Part 2 (1/2)

Virginia was growing. At the start of the war with France, the colony held 230,000 people. When war ended, there were 340,000. Counties split to form new counties. More land came into cultivation, and more slave s.h.i.+ps arrived from Africa and the West Indies. Though many people delayed payment, Virginians were good customers. A British officer said that, while a Pennsylvania farmer would buy a durable kersey coat, a Virginia planter would buy something gaudy. Storekeepers spread throughout the colony, purchasing tobacco, selling merchandise, and, to win customers, extending easy credit. Always seeking a good investment, Dr. Thomas Walker put up one-third of the capital for a new store in Charlottesville in 1761. Three years later he had ”a Great Deal of money Due to him.”

Many of the new young men came from Scotland and worked for companies opening strings of retail stores. Known as factors, they strove to get the trade of ”the common People...who make up the Bulk of the Planters.” They did so well that Virginians came to speak routinely of ”Scotch stores.” Scots specialized in inferior grades of tobacco, which made up most of the crop and was re-exported from Britain to France. It had one buyer: the French state monopoly, the Farmers-General. Since that market was certain and growing, Scottish companies confidently extended credit to Virginians, knowing that money spent on land and slaves would yield more tobacco. Money spent on merchandise marked up 100 percent, 150 percent, or 200 percent came back to the factor's company as profit. Long credit excused a higher markup.

To rise in the esteem of his employers and to return to Britain with a modest fortune, a factor needed ambition. As the number of merchants in Virginia grew, compet.i.tion increased. Even so, in the 1750s and 1760s the Scots' share of Britain's tobacco trade steadily rose until they controlled more than half. The great Glasgow firms had found the enterprising men they needed. One of the quickest ways to get a planter's tobacco-some said the only way-was to lend money or extend credit. In 1760 a planter could ”command double the Cash his Tobo was worth besides credit for what goods he had occasion for.” This method of business was called ”engaging of Customers.”

Virginians often said that they disliked Scottish merchants as a group. Scots for their part seldom hid their opinion of colonial planters, whom they called ”common buckskins.” The mayor, aldermen, and Common Council of Norfolk demanded a public apology from some young Scottish merchants and others two days after the mayor took office in 1755. On election day the young men had chosen their own mayor: Richard Scott's slave, Will. They ”seated him and drank to him as Mr. Mayor by way of Derision.” As debts swelled in the following years, many Virginians concluded that these people who had lent them money had made fools of them, that they were ”held in Derision by the Merchts...of the Metropolis & Factors of Glascow.” They discerned a pattern: Scots took care of one another; Scots had ”secrets in the Tobo Trade”; Scots were ”Engrossers.” With ”the artful Craftiness and Cunning natural to that Nation,” Scots had conspired to grow rich at the expense of Virginia. By this line of thought, victims saw themselves as ”unfortunate Debtors,” reduced to ”Vasalage & Dependance.”

Virginians remained optimistic, seeking more land and more slaves. Though they were promising to pay 5 percent interest on their debts, might their property not rise in value at an even greater rate? They needed only ”prudent Management,” frugality, and higher prices for tobacco. Rather than resort to slow courts, merchants often found it simpler to take a debtor's bond and hope for the best. The ”maxims so generally embraced” embraced” in Virginia, Robert Beverley wrote in 1761, were: ”being in Debt & making great Promises for the future.” in Virginia, Robert Beverley wrote in 1761, were: ”being in Debt & making great Promises for the future.”

Virginia had few if any debtors more stubborn than John Syme of Hanover County. He ran up a large account in the 1750s with Lidderdale, Harmer & Farell, merchants in Bristol, who s.h.i.+pped goods to him on credit and lent him money by accepting his bills of exchange. He consigned his tobacco to them, but its value fell far short of the advances he received.

