p. xiv Stafford County Timeline [abstracted]
- 1608 John Smith explores and maps river and creeks of Stafford
- 1620 Indians destroy English trading post at Marlborough
- 1646-47 Giles & Margaret Brent settle at mouth of Aquia Creek
- 1650 Sandstone quarries open on Aquia Creek, 50 acres set aside for Aquia town
- 1662 Potomac Parish formed from Washington Parish (Westmoreland County)
- 1662-63 Assembly orders road built from Aquia to Passapatanzy
- 1662-64 Potomac Church built
- Potomac Parish divided into Upper Parish and Lower Parish
- 1664 first court meets in Stafford
- 1668 John Waugh becomes rector of parish
- Brent's Mill built
- 1676 Nathanile Bacon led planters against Gov. Berkeley and burned Jamestown
- 1680 Upper Parish becomes known as Stafford Parrish
- Act of Parliament establishes Marlborough as official port town
- 1686-87 George Brent, Nicholas Hayward, Richard Foote & William Bristow purchase land for Huguenot settlement (present Prince William County)
- 1690 first courthouse burns
- 1692 new courthouse built at Marlborough
- 1702 Stafford Parish renamed Overwharton Parish
- p. xv
- 1718 convict laborers begin arriving in Stafford
- courthouse in Marlborough burns
- 1727 Falmouth incorporated
- 1728 Accakeek Furnace begins operation
- 1730 Overwharton Parish divided with largest section being renamed Hamilton Parish
- (?) Concord built
- 1738 Augustine Washington moves to Ferry Farm
- John Moncure becomes rector of Overwharton
- 1776 Richland burned by British
- James Hunter's musket made standard by Revolutionary convention
- 1777 Present county border established between King George and Stafford Counties
- 1786-87 gold round in Stafford
- 1791 Aquia Sandstone quarry purchased for building of new capitol
- 1800-03 Aquia sandstone quarries close
p. 9 Stafford has undergone a number of boundary changes since those earliest days of European settlement. To understand the changes one must first understand how counties evolved from parishes. When an area was first seated or settled, parishes were designated and these were often enormous in size. Due to an absence of roads, early settlement began along rivers and creeks and population tended to spread in a north-south orientation. Due to the importance of shipping and transportation, land along the Rappahannock River was very valuable and so was carefully surveyed, the lines running straight fro the river east to the ridge on which State Route 218 (White Oak Road) was later built. . . . Land to the west was inhabited only by scattered groups of hostile Indians; settlers and surveyors alike were reluctant to venture in that direction. For this reason, the parishes usually had north and south boundaries but rarely western boundaries. . . .
Stafford County begain in 1662 as Potomac Parish, which was the upper portion of Washington Parish of Westmoreland County. The act creating Westmoreland County in 1653 specified a northern boundary at the falls of the Potomac River near [p. 10] present day Anacostia. . . .
Sometime between 1662 and 1664 Potomac Parish was divided into an Upper Parish and a Lower Parish. According to Hening's Statutes, the earliest recorded meeting of a court in Stafford was in 1664, and it is assumed that Stafford County and Potomac Parish were one and the same.
Although the exact date of the dividing of Potomac Parish into the Upper and Lower Parishes is unknown, the division left the greatest part of what was then known as Stafford in the Upper Prish. In fact, this parish contained all of present-day Stafford, Prince William, Fairfax, Loudoun and Arlington Counties as well as the part of Fauquier that drained into the Potomac River. It is important to note here that the parish and county lines were coterminous and all of this area made up what was then called Stafford County. Overwharton Parish contained all land wes of Passapatanzy Creek which drained into the Potomac (a line that roughly followed State Route 218). . . .
At that time all the land between the Rappahannock and the dividing line described above was part of King George County. That put most of what we today call the south end of Stafford in King George.
p. 11 In 1680 referene was made to the Upper Parish as Stafford Parish and the Lower Parish as Choatank Parish. An official list of parishes in 1702 indicates that Choatank was renamed St. Paul's Parish and Stafford Parish became Overwharton Parish (probably named for Parson John Waugh's planation by the same name). The boundary between the two was Passapatanzy Creek (now in King George).
