# Memoirs of a Huguenot Family/Letters of Rev. Peter Fontaine

Letters of the Rev. Peter Fontaine
of Westover, Virginia.
Virginia, Nov. 4th, 1749.
Dear Brother Moses:—Yours and brother John's letters dated March last, with Mr. Torin's, by way of London, through the care of Mr. Carey, merchant there, came safe to our hands some time in September last. It is putting brother Torin to trouble and some charge, sending the letters about, which may have a more quick passage by directing them in a cover to us to the care of Messrs. Joseph Farrell, senior and junior, merchants, in Bristol, who will further them to me by all opportunities, provided they are directed to Peter Fontaine, minister of Westover Parish, James River, Va., which you may do for the future.
I observe you have but an indifferent state of health, no more than myself. When we are turned of fifty, we must expect indispositions will creep upon such weak constitutions as ours. The rheumatism upon you, and the gout upon me, distempers near of kin and very sharp, which, as you well observe, we must bear with Christian patience and resignation. We are, nevertheless, allowed to struggle against these attacks by all lawful means, such as temperance in meats and drinks, ​warm clothing, gentle exercise, especially taking the air frequently on horseback; and though we cannot hereby make our shattered tenements sound and strong, yet we may keep them up for some time, until we have made our peace with God, and served our generation as long as he, in his great wisdom, shall see fit. For this reason, I shall give you my bill of health, not any prescription of our doctors here, for they are very ignorant, but my own observations, by watching my constitution diligently.
I drink no spirituous liquors at all, no small beer; but when I am obliged to take more than ordinary fatigue, either in serving my churches, or other branches of my duty, I take one glass of good old Madeira wine, which revives me, and contributes to my going through without much fatigue. I walk much about the family business, and ride constantly every morning all over my plantation, giving to my servants their several employments, in all which I avoid, as much as possible, wet either in my body or feet. I eat very little meat of any sort, living chiefly upon bread and butter, greens, pulse, and roots, especially Irish and Virginia potatoes, Scotch barley, milk, and the like; and by this regimen have made shift to be my own overseer last year, and made a tolerable crop. The gout seized me once by my right knee and foot, but was entreated to let me get clear without giving me much pain. If this be of use in my case, it may in yours, and my tale will not appear long or impertinent.
It is natural to pass from the dying to the dead. Poor brother Francis, after having labored under ill health for some years, was seized a few months since with a nervous fever, which in four or five days time deprived him of his life; and of his senses the very first day. He has left the disposal ​of all to his wife, who governed him and his with a heavy hand. His eldest son, by this means, will have nothing, and his second son, and his daughter by his first wife, but what she thinks fit to give them.
Both Frank and John are carpenters, as good trades as any in this wooden country. Frank has been some years in disgrace, upon account of disobliging his step-dame, and never received one farthing but what his master obliged my brother to do for him by contract. Frank has been free about six years, and is married and has had three children, the eldest of which is dead. He lives at the town of New Berne, in North Carolina, where he and a fellow-apprentice of his, who is married to his wife's sister, have all the carpenter's business between them. His master has been to see them, and has been here this week. He gave me a very agreeable account of their behavior and circumstances. He is apprised that his father hath left him nothing, and hath sent a kind invitation to his brother to join him. With the blessing of God, I doubt not he will make a thriving man, he being honest and of good principles. I do not like the place, and dissuaded him from going thither; but he is capable of serving God in his family, and does so, I understand, and is very diligent and active. They are much beloved, and thrive fast, for even knaves choose rather to deal with such men, than their like.
As to Molly, she has been well brought up, so that if she can but light of a good match, her personal qualities alone may prove better than an ordinary portion. She is a very pretty girl, much resembling our dear deceased sister, whom you have seen, but of a more hardy constitution. She is now about twenty years of age.
​James Maury, his son by this last wife, is a boy of fine parts, and I hear goes now to the college. If the vixen's over-fondness crush him not in the bud, he will, it is to be hoped, make an excellent man, for he knows more than any boy in the country of his age. His sister, the youngest of all, is a pretty girl, but so cockered, that it will not be the old lady's fault if she doth not spoil her quite. I hope better things, however, and that she may take more after poor Socrates than Xantippe.