Turning twenty-one in 1750, Syme came into possession of his late father's estate. He knew his father's face; he had the same ”remarkably homely” features. The elder William Byrd noticed this when Syme was only four years old. Byrd said that, although Syme's lively, cheerful widowed mother ”seem'd not to pine too much for the Death of her Husband,” no one could doubt that her little son was legitimate. To celebrate his new independence Syme built a house overlooking the South Anna River, sparing no expense on a granite foundation, rose-colored brick, sandstone quoins, pedimented doorways, and rich interior woodwork. By the spring of 1753 he was ”beginning housekeeping.” His wife was Mildred Meriwether, daughter of Dr. Thomas Walker's wife by her first marriage. The Symes' first son was born in 1752. On the recommendation of Peter Randolph, Syme s.h.i.+pped 50 hogsheads to Lidderdale, Harmer & Farell, then began to ”Draw largely” on them, promising to s.h.i.+p 100 hogsheads from his new crop. The following year he was ”Oblig'd to draw largely” to buy slaves. He won a seat in the House of Burgesses in 1756 and allied with John Chiswell, father of Speaker Robinson's new sweetheart. Syme and Robinson jointly owned tobacco warehouses in Hanover County. The speaker put him on one of the most important committees. ”My situation in a Publick Place,” he explained to his Bristol merchants, ”Obliges me to live in a Way, somewhat Expensive.” In a visit to Syme's home and to other plantations, an English clergyman found Virginians hospitable but guilty of ”extravagance, ostentation, and a disregard of economy.”

Syme a.s.sured Lidderdale, Harmer & Farell that his influence would obtain consignments and customers for them. He did get a s.h.i.+pment of tobacco and an order for goods from his mother-in-law. Despite the short crop of 1755, Syme drew more large bills of exchange in 1756. This time, however, the Bristol firm returned his bills protested. He renewed them, promising not to draw more than 300 in bills each year, but he drew for much larger sums. Joseph Farell, forming a new firm, protested to Syme, saying that he and his partners had to live. Syme replied: ”I am heartily for your living, & that you would let me live also.” He asked for a loan of 1,000 to buy slaves. He and a partner opened a store, for which Syme ordered a stock of goods. After Farell refused to advance more, Syme got store goods from Glasgow on fifteen months' credit.

In 1763, Syme promised to ”Clear off the old score,” nearing 6,000 sterling, but thereafter he s.h.i.+pped too little tobacco to meet his current account, much less reduce his debt. To the new firm, Farell & Jones, he described a series of schemes for raising money to pay them: import a stud for his thirty or forty mares and breed horses; start a commercial gristmill; collect thousands of pounds owed to him in Virginia. Syme sought help from Farell & Jones to win the lucrative post of surveyor general of Customs in the southern district, now that its former occupant, Peter Randolph, had died. He wrote: ”I always knew Colo. Randolph's Were of a Short Liv'd Family Short Liv'd Family & I was Contented to Wait for a Vacancy.” Instead of aiding him, Farell & Jones returned his bills of exchange protested, then returned them a second and a third time after he renewed them. Syme complained: ”my Old Freinds, for whom I have Done so much, are Determin'd to Ruin my Credit.” & I was Contented to Wait for a Vacancy.” Instead of aiding him, Farell & Jones returned his bills of exchange protested, then returned them a second and a third time after he renewed them. Syme complained: ”my Old Freinds, for whom I have Done so much, are Determin'd to Ruin my Credit.”

Syme had many a.s.sets, amounting, Farell & Jones heard, to 15,000 or 20,000. The partners realized that Syme was ”trifling” with them. Having promised that Dr. Walker would give a bond as security for the debt, Syme instead produced a letter from ”his toadeater,” John Hawkins, a ”worthless sharping sort of a fellow,” who offered to be Syme's security. The firm wanted not Hawkins's bonds but Syme's tobacco, remittances, and payment of damages for protested bills. Syme told Farell & Jones: ”nothing has ever given me so much Pain Pain as this affair, & your Usage to me lately.” He never would have run up so large a debt, he said, but ”for advantages Promis'd me, wch you now refuse.” The firm ordered a suit brought against him. He began to avoid the sheriff. as this affair, & your Usage to me lately.” He never would have run up so large a debt, he said, but ”for advantages Promis'd me, wch you now refuse.” The firm ordered a suit brought against him. He began to avoid the sheriff.