Increases in population required a division in Overwharton in 1730. Hamilton Parish, formed from the northern and western portions of Overwharton, took by far the greatest part of then-enormous Stafford County. By the mid-1700s Overhwarton contained a much reduced Stafford County and a small portion of land along the Potomac which is today part of King George.
The dividing line between Hamilton and Overwharton was the north branch of Chopawamsic Creek to its head and then southwest almost to the Rappahannock near the area known as Beach on State Route 616. These lines remain as the boundaries between Stafford and Prince William and Stafford and Fauquier Counties.
A redrawing of the Stafford-King George boundary line in 1777 placed all land north of the Rappahannock in Stafford.
p. 19 During the very earliest days of Stafford's hisotry, the colonist provided his own labor. Ill-prepared for physical labor, having led a somewhat pampered lifestyle in Europe, many of these settlers depended heavily upon friendly Native Americans to show them how to clear land and plant. . .
By the 1660s indentured servants from England were easily avialable and the Stafford planters began relying on them to fill their labor needs. Two government policies in England contribued to the great number of indentured servans who arrived in Virgina. First, an act passed during Elizabeth's reign required individuals who wished to be employed in the arts or trades pass through a regulated apprenticeship. There were few of these positions avialable in England and by 1662 there were a great many unemployed, able-bodied people in that country.
Another act required each parish to take care of its needy. As the population of unemployed people grew, a greater and greater burden was placed on the parishes. Taxes were raised to feed the poor, resulting in open public resentment of them. The best solution to the problem seemed to be to send these people, who were willing to work, to the colonies. There, they could find work - and, at the same time, their labor efforts there would increase the amount of goods sent back to the Mother Country, [p. 20] helping to free England from her dependence on European imports.
Indentured servants, both men and women, agreed to work for a period of years after which time they would be set free. They could be sold while their indenture was still in effect. When their indenture expired, the employer was required to provide them with certain necessities. The "Act concerning servants and slaves" of 1705 regulated the responsilbilites of masters and slaves and servants. Masters were to provide wholesome diet, clothing and lodging, and were prohibited from administering "immoderate correction" and, specifically, from whipping a Christian servant naked without an order fro a justice of the peace. At the end of a servant's indenture, his employer was required to set up the now-free person as a potential planter, giving him "freedom dues" consisting of "10 bushels of Indian corn, 30 shillings in money or the value thereof in goods and 1 well fixed musket or fuzee of the value of 20 shillings at least."
England sent many indentured servants to the colonies solving much of the unemployment problem in her parishes. She had found a convenient dumping ground for her less desirables and she next turned to relieving the overcrowding in her prisons.
In 1718 an Act of Parliament was issued which provided for the transportation of convicts to the colonies. By 1722 convicts were arriving and being bought as indentured servants; they would work on a plantation for seven years and then be given their freedom. The slave trade was still in its infancy and planters of Stafford, poorer than the lower Virginia planters, found it cheaper to use convicts as a labor source than to purchase slaves. . . .
p. 21 An act passed by the Assembly in 1722 required planters to register any convicts they bough and record their names and the offenses for which the servans had been transported. The Privy Council of the King, however, disaalowed the act on the grounds that it imposed such difficulties on the importers as to put them out of business. Of course, this was exactly the result the Virginians had in mind.
Convicts continued to pour into the colony. Crime, especially arson, became so rampant in the Northern Neck area that in 1730 the Assembly increased the punishment for arson, declaring that severe penalties were necessary "in a country which is so much crowded with convicts, who after they have committed a crime may easily be concealed by their abettors until they find means to escape into another government."
p. 40 Just north of Clifton was the West Farm, probably named for the West family who patented land in this area in the seventeenth century. Little is known about the house or farm and the only illustration known remaining is a drawing from an 1806 Mutual Assurance Society of Virginia policy. This drawing shows a large frame house with a porch on both long sides, a barn, a school house, and a stone kitchen. . . .
Colonel John Cooke (1755-1819) may well have built the house. He served as a justice for Stafford in 1781 and his name appears in the 1785 and 1786 personal property tax records as owning 26 slaves, 8 horses and 18 catle.
