And then, to shew what a Church the Parish might have had but did not, there is this entry on the 30th December 1774. (Page 30) "Ordered that there be a Church built at or near the place where the Chapple now stands at Stephen Rozels and that it be 50 feet long & 40 feet broad in the clear. To be built either of brick or stone. To be of Sufficient Pitch for two rows of Windows, if built of brick the wall to be 21/2 brick thick if built of stone the walls to be 2 feet thick; the Pews & all the Carpenter work to be of pine plank (framing excepted) The Base to be of Stone 21/2 feet thick & to be finished off in such manner as the person appointed shall direct."
From the 10th day of June, 1776, no meeting of the vestry is recorded until the 1st day of April 1779.
At the meeting of the 4th November, 1795, Mr. Jones, the minister was ordered to preach "one Sunday at the Church at Rozels & the rest at Leesburg."
Thus the county was divided into two parishes. A little later Cameron secured the services, as Parson, of a member of another well-known family of the Northern Neck when, in 1771, the Rev. Spence Grayson returned from his theological studies and ordination in England and assumed that position. He was the son of Benjamin Grayson and Susan Monroe and had inherited from his father his home, Belle Air, in Prince William County which he left to go to England to enter the church. He married Mary Elizabeth Wagener, sister to Colonel Peter Wagener (clerk of Fairfax County and subsequently an officer in the Revolution) and became one of the original trustees in 1788 of the town of Carrborough on the south side of the mouth of Quantico Creek, where now are situated the Marine Corps Barracks. His nephew was the well-known Colonel William Grayson who, after serving with distinction in the Revolution, became one of the original two senators from Virginia.
But Shelburne was not to be cast in the shade in this matter of Parsons. In 1771 there was inducted there as minister the man who, of her long line of clergy, has left in Church, State, and Nation the most prominent name of all. The Rev. Dr. David Griffith had been born in the city of New York in 1742. Like the Rev. Charles Green, early minister of Truro, Dr. Griffith first became a physician, taking his medical degree in London and then returning to New York and beginning his practice as a physician there in 1763. Determining to enter the church ministry, he returned to England and was ordained in London by Bishop Terrick on the 19th August, 1770. Again he returned to America and worked as a missionary in New Jersey, whence he came to take charge of Shelburne Parish in 1771. When the Revolution came on, he, in 1776, became Chaplain of the 3rd Virginia Regiment and, in December of that year, he "was acting as a surgeon in the Continental Army in Philadelphia." Long a close and confidential friend of George Washington, he became the Rector of Christ Church, Alexandria, in 1780, in which position he continued until his death. He was a leader in building up the church in Virginia from its depressed condition after the Revolution, was a member of its first convention in Richmond in 1785 and was elected first Bishop of Virginia at the second annual convention of the Diocese in May, 1786. Unfortunately there were no funds available to pay his expenses to England and thus he was never formally consecrated. He died at the house of Bishop White in Philadelphia, while attending a church convention there, in 1789. He has been described as "large and tall in person but firm in manner. Without perhaps being brilliant, he was an able man of sound judgment and consecrated life, who had the esteem and affection as well as the confidence of his contemporaries. His memory ought to be held by us in highest honour."[93]
In those days Loudoun shared, with other of Virginia's frontier counties, a pest of numerous wolves which indeed penetrated into the older counties as well. There was a broad demand that the bounty for killing the animals be increased and in 1765 the Assembly passed an act authorizing Loudoun and six other counties to pay larger bounties, providing that a person killing a wolf within their respective boundaries "shall have an additional reward of fifty pounds of neat tobacco for every young wolf not exceeding the age of six months, and for every wolf above that age one hundred pounds of neat tobacco, to be levied and paid in the respective counties where the service shall be performed."[94] The act was to continue in force, however, only three years.
