A Soldier of Virginia | Page 9

Westmoreland County, and there he worked, first as laborer and then as overseer, for nigh upon ten years. His master treated him with great kindness, and at the Restoration, having made tenfold his purchase money by him, gave him back his freedom.
Despite the years and the hard work in the tobacco-fields, Stewart's thoughts had often been with the wife and children he had left behind in Scotland, and he prevailed upon Spenser to secure him passage in one of his ships for London, where he arrived early in 1662. He made his way back to Kincardine, where he found his estate sequestered, his wife and one child dead in poverty, the other disappeared. From a neighbor he learned that the boy had run away to sea after his mother's death, but what his fate had been he never knew. Weary and disheartened, Stewart retraced his steps to London, and after overcoming obstacles innumerable, occasioned mostly by his want of money, laid his case before the king. Charles listened to him kindly enough, for his office had not yet grown a burden to him, and finally granted him a patent for two thousand acres of land along the upper Potomac. It was a gift which cost the king nothing, and one of a hundred such he bestowed upon his favorites as another man would give a crust of bread for which he had no use. Stewart returned to Virginia with his patent in his pocket, and built himself a home in what was then a wilderness.
In five or six years he had cleared near three hundred acres of land, had it planted in sweet-scented tobacco, for which the Northern Neck was always famous, bought two-score negroes to tend it, and began to see light ahead. It was at this time that he met Marjorie Usner, while on a visit to Williamsburg, and he married her in 1670, having in the mean time erected a more spacious residence than the rude log-hut which had previously been his home. He was at that time a man nigh fifty years of age, but handsome enough, I dare say, and well preserved by his life of outdoor toil. Certainly Mistress Marjorie, who must have been much younger, made him a good wife, and when he died, in 1685, he left a son and a daughter, besides an estate valued at several thousands of pounds, accumulated with true Scottish thrift. It was this daughter who named the estate Riverview, and though the house was afterwards remodeled, the name was never changed. The Stewarts continued to live there, marrying and giving in marriage, and growing ever wealthier, for the next half century, at the end of which time occurred the events that brought me into being.
In 1733, Thomas Stewart, great-grandson of the Scotsman, was master of Riverview. His portrait, which hangs to-day to the left of the fireplace in the great hall, shows him a white-haired, red-faced, choleric gentleman, with gray eyes and proudly smiling mouth. He had been chosen a member of the House of Burgesses, as had his father before him, and was one of the most considerable men in the county. His son, Tom, was just twenty-one, and had inherited from his father the hasty temper and invincible stubbornness which belong to all the Stewarts.
It was in the fall of 1733 that they made the trip to Williamsburg which was to have such momentous consequences. The House of Burgesses was in session, and Mr. Stewart, as the custom was, took his whole family with him to the capital. I fancy I can see them as they looked that day. The great coach, brought from London at a cost of so many thousand pounds of tobacco, is polished until it shines again. The four horses are harnessed to it, and Sambo, mouth stretched from ear to ear, drives it around to the front of the mansion, where a broad flight of stone steps leads downward from the wide veranda. The footmen and outriders spring to their places, their liveries agleam with buckles, the planter and his lady and their younger son enter the coach, while young Tom mounts his horse and prepares to ride by the window. The odorous cedar chests containing my lady's wardrobe are strapped behind or piled on top, the negroes form a grinning avenue, the whip cracks, and they are off, half a dozen servants following in an open cart. It is a four days' journey to Williamsburg, over roads whose roughness tests the coach's strength to the uttermost but it is the one event of all the year to this isolated family, and small wonder that they look forward to it with eager anticipation.
Once arrived at Williamsburg, what craning of necks and waving of handkerchiefs and kissing of hands to