May God preserve you, is the hearty prayer of your affectionate brother and servant,
Peter Fontaine.
"Virginia, 14th Feb. 1750–1.
Dear Brother Moses:—I received yours and brother John's kind letters by the Virginia Packet, Captain Aselby.
Since the middle of last August to the middle of November, we have had continual rain, which has done much mischief. As to myself and family, we have been troubled with continual colds and small fevers, but are now, thank God, pretty well recovered.
Cousin Francis Fontaine came from New Berne in North Carolina last November, to see us, and buy some tools which could not be had there, and to hire workmen—a journey of almost four hundred miles. He is well settled in that place, and has much business. He has taken his brother John and some other workmen out with him. He paid a visit to his step-mother, and though she boasts my brother Francis's estate was valued at £1500 Virginia currency, yet she neither gave nor offered him one sous. He has two children, a boy ​named Francis, about three years old, and a girl of fourteen months, named Mary, He has several lots in the town of New Berne, and 640 acres of land near it, which supplies him with timber for his business. He brought with him sixty pistoles, to purchase his tools and other necessaries. His step-mother offered to be his security if he wanted more goods, than he had cash to pay for, but he refused it, and the merchant he dealt with told her his own credit was sufficient, if he wanted to take the value of £500.
He only asked of her to see his father's will, and they parted contented on both sides, he with the pleasure of having his brother with him, and she with that of getting rid of him. She gave John, however, a negro boy, which he carried with him.
Frank was, by means of her cruelty, cast off without a rag to cover him; and we see how God hath taken him up, and hath been to him a most tender and kind Father. He came very decently dressed, and my wife observed by the neatness of his clothes, and the good sewing of his linen, that his wife must be a good seamstress and ingenious woman. I need not repeat what I said in my former, that he is beloved and respected.
I sent your kind letter to my son soon after I received it. He lives threescore miles, in the woods back from the river. I can send a letter to you in as short a time as to him. No post travels that way, and I have not heard from him at all this two months. He is now out in the forest surveying, if well, and I do not expect to hear from him till April or May. His wife has brought him a fine son, named John. My wife was up to see them last August, and she says he is the greatest boy of his age she ever saw. He was ​then three months old. Please God to preserve him; he will have limbs and strength to scuffle through the woods, and cope with his fellow foresters, whether human or brute.
Dear brother, feed much on soup and vegetables, and good fruits; and in the winter good salad oil with endive, dandelion, and other bitter salads at your meals, will help digestion, cut the tough phlegm which engenders the pleurisy, make good blood, and keep the body in good order. I know you eat little meat. Taking the air on horseback in fine weather, and your employment in your garden, will keep you healthy and cheerful, with God's blessing. Be pleased with little things, such as the flourishing of a tree or a plant, or a bed of flowers, and fret not at disappointments. Why may not the growth of your trees afford you as much pleasure as the flourishing of a colony does to His Majesty, who hath as many, God bless him! as you have trees. Excuse this piece of quackery. I give you the same advice I follow myself, and am with great sincerity, dear brother,
Your affectionate, humble servant,
Peter Fontaine.
Virginia, 15th April, 1754.
Dear Brothers John and Moses:—Just received your kind letters of 30th November, 1753, dated from your castle, with a hard name, and give you joy of your purchase, which, if you have a fee simple in it, will be, with God's blessing, a pretty revenue for you and one of yours, for many generations.
While our Merciful Father pours in his blessings upon us through one channel, he afflicts through another. I heartily condole with you, my sister, and the rest of our relations on ​the other side of the water, upon account of the loss of our dear niece, your daughter.
This world is a kind of warfare, where we meet with good and evil, and both dispensed by the same kind hand, to loosen our affections from it, and remind us that we have no abiding place here, but are reserved for a better. May we all make it our chief study to prepare for a blessed change.
I very much approve of your wise disposal of your boys to good trades. Labor was ordained by our good Creator to quell the impetuosity of our passions, lest they should run into riot if left unsubdued and unemployed; for which reason, considering our present degenerate state, that part of Adam's curse which condemned him to labor, hath to him and his posterity proved a remarkable blessing ever since ; and, if I may be indulged in one thought more, even his fall was of no small advantage to all those who will make right reason and divine revelation their guide, since the happiness of heaven infinitely surpasseth the bliss of Paradise, even in the state of innocence.
