and had served in the royal navy. Afterward he became the owner of "a passenger ship," and traded to Hobbes' Hole, Virginia, on the Rappahannock river. He is said to have crossed the Atlantic twenty-five times, bringing Irish immigrants, and returning with cargoes of peltries and tobacco.—[R. A. Brock, "Dinwiddle Papers," Vol. I, page 8.]
Most of the people introduced by Patton were the class known as "Redemptioners," or "indentured servants," who served a stipulated time to pay the cost of their transportation.[1] The records of the county court of Augusta show that this class of people were numerous in the county previous to the Revolutionary war. They were sold and treated as slaves for the time being. Up to the Revolution there were comparatively few African slaves in the Valley.
Missionaries, says Foote, speedily followed the immigrants into the Valley. "A supplication from the people of Beverley Manor, in the back parts of Virginia," was laid before the Presbytery of Donegal, Pennsylvania, September 2, 1737, requesting ministerial supplies. "The Presbytery judge it not expedient, for several reasons, to supply them this winter." The next year, however, the Rev. James Anderson was sent by the Synod of Philadelphia to intercede with Governor Gooch in behalf of the Presbyterians of Virginia. Mr. Anderson visited the settlements in the Valley, and during that year, 1738, at the house of John Lewis, preached the first regular sermon ever delivered in this section of the country.
The proceedings of Synod, just referred to, were taken "upon the supplication of John Caldwell,[2] in behalf of himself and many families of our persuasion, who are about to settle in the back parts of Virginia, desiring that some members of the Synod may be appointed to wait on that government to solicit their
- ↑ Some persons of this class were well educated, and were employed as teachers. The maternal grandfather of the Rev. Dr. Baxter purchased a young Irishman, who called himself McNamara, and the father of the Rev. Dr. Alexander purchased another named Reardon, and to these, respectively, were Drs. Baxter and Alexander indebted for their early instruction in Latin, &c.
- ↑ Grandfather of John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina. Mr. Caldwell, however, never lived in the Valley, but in Charlotte county.
