Greenbrier independent. [volume] (Lewisburg, Va. [W. Va.]) 1859-1980, 1895-07-18

For the Greenbricr Independent.
Among the Old Virginia Records.
BY GEO. G. SMITH, ID. ID.

The Genesis of the Southern peo-
pie Of the United States is to be
found in Virginia. The people who
went to North Carolina, upper South
Carolina and Georgia, and the States
further West springing from them,
came very largely from the settlers
in Virginia. Only very small
number Of Europeans came directly
to any Of these States and in the
study of the history of any State or
family South and West of Pennsyl-
vania, we must search into the old
records of Virginia. In my work
as Methodist preacher, | have been
often thrown in the old counties of
Virginia and have searched with
great care and interest into these old
records. The histories of the va
rious Southern States have not been
satisfactory to me. They have been
too general to convey anything like
a correct idea of what the country
was and how it grew. In reading
Virginia history especially the i'm
preston made upon me of the So
cial condition of the people was
very different from the facts as /
have found them. The almost en-
tire ignoring of the humber class of
yeomanry has left the impression
that the old-timc Virginian was al
ways the Cavalier pictured by Mr..
John Esten Cooke or Mr.. Nelson
Page. That the English Gentry
mot the nobility, for save Lord Fair
fax and Lord Baltimore, there were
a very few real mobiles who came to
America) had very much to do with
the early settlement of Virginia,
goes without saying. And the fami-
lies in Virginia-and the farther
South, who have their names even
now in Burkes Landed Gentry, and
in the Books of the English and Ir-
ish, and Scotch Peerage, are very
numerous, but the larger part Of the
aristOcratic settlers in Virginia were
from Baronets and Squires and not
from Dukes and Earls, and these
were generally the youngest and
most impecunious of the family.
The first people who came to
Jamestown, like those who came to
Plymouth Rock twelve years after,
had very wrong idea of the coun-
try to which they came and the work
for them to do, and all history tells
of the dark days which were never
much brighter till about twenty
years after the first landing, when
the charter Of the London Company
was revoked and the king took the
Government Of the colony in his
own hand and the General Assem-
bly, or House Of Burgesses had be-
gun to hold its annual sessions.
Then the tide of settlement rose and
while it was checked by the Indian
massacre after the complete subju-
cation of the Indian Tribes near the
coast which followed this, 1T re-
ceived large impetus. The colo
NAL council now granted 90 acres OF
land to every adventurer, and 5O
acres for each dependent he brought
over. The result was that the coun-
try began to fill up rapidly. Dur
ing the 20 years of first settlement
there was nothing which could be
called prosperity, and the sons OF the
English gentlemen and the fe"
servants that they brought had alike
hard struggle for existence, but
now plantations were opened, cattle
were increasing, and hogs and poul
try begun to be a part Of every
farmers possessions.
The earliest records we're those OF
lanes City, but they were, alas
burned In Bacon's rebellion. The
earliest preserved is perhaps an ole
and mutilated and imperfect copy
of the record of Charles River Par
isb now York, and began in 1888
The next in Northampton, on th'