As age comes on, my distemper gains ground, and warns me to prepare for my change. Last fit of the gout confined me to my bed almost three months. I am but just upon the recovery, and still very weak, so that without any pretence to the spirit of prophecy, I may say, in all probability, this will be the last letter you will receive from me.
The rest of the grave, had not God some wise purpose for detaining me here, for my own good or the good of others, or both, would be preferable to my present state. For the greatest of earthly blessings, of which I must acknowledge I partake infinitely more than I deserve, in the prosperity of our families here and elsewhere, do not afford ​me the same pleasure they used to do. Though I am sincerely thankful for them, yet the lazy body which I drag about, and which is never free from pain in my best estate, nor hath been, I may truly say, for some years past, soon palls my joy, and makes me believe I have arrived at those days mentioned by Solomon, in which I can say, I take no pleasure except in the promises of the Gospel, which I have sincerely believed from my youth up until now, and in prospect of a blessed eternity, through the merits and mediation of my Blessed Redeemer. God is now my only comfort and stay; a comfort so powerful through his infinite goodness, that it affords me relief in my most violent agonies, and chases away all melancholy and desponding thoughts from my heart; a blessing I can never sufficiently thank him for.
I shall now give you some account of my family. My son Moses, the oldest by my second marriage, is going in his twelfth year. My daughter Sarah is going in ten. These two can read and write, and are beginning to cipher. My daughter Elizabeth, going in seven, can spell pretty well. My son Joseph is going in six, and my last, Aaron, is about four months old. Three days ago I received an account from Peter, that his wife was delivered of a third son, named William. My daughter Winston, hath three fine boys. Peter, a month older than my Moses; Isaac, about nine years old, and William, about six. Their father, Mr. Isaac Winston, is the very best of husbands, a man of strict honesty, and possessed of a very plentiful estate. With regard to my worldly estate, I am full; I abound with every valuable blessing my heart can desire or wish for.
I look upon a competency, I mean a small estate which will, with a man's industry, maintain himself and family, and ​set him above the necessity of submitting to the humors and vices of others, the most happy state this life affords. And as we here in Virginia may be said to be all of one trade, namely, planters, about one thousand acres of land will keep troublesome neighbors at a distance, and a few slaves to make corn and tobacco, and a few other necessaries, are sufficient. This, God hath enabled me to leave to each of my younger children, who you may perceive by what is before, are five in number.
I would by no means add affliction to the afflicted, or give advice when it is too late, but had you taken me into your counsel when you were deliberating about marrying my deceased niece to so near a relation, I should have opposed it, and advised you rather to a stranger for her, as I did in the case of my own daughter being married to James Maury, all friends here being very intent upon the match.
Marriage was the first divine institution, the only one with regard to our neighbor in the state of innocence, and consequently the best; joining again by the strictest ties of love and duty those who are separated in many degrees by descent from our first ancestors; thus, though by generation we are continually falling off one from another, yet the circle meets again, and we become one flesh. You may perceive that, confining these alliances within our own family is straitening this circle greatly, making a circle within a circle, a state within a state, as the clans of Scotland and the west of Ireland, which is not only of pernicious consequence to the government, but contrary to the true spirit of Christianity, which is the most diffusive of any, and would have every man look upon himself, not as of this or of that nation, but as a citizen ​of the world. This comes too late for what is past, but may be a caution for the future.
As you desire to know something of sister Maury, I will tell you. In the first place, my brother left her the house, land, and stock, household furniture, and six working slaves during her life, besides twenty pounds a year. She lives on the mansion plantation, and wants nothing this world affords except health, the greatest blessing of all; but age brings infirmities, and she is perfectly resigned to God's will. Her youngest son, Abraham, lives with her, and is not yet married. As far as I can learn, James has got a parish amongst the mountains, and is concerned in the Ohio Company, who have an entry on Halifax, beginning on the other side, or properly, west side of the great mountains, upon the line between North Carolina and Virginia, of eight hundred thousand acres of land. His wife's uncle, Colonel Walker, is the chief person in this scheme. They have it quite free for some years, and sell it to settlers at £3 the hundred acres. They have about thirty settlements upon it, if the French and their Indians have not routed them lately.
