Part 1 (2/2)

of

Marlborough, Virginia

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 1.--JOHN MERCER'S BOOKPLATE.]

HISTORY

I

_Official Port Towns in Virginia and Origins of Marlborough_

ESTABLIs.h.i.+NG THE PORT TOWNS

The dependence of 17th-century Virginia upon the single crop--tobacco--was a chronic problem. A bad crop year or a depressed English market could plunge the whole colony into debt, creating a chain reaction of overextended credits and failures to meet obligations.

Tobacco exhausted the soil, and soil exhaustion led to an ever-widening search for new land. This in turn brought about population dispersal and extreme decentralization.

After the Restoration in 1660 the Virginia colonial government was faced not only with these economic hazards but also with the resulting administrative difficulties. It was awkward to govern a scattered population and almost impossible to collect customs duties on imports landed at the planters' own wharves along hundreds of miles of inland waterways. The royal governors and responsible persons in the a.s.sembly reacted therefore with a succession of plans to establish towns that would be the sole ports of entry for the areas they served, thus making theoretically simple the task of securing customs revenues. The towns also would be centers of business and manufacture, diversifying the colony's economic supports and lessening its dependence on tobacco. To men of English origin this establishment of port communities must have seemed natural and logical.

The first such proposal became law in 1662, establis.h.i.+ng a port town for each of the major river valleys and for the Eastern Sh.o.r.e. But the law's sponsors were doomed to disappointment, for the towns were not built.[1] After a considerable lapse, a new act was pa.s.sed in 1680, this one better implemented and further reaching. It provided for a port town in each county, where s.h.i.+ps were to deliver their goods and pick up tobacco and other exports from town warehouses for their return voyages.[2] One of its most influential supporters was William Fitzhugh of Stafford County, a wealthy planter and distinguished leader in the colony.[3] ”We have now resolved a cessation of making Tob^o next year,”

he wrote to his London agent, Captain Partis, in 1680. ”We are also going to make Towns, if you can meet with any tradesmen that will come and live at the Town, they may have privileges and immunitys.”[4]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Potomack River]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 2.--Survey plats of Marlborough as copied in John Mercer's Land Book showing at bottom, John Savage's, 1731; and top, William Buckner's and Theodorick Bland's, 1691. (The courthouse probably stood in the vicinity of lot 21.)]

Some of these towns actually were laid out, each on a 50-acre tract of half-acre lots, but only 9 tracts were built upon. The Act soon lagged and collapsed. It was unpopular with the colonists, who were obliged to transport their tobacco to distant warehouses and to pay storage fees; it was ignored by s.h.i.+pmasters, who were in the habit of dealing directly with planters at their wharves and who were not interested in making it any easier for His Majesty's customs collectors.[5]

Nevertheless, efforts to come up with a third act began in 1688.[6]

William Fitzhugh, especially, was articulate in his alarm over Virginia's one-crop economy, the effects of which the towns were supposed to mitigate. At this time he referred to tobacco as ”our most despicable commodity.” A year later, he remarked, ”it is more uncertain for a Planter to get money by consigned Tob^o then to get a prize in a lottery, there being twenty chances for one chance.”[7]

In April 1691 the Act for Ports was pa.s.sed, the House, significantly, recording only one dissenting vote.[8] Unlike its predecessor, which encouraged trades and crafts, this Act was justified purely on the basis of overcoming the ”great opportunity ... given to such as attempt to import or export goods and merchandises, without entering or paying the duties and customs due thereupon, much practised by greedy and covetous persons.” It provided that all exports and imports should be taken up or set down at the specified ports and nowhere else, under penalty of forfeiting s.h.i.+p, gear, and cargo, and that the law should become effective October 1, 1692. The towns again were to be surveyed and laid out in 50-acre tracts. Feoffees, to be appointed, would grant half-acre lots on a pro rata first-cost basis. Grantees ”shall within the s.p.a.ce of four months next ensueing such grant begin and without delay proceed to build and finish on each half acre one good house, to containe twenty foot square at the least, wherein if he fails to performe them such grant to be void in law, and the lands therein granted lyable to the choyce and purchase of any other person.” Justices of the county courts were to fill vacancies among the feoffees and to appoint customs collectors.[9]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] WILLIAM WALLER HENING, _The Statutes at Large Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia_ (New York, 1823), vol. 2, pp. 172-176.

[2] Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 471-478.

[3] William Fitzhugh was founder of the renowned Virginia family that bear his name. As chief justice of the Stafford County court, burgess, merchant, and wealthy planter, he epitomized the landed aristocrat in 17th-century Virginia.

See ”Letters of William Fitzhugh,” _Virginia Magazine of History & Biography_ (Richmond, 1894), vol. 1, p. 17 (hereinafter designated _VHM_), and _William Fitzhugh and His Chesapeake World_ (1676-1701), edit. Richard Beale Davis (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, for the Virginia Historical Society, 1963).

[4] _VHM_, op. cit., p. 30.

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