01-H '0 'n ^9 •KOI'JMHSVW! •V •! *NVIliVtJvm FIFTY JULY CENTS 1956 NDENT rtc PUBLICATIOPUBLICA- N FOIJNDED 1878 JUL 3 1 1956 iiiBiiIl:i«H THE MILITIA OF THE COMMONWEALTH: THE VIRGINIA NATIONAL GUARD By MR(;iNIA WALLER DA\ LS GEORGE MASON'S ISLAND VHiGINIA BUSINESS REVIEW Felicitations to GENERAL CRUMP and the VIRGINIA NATIONAL GUARD from tlu WAYNESBORO AUTOMOBILE DEALERS WE SALUTE THE VIRGINIA NATIONAL GUARD TELEPHONES FOR HANDS-FREE TALKING VAUGHAN You can do more work in less time with the help of the new Speakerphone. The Speaker- phone has its own microphone and adjustable loudspeaker, leaves your hands free to make notes, take orders, use your files while you talk or listen. Others in the office can join in the conversation. And you don't even have to pick up the receiver. The Speakerphone is just one of the mod• Bankers ern services we have for business. There are many others you ought to know about. No matter how specialized your communication needs, we can fill them. A call to our Business Office will give you all the details. FRANKLIN THE CHESAPEAKE & POTOMAC TELEPHONE COMPANY 0/ OF VIRGINIA VIRGINIA A company of more than 9.000 Virginians providing good telephone service for their friends and neighbors. AN INDEPENDENT PUBLICATION—FOUNDED 1878 TO TELL THE VIRGINIA STORY accent. The directions are very compli• cated. I remember that the courteous young man with the molasses accnt DONNA Y. LAURINO CLIFFORD DOWDEY said that when we reached a fork, with Business Editor Editor "a lot of what-all" on a tree pointing in one direction, we should go to the JULIA GWIN AULT FRANCES GORDON other. I'his thing we did, between Associate Editor Managing Editor fields of young-planted corn and old Published Monlhly At The State Capital woods, thick with creeper and wild Copyright 1956 By By Virginia Publishers Wing, Inc. grape, until we landed on a fine ex• VIRGINIA RECORD EDITORIAL OFFICES: panse of the York River at the home of 303 West Main Street "Second Class Mail Privileges a jjleasant farmer-lady who lived in a Phones 7.2122-7-6717 Authorized at Richmond, Va." (oltage called (rightly) "Salt Air." SUBSCRIPTION PER YEAR $4; TWO YEARS $7 This good woman re-directed us bat k toward the "what-all" signs, and Please address all mail to: pointed out that we must take a trail VIRGINIA RECORD, P. O. Drawer 2-Y, Richmond 5, Va. below that. VIRGINIA RECORD ii an independent publication cooperating with all organizations that have for their ob• jectives the welfare and development of Virginia. While this publication carries authoriutive articles and We found the trail, which was a features on statewide and local industrial, business, governmental and civic organizations, they are in no other < upheinism, and persevered between resi>ect resi>onsiblc for the contents hereof. more woods and cornfields—thick with birds of all kind, and one stately phi as- VOLUME LXXVIII JULY 1956 NUMBER SEVEN ant^—until we entered a slumbrous thi( ket of honey-suckle, creepers crawl• ing up live-oak and magnolia. There, A Trip to Rosewell turning the car into the brush, we saw the ghostly columns of the Rosewell ruins arising behind the green screen. N THE LAST issue of VIRGINIA as our "home-building" magazines are I RECORD, we mentioned the dere- published today. The assumption is I remember that we—a doctor and a littion of the .state in regard to the that plantation families formed from music Ian and I—had been joking a lot preservation of its physical past. That these books a general concept of their as we rolled in and out of the road's sj)( ( itically concerned Hanover County. desire, and brought in professionals— pits back and forth from "Salt Air," Siiuc then I have taken a trip to the (ailed "master workmen"—to work out and that all at once nobody could say a remains of the mansion — called by the details. These unknown architects word. The ruins were too awesome. Waterman the greatest in the Ameri- would be a good Ph.D. thesis for some We moved single-file through the ( an c olonies—which the Pages built on student on Virginia, but, in the absence ankle-deep vines and under the brush, the York in Gloucester County. There of such a thesis, we know only that shooting pictures from all angles, as a were perhaps more beautiful houses in such men of special training, skill and means of establishing our own identity Virginia, if it came to an argument, imagination did live in the period, be• in terms of this lost grandeur, until we but, according to all authorities, none ginning roughly 1725, when the first of reached the back. There one-half of the was so magnificent and impressive as the great houses were built. four-story wall had fallen, with a pile Rosewell. These poor