the right to govern; and, first and last, all his exertions were for the good of Virginia.

XXIII.

THE VIRGINIANS OF THE VALLEY.

VIRGINIA in these years was reaching out steadily past the mountains. The smiling valley of the Shenandoah was becoming the home of brave settlers who carried civilization into this wild region, long the battleground, tradition said, of the Northern and Southern tribes of the continent. We have seen the first attempts to explore the country, the expedition of Batte in 1670, and the march of Spotswood in 1716. The impetus was thus given, and adventurous explorers followed the Knights of the Horse-shoe. The Virginians began to hold out longing arms toward the sweet fields along the Shenandoah; and the wave of population, like a steadily rising tide, advanced up the lowland rivers, reached the mountains at last, and flowed over into the Valley of Virginia.

Cotemporary with or a few years before this lowland immigration, the region toward the Potomac had been settled by Scotch-Irish and Germans, who had come to Pennsylvania, and thence, attracted by the rumor of its fertility, passed on to the Shenandoah Valley. The exodus thither began about the year 1732. The ScotchIrish, who were good Presbyterians, were the pioneers, and established their homesteads along the Opequon, from the Potomac to above what is now Winchester. As soon as they had built their houses they proceeded to build their churches; and the " Tuscarora Meeting

House," near Martinsburg, and the "Opequon Church,” a little south of Winchester, are, it is said, the oldest churches in the Valley of Virginia, they are still standing.

The Germans followed closely. Joist Hite obtained forty thousand acres of land in the vicinity of Winchester; and his thrifty Teutons built Strasburg and other towns along the Massinutton Mountain. To this day the Germans constitute an important element of the population, and in some places the language is spoken. It was an excellent class of immigrants. Everywhere was the appearance and the reality of thrift: well-kept fields, fat cattle, and huge red barns. "The Dutchman's barn," says Kercheval, the old historian, "was usually the best building on his farm. He was sure to erect a fine large barn before he built any other dwelling-house than his rude log cabin." They were an honest, merry people in their good Fatherland manner, keeping festivals and enjoying themselves at weddings and other ceremonies. The groomsmen waited in "white aprons beautifully embroidered ;" and their duty was to protect the bride from having her slipper stolen from her foot; and if any one succeeded in capturing it, the groomsmen must pay a bottle of wine for it, since the bride's dancing depended on it. These kindly Germans, says their historian, were generally of three religious sects, Lutherans, Mennonists, and Calvinists, with a few Tunkers, or Dippers, who believed that immersion was the true form of baptism. But they were not stern people. "Among the Lutherans and Calvinists, dancing, with other amusements, were common, and were sometimes kept up for weeks together." The Irish Presbywere no less merry, and celebrated their wed

terians "

dings by "running for the bottle," a ribbon-decorated prize for the fastest rider, and by "great hilarity, jollity, and mirth." The only exceptions to this border hilarity were the few Quakers, who married without the intervention of clergymen, and conducted the ceremony with the "utmost solemnity and decorum."

When Winchester, the capital of the lower valley, was founded there were two log cabins there in 1738, and the town was established in 1752 — the Dutch and Irish entered on a war of Guelphs and Ghibellines. The historian Kercheval paints the hostilities in glowing colors. On St. Patrick's Day the Dutch would form in grand procession and march through the streets, carrying effigies of "the Saint and his wife Sheeley," the saint decorated with a necklace of Irish potatoes, and his spouse with an apron full of them. And on the day of "St. Michael, the patron of the Dutch," the Irishmen would retort by exhibiting an effigy of that saint with a necklace of sour-kraut; whence misunderstandings and bloody noses and cracked crowns for the consideration of the worshipful justices of Frederick, who have just begun to hold their sessions in the "log cabin courthouse."

The lower Valley is full of these old traditions handed down from father to son. Another is here repeated. It is said that an Irish laboring man and his wife came about 1767 to the house of Mr. Strode, a German landholder on the lower Opequon, and lived with him some years, during which time a son was born to them. Then they resolved to go further southward, and set off; but the children of the Strode family followed begging that they would leave the baby, who was a great favorite with them. When they stopped for a

moment, and the child was laid on the grass, the Strode children snatched him up, and would have carried him off if they had not been prevented. The journey was then resumed, and the wanderers finally reached the Waxhaws in North Carolina. Here the boy grew up, and in due time made his mark, since he was Andrew Jackson, President of the United States. The tradition is possibly true. Jackson is said to have been doubtful about his birth-place, and a spring near the Strode house is still called “ Jackson's Spring."

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While the Germans and Irish were thus settling on the banks of the Potomac and the Opequon, the upper waters of the Shenandoah became the home of adven-◄ turous explorers from tide-water Virginia. These were nearly without exception Scotch-Irish Presbyterians: men and women driven out of Ulster by the English persecutions there; and the pioneer was John Lewis, the founder of a distinguished family. Lewis belonged to a Huguenot family which had taken refuge in Ireland. He put to death an oppressive landlord there and escaped to Virginia, where he obtained a great grant of land. It covered half of what is now the large county of Rockbridge; and Lewis was to settle one family on every thousand acres. He brought over from Ireland and Scotland in 1737 about one hundred families; and from these families descended some of the most emineut men of Virginia: among them Archibald Alexander, James McDowell, Andrew Lewis, and others. These "Scotch-Irish Presbyterians" were conscientious and law-abiding persons; Calvinists of the straightest sect, pious, earnest, grave of demeanor, not at all sharing the fox-hunting and horse-racing proclivities of the tide-water Virginians; but bent on doing earnest work.

They devoted themselves to agriculture, to erecting mills, to educating their children, to making their new homes comfortable, to all the arts of peace, and above and beyond all, to the firm establishment of their church. The "Stone Meeting-House" or Augusta Church, near Staunton, was one of the first erected in the valley. When war came, then or afterwards, there were no better soldiers in the Commonwealth; for the list that begins with Andrew Lewis ends with Stonewall Jackson.

The upper and lower Valley were thus settled nearly at the same moment. The great principality of.. "Orange," that is to say, the tramontane world, was then divided into two counties: Frederick, toward the the Potomac, and Augusta, toward James river; that great" West Augusta," or Alleghanies, to which Washington said that he meant to retreat if he was driven from the seaboard. This upper, or Augusta, region was the headquarters of the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian element; and from the first these brave citizens were intent on securing all their rights. The Presbyterian Synod of Philadelphia petitioned the Governor of Virginia (1738), that those of their denomination removing to the valley of Virginia might have "the free enjoyment of their civil and religious liberties; and the writer of this petition, John Caldwell, grandfather of John Caldwell Calhoun of South Carolina, having received a courteous response, proceeded to settle Presbyterian families also in the counties of Prince Edward, Charlotte, and Campbell.

These details will show what races of men settled the fertile Valley of Virginia: German and Dutch Lutherans, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, and a few Friends or Quakers. One infusion has not been noticed, a small