The Indians afterwards told that the whole day before the fight several of their chiefs had been concealed near the Smithfield house, under a large hay stack, 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 emigrated to this country.
All who visited at the homesteads just described retained ever after a recollection of the superbly cooked meats, bread, &c., 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 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 the very velvet rolls, 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.”
“One of our own cooks and my mother’s recipe,” exclaimed the other, “and I had to come all the way to Georgia to get it, for Aunt Rose never would show me exactly how to make them!”
[CHAPTER XI.]
Not far from Greenfield was a place called “Rustic Lodge.”