Journal and Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian: A Plantation Tutor of the Old Dominion, 1773-1774.

Preface

Once in a great while historians find a firsthand account that provides striking insight into a past era. Only rarely is such a document written with the perception and charm that make its readers feel as if they had participated in the incidents described and shared the experiences related. The journal and relevant correspondence of Philip Fithian constitute this kind of source.

Fithian was reared in New Jersey and attended the College of New Jersey in Princeton, receiving his degree in 1772. Before entering the Presbyterian ministry, he followed the advice of President Witherspoon of Princeton and became a tutor in the family of Robert Carter at "Nomini Hall" plantation on the Northern Neck of Virginia. The reactions of the somewhat austere young man to the rich, warm life of a Virginia plantation are always instructive and often amusing. The Carters and their seven children were a fascinating family, liberal in their sentiments and deeply interested in books and music. Fithian sets forth truthfully, yet with lively touches, the family's assessments of the society in which it moved, the institution of slavery, and the dispute developing with the mother country. Throughout his experiences Fithian remained true to his "fair Laura" – Elizabeth Beatty in far off New Jersey.

The journal, with certain of the letters, was first published in 1900, in somewhat abbreviated form, by the Princeton Historical Association. Dr. Hunter Dickinson Farish, in his edition of The Journal and Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian (Williamsburg Restoration Historical Studies, III; Williamsburg, Va., 1943), included the complete journal, added other relevant letters as well as Fithian's catalogue of Carter's library, and supplied a thoughtful Introduction.

Dr. Farish was Director of Research at Colonial Williamsburg from 1937 until ill health forced him to retire in 1944. He broadened the program there by bringing young research associates to the staff, making grants-in-aid to scholars in the field of early American history, and establishing and editing the Williamsburg Restoration Historical Series. He also taught at the College of William and Mary and helped to work out the organizational plans for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, which since 1943 has been jointly sponsored by Colonial Williamsburg and the College of William and Mary.

Dr. Farish's edition of the Journal had been out of print for a few years when, in 1957, Colonial Williamsburg reissued it, with pen and ink illustrations by Fritz Kredel designed to interest new readers. The present edition by the University Press of Virginia reproduces the 1957 one, but in convenient paperback form. Young Fithian's revealing picture of Virginia plantation life will always be a key source for the historian and an absorbing human document for the general reader.

Colonial Williamsburg

September 1967

CHAPTER ONE

Virginia During The Golden Age

In the "Golden Age," or half-century immediately preceding the American Revolution, a remarkable civilization reached its zenith in the broad coastal plain of eastern Virginia. Gradually, during a century of colonization and expansion, the heavily wooded tidewater had been converted into a land of settled order and accumulated wealth. Vast estates had been carved out of the wilderness and large plantations were everywhere the rule.

Embraced by numerous arms of the Chesapeake and covered by a network of wide rivers and creeks, this sylvan Venice abounded in safe and convenient water routes. Pressing through the mouths of the deep estuaries, the ocean tides reached the "fall-line," beyond which the streams were inaccessible to shipping owing to the rapids. Ocean vessels could penetrate to the plantations in every part of the lowlands and carry cargoes thence straight to the wharves of London and the outports. Despite the distance and rigors of the voyage, the colonists of the Tidewater had maintained a constant intercourse with the mother country from the time of their earliest settlement.

The hope had long persisted that this coastal plain might yield the ores, timber, ship stores and other products England needed, and for which she then largely depended on foreign potentates. Lacking an ample supply of cheap labor, however, colonial industries could not compete with well-established ones of the Old World. For well over a century tobacco proved the one commodity which the colony could profitably produce for the home market in large quantities.

A notable result of the method of tobacco cultivation was a rapid depletion of the soil. Intent only upon reaping quick returns, men customarily neglected the most ordinary precautions to preserve fertility. Since the tobacco plant required the richest loam to produce the leaf in its perfection, fields were usually abandoned after three or more crops had been harvested, and "new grounds" were cleared. Thus there developed an ever recurring need for fresh lands.

Under so wasteful a system, Virginians had soon realized the necessity of acquiring many times the quantity of land they could cultivate at any one time. Farseeing men, realizing a day would come when fertile soil could no longer be had for a song, wished also to provide sufficient elbow room for their children at a future day. The appreciation in land values in a new country provided a further incentive to the accumulation of large holdings. As a result, enterprising persons everywhere competed to secure the best tracts.