He has three sons, Matthew, James, and Walker, the latter a mountain hero, by report, and two daughters, Ann and Mary, and his wife, a healthy young creature, who, in all probability, will have half a score more. His last letter to me consists of three sheets, wrote on all sides, with a box containing a piece of antediluvian mud, petrified with the perfect print of a cockle-shell upon it, taken from the top of one of the Great Mountains, and a piece of sea-coal as good as any in Whitehaven, taken out of a broken bank. They have excellent limestone, and many other materials for building on the other side of the mountains, and want but salt to live ​comfortably, which, no doubt, is in great plenty, if once discovered.
Have not room to say a word or two about Brother Frank's family and Molly Claiborne, but shall refer you to Moses' particular letter, having no more than is necessary to assure you that I am,
Your affectionate brother and servant,
Peter Fontaine.
Virginia, 17th April, 1754.
Dear Brother Moses:—'Tis kind in you to send me a line, though brother John's ample letter might have satisfied a moderate appetite that way.
The first thing I look at is the name at the bottom, and having found all things right, I read the rest with pleasure, more especially when yours to me are sealed with black wax.
Though my brother's loss is great in being deprived of his only daughter, in the bloom of her years, yet your two precious lives, and that of my sister, are of much more consequence towards directing and providing for the four hopeful boys under your management, who as yet are but young, and beginning to launch out into the world, an ocean full of rocks and shoals; to the inexperienced and unwary most dangerous.
May God preserve your lives, that you may have the comfort to see the youngest of them well settled in the world, and all of them in a fair way to provide for themselves.
I always correspond with all the family who will be so kind as to answer my letters, and have endeavored to instil the same maxim in my son Peter, and my nephews James Maury and Frank Fontaine, and I reap no small benefit from ​it; for next to being with my friends is the pleasure of hearing from them, and knowing how matters go with them in this inconstant and fluctuating world. I am highly pleased to find my conduct approved in this particular by those I esteem and love, and I hope by this means, when I am gone, there will not be wanting some to brighten the chain between us here and you in England, many years to come, an Indian but very significant expression, signifying to renew the affection or alliance between people of different nations, or friends, at a distance one from another.
Francis Fontaine, my brother's oldest boy, lives at New Berne, in North Carolina, has three children, two boys and a girl. He and his brother John have all the business of the town, they both of them being good joiners and carpenters. John is lately married to a girl of good fortune and reputation, a thing somewhat scarce in those parts, as they have no established laws and very little of the Gospel in that whole colony. I hear from them once a year, and am put to it to find conveyances to send my letters, or get any from them. They live at least 400 miles from hence, and there are very few opportunities by water, they having little trade to Virginia. In every letter I exhort them to come to Halifax or Lunenburg, near to my son Peter, who hath it in his power to help them to good land, and where they may be under the protection of the laws as to property, and have their children educated in the fear of God. James Maury Fontaine is a charming youth; he is at our college here, and makes great proficiency in his learning. He is son of my brother Francis by his second wife, who is still living. Molly Fontaine I have not heard from lately. She is whole sister to Frank and John above-mentioned, and I believe lives with my brother's widow. ​her mother-in-law, as yet unmarried, for what I know. Judith, the youngest of all my brother Frank's children, is with her mother.
Mr. Daniel Claiborne, who married my niece Molly Maury, sold his estate in King William County, and now lives near my son Peter in Lunenburg, where he has purchased a fine tract of land, and has carried with him a good number of slaves. He has had two sons, both of which he had the misfortune to lose, and hath now but one daughter about three years old. He is a very worthy man, and kind husband. I have not heard any thing this three years of brother James's family. They live in Northumberland Co., Virginia, and we can never hear from them.
Cousin Abraham Maury has a fine tract of land in Halifax, to which he will probably remove after my sister's death, my brother having ordered in his will the land she now lives on should be sold then, so that in all probability our relations here will in time be near one the other.
Thus have my poor gouty hands, but skin and bones, performed more than I expected when I began. Excuse blots and blurs.
