Cockpit of history

Friday took family down the road well trodden by Donalds past - to Hanover County. Thursday we were on route 64 which is a very beautiful dual carriageway, but you don't see anything except trees - so today we went the back routes - through Keswick, up to Boswell's Tavern, through Louisa and on to Hanover. Letters from Alexander I read on Thursday in the William and Mary said that he went to Hanover Court and Louisa Court and then on to Albermarle - so he must have taken the same road - and he also had an uncle living at Major Boswell's, which is Bowell's Tavern. Stopped off at the Page's library - an old stage coach house and another place I am sure Alexander would have stopped in - which is fantastic and picked up a history of Hanover Town, our eventual destination.
After Page's library went on to Scotchtown - Patrick Henry's house from around the time that Alexander Donald was employing him for cases and also when they must have been near neighbours. Children being children, when I told them what we were going to see, obviously focussed on the fact they wanted to see the room downstairs where his wife was kept when she wasn't well. Kept asking questions of the Docent about that - another word for guide or interpreter that seems to be used here. Of all the houses I have seen - and I have been to quite a few now - I think it is probably the most accurate for the houses the Donalds would have been in. One of those, if only the walls could talk moments.
From here to Hanover Tavern for lunch. Very good bloody Marys. And a very good lunch. Explored the tavern - again as this is where Patrick Henry was staying whilst he was working in the court opposite - and from his ledger, this is somewhere he and Alexander must have met. The present day Alexander and his sister had a great time running around and also went on the stage which has been put in the basement, which looks great. Annoyingly sold out so we didn't see a play.
Then went in convoy with Darshell leading to Slash Church - the oldest frame church still standing in Virginia. It dates back to 1729. Patrick Henry's uncle was the rector between 1737 and 1777 and he was at the centre of the Parson's Cause, the big case that made Patrick Henry's name - and the judge for the case was none other than Patrick Henry's father. 
From there to Hanover Town and met up with Alastair, my host from dinner last Saturday, so when we turned up at the farm there were quite a few of us I have to admit, so ran ahead and explained, but the owners were charming and said not problem. Went with Leroy and Caroline down to the Pamunkey River - and this time I was shown the remains of the warehouse - which was Page's original warehouse. Just on the banks of the river, you can see some bricks, the remains of the foundations, sticking out from under the roots of some trees. Apparently substantial English and Flemish bond brick foundations were visible in the river bank until they were washed away by the floods of 1972 - now there are very few bricks remaining, they are all slowly being washed away by the river. 
The town was thriving in the 18th century - but now it is very hard to imagine the importance it played, and how it could have only lost out to Richmond by one vote in the race to be the main city of Virginia in 1781. Scots always seem to have been important to Hanover Town - in 1736 there was an advertisement in the Virginia Gazette for a party on St Andrews Day. 

Any number of country fiddles to enter the competition, dancing, singing, foot-ball play, jumping and wrestling. And if that wasn't enough - a pair of silk stockings - fine at that - to be given to the handsomest maid on the Green. Who could refuse an invite like that? As the Virginia Gazette went on to say: 

That's good entertainment. Who could ask for more? Merry disposed Gentlemen of Hanover indeed. 
Now, looking at a few bricks on the side of the river, it is hard to imagine all this history - and that there was a tavern there in the 1770s, where "gentlemen may depend on being genteelly entertained", run by John Merriweather. Then Tinsley opened one, offering "as good, or the best entertainment in the colony" in 1772. 
However, Hanover Town had bigger dates with destiny than a few Scots enjoying a drink or two and a couple of taverns vying for business. 
In 1781 a hospital for the American wounded in the Revolution was established there. Cornwallis burnt down the warehouses in the same year. The French supply wagon passed through in 1782, under Generals Collot and Berthier. 
Over 150 British prisoners were there in 1781 as well. They caused quite a few problems - and on November 15 a local resident asked for relief from the "hearty fellows". Slightly stronger letters followed - A Kirkpatrick wrote about the prisoners: "who are daily committing some wanton destruction on either public or private property. Two nights ago they broke open the Issuing house and took several barrels of flour - they have burnt three houses already, that was empty, all fencing within half a mile of town and most pailing around their gardens." 
Count Rochambeau camped at Hanover Town in 1782 on his ways home and indeed the map made during his visit is the only surviving map of the town from that time.

 

Things seem to quieten down in Hanover Town from this time - probably due to the fact the river was being silted up from the neighbouring tobacco fields. Arms were requested to defend the town in 1800 during Gabriel's abortive slave insurrection threatened Richmond in 1800 as Hanover Town was said to be the route of retreat planned by Solomon, Gabriel's brother should the revolt fail. There is no indication that he went there. 
So by the time that US Grant's troops crossed the Pamunkey river there in the Virginia campaign of the Civil War in 1864, little more than a ferry remained. Leroy explained that Custer had also been there and pointed out the spot in the river that he is said to have fallen in as he was impatient for a pontoon bridge to be built to cross the river. 
Then we went to the grave of Latane just over the fields. Captain William Latane of the 9th Virginia Cavalry is famous for three things. 
Firstly being the only Confederate soldier killed during JEB Stuart's ride around Union general George B McCellan's army during the Peninsula campaign in 1862. 
Secondly for having a poem written about his death - which includes the following lines: 

A brother bore his body from the field
And gave it unto strangers' hands, that closed

The calm blue eyes, on earth forever sealed,

And tenderly the slender limbe composed:

Strangers, yet sisters, who, with Mary's love,

Say by the open tomb, and, weeping, looked above.

A little child strewed roses on his bier,

Pale roses, not more stainless than his soul,

Nor yet more fragrant than his life sincere

That blossomed with good actions, brief, but whole.

The aged matron and the faithful slave

Approached with reverent feet the hero's lowly grave.

No man of God might say the burial rite

Above the "rebel"--thus declared the foe
That blanched before him in the deadly fight.
But woman's voice, in accents soft and low,
Trembling with pity, touched with pathos, read
Over his hallowed dust the ritual for the dead
.

And thirdly for having this painting painted of his burial by William Washington, which was then made into a print and became a firm favourite in the South. 

There's the little child stewing roses on his bier and as no man of God, the woman's voice, trembling with pity, reading over his hallowed dust the ritual for the dead. 
Saw this painting years ago and was always struck by its strong message, which I admit with hindsight it does rather lay on with a trowel and is not quite as sophisticated or subtle as I once thought. However, very moving to stand next to his grave and look around the surrounding fields in the setting sun as Leroy pointed out where the Hanover Town settlements had been and where Leroy used to pick up bullets from Civil War camps, where he used to find arrow heads from the Pamunkey Indians, where the slave burial ground is that he had fenced off and where he used to find weights for scales with Lions on them from England and to think of all the people who had been through Hanover Town through the ages, or had lived there, and how important a hub it had been. 
Now it is just fields.