Robert Dinwiddie concluded that he had made a bad bargain with the Earl of Albemarle for dividing the income of the governors.h.i.+p of Virginia. In the spring of 1755, Dinwiddie regretted having taken the office. Though another fifteen years of life lay before him, he felt ill. In the fall of 1756 he asked the Board of Trade to relieve him of the governors.h.i.+p, and late in 1757 he returned to England. The Board of Trade and the Privy Council chose as his successor Francis Fauquier, a trim, handsome man in his mid-fifties, as affable as Dinwiddie was dour.

Fauquier had an elegant demeanor and refined taste for good living. He knew William Hogarth and other artists; he also knew George Frederick Handel. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society; he had published an essay on the political economy of financing war with France. He sought the lieutenant governors.h.i.+p, rumor said, because he needed money. Virginians were told that Fauquier, an avid gambler, had lost so much money to Admiral George Anson, first lord of the Admiralty, that Anson felt obliged to use his influence to get the resident governors.h.i.+p for him. In London, Fauquier's behavior showed that ”no Governor ever went abroad better disposed to make a people happy.”

Robert Dinwiddie thought that some Virginians, especially Speaker Robinson and his friends, were already too happy. Dinwiddie appeared before the Board of Trade to urge that Robinson not remain both speaker and treasurer. Dinwiddie called Fauquier ”a very good-natured Gentleman”; he thought the new governor needed ”some directions...upon this point.” Two days later Fauquier met with the Board of Trade, who told him what Dinwiddie had said and pressed him to end the ”highly improper” practice of giving both offices to the same man. The vessel bearing Fauquier to Virginia also held letters from Dinwiddie, exulting that he had gained a victory over the speaker.

Fauquier took the oath of office in Williamsburg on June 5, 1758. Within three weeks the ”princ.i.p.al People” had convinced him that John Robinson would be speaker and treasurer for life. Robinson had learned of Dinwiddie's appearance before the Board of Trade, and he was vexed. He dismissed it as Dinwiddie's attempt at revenge for loss of the pistole fee. The Nelson brothers, Peyton Randolph, and others scared Fauquier by saying that a mere attempt to deny Robinson one of his offices ”might throw the Country into a Flame.” The governor told the Board of Trade that only by winning the good opinion of the speaker's friends could he get appropriations for the colony's defense. On September 14 the burgesses unanimously re-elected Robinson speaker. He remained treasurer. A few weeks later a visitor to Williamsburg wrote: ”The Govr is in general well Spoken off.”

In the fall session Fauquier a.s.sented to an emission of paper money, though merchants in Britain objected vehemently. He a.s.sented to the Twopenny Act, though merchants protested and clergymen of the established Church felt cheated. They said their rightful annual salary was 16,000 pounds of tobacco no matter how short the crop or high the price. Governor Fauquier was violating his instructions. Only in this way, he wrote the Board of Trade, could he gain influence among the councillors and burgesses. He knew that he had won the esteem of the speaker and his friends. Peyton Randolph published a pamphlet in Williamsburg, defending the colony's currency. In it he addressed Fauquier: ”it is the Patriot GOVERNOR alone that can represent the Patriot KING. Nor deem thou this as a Drop bubbling from the nauseous Fountain of Flattery.”

