairing and repointing the damaged walls.

  "And we've a wonderful new governor in Alexander Spotswood. Major Dorsey knew him in England. You've an exciting future, here, in Virginia. I'm almost sorry not to see it. Home to Britain. Who'd have thought it possible?" Then she lapsed into a sigh which Stephen couldn't decipher as happiness or sadness.

  Sarah Alice directed the driver to continue down the street towards the new Capitol Building.

  "You're going home, Sarah Alice," Joseph said. "Home to an elegant life in England. Is there a woman in Virginia who would not change places with you?"

  "I'm going to Edinburgh, Joseph. Scotland's not home to me," she said.

  "Well, if you're to be the wife of Captain Curtis Dorsey, it had better be becoming home!"

  "It will. It will," she reassured herself and her brother.

  "Strange place to put a fancy road," Stephen said, as the carriage dipped into one of the deep ravines that crossed broad Duke of Gloucester Street near the dilapidated Bruton Parish church. The ravines were deep enough to prevent him from viewing the focal points that anchored either ends of the nearly one-mile avenue.

  Sarah Alice apologized for the sorry condition of the church, and told them that situation would soon change. Commissary Blair had just been made rector of this parish and had ordered a new church building to accommodate the growing congregation and the constant overflow of visitors coming to worship while in the city on business. When the carriage rose again, Sarah Alice pointed out the tall, nearly square building that sat at the far end of an intersecting street.

  "They're calling it 'the Governor's Palace.' They almost completed it during the last five years, when we really didn't even have a governor! Now Governor Spotswood is installing luxuries and fittings for the house that will make it the closest thing to a royal palace in all of English America."

  Small shops and homes lined parts of the broad Duke of Gloucester Street. Smaller and older buildings were clustered back near the College site where there'd been the original need for inns, ordinaries, and lodgings. Since the fire of 1705, and the concentrated work—and now, completion—of the Capitol Building, the new and growing demand for building was at the eastern end of the street. Some homes lined the parallel Frances and Nicholson Streets—named by and after the governor who had planned the city.

  Father and son looked about the treeless landscape. All nearby wood had been used for building or for fuel.

  "You know," Sarah Alice injected into her tour monologue, "it was my father-in-law, Colonel Harrison, who made the official suggestion that Williamsburgh—then Middle Plantation—become the new seat of government after the last burning of the James Town State House.

  "Drive on by the Capitol, Nolly," Sarah Alice told the driver. "We'll let you see the town and let the town see you," she told her guests.

  Joseph knew that people would be looking out to see who was passing in the Harrison coach. He was touched—and a little surprised—that his sister wasn't ashamed of him and his son.

  Sarah Alice Harrison had only a cold claim to the late Colonel Benjamin Harrison as father-in-law, but that connection linked her to the most powerful men in the colony. Her marriage to Harrison's son had ended as quickly as her childhood marriage to the Craford boy. Her children by both marriages had died, and she was left a dependent to a family which neither knew her well, nor cared to. After all, her own family was of absolutely no use to them. Still, as a Harrison, she was entitled to the respect due a member of the Virginia elite. Her father-inlaw had been on the Council, two brothers-in-law were burgesses. One sister-inlaw was the mistress of Green Springs plantation, the former home of Governor Berkeley, the first real mansion in Virginia. Another was married to Commissary James Blair—the Bishop of London's representative in Virginia, and William and Mary's President-for-life.

  "She is named Sarah, too. Sarah Blair. She drinks to excess and is older than I. Such an embarrassment for the Commissary."

  Blair was, possibly, the most important man in the colony—including the governor, since Blair had been personally responsible for the removal of more than one.

  For Sarah Alice, the Harrison connection had been a blessing with little responsibility. It had culminated in her introduction to Major Dorsey, a man she immediately loved and wanted. There was no dowry to purchase Major Dorsey, but the relationship was heartily encouraged by the Harrisons, who were anxious to be freed of the responsibility of her. The couple had announced their betrothal at the Green Spring reception honoring the arrival of Governor Spotswood the previous week. The good-byes she was making now and over the next few weeks would be, certainly, tearful, but her joy at having found Major Dorsey was hard to conceal. And she was going home to England! To Scotland, at least.

  "See, Stephen, the Capitol! Don't you love the name, Joseph? Like in ancient Rome, Colonel Harrison said. It's built like two of the old James Town State Houses, one behind the other, and connected by a piazza with a meeting room upstairs. It's built like that for a reason. The Burgesses have one side; the King's Governor and Council have the other one. And there's a room atop the connecting piazza where the two sides can get together to thrash things out. Isn't it rational and beautiful?"

  She waved her fan for emphasis as she repeated the story for these visiting relatives. It was a role she was used to. The Harrisons often used her to show visitors about town.

  "We'll meet John at Taylor's Coffee House," she went on, then interrupted herself. "Look at that building! It's the biggest store in Williamsburgh. It belongs to my brother's-in-law, Commissary Blair and Philip Ludwell, of Green Springs."

  "Your Mister Blair must be the busiest man in Virginia," Stephen said.

  "Joseph!" Sarah Alice jerked the fan from her lap and grasped it with both hands. She saw her fallen face patch stuck to her dress, and removed one hand to fold the fabric and conceal the spot. The child's eyes followed her movements.

  Joseph spoke seriously to his son.

  "The Reverend Blair may well be the busiest man in Virginia, Son. We are most fortunate to have him in the colony, and to have this family connection to him."

  "Indeed!" Sarah Alice said, somewhat mollified. "Here. You'll meet John here for late morning tea, then proceed to our lodgings."

  The driver had stopped before a frame building of some depth. It looked much like the other buildings in the city, some constructed of wood, some of brick. Joseph had described the city to his boy as they sailed up from Deep Creek.

  "Don't expect it to look like Norfolk Town," he'd said.

  Governor Nicholson had planned the city and, despite some changes in his plan—most notably, the idea that the streets would form a huge monogram of the monarchs initials, W and M, overlain— many things remained the same. The lots were of one-half acre; the houses had to be set back
six feet from the street; buildings had to be at least twenty-by-thirty feet in size; they had to stand ten feet at roof's edge; had to be built within twenty-four months of the lot's purchase; and had to be fenced within six months of occupancy.

  When Stephen jumped down from the carriage, he ran to stand at a corner of the building to line-sight the other buildings of the street, hoping one would be out of line.

  "The uniformity contributes to the overall balance of the plan," Sarah Alice said to him, resorting to her travel monologue. She repeated a line she'd overheard and seized as her own. "The Greeks and Romans emphasized balance and symmetry."

  "What are Greeks and Romans?" Stephen asked his father as his aunt's carriage rattled off.

  But they had entered the coffeehouse, and John Williams was rushing to them from his table near a side window. Stephen looked from his uncle to his father and then to the other men about the room. Uncle John must be very hot on this summer day, he thought.