May our good and gracious God shed on you all his choicest blessings, is the hearty prayer of, dear brother,
Your most affectionate brother and servant,
Peter Fontaine.
March 2d. 1756.
Dear Brothers:—Yours of the 30th October, 1754, came to hand the February following, when I was very ill of the gout, which confined me to the middle of April, and ​took me again in September, but did not confine me so long. Thus much with regard to my troublesome companion.
My sister came to reside with us in the beginning of last October, but we had no long enjoyment of her company, for she departed this life the last day of December, after a five days' illness, which though very sharp, she bore with a truly Christian patience and resignation to the Divine will, spending her last breath in prayers for all her relations and acquaintances, and in blessing me and my little family, one by one, as we stood in tears around her. The first thing she said to me when she came to my house was: "Brother I am come to die with you." Her countenance was cheerful, and I was in hopes that her words would not be so soon accomplished. During the little time she was with us, she did me and my family much good by her pious exhortations, and she instructed my little ones in commendable works they were unacquainted with before, which she was very capable to teach them. She had, after her duty to God, taken the excellent daughter, Proverbs 31st chapter, the 18th verse to the end, for her pattern; and she kept all about her employed, and would often wish she had strength to do more herself, and not be the only lazy person in the family; and yet in that short time, besides her daily task in the Bible, four chapters and the Psalms for the day, she had read the best part of "The Persecutions of the Vaudois of Piedmont," a pretty large folio by John Liger, a minister of that country. She concluded her labors here in the sixty-sixth year of her age, and by the truly Christian manner of her death gave us great comfort, who were eye-witnesses of it. This being the last scene she acted on this troublesome stage of life, I have transmitted it to you faithfully, and I hope we may all imitate her faith and constancy.
​As to news, you have a better account in the public papers than I can give you.
Hitherto we have been shamefully defeated by the enemy, not for want of men to carry on the war, but of money and proper military discipline.
The French as you observe are bad neighbors, and the Indians not one jot better, neither of which any treaties can bind, so that though a peace should be concluded at home, and you should reap the benefit of it, till the floating walls are unmanned and laid up, the enemy will make use of that cessation of hostilities to distress us. It would be no peace for us here, for, until the English colonies can, by exerting themselves, force the enemy to retreat from their borders, the people will be cut off piecemeal under pretense of an Indian war. The French will furnish the Indians with arms, ammunition, scalping-knives and leaders, to harass us continually; and may it not be of evil consequence to tie up our hands by a peace just now? Is not this delivering us over to the tyranny of fear, an imperious master more dreadful than a thousand deaths? No doubt peace is a jewel more to be desired than any thing else this world affords, could it be expected to be a real peace; but to put off the evil day, because you or I, who are old, may by that time be out of harm's way, and leave the conflict to our children, is not acting a generous, but a dastardly part.
The other evil you mention, our intestine enemies, our slaves, increase daily. The females are far more prolific than the white women, for, living upon a simple diet, upon bread, water, pulse, roots and herbs, seldom tasting meat of any sort, and drinking no strong drink, and being used to labor in the ground, they seldom miscarry, have strong healthy children, ​liable to no distempers. When our mother country shall vouchsafe to consider us a part of herself, she may perhaps not suffer such multitudes to be brought from Africa to pleasure a company, and overrun a dutiful colony.
May God preserve you, is the hearty prayer of your affectionate brother and humble servant,
Peter Fontaine.
March the 30th 1757.
Dear Brother Moses:—As I was obliged to take my consignments out of the hands of Hanbury and Farrell, it has occasioned some miscarriages and delays of our letters. Thomas Knox, Esq., in Bristol, and Robert Gary, Esq., in London, manage for me now. I am favored with yours, and brother and sister Torin's letters, dated December, 1756, and January, 1757, received the 11th March. Yours and our kind relations' prayers for me and mine, give me great comfort, as I am persuaded they have a favorable audience at the Throne of Grace. Dear brother, the best thing we can do for one another at this distance, is to send up our petitions continually to the centre of our hope, love, filial affection and fear, where they meet in an instant, join us to our Heavenly Father, to our blessed Redeemer, and one to another. Thus we shall be disposed to turn our faces now towards our heavenly rest, where we shall ere long meet, see one another, and by God's grace and mercy live for ever. When our thoughts take this direction the darkest scenes of life disappear, or are only noticed as small rubs on our journey thither. Oh! let us not be concerned at the measure or duration of afflictions sent to bring us back from our strayings. Let us not open ​our lips in complaints, but, with holy David, be dumb, and be content that all our affairs should be managed by Him whom our soul loveth, and who we are persuaded loveth us, and who saith to the sword and to the pestilence, what he formerly said to the sea, Thus far shalt thou rage, and no farther, and there shall thy proud waves be stayed.
