Marlborough, Virginia

“ Within the garden was the summerhouse built by Mercer in 1765. From the east windows and steps of the house and from the garden could be seen the Potomac, curving towards the bay, and the flailing “drivers” of the windmill near the Potomac shore.
The excavated and written records of Marlborough are a microcosm of Virginia colonial history. They depict the emergence of central authority in the 17th [Pg 179] century in the establishment of the port town as a device to diversify the economy and control the collecting of duties. ”

“ There remained only level acres of grass, clover, and grain where once a poor village had been erected and where John Mercer’s splendid estate had risen with its Palladian mansion, its gardens, warehouses, and tobacco fields. Even in the early 19th century the tobacco plantation, especially in northern Virginia, had become largely a thing of the past. Within the memory of men still alive, the one structure still standing from Mercer’s time was the windmill. Except for the present-day fringe of modern houses, Marlborough must look today much as it did after its abandonment and disintegration. ”

“ George Andrews and Peter Beach, somewhat less distinguished, were perhaps the only full-time residents from among the first grantees. After 1708 Thomas Ballard and possibly William Barber were also householders.
Thus, few of the ingredients of an active community were to be found at Marlborough, the skilled craftsmen or ship’s chandlers or merchants who might have provided the vitality of commerce and trade not having at any time been present. ”

“ Aside from being elongated, Marlborough derives from the ubiquitous informal brick cottage of Virginia. So indigenous is this vernacular form that it is often found in houses of considerable pretension, even in the 18th century. Such are the Abingdon glebe house in Gloucester County, Gunston Hall in Fairfax, and the Chiswell Plantation, known as “Scotchtown,” in Hanover. Robert Beverley noted the Virginians’ fondness for this style, commenting that they built many rooms on a floor because frequent high winds would “incommode a towering Fabrick”—an explanation as delightful as it is absurd. ”

“ The great plantation house with its sophisticated elegancies, its outward formalities, and its rich resort for the intellect in the form of a varied library, was the center and spirit of the society of which men like Mercer were leaders. With the death of the system came the death of the great house, and the rise and fall of Marlborough symbolizes, as well as anything can, the life cycle of Virginia’s colonial plantation order. ”

“ In this seeming anomaly Marlborough is a true illustration of its age, when men like Mercer were strong individuals but at the same time typifying and expressing the milieu in which they lived.
Mercer’s rise to wealth and leadership occurred at a time when favorable laws held out the promise of prosperity, while boundless lands offered unparalleled opportunities for investment. ”

“ Marlborough’s beginnings as a town in 1691 cast the shape that has endured in a few vestiges even until today. The original survey of Bland and Buckner remains as evidence, and by it we are led to believe that the courthouse was located near the “Gutt” to the west of the town, near a change of course that affected the western boundary and all the north-south streets west of George Andrews’ lots. Archeological excavation in the area disclosed Structure B, which subsequent evidence proved to be the foundation of Mercer’s mansion, built at the pinnacle of his career between 1746 and 1750. ”

“ Despite the seeming unwisdom of doing so, James Mercer held on to Marlborough until his death. He was an active patriot in the Revolution, serving as a member of the Virginia Committee of Safety. Marlborough, too, seems to have been a participant in the war, when Lord Dunmore, on a last desperate foray, sailed his ships up the Potomac and attacked several plantations. ”

“ That they included no lawbooks at a time when Mercer was preparing for the law is an indication of his broad taste for literature and learning.
Marlborough, we can see, was occupied by a young man of talent, energy, and creativity. He alone, of the many men who had envisioned a center of enterprise on Potomac Neck, was possessed of the drive and the simple directness to make it succeed. For George Mason and the Waughs, Mercer was the ideal solution for their Marlborough difficulties. ”

“ But with neither courthouse nor port activity nor manufacture, the town became a paradox in an economy and society of planters.
Remote and inaccessible, uninhabited by individuals whose skills could have given it vigor, Marlborough no longer had any reason for being. It lingered on for a short time, but when John Mercer came to transform the abandoned village into a flourishing plantation, “Most of the other Buildings were suffered to go to Ruin, so that in the year 1726, when your Petitioner [i.e., Mercer] went to live there, but one House twenty-feet square was standing.” ”