The governor's house, grandly called a palace, was pleasant to visit in Fauquier's time. He played music well, joining other amateurs in weekly concerts. Champagne, white Rhine wine, Tokay, and malmsey flowed. Speaker Robinson called every so often. Fauquier thought him ”the Darling of the Country, as he well deserves to be.” Before long, it became clear that the quickest way to get something from the governor was to approach the speaker; ”for by a proper exertion of his Interest, which is very prevailing at the Palace, any reasonable point might be carried.” The Earl of Halifax, his colleagues on the Board of Trade, and others in London thought that Fauquier was too good-natured and eager to please. The governor ought not to be so accommodating to ”designing People.” Learning of aspersions cast on Fauquier, the speaker and the councillors came to his defense. The colony's committee of correspondence sent a letter, prepared by Peyton Randolph and others, to their agent in London, urging him to prevent any ”ill impressions” arising from Fauquier's conduct. The governor, they said, had given ”universal satisfaction.” The House of Burgesses voted Fauquier an unusually generous present of money.

On the day Fauquier took the oath of office, Dr. Thomas Walker was working in Philadelphia, buying tents, kettles, and provisions for troops at Winchester and Fort c.u.mberland. Fauquier retained him as commissary for the rest of Virginia's campaigns, lasting three more years. Dr. Walker suffered censure in the autumn of 1758. Thomas Johnson, a burgess, learned that the commissary had furnished supplies for troops in Augusta County by contracting with their commander, his friend, Major Andrew Lewis, a resident of the county who wielded ”great Influence amongst the Inhabitants of that Country.” Walker had kept Lewis's role secret, since it obviously permitted abuses: The man furnis.h.i.+ng rations to soldiers was also the commander attesting that the right quant.i.ty and quality had been supplied. Food bought with public funds could be falsely declared spoiled, then used elsewhere. Soldiers could be stinted in their rations while the commissary and the contractor collected the full sixpence per man per day allowed in the colony's contract. Thomas Johnson told his guests that Walker had cheated the colony out of 1,100. They asked how burgesses could be so blatantly deceived. Why did burgesses still court Walker, begging him to continue as commissary? Johnson replied: ”You know little of the Plots, Schemes, and Contrivances that are carried on there; in short, one holds the Lamb while the other skins; many of the Members are in Places of Trust and Profit, and others want to get in, and they are willing to a.s.sist one another in pa.s.sing their Accounts.”

The House of Burgesses convened in February 1759. Johnson's remarks had been widely repeated. Dr. Walker asked for an inquiry into his conduct. Peyton Randolph and other members of the committee of privileges and elections judged the agreement with Lewis improper, but reported that soldiers had suffered no abuse and that Walker had perpetrated no fraud. Three weeks later Randolph's committee recommended that Thomas Johnson be reprimanded for his ”false, scandalous, and malicious” words, as well as his criticism of the manner in which Randolph and other friends of Speaker Robinson's secured a high salary for the clerk of the House of Burgesses. Opinion was divided. After a debate, during which Johnson remained outside the chamber, the committee's resolution pa.s.sed by a vote of 37 to 32. Johnson then took his place, and Speaker Robinson, from the chair above the mace, reprimanded him for his words, which ”reflect highly on the Honor of the House.”

Though the British had taken the forks of the Ohio and, in September 1759, France's chief American city and fortress, Quebec, Virginians were still at war in 1760 and 1761 with a new enemy, their former allies the Cherokees. South Carolinians and British regulars did most of the fighting; William Byrd and his regiment went no nearer than the upper reaches of the Holston River, 200 miles from any Cherokee town. Walker said he could not supply them farther south.

Walker resumed his journeys in the spring of 1761. From Williamsburg, he went in May to Philadelphia to contract for provisions. In the last two weeks of June he traveled from Philadelphia to Fort Chiswell in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains near the North Carolina line. He and John Chiswell served as Virginia's commissioners to the Cherokees, paying ransom in return for release of prisoners. Most Cherokees sought peace that summer, but the British did not end the war until Sir Jeffery Amherst sent a force of regulars on a punitive campaign of destruction among Cherokee towns.