Five years later the hunting activities of Leesburg, at least, took on a more domestic hue. The inhabitants of the little town were busy in building up the reputation of a famous Virginia delicacy but apparently were rather overdoing it. "It is represented" reads an act of 1772 "that a great number of hogs are raised and suffered to go at large in the town of Leesburg, in the county of Loudoun to the great prejudice of the inhabitants thereof;" so the act forbade owners from allowing such liberties to their porkers and permitted any person to "kill and destroy such swine so running at large."[95]
That Francis Aubrey established the first ferry from Loudoun's shore across the Potomac prior to 1741 has been noted in Chapter IV. It was at the Point of Rocks and was inherited by Thomas Aubrey, son of its founder, who obtained a license for its operation in 1769. By 1775 the travel was very light at that point and complaint was made of inadequate equipment. In 1834 it, with the surrounding land on the Loudoun side, was in the possession of Rebecca Johnson and in 1837 in that of Margaret Graham. The construction of the Point of Rocks bridge by the Potomac Bridge Company in 1847 ended its usefulness.
A second ferry, also across the Potomac and heretofore recorded, became far more famous than that of the Aubreys. When Philip Noland acquired land on that river where travel over the old Carolina Road had, from time immemorial, crossed it, he had the most valuable and frequented ferry-site in the neighborhood. He had sought, but unsuccessfully, a ferry license as early as 1748; in 1756, with or without a license, he was operating his ferry. Its operation was eventually authorized by the Legislature in 1778 to the land of Arthur Nelson in the State of Maryland. No other ferry from Loudoun's shores acquired the fame that did Noland's. At the height of its activities the travel at that point is said to have supported a country store, a blacksmith's shop, a wagon shop, a tailor and a shoemaker. The coming of the railroads and the construction of the Point of Rocks Bridge together were responsible for its ultimate abandonment. We have a suggestive glimpse of conditions there. In May, 1780, the Moravian emissary John Frederick Reichel, in the course of his ministrations to those of his faith in America, undertook a journey from Bethlehem in Pennsylvania down the Carolina Road to the present Winston-Salem in North Carolina. One of his companions kept a journal from which we learn that upon successfully crossing into Virginia at Noland's Ferry, Bishop Reichel and his company "made camp near Mr. Th. Noland's house close to the road which turns to the right from the Foart road towards Noland's Ferry which crosses the Patomoak two miles from here. So far our journey had been very pleasant. Now, however, the Virginia air brought storms." While the weary travelers were resting that night from their journey, some of Noland's negroes left their "Quarters" and proceeded to lay their hands on the strangers' equipment. The diarist on the next day indignantly records the following "Note. Mr. Th. Noland and his father and father in law have 200 negroes in this neighbourhood on both sides of the Potomoack and this neighbourhood is far-famed for robbery and theft." On their return the travellers found that Mr. Noland had busied himself in recapturing much of the loot and duly returned the articles to their rightful owners.[96]
Between Noland and Josias Clapham there was a controversy for many years over which of the two should control the very profitable ferry business over the nearby stretches of the Potomac. Both had powerful associations and friends and both were, through their own activities and characters, outstanding figures in the Loudoun of their day. Noland as the son-in-law of the most prominent of Loudoun's earliest settlers, Francis Aubrey, and through his wife in possession of part of Aubrey's great land-grants, could well have entertained a conviction that he was Aubrey's representative and as such entitled to especial consideration as well as for his own accomplishments; while, on the other hand, Clapham's inherited friendship with Lord Fairfax and his own recent military services as a lieutenant in the troublous times following Braddock's defeat and death, his early and continued ownership of extensive tracts of land, his sound personal qualities and the high esteem in which he was held by his neighbours, made him a formidable opponent and rival. He successfully fought Noland's application to the Legislature for a ferry license in 1756 and in 1757 obtained one himself for the operation of a ferry below that of Noland, "from the lands of Josias Clapham, in the County of Fairfax, over Potowmack river, to the land on either side of Monochisey creek, in the province of Maryland; the price for a man four pence & for a horse the same."[97] Though this license was afterwards suspended, Clapham appears to have operated his ferry until 1778 when the Legislature ordered it discontinued as inconvenient. As Clapham at that time was himself a member of that body, it is probable that the old rivalry between the neighbours had ended.