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Updated: June 7, 2025
Hugh Jones, writing of society in Governor Spotswood's time, says: "The habits, life, customs, computations &c of the Virginians are much the same as about London, which they esteem their home; the planters generally talk good English without idiom and tone and can discourse handsomely upon most common subjects; and conversing with persons belonging to trade and navigation in London, for the most part they are much civilized."
Governor Spotswood's scheme for an Ohio company was revived immediately after the peace of Aix-la-Cha-pelle, when certain merchants of London, who traded to Maryland and Virginia, petitioned the government on this subject, and were indulged not only with a grant of a great tract of ground to the southward of Pennsylvania, which they promised to settle, but also with an exclusive privilege of trading with the Indians on the banks of the river Ohio.
There were certain visits from Lord Hurdly's relations which had to be received, an ordeal that would have tried Bettina sorely had it not been that she made these the occasion for the investigation of Horace Spotswood's character, nature, actions, interests, habits, etc., which the fateful letter had recommended her to make.
In the meantime the witty William Byrd of Westover describes for us his amusing survey of the Dismal Swamp, and his excursions into North Carolina and to Governor Spotswood's iron mines, where he reads aloud to the Widow Fleming, on a rainy autumn day, three acts of the "Beggars' Opera," just over from London. So runs the world away, south of the Potomac.
After a brief glance at a folio and an octavo side by side he gives up that attempt, but although he may have to be content to see his large Augustine, Benedictine edition, in the same row with Bayle's Dictionary, he does not like it and comforts himself by thrusting in between, as a kind of mediator, Spotswood's History of the Church of Scotland with Burnett's Memoirs of the Dukes of Hamilton, that edition which has the rare portrait of Charles I. by Faithorne.
German craftsmen, who had been sent over by Queen Anne vine-dressers and ironworkers were settled on Spotswood's own estate above the falls of the Rapidan. The little town of Germanna sprang up, famous for its smelting furnaces. To his country seat in Spotsylvania, Alexander Spotswood retired when he laid down the office of Governor in 1722.
Rude lumbermen from Norfolk or the borders of the Dismal Swamp stared about them, while here and there showed the sad-colored coat of a minister, or the broad face of some Walloon from Spotswood's settlement on the Rapidan, or the keener countenances of Frenchmen from Monacan-Town.
But 'twas worth all the damage to show the moderation and good humor with which she bore this disaster. In the evening the noble colonel came home from his mines, who saluted me very civilly, and Mrs. Spotswood's sister, Miss Theky, who had been to meet him en cavalier, was so kind too as to bid me welcome.
One means to this end was the reading of newspapers, and this occupation now absorbed a part of every morning. In this way she occasionally came upon Horace Spotswood's name, and when she did, a strange agitation would possess her. She could not quite shake off an influence which this man's life seemed to exert upon hers.
Of the three conspirators, two were burnt alive!! "'Twas admirable," says the account, "to see how long they stood before they died, the great wood not readily burning, and their cry was water, water!" In August, 1730, an insurrection of blacks occurred in Williamsburgh, Va., occasioned by a report, on Col. Spotswood's arrival, that he had direction from his Majesty to free all baptized persons.
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