William Byrd resigned his command in August. He went to Philadelphia, where his pregnant wife had remained with her parents. Mary Willing Byrd was twenty-one years old, child of a marital alliance between two prosperous merchant families, the Willings and the s.h.i.+ppens. She gave birth to a daughter in November. The following summer, Dr. Walker came north; and he and Byrd called on Sir Jeffery in New York to present their accounts. Amherst was both British commander in North America and successor to the Earl of Albemarle as sinecurist governor of Virginia.

Members of the Loyal Company and the Ohio Company, looking toward the return of peace, wished to make their t.i.tles secure. They sought friends. One land company made Governor Fauquier's son a partner. The Ohio Company invited Colonel Henry Bouquet, British commander in the west, to join and receive a full member's share, 25,000 acres. Fauquier and Bouquet, however, were discovering that the government in London no longer encouraged settlement west of the mountains, at least not the land grants and migration of the years before the war. The ministry preferred peace with the Indians, and the Ohio Company had disrupted peace. The new policy favored what Fauquier called ”well settling and peopling a Colony.” This meant controlled, orderly movement and, for a while, no movement. Bouquet told the Ohio Company: ”no settlement will be permitted upon the Ohio till the Consent of the Indians can be procured.” On October 13, 1761, he made this an order, prohibiting whites from living west of the Alleghenies. Later he suggested that all grants in the west be annulled and that the region have a ”new government under Military Tenure.”

Two years later Bouquet's policy became a royal proclamation forbidding westward migration and a.s.signing governance of the west to the commander in chief in America. Yet many colonists thought as George Was.h.i.+ngton did: the proclamation was only ”a temporary expedient to quiet the Minds of the Indians & must fall of course in a few years.” Families with no grants or legal claims crossed the mountains, built homes, and began farms in ”stragling Settlements” along the Ohio River and its tributaries. Men who disapproved called them ”Vagabonds” and ”borderers.” Was.h.i.+ngton found them ”very troublesome.” Still, packhorses climbed through pa.s.ses. Despite orders to the settlers from the governors of Virginia and Pennsylvania to return east, more and more went west. Everyone knew that soil in the Ohio Valley was ”extremely fine,” and, General Thomas Gage reported, ”it is the pa.s.sion of every man to be a landholder, and the people have a natural disposition to rove in search of good lands, however distant.” Of course, the Crown could not expect payment of two s.h.i.+llings quitrent each year for every 100 acres occupied this way. Even holders of lawful grants living in the west refused to pay after the proclamation.

The proclamation especially displeased George Was.h.i.+ngton, Adam Stephen, the Lee brothers-four sons of Thomas Lee-and some of their friends. Just two weeks earlier, they had written to Thomas c.u.mming, a merchant in London, describing a new ”Scheme” they had formed in June: the Mississippi Company. Their memorial to the king asked for a grant of 2,500,000 acres stretching eastward from the Mississippi River, embracing part of the watersheds of the Wabash, Ohio, and Tennessee rivers. They hoped to get this tract without paying the Crown anything for twelve years or longer. They offered to settle two hundred families on it. The company's fifty ”Adventurers” would each own 50,000 acres separately, not jointly, ”any thing in the said Grant to the Contrary notwithstanding,” a provision they did not mention in their memorial or their letter.

Mary Willing Byrd, Matthew Pratt. Courtesy of the Library of Virginia. Second wife of the younger William Byrd, daughter and sister of Philadelphia merchants, and mistress of Westover for almost fifty years.

The founders presented the Mississippi Company as a public-spirited undertaking. The ”poorer sort” could obtain land more cheaply from the company than from the Crown because they need not hire surveyors or pay cash for patents. The region would produce commodities Britain needed: ”above all things Hemp it appears peculiarly adapted to.” Such a westward movement violated the government's promise to Indians to allow no settlement beyond the mountains; but, the company's founders said, Indians' attacks already had broken that agreement. To ensure the prosperity and ”public utility” of the company, its memorial said, several partners had formed ”a determined resolution...to be themselves among the first settlers.”