Towards the close of the seventeenth century the practice of engrossing lands gained increased momentum. African slavery was rapidly superseding white indentured servitude as the principal source of labor supply. The price of tobacco had steadily declined owing to overproduction, the burdens of the Navigation Acts, and the effects of European wars. As a result of these conditions, the margin of profit from the leaf had so decreased that the cheaper labor of slaves and large-scale production had now become virtually essential to economic survival. After he had served his indentureship, the white servant could no longer establish himself as an independent farmer as he had once done, and the small yeoman now usually felt obliged to sell his lands to his wealthier neighbor and either become his tenant or migrate to some other section or colony. Political developments likewise favored the accumulation of large estates. Through repeated intermarriage certain families had acquired a very extensive influence. Members of these families were active in the Governor's Council or the House of Burgesses and held other high offices as a matter of course. Their official position often aided them as private individuals in acquiring lands. Through the presentation of "head right" certificates, compensation for military services, purchase from private proprietors, and other ways they obtained domains comprising thousands of acres. Some carved out what resembled small principalities. William Fitzhugh of Stafford County owned over 50,000 acres, and by 1732 Robert or "King" Carter of Lancaster County held some 333,000 acres.

The estates of such men, far from consisting of one compact property, generally comprised many separate and sometimes widely scattered tracts, perhaps in half a dozen or more counties. They ranged in size from a few hundred to thousands of acres. The individual owner acquired his holdings over a period of years, in what often appeared a haphazard manner. Not infrequently, a planter, foreseeing the depletion of his Tidewater lands, engrossed large tracts in the Piedmont and Valley sections.[1]

Life in the Tidewater during the Golden Age was dominated, to a remarkable extent, by families possessing vast estates. Not everyone, it is true, owned such princely domains as the Carters or Fitzhughs, but men in their station were imbued with a deep sense of their obligation to society. They sat as justices in the county courts, served as sheriffs and as colonels of the militia in their counties, and acted as vestrymen and church wardens in their parishes. They accepted seriously their duty to preserve the peace and watch over the less fortunate classes. Because of their wealth and position, their education, resourcefulness and keen sense of public responsibility, they were able to influence and to impress their ideals and tastes upon the community in a measure rarely equalled by a similar aristocracy.

The great landed proprietors operated their estates in either of two ways or a combination of the two. They might take full responsibility themselves, planting tobacco and secondary crops; they could lease tracts to others to cultivate; or they might do both. Sometimes a man leased more of his arable lands than he reserved for his own use. Though disturbed conditions in Europe and the burdens imposed by the British regulatory system led to repeated attempts to develop other staples for export, tobacco continued to be the mainstay. Aside from money crops, however, the great landowners had to supply numerous foodstuffs and other commodities needed on their plantations.

A proprietor customarily resided on what was generally known as the "manor plantation."[2] This seat usually served as the nerve center of the activities of his entire estate, with the other units subordinate to it. Not infrequently some of the outlying properties were devoted to producing commodities needed by the manor plantation and by such other plantations as were engaged in raising tobacco and other marketable staples. Overseers or stewards managed the units over which the owner found it difficult to exercise personal supervision. These men reported to him at regular intervals to receive instructions and give an account of their stewardship.

Though the basis of life was agricultural, the great landowners discharged a wide variety of other economic functions. They served as factors for their neighbors, buying their crops, selling them supplies, and providing them with credit facilities. Many sent vessels regularly up and down the Chesapeake and the Virginia rivers, purchasing the produce of others for later marketing. In like fashion they brought manufactured goods from overseas for sale in the plantation stores. When European conditions interfered with the import trade, enterprising men frequently set up grist mills, textile factories, foundries, and other manufactories on their plantations, to supply their own and their neighbors' needs.

The great Tidewater proprietors of the Golden Age were, then, no perfumed courtiers spending their days in idleness and diversion and consciously seeking to avoid all "taint of trade." In a very real sense they were capitalists, acute men of business, seriously concerned with managing their estates, tilling their lands and disposing of their produce, and eager to reap a profit through trading with their neighbors. Their ledgers and their correspondence reveal their energy, shrewdness, and enterprise. In a similar way the constant stream of letters they wrote the factors who served them in London, Bristol, and other ports of the mother country show their vital interest in conditions in the world market.

The planters' preoccupation with such matters does not signify that they lacked grace of living, nor that they were deficient in aristocratic ideals. They were determined they should not revert to barbarism in the wilderness. At no time did they allow themselves to forget that they were inheritors of British civilization.[3] Taking the English gentry as their model, they tried, insofar as colonial conditions would allow, to follow the ways of the country gentlemen of the homeland. On that pattern they fashioned their manners, their homes, their diversions; and with a similar aim they sought to acquire, and instruct their sons in, every branch of knowledge useful to a gentleman.

