A Soldier of Virginia | Page 9

the
Royalist soldiers. At any rate, this one ship dropped anchor at Hampton,
and its passengers, to the number of about three hundred, were sold
very cheaply to the neighboring planters. I may as well say here that all
of them were well treated by their Cavalier masters, and many of them
afterwards became the founders of what are now the most prominent
families in the colony.
Now one of those who had been sold in Virginia was the Thomas
Stewart whom I have already mentioned, and whom neither stinking
jail nor crowded transport had much affected. Doubtless, no matter
what the surroundings, he had only to close his eyes to see again before
him the green hills and plashing brooks of Kincardine, with his own
home in the midst, and the bonny wife waiting at the door, a boy on

either side. Alas, it was only thus he was ever to see them this side
heaven. He was bought by a man named Nicholas Spenser, who owned
a plantation on the Potomac in 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