The founders' letter to c.u.mming explained that they sought a patent from the Privy Council in London, rather than an order directing the governor and Council of Virginia to make a grant. In Williamsburg, measures that Speaker Robinson and his friends disliked often did not prosper: ”so many persons of the first influence here, are concerned in Land Schemes; that a thousand nameless, artfull obstructions would be thrown into their way to prevent the success of their enterprize.” The Crown's answer to the Mississippi Company's memorial, coming even before the memorial could reach London, was the royal proclamation forbidding migration to the west.

Dr. Walker did not let the proclamation stop his Loyal Company. On May 25, 1763, complying with instructions from London, the Council refused to confirm or renew the company's grant. The clerk recorded in the minutes that the Council had ”postpond” the pet.i.tion for renewal. Walker did not take this as a rejection or a ban. He believed that councillors approved of the Loyal Company's claims, a reasonable belief, since Councillors Thomas Nelson, William Nelson, and Richard Corbin were members of the company. Walker acted as if his pet.i.tion had been approved. He summoned settlers who had fled their homes during the war to return; he sent surveyors to extend the company's lines; he signed contracts with hundreds of new settlers. They accepted the original terms, to take effect as soon as the company's grant was confirmed: 3 for each 100 acres, with surveyor's fees, patent fees, and composition money, on all of which 5 percent annual interest accrued until the buyer paid in full.

Within an expanse of 5,000,000 acres of mountainous watershed of the Ohio, Tennessee, and c.u.mberland rivers, surveyors marked more than 150,000 acres of the best land for the Loyal Company. Later, a North Carolinian, objecting to Virginians' claims, said that ”secret Surveys were made in these parts by an old Land monger.” But anyone interested knew what Dr. Walker was doing. People came from other colonies and settled on plots already purchased from the Loyal Company by Virginians. These squatters said that the king's proclamation annulled all western grants, throwing open the land ”to the occupation of the first Adventurer,” as if the proclamation had not also forbidden them to move there. Settlers taking Walker's contracts knew that recent surveys were ”illegal.” They, too, defied the Crown and the governor by refusing to leave. Some later pet.i.tioned to quash the Loyal Company's grant, under which they had bought their farms. They said they saw with ”disappointment and regret” that Dr. Walker persisted in pressing them to comply with his terms for holding what they called ”our possessions.” The company, they contended, should derive no t.i.tle from its ”forcable or clandestine Surveys.” Those who thought that ”The Doctrs grant is broke” had yet to learn that they underestimated Thomas Walker.

Robert Tucker served another one-year term as mayor of Norfolk in 175960. Joanna Tucker conceived and gave birth to their fifteenth child, a daughter. Norfolk was growing; the county and borough held about 12,000 people at the end of Tucker's term. The borough opened its first school-house. Redrawn boundaries added new streets and residences. Tucker and other merchants acted as trustees and directors for construction of a new wharf and built more warehouses. Norfolk had become the chief port of Chesapeake Bay. While Tucker was mayor, John Sparling and William Bolden of Liverpool established their firm, Sparling & Bolden, in Norfolk. Representing Glasgow merchants, Neil Jamieson arrived in 1760, beginning a successful business. He soon owned a fine brick house with a 60-foot front and, in back, two ranges of warehouses along the east and west sides of his wharf. Thus he outstripped his fellow merchant and fellow Scot, Dr. Archibald Campbell, who had left medicine for trade and had built in c.u.mberland Street a house with a 50-foot front.

As George Was.h.i.+ngton and other Virginians planted more wheat, the colony became the largest exporter of grain in North America. The bulk of Chesapeake grain pa.s.sed through Norfolk, bound for the West Indies in sloops and schooners often recklessly overladen. Norfolk's wharves also held bales of s.h.i.+ngles, stacks of staves, barrels of pork, bars of iron. Proud civic verse said that a poet Saw s.h.i.+ps unnumber'd riding in thy port, And groves of masts in mazy prospect stand; Saw commerce spreading sail for distant climes, And well-earn'd profits brought in full return.

