His book of correspondence with Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Benezet, Pemberton, Henry and many noted men is preserved in Friends' safe, Monument St., Baltimore.
In 1790 Abolition Society founded in Virginia, Robert Pleasants, President. At death freed eighty slaves, in addition to several hundred belonging to father freed during his life time.
[12] On the James River, near Richmond.
[13] Original at Monument Street, Baltimore.
[14] Hanover Court House, 20 miles from Richmond, 102 miles from Washington, is situated several miles from the river.
It has two very large and commodious jails (!!), one tavern, one store, one boot and shoe shop, one blacksmith-shop. It has a population of about 50. One attorney lives there.—"Martin's Gazetteer", 1835.
It has a population of 58 to-day.
Hanover Court House where Patrick Henry figured in early life. Here many of his speeches were delivered. Here he won his first case, "The Parson's Cause."
[15] The same Benjamin Bates who in 1816 as clerk of the Virginia Yearly Meeting drew up and presented to the Burgesses of Virginia a protest against the existing militia laws of the State and accompanied it by an able letter, of which the editor of "Niles' Register," November 30th, says that it perhaps "forms a body of the ablest arguments that have ever appeared in defense of certain principles held by this people."—"Friends' Miscellany," Vol. VII, p. 221; "Niles' Register," VII, p. 90, supplement. William Wirt also pronounced its arguments "unanswerable."
[16] "(1634)" There are no schools or printing to make poor people "dissatisfied." But later there was one free school endowed by a large-hearted man. Virginia up to this time had few schools. In some neighborhoods the planters clubbed together and log school houses were built, but there were more often none at all, the boys being sent North or abroad for their education, while that of the girls was often entirely lacking. An old gazetteer of 1835 makes report for Henrico County, including Richmond, which had been incorporated as a city in 1782, "few or no schools worthy of notice," "that a few good schools have existed," but not a single academical institution. "That in 1803 a charter had been obtained for one to be built by lottery and private subscription, but only the basement was built and the project abandoned."