Now, to answer your first query—whether by our breach of treaties we have not justly exasperated the bordering nations of Indians against us, and drawn upon ourselves the barbarous usage we meet with from them and the French? To answer this fully would take up much time. I shall only hint at some things which we ought to have done, and which we did not do at our first settlement amongst them, and which we might have learnt long since from the practice of our enemies the French. I am persuaded we were not deficient in the observation of treaties, but as we got the land by concession, and not by conquest, we ought to have intermarried with them, which would have incorporated us with them effectually, and made of them stanch friends, and, which is of still more consequence, made many of them good Christians; but this our wise politicians at home put an effectual stop to at the beginning of our settlement here, for when they heard that Rolfe had married Pocahontas, it was deliberated in Council, whether he had not committed high treason by so doing, that is, marrying an Indian Princess; and had not some troubles intervened which put a stop to the inquiry, the poor man might have been hanged up for doing the most just, the most natural, the most generous and politic action that ever was done this side of the water. This put an effectual stop to all intermarriages afterwards. Our Indian traders have indeed their squaws, alias whores, at the Indian ​towns where they trade, but leave their offspring like bulls or boars to be provided for at random by their mothers. As might be expected, some of these bastards have been the leading men or war-captains that have done us so much mischief. This ill-treatment was sufficient to create jealousy in the natural man's breast, and made the Indians look upon us as false and deceitful friends, and cause all our endeavors to convert them to be ineffectual. But here methinks I can hear you observe, What! Englishmen intermarry with Indians? But I can convince you that they are guilty of much more heinous practices, more unjustifiable in the sight of God and man (if that, indeed, may be called a bad practice), for many base wretches amongst us take up with negro women, by which means the country swarms with mulatto bastards, and these mulattoes, if but three generations removed from the black father or mother, may, by the indulgence of the laws of the country, intermarry with the white people, and actually do every day so marry. Now, if, instead of this abominable practice which hath polluted the blood of many amongst us, we had taken Indian wives in the first place, it would have made them some compensation for their lands. They are a free people, and the offspring would not be born in a state of slavery. We should become rightful heirs to their lands, and should not have smutted our blood, for the Indian children when born are as white as Spaniards or Portuguese, and were it not for the practice of going naked in the summer and besmearing themselves with bears' grease, &c., they would continue white: and had we thought fit to make them our wives, they would readily have complied with our fashion of wearing clothes all the year round; and by doing justice to these poor benighted heathen, we should have introduced ​Christianity amongst them. Your own reflections upon these hints will be a sufficient answer to your first query. I shall only add that General Johnson's success was owing, under God, to his fidelity to the Indians, and his generous conduct to his Indian wife, by whom he hath several hopeful sons, who are all war-captains, the bulwarks with him of the five nations, and loyal subjects to their mother country.
As to your second query, if enslaving our fellow creatures be a practice agreeable to Christianity, it is answered in a great measure in many treatises at home, to which I refer you. I shall only mention something of our present state here.
Like Adam we are all apt to shift off the blame from ourselves and lay it upon others, how justly in our case you may judge. The negroes are enslaved by the negroes themselves before they are purchased by the masters of the ships who bring them here. It is to be sure at our choice whether we buy them or not, so this then is our crime, folly, or whatever you will please to call it. But, our Assembly, foreseeing the ill consequences of importing such numbers amongst us, hath often attempted to lay a duty upon them which would amount to a prohibition, such as ten or twenty pounds a head, but no Governor dare pass such a law, having instructions to the contrary from the Board of Trade at home. By this means they are forced upon us, whether we will or will not. This plainly shows the African Company hath the advantage of the colonies, and may do as it pleases with the Ministry.