Colonel Cooke's daughter Elizabeth inherited West Farm and seems to have been a notable manager in her own right. She inherited several plantation in Stafford from her own family prior to her father's death, which she managed with some measure of success. In 1768 she was taxed on 2,324 acres in her own name. After the colonel's death, she apparently did not marry, but continued to operate her plantations and ferry.
The West Farm is perhaps best known for the ferry that operaed there for many years and provided transportation between Stafford and southern Maryland (just across the Potomac River). . . .
p. 42 At this point a bit of genealogy is appropriate. [abstracted]
1 John Cooke b. ? d. 1733 md. Elizabeth Travers
1a. Travers Cooke b. ca. 1730, d. 1759 md. Mary Doniphan b. 1737, d. 1781 (d/o Mott Doniphan) md. 2) Colonel William Bronough. Travers & Mary had 1 surviving child.
1a1. Colonel John Cooke b. 1755, d. 1819 md. Mary Thomson Mason
1a1a. Elizabeth Cooke
Colonel Cooke acquired the very handsome Marlborough estate from the Mercers, to whom Mary Mson was related. John Cooke also owned the Aquia quarry in partnership with Daniel Carroll Brent (1760-1815). . . .
The above-mentioned John Cooke was fairly well to do by Stafford standards. This was reflected by his inventory, as recorded in county court records upon his death. The inventory included:
- 10 slaves
- 2 horses, 2 heifers, 2 steers, 20 hogs, 12 sheep, 2 cows
- 1 walnut table, 1 pine table, 2 sets of drawers, 1 cupboard & safe, 12 chairs
- 2 spinning wheels, 1 loom
- 4 chests, 18 empty barrels
- 2 saddles & saddlebags
- 2 looking glasses
- 1 crosscut & 3 hand saws, 4 hoes, 2 spades, 4 wedges, 3 grubbing hoes, 3 augers, 1 cart & gear
- 9 pewter basins, 4 pewter plates, 4 iron pots, 2 covered skillets, 1 grid iron, 3 pot raks, 1 flesh fork & griddle, 2 ladles, 1 frying pan, fencer & hooks
- 1 coffee mill, 1 spice mortar
- 2 flat irons, 1 tongue shovel, 2 iron forks & drawing knife
- 3 beds & furniture
The appraisers valued his property at $2046.70.
p. 51 Richland was the hub of the community in Widewater. As mentioned earlier, the Brents operated a grist mill, lumber mill, store, blacksmith shop and distillery. Ledger books recording activities in the mill and store between 1804 and 1806 survive . . .
p. 52 The records indicae that a large number of people had accounts with the store. Below is a partial listing [abstracted]:
- Adie, Ashby
- Beagle, Brent, Bridgward, Burroughs
- Carter, Combs, Conneway
- Cooke - Colonel John
- Dunbar, Edrington, Fairfax, Fox
- Gaddis, Gallyhorn, Garretson, Green, Guy
- Harris, Harrison, Hore
- King, Knight, Lowe
- Millburn, Mitchel, Moncure
- Pates, Peyton, Posey, Quarry
- Rains, Ratliff, Robertson, Rolls
- Shop, Shacklett, Simonton, Starke, Steward, Stone, Swan
- Truslow, Washington, Waters, Woodrow
p. 59 Chelsea - Owners: 1720 G.M. Cooke, 1750 Purchased by John Moncure . . .
From Boswell's Corner and U.S. Route 1, Chelsea is .6 mile southeast on State Route 637 and 1.5 miles east on State Route 611. The house stands on the north side of the road.
This once lovely old home was built in 1819, the date of [p. 60] construction carved in a stone in the chimney. . .
p. 82 In October 1792 the Assembly ordered the establishment of a town on fifty acres of George Brent's (1760-1804) land. . . . The trustees [p. 83] named for the new town of Aquia were Travers Daniel Jr., Bailey Washington, John Cooke, Daniel Carroll Brent, John R. Peyton, Valentine Peyton, John Murray, Robert Brent, Thomas Mountjoy, John Mountjoy, Elijah Threlkeld and Nathaniel Fox.
p. 128 Bell's Hill - just north of the court house on the west side of Bell's Hill Road (State Route 631). Prior to the Civil War, this farm was home to John H. Daniel and the Taliaferro family.
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