Frontiers of Settlement and Culture in Augusta County, Virginia, 1738—1770
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W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 1990 Across the first divide: rF ontiers of settlement and culture in Augusta County, Virginia, 1738-1770 Nathaniel Turk McCleskey College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation McCleskey, Nathaniel Turk, "Across the first divide: rF ontiers of settlement and culture in Augusta County, Virginia, 1738-1770" (1990). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539623794. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-6p40-zt04 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 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Reproduced with with permission permission of the of copyright the copyright owner. owner.Further reproductionFurther reproduction prohibited without prohibited permission. without permission. Order Number 9110052 Across the iSrst divide: Frontiers of settlement and culture in Augusta County, Virginia, 1738—1770 McCleskey, Nathaniel Turk, Ph.D. The College of William and Mary, 1990 Copyright ©1991 byM cCleskey, Nathaniel Turk. All rights reserved. 300N.ZeebRd. Ann Aibor, MI 48106 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with with permission permission of the of copyright the copyright owner. owner.Further reproductionFurther reproduction prohibited without prohibited permission. without permission. NOTE TO USERS THE ORIGINAL DOCUMENT RECEIVED BY U.M.I. CONTAINED PAGES WITH POOR PRINT. PAGES WERE FILMED AS RECEIVED. THIS REPRODUCTION IS THE BEST AVAILABLE COPY. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with with permission permission of the of copyright the copyright owner. owner.Further reproductionFurther reproduction prohibited without prohibited permission. without permission. ACROSS THE FIRST DIVIDE FRONTIERS OF SETTLEMENT AND CULTURE IN AUGUSTA COUNTY, VIRGINIA 1738-1770 A Dissertation Presented to The Faculty of the Department of History The Coliege of William and Maty in Virginia In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Turk McCleskey 1990 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. APPROVAL SHEET This dissertation is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Nathaniel Turk McCleskey j Approved, May 1990 lames ?. Whittenburg A kuU. James Axtell Enjory <J. Evans University of Maryland at College Park i P. Kelly£ Colonial Williamsburg foundation ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. For Camille The best that ever was Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v LIST OF TABLES ix LIST OF FIGURES xi LIST OF MAPS xii ABSTRACT xiii INTRODUCTION 2 PART I: AUGUSTA COUNTY AND THE SOUTHERN FRONTIER SETTING 9 I. THE FRONTIER JOURNEY OF JOHN PETER SALLING: AN EXPEDITION IN SOUTHERN COLONIAL HISTORIOGRAPHY 15 PART II: ON THE FRONTIER n. RICH LAND, POOR PROSPECTS: REAL ESTATE AND THE FORMATION OF A SOCIAL ELITE 54 m. TINY HANDS AND FIELD HANDS: THE RAISING OF AUGUSTA COUNTY'S LABOR FORCE 97 IV. FOR MINE IS THE KINGDOM: RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY AND SOCIAL UNITY 173 V. ASSERTIONS OF AUTHORITY 208 PART ffl: IN THE FRONTIER VI. THE CONTEXT OF ENDIAN-WHITE RELATIONS 249 VII. PATHS OF PEACE, ROADS OF REPRISAL 261 Vm. WASPS AND YELLOWJACKETS 303 CONCLUSION 335 APPENDIX A 339 BIBLIOGRAPHY 344 VTTA 364 iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Until recently it was customary to pause before plunging into the Introduction in order to acknowledge the aid of a devoted typist—often a wife, in this male- dominated business—who made the manuscript possible. The advent of personal computers forces a change to that ritual, because now real men do their own typing, or at least should. So: I typed every word in this dissertation, right and wrong alike, wearing out one computer keyboard in the process and putting the Studebaker equivalent of a hundred thousand miles on another—comfortably broken in, for the uninitiated. Having hogged all the typing glory, though, I readily admit that every other phase in this work is marked by extensive debts to institutions, colleagues, and friends. But in the bookkeeping of scholarship such debts also count as capital, and for that reason it makes me feel wealthy indeed to enumerate the assistance I've received. ■ Funding was provided in part by generous grants from The Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Virginia and The National Society Colonial Dames XVII Century. The continuing support of these two organizations for the graduate history program at the College of William and Mary is deeply appreciated by myself and numerous other beneficiaries. Additionally, minor research grants from the College of William and Mary helped offset the endemic petty expenses of historical detection. Many librarians and archivists assisted my research; I am indebted to staff members of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC; Alderman Library at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville; Swem Library at the College of William and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Mary, Williamsburg; the Virginia State Library and Archives, Richmond; the Union Theological Seminary Library, Richmond; the Baptist Historical Society at the University of Richmond, Virginia; and Perkins Library at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. Bill Obrochta of the Virginia Historical Society’s Department of Archives and Manuscript Acquisitions was a knowledgable guide through the Preston Family Papers, and Mitchell Bowden, Executive Director of the Roanoke Valley Historical Society, Roanoke, Virginia, provided ready access to useful but often overlooked items in the Society's collections. John Ingram and his staff in the Library Special Collections of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, Virginia, were unfailingly helpful. West of the Blue Ridge, the staffs of the Botetourt County and Montgomery County Courthouses (in Fincastle and Christiansburg, respectively) were generous with their attention, and in the Augusta County Courthouse, Staunton, the clerk of court's office was especially tolerant of my inqueries. For this I am most grateful to John H. Davis, clerk of court. My research in Botetourt County was aided immensely by Tommy Moore, who gave an entree to the courthouse in the best Virginia tradition of well-spoken country lawyers. Tommy also introduced surveyor Charles McMurry, who spent a delightful July afternoon acquainting me with the eighteenth-century geography of land he has measured—and clearly loved-for better than three decades. Once the research for this dissertation was 'mostly) complete the task of transforming my notes into history began. Throughout that transformation I was guided not only extensively but well by my advisor, James P. Whittenburg— although out of a misplaced sense of self-effacement he will protest that I'm too mulish to follow him out of a burning building, much less be led through the writing of a dissertation. Jim is responsible for my interest in the alchemy of vi Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. quantitative social history, and his patience