Many of these graceful vessels, with much sail and little superstructure, had been launched from Norfolk. Slave s.h.i.+pwrights ”were able to build a s.h.i.+p amongst themselves without any a.s.sistance but of a Master Builder.” Merchants exported masts cut in the Dismal Swamp. From a ropewalk's constantly turning wheels emerged strands of cable, rope, and other cordage for the rigging of new vessels and for refitting those careened for cleaning and repairs.

No one knew from day to day how many seamen were in town. There they found brothels and taverns such as John Reinsburg's, run by a former fencing master from Annapolis. Sailors who had jumped s.h.i.+p met crimps ready to advance money and find them a new berth. A seaman's monthly wage was 5. Masters of undermanned vessels bound for Britain, trying to complete their crews, had to pay between 10 and 16 guineas per man for the voyage. Sailors spent most of that money in the borough. Vessels not trading through the port nevertheless called at Norfolk in search of sailors.

Everyone knew that merchants were divided between ”the Scotch Party” and ”the Buckskin party.” Though Scots took much of Norfolk's business, the Virginia buckskins controlled the borough's closed, self-perpetuating corporation. One Scot, William Aitchison, represented Norfolk in the House of Burgesses while Robert Tucker was mayor. He had come to Virginia shortly before the war, at the age of forty, and soon was married to Rebecca Ellegood, daughter of one of the borough's founders. In 1758, Aitchison joined a younger Scottish merchant, James Parker, a little man called Jamie, to establish the firm of Aitchison & Parker. Two years later, Parker was married to Margaret Ellegood, Rebecca's sister. The two sisters' cousin, Fernelia Ellegood, was married to Neil Jamieson. The Aitchisons lived in an ”elegant and well furnished” house. His firm's success enabled William Aitchison to own six houses, while Parker acquired five. Their trade grew; yet they pointedly bought barrels of bread not from Robert Tucker's bakery but from Baltimore.

These Scots took an interest in North Carolina-primarily its trade, but also its land. In 1755 a seventeen-year-old boy, Thomas Macknight, arrived in Norfolk from Scotland and for three years lived with the Aitchisons. The new firm of Aitchison & Parker employed Macknight in North Carolina to open a store at Windfield on the Pasquotank River, south of the Dismal Swamp. They financed a North Carolina firm, Thomas Macknight & Company, to get a share of the colony's wheat, pork, pine tar, and lumber, as well as its retail trade. As Parker said, Macknight went to do business with the ”Crackers,” who ”made Shoes played the Fiddle & sung Psalms for a livelyhood.” He soon cut a big figure among these ” Checque Squires.” Macknight patented and purchased property, foreseeing that better roads and easier, growing trade from North Carolina to Norfolk would raise the value of arable land. When Aitchison and Parker turned their attention to the Dismal Swamp, after noticing what the Virginia buckskins were doing, they brought in Macknight to help.

As more of North Carolina's products came into Virginia, the town of Suffolk grew to fifty or sixty houses, with a public wharf on the Nansemond River. Smaller vessels in the West Indies trade sailed up the Nansemond to take on their cargoes. Other vessels, bay craft that did not sail beyond the capes, took commodities to Norfolk. By making the last 28 miles to Norfolk a water carriage, facilities at Suffolk reduced difficulties and expense in the Carolina trade. Visitors found Suffolk ”a pretty little Town,” though goats and hogs roamed at large. One of its princ.i.p.al merchants, James Gibson, had arrived from Scotland soon after the town became important enough to erect its beautiful brick courthouse. He established connections in North Carolina; his business widened; he built more warehouses. Gibson specialized in exporting pork and importing dry goods, but he also dealt in naval stores, deerskins, and rum. If Aitchison and Parker needed a friend in Suffolk, they called on James Gibson.

