THE SCOTCH-IRISH OF THE VALLEY OF VIRGINIA
...continued

BY HON. JOSEPH ADDISON WADDELL, STAUNTON, VA.

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Till the year 1738 all the country west of the Ridge was embraced in the county of Orange, whose county seat was some distance east of the mountain. On the 1st of November, 1738, however, an act was passed by the Colonial Assembly constituting the counties of Augusta and Frederick. The latter embraced the country along the Potomac and about seventy-five miles up the Valley, while Augusta embraced much the greater part of the Valley and the country westward as far as the British possessions extended. While, however, the two counties were thus recognized by law in 1738, they can hardly be said to have existed till justices of the peace were appointed and courts were established therein, which in the case of Frederick was in 1743, and of Augusta in 1745.

All the time we have passed over new settlers were coming in. James Patton was an efficient agent in introducing them, and in the course of bis business crossed the Atlantic Ocean twenty-five times. Unfortunately, he introduced many "indentured servants," white people of both sexes, who had been banished from the old country for petty offenses, and who, to a great extent, kept up their evil practices in this new land. But in the latter part of 1739, or early in 1740, there was a great influx of people of the best sort, the very people to wrestle with the wilderness and found a State. Then came John Preston and "his wife Elizabeth" (Patton's sister), Alexander Breckinridge, David Logan, Hugh Campbell, Robert Poage, the Bells, Trimbles, Hayses, Pattersons, Andersons, Scotts, Wilsons, Youngs, and that ubiquitous man who is found wherever the English language is spoken, John Smith. This John Smith was no myth, but a sturdy captain of rangers during the Indian wars, and almost died of chagrin because the military authorities would not give him a command in his old age, when the Revolutionary War arose. He was the ancestor of Judge Daniel Smith, of Rockingham, and of Col. Benjamin H. Smith, of Kanawha.

Notwithstanding the Indians who prowled around the settlements were professedly peaceful, frequent collisions occurred between individuals of the two races, and a military organization of the white people was perfected in the fall of 1742. William Beverley, although a resident of Essex County, was the county lieutenant, or commander in chief. James Patton was the colonel, or officer immediately in command. There were twelve captains and companies, the first captain in the list being John Smith, and the next Andrew Lewis. Among the captains was John Willson, who afterwards, for twenty-seven consecutive years, represented Augusta County in the House of Burgesses; Peter Scholl, who lived in what is now Rockingham, thirty miles from a public road; and John McDowell, who, with eight of his men, was killed by Indians in December, 1742. The privates were enrolled without respect to age, from boyhood to the extremity of life. The venerable Ephriam McDowell was a member of his son John's company. The number of men in a company averaged about fifty, which indicates a total population in the settled parts of the present counties of Rockingham, Augusta, and Rockbridge (all then Augusta) of about twenty-five hundred.

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