Indeed, since we have been exhausted of our little stock of cash by the war, the importation has stopped; our poverty then is our best security. There is no more picking for their ravenous jaws upon bare bones, but should we begin to thrive ​they will be at the same again. All our taxes are now laid upon slaves and on shippers of tobacco, which they wink at while we are in danger of being torn from them, but we durst not do it in time of peace, it being looked upon as the highest presumption to lay any burden upon trade. This is our part of the grievance, but to live in Virginia without slaves is morally impossible. Before our troubles, you could not hire a servant or slave for love or money, so that unless robust enough to cut wood, to go to mill, to work at the hoe, &c., you must starve, or board in some family where they both fleece and half starve you. There is no set price upon corn, wheat and provisions, so they take advantage of the necessities of strangers, who are thus obliged to purchase some slaves and land. This of course draws us all into the original sin and curse of the country of purchasing slaves, and this is the reason we have no merchants, traders or artificers of any sort but what become planters in a short time.
A common laborer, white or black, if you can be so much favored as to hire one, is a shilling sterling or fifteen pence currency per day; a bungling carpenter two shillings or two shillings and sixpence per day; besides diet and lodging. That is, for a lazy fellow to get wood and water, £19. 16. 3, current per annum; add to this seven or eight pounds more and you have a slave for life.
My last to you was in March, 1756. The 9th of April following I had a son born whose name is Abraham, a fine child, praised be God, the biggest I ever had; he has eight teeth.
I have had a severe fit of the gout this winter, and am just able to write.
We hear the Brest fleet is out, and Louis the 15th dead. ​If they come to Virginia we must take to the woods and fight behind the trees. We have no other fortification but the Lord of Hosts, if he be on our side we shall give them a great deal of trouble. May he be your protection and ours, is the daily and sincere prayer of, dear brother,
Your affectionate, humble servant,
Peter Fontaine.
April, 1757.
Dear Sister Torin:—I did not desire in any measure to occasion affliction by giving you an account of our dear sister's Christian death, but rather comfort, and such I hope it hath been to you.
I am sorry to hear your indisposition prevails, as you are but young in comparison of me, and how often hath my distemper brought me to the gates of the grave, and yet have I lived to see these troublesome times, and for what end God only knows, unless it be to bring up these dear little ones, which he hath bestowed on me, in his fear and love, which I strive to do both by my daily prayers and endeavors.
All our infirmities are a warning to us, as you rightly observe, to prepare for our end, to set our faces, our hearts and affections towards that heavenly country, where we may hope, through the mercy of the Lord Jesus, to meet our friends and relations who are gone before us. In the mean time we ought to wait in patience for our release from these bodies, and cheerfully bear their burdens, not knowing what further service may be in the designs of God's providence for us yet to perform. This, dear sister, will keep us cheerful in the midst of trouble, and lessen the pains of our pilgrimage here. ​May God take you in his most gracious care, may he be your comforter, your joy and your hope, is the hearty prayer of, dear sister,
Your affectionate brother and servant,
Peter Fontaine.
This is the last letter of the Rev. Peter Fontaine, which has fallen into our hands. He died in the month of July of the same year.
Extracts from his last Will.
In the name of God, Amen. I, Peter Fontaine, of the County of Charles City, Parish of Westover. being infirm of body, but of sound mind and memory, knowing it is ordained for all men once to die, do make and ordain this my last will and testament.
First, I commend my immortal soul into the hands of my Creator, to be disposed of according to the determination of his unerring wisdom, humbly hoping through the merits of my only Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ, that it will obtain favor in his sight, and the pardon of all my known transgressions. As to my body, I commit it to the earth, whence it was taken; there to be purged of all rags of corruption through the blood of my merciful Redeemer, firmly believing it will be raised again to eternal life, summoned by the awful trump of doom, and be joined to my soul and live with it for ever.******
My will and desire is that I may have no public funeral, but that my corpse may be accompanied to the ground by a ​few of my nearest neighbors, that no liquors be given to make any of the company drunk; many instances of which I have seen, to the great scandal of the Christian religion, and abuse of so solemn an ordinance.****
I desire none of my family to go in mourning for me.