Robert Tucker added another port to the destinations of his grain s.h.i.+pments. Already exporting to Lisbon and Madeira, he sent a cargo to Tenerife and imported hundreds of gallons of the Canary Islands' sweet wine. His brother-in-law, Richard Corbin, invested 50 in the venture. Tucker and Corbin shared their troubles. Despite ceaseless work, Tucker fell behind in some transactions and s.h.i.+pments he had promised to complete. Corbin held more than 2,500 in bills of exchange drawn by Speaker Robinson, which had been returned protested. And the two men had the unpleasant task of sorting out the estate of Gawin Corbin, half brother of Richard Corbin and brother of Joanna Tucker; he had died in January 1760, still owing more than 1,200 to ”impatient” merchants in Britain. His widow, Hannah, sister of the Lee brothers, and Richard Corbin, with the Lees' help, put up for sale some of the estate's land and slaves, hoping to pay Gawin Corbin's debts. Thus the Corbins and the Tuckers had several reasons to travel along the Mattaponi and York rivers between Norfolk and King and Queen County.

In August 1761, Richard Corbin's eldest son returned from three years in Christ's College, Cambridge, and two years at the Middle Temple. This Gawin Corbin, namesake of his uncle and grandfather and now twenty-one years old, was open, unaffected, lovable. Before the end of 1762 he was married to his cousin, Joanna, daughter of Robert and Joanna Tucker. Sixteen months later they made the Tuckers grandparents.

On Sat.u.r.day, August 20, 1763, the s.h.i.+p Two Sisters Two Sisters, commanded by Captain Jeremiah Banning, sailed up Chesapeake Bay into the estuary of the Choptank River on the Eastern Sh.o.r.e of Maryland and dropped anchor near the warehouses and stores of Oxford. Her pa.s.sage from the coast of Senegal had taken thirty-seven days. She had five slaves on board. Anthony Bacon, the merchant in London who had bought the Two Sisters Two Sisters in a public auction at Lloyd's Coffee House, would have been happy for her to take more slaves to Maryland. Three years earlier his s.h.i.+p in a public auction at Lloyd's Coffee House, would have been happy for her to take more slaves to Maryland. Three years earlier his s.h.i.+p Sarah Sarah had borne eighty from Senegal. But Captain Banning's chief duty was to take liquor and wine to British garrisons on the west coast of Africa, then return to London with tobacco from Maryland. He took slaves for his own profit, and he had difficulties doing so on this voyage. had borne eighty from Senegal. But Captain Banning's chief duty was to take liquor and wine to British garrisons on the west coast of Africa, then return to London with tobacco from Maryland. He took slaves for his own profit, and he had difficulties doing so on this voyage.

Running southward along the Barbary Coast late in May, the Two Sisters Two Sisters was threatened by one of the Algerine cruisers that raided pa.s.sing vessels. Her six artillery pieces caused the raiders to change their minds. Anch.o.r.ed off the sandbar that made the mouth of the Senegal River dangerously shoal, the was threatened by one of the Algerine cruisers that raided pa.s.sing vessels. Her six artillery pieces caused the raiders to change their minds. Anch.o.r.ed off the sandbar that made the mouth of the Senegal River dangerously shoal, the Two Sisters Two Sisters waited while Captain Banning by barter and purchase acquired eleven slaves: six men, one woman, and four children. They were too few to pose a threat to the crew; he left them unchained. Also anch.o.r.ed in Senegal Roads were troop transports filled with British soldiers. A night riot among the soldiers kept Banning's crew and boats busy rowing army officers to each transport. Banning's men were tired when they returned to the waited while Captain Banning by barter and purchase acquired eleven slaves: six men, one woman, and four children. They were too few to pose a threat to the crew; he left them unchained. Also anch.o.r.ed in Senegal Roads were troop transports filled with British soldiers. A night riot among the soldiers kept Banning's crew and boats busy rowing army officers to each transport. Banning's men were tired when they returned to the Two Sisters Two Sisters.