The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1885-10-02

Eastern Shore OF yirginia-IIistOriC
Threads Found I'm an Unknown Land.
Philadelphia Record.
Few sections of Virginia are richer in his
toric interest than the strip ofseabound soil
comprising the counties of Accomac and
Northampton, which is familiarity known as
the Eastern Shore, and which has just been
brought into wider public notice by the
construction of the new all-rail route from
this city by way of Norfolk. The first land
sighted by the adventurous Captain John
Smith from the deck of his ship was Cape
Charles and the first Indians seen by the
English were the tall natives of what is now
Accomac county. There also was born the
unfortunate UpshuN whose tragic death on
board the Princeton shocked the nation as
have few other events of peaceful times.
Not far from the birthplace of the famous
Henry A. Wise was planted the first seeds of
Presbyteriansm in the United States.-
Francis Meckamill was the Asbury of the
Presbyterian Church and organized its first
congregation in this country on the Eastern
Shore of Virginia. He died and was buried
in Accomac county, which is thus, through
him, the birthplace of the American Presby-
terrain Church. Down in Northampton, Il
few miles from quaint Eastville Court House,
is the ancestral home of the Gusts family
the heights above Washington take their
name. Here the ancestors of Martha Wash
ington lived in Colonial splendor when the
country was loyal to the King. Parts of the
ancient burial ground of the Gusts family
still remain, and one marble slab, ivy mantled
and blackened by time and the elements, has
this curious inscription:
Under this tomb lies We body of
YE HONORABLE JOHN GUSTS, ESQ.,,
OF the City of Williamsburg and Parish of Benton,
Formerly of Hungus Parish,
and County of Northampton,
the place of his nativity,
Aged II, and yetlived but years,
Which was the space of time he kept Bachelors
House, at Arlington, on the Eastern Shore of
Virginia.
The paradox which concludes this inscrip-
ton is variously explained, but traditions say
that the poor fellow married vixen, who
led him sad dance through life. He had
spent seven years with none but his servants
at Arlington, a careless bachelor, happy to
ride across country and keep late hours with
the young bucks of the day over bottle OF
rum and the solacing influence of pipe and
tobacco. When he finally became Benedict
he lost his liberty and counted himself dead
from that day.
A half-score of miles below Accomac Court
House, on the bend of an ill-kept country
road as it energies from forest of pines, is
one of the landmarks of the country-a bat
tered, storm beaten mill. The summer tourist
who goes out of his way to visit this anti
quated structure is at once impressed by the
tranquility of the scene. The twitter of Il
bird, the almost inaudibe splashing of the lit
tie stream falling over the dam, or the melan.
choly murmur of the breeze passing through
the high tops of the pines are the only sounds
to be heard. AS for motion, except the lazy
turning of the great moss covered water
wheel, moving its green and shiny flukes
with solemn slowness, as if protesting
against such unssemly haste, there is none
The old mill itself is almost a ruin. but it is
still used by the neighbors to crush their
grain, and there is a miller there at times, and
flour of primitive kind may be manufactur-
edlbeneath its tumbled shingles and falling
brick walls but, as the tourist generally finds
it, its only inhabitants are the muskrats and
the owls, and its most important use appears
to be to afford a principal and striking feature
of this bit of picturesque Eastern Shore land
scape.
The dwelling house connected with this
old relic long since disappeared. More than
hundred years ago its roof protected little
black-eyed girl, the story of whose romantic
career makes one of the most interesting
chapters of American history. This girl
born within the shadow of this old mill, be-
came in curious manner the wife of one oil
the most conspicuous and influential public
men of this century. She died upon the
| threshold of the White House, the mistress
| of which had she lived a few months longer
she would have become One of the most
| famous duels that ever occurred in this coun.
| try was fought to the death for breath
upon her honor. Altogether she became a
famous woman, and the fact that she loved
| TO smoke clay pipe with the great man who
became her husband has not lessened the re-
gard in which posterity will ever hold her.
Rachel Donaldson, was born eleven years
| before the Declaration of Independence, and
in the very year when Andrew Jackson first
| saw the light in North Carolina wilderness.
| She passed her girlhood days within sound of
| the murmuripg pines about the old Accomac
mill, and there was living twenty years ago
near the Atlantic coast an old colored woman
| who was the daughter of a nurse of the little
black-eyed, swarthy complexioned child who
died at the Hermitage from the effects of a
transport of joy at hearing the news OF the
election of her husband as President of the
| United States. Tradition only and some de-
scription of this old nurses daughter are all
that are left of this old nurses story-the wife
of "Old Hickory" the hero of New Orleans
and the destroyer of the United States Bank
| There is an Eastern Shore story that the
great grandmother OF Rachel Donaldson was
an Indian girl who married Donaldson two
centuries or more ago. This would account
for her very black hair and exceedingly dark
complexion, which led a visitor to "The
Hermitage" in 1928, when she was Mrs
Andrew Jackson, and about to become mis-
tress of the White House, to hint in letters,
since become historical, that the mingling oil
blood had been of another and less distin.