“ No scheme I have tried will answer, & the Records differ as much, the streets according to Buckner’s Survey running thro the House I lived in built by Ballard tho his whole lot was ditched in according to the Bounds made by Gregg. [47]
Whatever the intent may have been in laying out formal street and lot plans, Marlborough was essentially a rustic village. ”

“ One of its most influential supporters was William Fitzhugh of Stafford County, a wealthy planter and distinguished leader in the colony. [3] “We have now resolved a cessation of making Tobo next year,” he wrote to his London agent, Captain Partis, in 1680. “We are also going to make Towns, if you can meet with any tradesmen that will come and live [Pg 6]
[Pg 7] at the Town, they may have privileges and immunitys.” [4]
Figure 2.—Survey plats of Marlborough as copied in John Mercer’s Land Book showing at bottom, John Savage’s, 1731; and top, William Buckner’s and Theodorick Bland’s, 1691. ”

“ Mercer’s Consolidation of Marlborough, 1730-1740 MERCER THE YOUNG LAWYER
The 1730’s opened a golden age in the Virginia colony. There was an interval of peace in which trade might flourish; there were new laws which favored the tobacco planter and led to the building of resplendent mansions along Virginia’s shores. John Mercer wasted no time in grasping the opportunities that lay about him. With shrewd foresight he made law his major objective, thus raising himself above most of his contemporaries. ”

“ Marlborough in its descent to an overseer’s quarters. Later 19th-century wares are insignificant in quantity or in their relation to the history of Marlborough. Tool and hardware forms are less diagnostic. Most of them correspond to ledger entries and to the 1771 inventory, so, without contradictory evidence, they may be assumed to date from John Mercer’s period.
In general, the artifacts illustrate the best of household equipment available in 18th-century Virginia, and the tools and hardware indicate the extensiveness of the plantation’s activities and its heavy reliance on blacksmith work. ”

“ Captain George Mason was a distinguished individual who lived at “Accokeek,” about a mile and a half from Marlborough. He certainly built in the town, for in 1691 he petitioned for a license to “keep an ordinary at the Town or Port for this county.” The petition was granted on condition that he “find a good and Sufficient maintenance and reception both for man and horse.” Captain Mason was grandfather of George Mason of Gunston Hall, author of the Virginia Bill of Rights, and was, at one time or another, sheriff, lieutenant colonel and commander in chief of the Stafford Rangers, and a burgess. ”

“ In Mercer’s concern with the Ohio Company and westward expansion they reflect a colony-wide trend as population increased and the need grew for more arable land and areas in which to invest and escape from economic limitations. They show that the war with the French inevitably ensued, with its demands on income and manpower, while following this came the enforcement of trade laws and the immediate irritants which led to rebellion. So Marlborough gives a sharp reflection of Virginia’s history prior to the Revolution. ”

“ Andrew Monroe, as manager of the plantation, advertised over his own name in Purdie & Dixon’s Virginia Gazette, of April 18, 1766, the services of “The well known Horse RANTER,” an English stallion imported by Mercer in 1762 (fig. 16) . One senses that without Monroe, Marlborough would have [Pg 58] collapsed completely. In spite of his ministrations, however, there were difficulties with the staff. Purdie & Dixon’s Gazette carried the following on June 6, 1766:
MARLBOROUGH, STAFFORD county, May 26, 1766. ”

“ Perhaps one of the 630 bricks brought on the Marigold by Captain Roger Lyndon and purchased by John Mercer.
The position of the Marlborough structure, outside of the enclosure wall but not far from the kitchen, the relative crudeness of its construction, and its off-axis orientation, support the likelihood of its being a utilitarian structure. The firing chamber and the flue show unquestionably that it was a building requiring heat or smoke. Marlborough had two greenhouses, according to Thomas Oliver’s inventory, and these would have required heating equipment. ”

