It may be collated with the Report and accompanying documents of the Virginia Commissioners on the boundary line between Maryland and Virginia, Richmond, 1873, which contains the statements of the Maryland Commissioners as well as those of the Virginia Commissioners, the latter having a voluminous appendix of historical documents, including a large number copied from the British Archives, and depositions taken in 1872. The Final Report of the Virginia Commissioners (Richmond, 1874), includes a memorandum of their journal and their correspondence (1870-72), as well as the journal of the joint commissions of Virginia and Maryland (1872).
WILLIAM BYRD.
After a cut in Harper’s Magazine, April, 1885, p. 712, from the original painting now at Brandon, on James River. Byrd was b. 1674, and d. 1744.
Respecting the bounds of Virginia and North Carolina, commissioners on the part of both colonies were appointed in 1710,[650] but the line was not run in its easterly portion till 1728, by commissioners and surveyors of both governments. Col. William Byrd, one of the commissioners of Virginia, prepared a sort of diary of the progress of the work, which is known as a History of the Dividing Line between Virginia and North Carolina, as run in 1728-29. This and other of Byrd’s writings which have come down to us are in manuscript, in the hand of a copyist, but interlined and corrected by Byrd himself. The volume containing them was printed at Petersburg in 1841 (copyrighted by Edmund Ruffin) with an anonymous editor’s preface, which states that the last owner of it was George E. Harrison, of Brandon, and that the family had probably been prevented from publishing the papers because of the writer’s “great freedom of expression and of censure, often tinctured by his strong church and state principles and prejudices;” for Colonel Byrd was “a true and worthy inheritor of the opinions and feelings of the old cavaliers of Virginia.” These papers were again privately printed at Richmond, in 1866, under the editing of Thomas H. Wynne, in two volumes, entitled History of the Dividing Line and other tracts, from the papers of William Byrd of Westover. Mr. Wynne supplies an historical introduction, and his text is more faithful than that of 1841, since some of the asperities of the manuscript were softened by the earlier editor. Byrd had been particularly severe on the character of the North Carolinians, as he saw it in his intercourse with them,[651] and not the worst of his characterizations touched their “felicity of having nothing to do.” Byrd at the time of his commission was a man of four and fifty, and he lived for some years longer, not dying till 1744. He was a good specimen of the typical Virginian aristocrat, not blind to the faults of his neighbors, and the best sample of such learning and wit as they had,[652] while he was not forgetful of some of the duties to the community which a large estate imposed upon him. Among other efforts to relieve the Virginians from their thraldom to a single staple were his attempts to encourage the raising and manufacture of hemp.[653] One of Byrd’s companions in the boundary expedition of 1728-29 was the Rev. Peter Fontaine, who acted as chaplain to the party, and a draft of the line as then marked is made in connection with some of his letters in Ann Maury’s Memoirs of a Huguenot Family (New York, 1852, 1872, p. 356).[654] In 1749 the line was continued westerly beyond Peter’s Creek, by Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson, the father of Thomas Jefferson; and was still further continued to the Tennessee River in 1778.[655]
Another question of bounds in Virginia, which it took some time to settle, was the western limits of the northern neck, as the wedge-like tract of territory was called which lay between the Rappahannock and the Potomac. It had been granted by Charles II. to Lord Hopton and others, but when bought by Lord Thomas Culpepper a new royal grant of it was made to him in 1688.[656] It passed as a dower with Culpepper’s daughter Catharine to Thomas, Lord Fairfax, and from him it passed to the sixth lord, Thomas, who petitioned (1733) the king to have commissioners appointed to run the line between the rivers. Of this commission was William Byrd, and an account of their proceedings is given in the second volume of the Byrd Manuscripts (p. 83) as edited by Wynne. A map of the tract was made at this time, which was called The Courses of the Rivers Rappahannock and Potowmack in Virginia, as surveyed according to order in the years 1736-1737. The bounds established by this commission were not confirmed by the king till 1745, and other commissioners were appointed the next year to run the line in question. The original journal of the expedition for this purpose, kept by Maj. Thomas Lewis, is now in the possession of John F. Lewis, lieutenant-governor of Virginia.[657] The plate of the map already referred to was corrected to conform, and this additional title to it was added: A Survey of the Northern Neck of Virginia, being the lands belonging to the Rt. Honourable Thomas Lord Fairfax, Baron Cameron, bounded by and within the Bay of Chesapoyocke, and between the Rivers Rappahannock and Potowmack. Along the line which is dotted to connect the head-spring of the southern branch of the Rappahannock with the head-spring of the Potomac is a legend, noting that it was determined by the king in council, April 11, 1745, that this line should be the westerly limit of the Fairfax domain. A section of the second state of the plate of this map is annexed in fac-simile from a copy in Harvard College library.[658]
An account has been given elsewhere[659] of what has been lost and preserved of the documentary records of Virginia.