“As to the officers, upon signing a parole they might go to Richmond and other adjacent towns to procure themselves quarters. Accordingly a parole was signed, which allowed a circuit of near 100 miles. And after the officers had drawn lots, as three were to remain in the barracks with the men, or at Charlottesville, the principal part of them set off for Richmond, and many of them are at plantations twenty or thirty miles from the barracks. I was quartered, with four other officers of our regiment, at Jones’s Plantation, about twenty miles from the barracks. The face of the country appears an immense forest, interspersed with various plantations, four or five miles distant from each other. On these there is a dwelling house in the centre, with kitchens, smoke-house and outhouses detached, and from the various buildings each plantation has the appearance of a small village. At some little distance from the houses are peach and apple orchards, and scattered over the plantation are the cabins and tobacco houses.” The worm fence was an object of wonder to every foreigner, and yet in a country of abundant timber the most natural thing in the world. Anburey mentions that in the New England settlements (where the holdings were smaller and fences could be made with more particularity) the inhabitants had a saying, “He is making Virginia fences,” used of a man not sober, but able to walk, as it were.
Anburey was twice at Richmond, once in the winter and once in the summer of 1779. The neighboring gentlemen were very hospitable, and would not let him leave until he had visited the whole circle. He speaks especially of Warwick and “Tuckahoe.” The proprietor of “Tuckahoe” was threatened with the burning of valuable mills because an English officer had been made welcome. It was an idle threat. On the way to Richmond, by the road through Goochland Courthouse, Anburey met that perennial, the celebrated roundabout directions: “If perchance you meet an inhabitant and enquire your way, his directions are, if possible, more perplexing than the roads themselves, for he tells you to keep the right-hand path, then you’ll come to an old field; you are to cross that, and then you’ll come to the fence of such a one’s plantation; then keep that fence, and you’ll come to a road that has three forks; keep the right-hand fork for about half a mile, and then you’ll come to a creek; after you cross that creek you must turn to the left, and there you’ll come to a tobacco house; after you have passed that you’ll come to another road that forks; keep the right-hand fork, and then you’ll come to Mr. Such-a-One’s ordinary, and he will direct you.” The fact of such directions as these, and the use made of them, are to be explained when we remember that the backwoodsman carries a map in his head, whereas the cockney’s brain is damaged by the use of maps.
In the woods the Convention officer came upon a track for quarter-racing. “Near most of the ordinaries there is a piece of ground cleared in the woods for that purpose, where there are two paths, about six or eight yards asunder, which the horses run in. I think I can, without the slightest exaggeration, assert that even the famous Eclipse could not excel them in speed, for our horses are some time before they are able to get into full speed; but these are trained to set out in that manner the moment of starting. It is the most ridiculous amusement imaginable, for if you happen to be looking another way, the race is terminated before you can turn your head; notwithstanding which, very considerable sums are betted at these races. Only in the interior parts of this province are these races held, for they are much laughed at and ridiculed by the people in the lower parts, about Richmond and other great towns. At Williamsburg is a very excellent course for two, three or four-mile heats.”
On his summer trip to Richmond, Anburey was struck by the numbers of peach orchards in full fruit—“it is deemed no trespass to stop and refresh yourself and your horse with them”—and by the sight of a family leaving a most comfortable house and good plantation to set out for Kentucky over the mountains. The summer of 1779 apparently was a good peach season, and a bad season in the item of forest fires. “The town of Richmond, as well as the plantations around for some miles, has been in imminent danger; as the woods have been on fire, which for some time past has raged with great fury, and that element seemed to threaten universal destruction; but, providentially, before it had done any material damage there fell a very heavy rain, which, nevertheless, has not altogether extinguished it [July 14, 1779]. During the summer months these fires are very frequent, and at Charlottesville I have seen the mountains on a blaze for three or four miles in length. They are occasioned by the carelessness of waggoners.”
During the winter of 1779 the Convention Army at Charlottesville lost heavily by desertion. “I should observe that this desertion is among the British troops. For what reason it is impossible to say, the Americans shew more indulgence to the Germans, permitting them to go round the country to labor, and being for the most part expert handicraftsmen, they realize a great deal of money exclusive of their pay.”
The officers made themselves pretty comfortable. They put up a coffee house, a theatre and a cold bath. Anburey made, or had made, a drawing entitled “Encampment of the Convention Army at Charlottes Ville, in Virginia, after they had surrendered to the Americans.” In this interesting print it is difficult to distinguish the theatre, but the coffee house is easily found.
September, 1780, when orders came to move to the North again, the officers were loath to go. They had understood that they were to remain at Charlottesville until exchanged. Several of them “had laid out great sums in making themselves comfortable habitations; for the barracks became a little town, and there being more society, most of the officers had resorted there. The great objection to residing at them on our first arrival, was on account of the confined situation, being not only surrounded, but even in the woods themselves. The proprietor of the estate will reap great advantages, as the army entirely cleared a space of six miles in circumference around the barracks. After we quitted the barracks, the inhabitants were near a week in destroying the cats that were left behind, which impelled by hunger had gone into the woods. There was reason to suppose they would become extremely wild and ferocious and would be a great annoyance to their poultry.”
The Convention Army, crossing the “Pignet Ridge, or more properly, the Blue Mountains,” at Wood’s Gap, moved to Winchester, and thence, recrossing the Ridge at Williams’s Gap, proceeded to Frederick Town, and so to New York to take ship.