That it was a constant concern of these planter-businessmen to see that their children should acquire "polite" accomplishments is clearly revealed in their papers. In a letter in 1718 Nathaniel Burwell of "Carter's Grove" deplored his son's inattention to his studies, not only because an ignorance of arithmetic would hamper him in "the management of his own affairs," but also because, lacking a broad basis of knowledge, he would be "unfit for any gentleman's conversation and therefore a scandalous person and a shame to his relations, not having one single qualification to recommend him."[4] In a like spirit William Fitzhugh of "Bedford" in Stafford County asserted in 1687 that his children had "better be never born than illbred."[5]

Though a parent sometimes specified that his sons be taught languages, philosophy, dancing, fencing, and other such "polite" subjects, practical studies were not neglected. Such subjects as mathematics, surveying, and law prepared a youth for managing the estate he would one day inherit and for discharging the obligations to society imposed by his position. The goal was not professional specialization, but, rather, an education which would develop fully every side of a gentleman's character. George Washington expressed this ideal in referring to plans for the education of his ward, young "Jacky" Custis, in 1771. Admitting that "a knowledge of books is the basis upon which other knowledge is to be built," he explained that he did not think "becoming a mere scholar is a desirable education for a gentleman."[6] Thus, also, Robert Beverley, father of Harry Beverley of "Hazelwood" in Caroline County, directed in his will that his son's guardians should continue the boy's education until he should be taught "everything necessary for a gentleman to learn."[7]

Books provided a ready means of transmitting English standards of life to the colony. The carefully selected volumes in the manor houses clearly reveal their owners' aspiration to become "compleat gentlemen." It was not unusual for the collection of a prosperous planter to number as many as one or two thousand. Works providing guidance in the mode of life they admired greatly predominated, though works of literature were not absent. English "courtesy" and "conduct" books were on every gentleman's shelves. Richard Allestree's A Gentleman's Calling and Henry Peacham's The Compleat Gentleman, and other works which portrayed fortitude, prudence, temperance, justice, liberality, and courtesy as cardinal virtues appear again and again in the inventories of the period, along with the writings of Castiglione and other Italians of an earlier day from whom English authors had derived ideas of courtly conduct.

Most numerous were works stressing a gentleman's religious obligations. Duty to God and Church was set forth in devotional works of various kinds, collections of sermons, and theological treatises. Then came books on historical subjects which offered actual examples of men of great deeds. There were also many volumes on politics and statecraft and military manuals, all of them useful in teaching the larger obligations which a man of wealth owed to society. Guidance in the practical duties of a great estate was furnished in treatises on various phases of farming and gardening, manuals of medicine and surgery, books on surveying and engineering, commentaries on law and legal procedure and handbooks of architecture.[8]

Naturally, the character of the schooling provided for the growing generation greatly concerned the Virginia gentlemen. Many, eager to give their children direct contact with the traditional learning and culture of the mother country, sent them for a period of years to English schools.[9] Not infrequently, mere infants were placed under the protection of relatives and friends in the mother country. As early as 1683 William Byrd II, then nine years old, and his sister Susan, about six, were being watched over in English schools by their Horsmanden grandparents, and plans were making to send over their little sister, Ursula, aged four. Each of the great "King" Carter's five boys was sent overseas at an early age. In 1762 John Baylor of Caroline County, who had received his own education at Putney Grammar School and Caius College, Cambridge, sent his twelve-year-old son to Putney, and about the same time put his four young daughters at a boarding school at Croyden in Kent.[10]

The high value placed upon schooling in England is well illustrated in the attitude of Robert Beverley of "Blandfield" when he prepared to send his young son, William, abroad in 1773. Confiding the lad for a season to a tutor in the home of his father-in-law, Landon Carter of "Sabine Hall," he carefully explained his purpose. "I would recommend to Mr. Menzies the Latin Lillies Grammar," he wrote Carter, "because, as no other rudiments are used in any Schools of Eminence, when he goes to England, he may in part have gotten over the Drudgery of Education. All I wish to learn him in Virginia is, to read, write, & cypher, & do as much with his Grammar, as the Time will admit of…"[11] Planters frequently provided in their wills that their young sons and daughters be educated abroad. It is likely that an even larger number of small children would have been sent "home," as the planters fondly called the mother country, had their parents not feared the dangers of an ocean voyage and the mortal effects of the smallpox which was raging in England during the eighteenth century.

As an alternative to sending children overseas, the traditional learning of the English schools could be brought to Virginia by English-trained tutors and governesses. Well-to-do planters customarily engaged such persons to instruct their children at home, even when it was planned to send the youngsters abroad later. They also employed dancing and music masters to visit their households at regular intervals. A building near the mansion was generally set aside as a schoolroom. There the master's children and perhaps those of some neighboring planters were taught. The young men and women who came overseas to teach the children of Virginia were honored members of the households in which they lived. Great care was taken in selecting them. After a number of young Scotchmen had come to the colony as tutors during the eighteenth century, it was feared they would "teach the children the Scotch dialect which they can never wear off."[12] Throughout the period one finds frequent mention of the need of suitable instructors in the letters of the planters to their factors in the mother country. After the middle of the century, tutors were sometimes secured from Princeton and other American colleges.[13]

A goodly number of the youths sent to the English schools enrolled later at the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, and others who had been educated by private tutors were also sent there. Certain families sent generation after generation of sons to these universities. At intervals from the time that Ralph Wormeley, the second of that name, had matriculated at Oriel College, Oxford, in 1665, until the outbreak of the Revolution, his kinsmen were found in English colleges. Not a few young Virginians attended the Inns of Court.

