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Updated: May 5, 2025
He divided up parcels of land in Greene and Wilkes counties among his sons, Robert Toombs and Dawson Gabriel Toombs, and his four daughters. Gabriel Toombs died in 1801. When Major Robert Toombs, the Virginia veteran, and son of Gabriel, came to Georgia to claim his award of land, he settled on Beaverdam Creek, five miles from the town of Washington.
He deserved a better fate. The main body crossed the Po river in the morning of Monday, February 29, and made a halt of fifteen minutes to feed. Thence it pushed on, Davies's brigade still leading, by way of Newmarket, Chilesburg and Anderson's bridge across the South Anna river to Beaverdam Station on the Virginia Central railroad.
This brings me to relate an incident which will serve to indicate the shrewdness and unscrupulousness of William once he took the spiritual bit in his teeth. We were on the Beaverdam Circuit, and he had bought a new horse a horse gifted with ungodly speed in the legs and a mettlesome, race-track temperament.
Pleasant, continuing for five miles on the Waynesborough turnpike, then turning to the right upon the Gordon road, we climbed by a steep and long hill to the barren ridge which is the watershed between the Duck River and Buffalo River. Five miles from the turnpike our way ran into the Beaverdam road, which we kept for five miles further to the fork of the Ashland road, turning to the left.
At that moment we rounded a curve in the road, and in the hot dust ahead there came to view a heavy, old-fashioned rockaway drawn slowly by a pair of sunburned plow-horses. "Oh, William," I gasped, "do stop! That is the Brock carriage and this is a horse race!" Brother Brock was a rich Methodist steward who not only owned most of the property in Beaverdam neighborhood, but the church as well.
Presently we heard the clatter of another horse's feet behind us, and the next moment the bay was neck and neck with Charlie Weaver's black mare. Charlie was one of the younger goats in the Beaverdam congregation, whose chief distinction was that he was an outbreaking sinner and owned the fastest horse in the county.
As we travelled from settlement to settlement, we, too, heard something of what had happened in distant districts: how the Schoharie militia had been called out; how one Huetson had been captured as he was gathering a band of Tories to join the Butlers; how a certain Captain Ball had raised a company of sixty-three royalists at Beaverdam and was fled to join Sir John; how Captain George Mann, of the militia, refused service, declaring himself a royalist, and disbanding his company; how Adam Crysler had thrown his important influence in favor of the King, and that the inhabitants of Tryon County were gloomy and depressed, seeing so many respectable gentlemen siding with the Tories.
There were bitter, burning words on the lips of the rank and file, and perfunctory rebukes on the lips of the young officers when they chanced to overhear. The law was surely working out as set forth by Si Sylvanne: "The fools in command, the leaders in the ranks." And now came news of fresh disasters the battles of Beaverdam, Stony Creek, and Niagara River.
On a certain Saturday, after services at Beaverdam Church, we were returning home in a light buggy drawn by the big, rawboned bay. When we came to a long stretch of good road William tightened the reins, took on a scandalous expression of Coliseum delight and let the horse out.
This added greatly to the discomfort of the march, which was resumed after tearing up the track and taking down the telegraph wires and poles in the neighborhood of the station. The stop at Beaverdam Station was not worth mentioning so far as it gave any opportunity to men or horses for rest or refreshment. Out into the dark night and it was a darkness that could be felt rode those brave troopers.
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