This land had descended in the same family since the Indian camp-fires ceased to burn there, and the same forests were still untouched where once stood the Indians' wigwams.
In this connection I am reminded of a tradition in the Greenfield family which showed the heroism of a Virginia boy:
The first white proprietor of this place, the great-grandfather of the present owners, had also a large estate in Montgomery County, called Smithfield, where his family lived, and where was a fort for the protection of the whites when attacked by the Indians.
Once, while the owner was at his Greenfield place, the Indians surrounded Smithfield, and the white women and children took refuge in the fort, while the men prepared for battle. They wanted the proprietor of Smithfield to help them fight and to take command, for he was a brave man; but they could not spare a man to carry him the news. So they concluded to send one of his young sons, a lad thirteen years old, who did not hesitate, but, mounting a fleet horse, set off after dark and rode all night through dense forests filled with hostile Indians, reaching Greenfield, a distance of forty miles, next morning. He soon returned with his father, and the Indians were repulsed. And I always thought that boy was courageous enough for his name to live in history.[11]
The Indians afterward told how, the whole day before the fight, several of their chiefs had been concealed near the Smithfield house under a large haystack, upon which the white children had been sliding and playing all day, little suspecting the gleaming tomahawks and savage men beneath.
From the Greenfield estate in Botetourt and the one adjacent went the ancestors of the Prestons and Breckinridges, who made these names distinguished in South Carolina and Kentucky. And on this place are the graves of the first Breckinridges who arrived in this country.
All who visited at the homesteads just described retained ever after a recollection of the perfectly cooked meats, bread, etc., seen upon the tables at both houses, there being at each place five or six negro cooks who had been taught by their mistresses the highest style of the culinary art.
During the summer season several of these cooks were hired at the different watering-places, where they acquired great fame and made for themselves a considerable sum of money by selling recipes.
A lady of the Greenfield family, who married and went to Georgia, told me she had often tried to make velvet rolls like those she had been accustomed to see at her own home, but never succeeded. Her mother and aunt, who had taught these cooks, having died many years before, she had to apply to the negroes for information on such subjects, and they, she said, would never show her the right way to make them. Finally, while visiting at a house in Georgia, this lady was surprised to see velvet rolls exactly like those at her home.
"Where did you get the recipe?" she soon asked the lady of the house, who replied: "I bought it from old Aunt Rose, a colored cook, at the Virginia Springs, and paid her five dollars."