In his domestic establishment the planter sought to reproduce as nearly as he conveniently could the residence of the English gentry with its gardens, lawns, and parks. Plans of English homes and gardens, which intelligent workmen or even a layman might adapt, were accessible in the handbooks of architecture and gardening found in many of the planters' libraries. In some instances the striking similarity of detail leaves little doubt that the plans for a planter's residence derived directly from plates in these books. All the forms common to the English country architecture of the period were employed in the plantation residences. Sometimes English master builders and gardeners were imported to supervise the construction of the residences and the planting of the grounds.

The vogue for formality in English architecture and landscaping was mirrored in the arrangement of the Virginia estates. The mansions were generally placed according to carefully preconceived plans in a formal setting which nonetheless managed to achieve an air of ease and naturalness. Balance and symmetry were observed everywhere, with the buildings, gardens, and extensive lawns forming component parts of one composition. Walks of brick or oyster shell crossed the grounds in geometric pattern. If a bowling green or formal garden flanked one side of the mansion, an orangery or perhaps a park stocked with deer flanked the other.

English box and other ornamental plants were used with fine effect. Terraces, elaborate parterres, sunken panels, canals, and dramatic vistas gave variety to the scene. "Falling gardens" were popular at the residences situated on high eminences overlooking the great rivers and marshes.[14] Not infrequently, as at "Blandfield," a ha-ha provided a note of pleasant surprise for one walking on the lawns.[15] Graceful garden houses, dovecots, and other miniature structures, carefully placed, sometimes imparted a fanciful atmosphere to the whole. Every estate had its orchard, the fruit of which surpassed the choicest specimens of the homeland. Wildernesses or preserves of transplanted trees might be found at some distance from the residence, and sometimes serpentine drives and walks invited one to explore hidden retreats.

Situated amidst such attractive surroundings, the residences appeared to fine advantage. Their architectural arrangement contributed much to their impressiveness. At the same time it was admirably suited to the peculiar needs of plantation life. The mansion or "great house" was but the central unit, about which, at carefully spaced intervals, stood numerous smaller structures, all subsidiary to it. Spoken of indiscriminately as "offices," these dependent buildings all served some useful purpose or function in the domestic economy.

The mansion was usually a substantial two-story, rectangular building of brick, though sometimes it was built of stone or wood. The rather low-pitched roofs were generally shingled with cypress or slate. Since many of the activities of the household were carried on in offices under separate roofs, a central structure approximately seventy-five feet long and forty-two feet wide was usually regarded as commodious. The exteriors of these houses were often characterized by an elegant simplicity achieved through perfection of line and proportion. The severity of a facade might be relieved by a handsome wooden cornice, a pedimented hood over the doorway, a string-course and water table of molded brick, and window and door facings of rubbed brick. Sometimes pilasters of finely molded brick framed the doorways.

Not infrequently the principal offices, set in advance or in the rear of the mansion, served as foils to impart greater dignity to it. Sometimes, as at "Blandfield" and "Mount Airy," the major offices were connected with the central building by straight or curved lateral passages. The great house and its dependent structures were generally placed in such a relation as to form one or more rectangular courts.[16] The principal offices were often large and contained a number of rooms.

To one unfamiliar with plantation life, the number and diversity of the offices about the manor house occasioned astonishment. A Huguenot exile who visited "Rosegill," the home of Ralph Wormeley, as early as 1686, recorded that the master's residence comprised at least twenty structures. "When I reached his place," this Frenchman wrote, "I thought I was entering a rather large village, but later on was told that all of it belonged to him."[17]

Offices near the great house were utilized as counting-rooms, schoolrooms, and sleeping quarters for the sons of the family as well as for a variety of other purposes. The kitchen, wash-house, dairy, smoke-house, and other offices intimately connected with the processes of housekeeping were usually set farther away in order to keep the mansion cool in summer and free it of the noise and odors of cooking.[18]

Within the manor house the lower floors were usually devoted entirely to social purposes. Halls and chambers were generally finely panelled in native pine or walnut, and the symmetry of the paneling, the deeply recessed windows, and the excellent proportion of the doors and mantels imparted dignity and beauty to the rooms. Frequently the effect was heightened by fine carving, and occasionally the pink or orange tones of mantels of sienna marble lent a pleasing touch of color.