fellows of talent were of bricks on what 200 years before had In the early eighteenth century, Vir• called in to build monuments of pride, been an entrance porch, and we could ginia's plantation-class had thoroughly what today we would call "conspicuous stare into the massiveness of the in• established themselves in wealth and consumption." The consumption was terior. Trees as well as vines grew up power, and—looking to their models in so conspicuous at Rosewell that two {Continued on page 22) the British country gentry—the new generations of the Mann Pages were colonial aristocrats turned to building impoverished in building it. The house COVER NOTE: mansions which symbolized their posi• later went out of the family, and Richmond Grays man 57-mm rifle in tion as had the feudal lords built castles. nothing exists today except three-and- Capitol Scjuare as guardsmen mobilize. Probably an impetus had been given one-half roofless walls enclosing the (National Guard Photo) the rich planters by Spotswood's elab• vine-covered debris of fallen brick. Yet, oration and adornment of the new gov• those barren walls, posted with signs of ernor's house in Williamsburg, whose BEWARE FALLING BRICKS, expenses were so large that the com• evoke more hauntingly the grandeur CONTENTS — plaining House of Burgesses called it of eighteenth-t entury Virginia than al• The Virginia National Guard .... 4 "The Palace." In any event, in a 20- most anything I have seen. by VIRGINIA WALLER DAVIS year period after the completion of the From Richmond, you drive down to Clever People. These Chinese .... 8 Palace there occurred a rash of build• Williamsburg and that lovely highway by FREDERICK RUSSELL ing great houses unequalled in any to Yorktown, and then at ross the new American colony. bridge built over the wide York River. George Mason's Island 9 by MOLLIE SOMERVILLE Until recently the legend existed Some seven miles beyond Gloucester whic h made each planter his own ar• Point, if you are very alert, you will Virginia Business Review 10 chitect. This is manifestly absurd, or so find a totally unhelpful state-marker by WILLIAM BIEN mu(h would not have been made of at a vacated store bearing in dim letters Letters to the Editor 20 Jefferson in the following generation the words White Marsh. You must for his architet tural talents. I'he weal• there stop and inquire of the attendants Mental Health 25 at a nearby garage, who will give you thy colonials owned books, with plates, Index to Advertisers 26 published by English architects much the directions in a deep-dish country' JULY 1956 PAGE THREE The Militia of the Commonwealth: TKe Virginia National Guard (Editor's note: The information for this article was obtained from official records and manuscripts assembled in the office of the Adjutant General by Colonel H. W. Holt, Assistant Adjutant General {Air], and from other records in the State and Congressional Libraries.) militia each man served under the coimnand of the "com• mander" of the various plantations, or the t onunander of his county, who was a Colonel or Major, commissioned by the (Foster Studio) Governor. Brigadier General Sheppard Crump, Adjutant General of Units of today's Virginia National Guard trace their lin• Virginia. eage back to the Colonial Militia, and to the illustrious "Vir• ginia Regiment" whit h had such famous commanding ofl[i- cers as George Washington and Patrick Henry. Composed of militia from many Virginia counties, its history tells the By VIRGINIA WALLER DAVIS Virginia story, from the mountains to the sea. What is the Virginia National Guard today? Its man• power is close to 8,000 strong with more than 100 separate C4"OiGHTiNG against our enemies, whomsoever." That, in a units composing its 20-odd organizations with headquarters jO nutshell, is the story of the Virginia Mihtia. A story in 40-odd different areas of the Commonwealth. that began to unfold when the earliest pioneers first "hit the Regardless of occupations or responsibilities, the members beaeh" at Jamestown in 1607, and was rolling at full speed of the Virginia National Guard drill once each week and, when the deseendants of those men were the first to "hit the for many of its members, the annual summer encampments, beaeh" at Normandy, on "D-Day" 338 years later. of 15 days each, means the sacrifice of vat ations. In times of In the mind's eye tin- militia pieture might be long lines peace it is not so easy to pay strit t attention to military duty ol iiKiK hing men. the glint of sunshine on bayonets at "|jr( - but on drill nights those lights flick on in armories across the sent arms," the dancing plumes atop dress helmets, the Connnonwealth, regardless of weather or weariness.