“ Mercer returned to Marlborough by way of George Mason’s, near the place where a few months later William Buckland was to begin work on “Gunston Hall.” He remained there all day on April 1—“at Mr Mason’s wind bound,” he wrote in his journal. The next day he went “home through a very great gust.”
The problems of managing a plantation went on through peace and through war. Besides a multitude of Negroes, there were also indentured white servants at Marlborough. One of these ran away and was advertised in the Virginia Gazette on May 2, 1755:
... ”

“ The records do not reveal how long the mansion survived. That by the beginning of the century it had already lost the dignity with which Mercer had endowed it and was heading toward decay is quite evident. After John Cooke’s death Marlborough was again put up for sale in 1819, but this time nothing was said of any buildings, only that the land was adapted to the growth of red clover, that the winter and spring fisheries produced $2500 per annum, and that “Wild Fowl is in abundance.” ”

“ English yellowware.—The few sherds of so-called combed ware occurring at Marlborough, although only the base fragments connect, all seem to have come from a single cup or posset pot having a buff body and characteristically decorated with spiraled bands of dark-brown slip that were created by combing through an outer coating of white slip, revealing an underlayer of red slip. ”

“ Origins of Marlborough ESTABLISHING THE PORT TOWNS
The dependence of 17th-century Virginia upon the single crop—tobacco—was a chronic problem. A bad crop year or a depressed English market could plunge the whole colony into debt, creating a chain reaction of overextended credits and failures to meet obligations. Tobacco exhausted the soil, and soil exhaustion led to an ever-widening search for new land. This in turn brought about population dispersal and extreme decentralization. ”

“ Negroes played an increasingly important part in the life of Marlborough, particularly after the manor house was built. Between 1731 and 1750 Mercer purchased 89 Negroes. Most of these are listed by name in the ledger accounts. Forty-six died in this period, while 25 were born, leaving a total of 66 Negroes on his staff in 1750. In 1746 he bought 6 men and 14 women at £21 10s. from Harmer & King in Williamsburg. The new house and the expanded needs for service were perhaps the reasons for this largest single purchase of slaves. ”

“ In his long letter to George, written in 1768, he reflected on the fact that, although through the years 98 Negroes had been born at Marlborough, he, at that time, had fewer than the total of all he had ever bought. “Your sister Selden,” he wrote “attributes it to the unhealthiness of Patomack Neck, which there may be something in.... I thank God, however, that my own family has been generally as healthy as other people’s.” ”

“ He certainly had encountered George Mason before then, and probably Mason’s uncles, John, David, and James Waugh, the sons of Parson John Waugh, all of whom owned idle Marlborough properties.
Mercer’s friendship with the Masons was sufficiently well established by 1725 that on June 10 of that year he married George’s sister Catherine. This marriage, most advantageous to an aspiring young man, was celebrated at Mrs. Ann Fitzhugh’s in King George County with the Reverend Alexander Scott of Overwharton Parish in Stafford County officiating. ”

“ The actual excavations were made under the direction of Frank M. Setzler, formerly the head curator of anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution. None of the investigation would have been possible had not the owners of the property permitted the excavations to be made, sometimes at considerable inconvenience to themselves. I am indebted to W. Biscoe, Ralph Whitticar, Jr., and Thomas Ashby, all of whom owned the excavated areas at Marlborough; and T. Ben Williams, whose cornfield includes the site of the 18th-century Stafford County courthouse, south of Potomac Creek. ”

“ Almost no exclusively 17th century artifacts were found at Marlborough; at least, there were very few sherds or objects that could not have originated equally well in the 18th century. The exceptions are the following: Westerwald blue-and-white stoneware with gray-buff paste; several sherds of delft and other tin-enameled ware, late 17th century in type, and an early 17th-century terra cotta pipestem. Otherwise, we find a scattering of things belonging to types that occurred in both centuries: North Devon gravel-tempered ware, which was imported both in the late 17th and early 18th centuries ”