A Virginia Family

A Virginia Family and Its Plantation Houses - Elizabeth Langhorne, K. Edward Lay, William D. Rieley

   This tells the story of several generations of Coles' in Virginia and the houses that they lived in. The authors' familiar and sometimes nostalgic tone was difficult to stomach, but it seemed to come from their sympathy and fondness for the Coles. Perhaps such sympathy is essential to analyzing the motivations and actions of historical characters?
   The enslaved Africans, however, were only peripheral characters in this telling. How they helped to build these houses, the time and tasks of maintenance, how the enslaved people would have interacted with the buildings day-to-day, their role in the development of the Cole's gardens, the details of their cash crop labor - all these questions went unanswered, but seem to me very important to an analysis of the Coles' history and their building habits. The authors did discuss slavery frequently, but mostly in economic terms - which is important and helpful, but insufficient to reach their stated goal of creating a "close-up view of four generations of one family of antebellum Virginia" and "a picture of plantation society." Only in Edward's story is there a Black character presented as a person, with mind and motivation, Ralph Crawford.
   I read this book to learn about John Coles the immigrant, but the meat of it has to do with his son, John II and his crew. In any case, it's a treasure chest of art and architecture and social history. I wish these authors had put their many talents into a fuller analysis of plantation life and building.

Profile of John Coles

• born circa 1705 to Walter Coles and Alice Philpot in Enniscorthy, Ireland
• grew up in the merchant class? His father was "port reeve" for 30 years in Enniscorthy
• Immigrated in 1730's?
• married Mary Ann Winston, daughter of Isaac Winston, a member of Cedar Creek Meeting
• 1739 appointed "Processioner," one who walks the bounds of property lines
• May 28, 1741, dines with Byrd II, not sure which house
• "Commissioner of the Peace"
• April 29, 1741, his request to ship 1500 lbs wheat to Lisbon is denied
• Growing tobacco also
• Also cattle, hogs, and horses - for profit?
• Spring 1742, proposes in Henrico Co. Council meeting that the collection of houses on the James by the falls should be incorporated as Richmond
• starts (or receives from inlaws?) plantation along Fork Creek in Louisa Co, near confluence with S.Anna River, near Fork Creek Meeting and his wife's family
• other lands: along Hunting Creek and Black Walnut Creek near the Staunton River (this may have been an active plantation by the time of his death); also in Brunswick Co along Staunton River, also in Albermarle Co on Green Mountain
• bought 15 plots from Byrd II in Richmond, as well as acreage north and along Gilly's creek
• builds "first house on Church Hill;" faces south with a view of the river
• On the vestry, appointed warden and building chairman
• Enslaved Africans in his will, "with all their future increase"
• Primus ("of Fork Creek")
• Phebey ("of Fork Creek")
• Three of their children "names not known to me"
• Cloe
• Beck
• Gabriel
• Primus Jun (Junior?)
• Billy
• Doll
• Lucy
• Jemmy
• Jenny
• Cate
• Abram
• Tamar
• Will
• London
• Dublin
• Nan
• Moll
• St. John
• Betty
• Tabey
• Sebrey
• Richmond
• Wexford
• England
• Phillis
• Bristol
• Sampson
• Scotland
• Cate
• Her young child
• Hannah
• Peter
• Bowston
• Scotland's child
• Dublin's child
• Ireland
• Harry
• Ceasar
• Pharoah
• Tom
• Aggy
• Sharlott
• Sarah
• Children
• Walter 1739
• Sarah Muter 1741
• Mary Tucker 1743
• John 1745
• Isaac 1747
• Friends mentioned in will, to oversee will
• Col Peter Randolph
• Isaac Winston Junr
• Col William Randolph
• wife Mary and brother Williams executors
• died 1747, buried at St John's "under the church"

notes

• on May 28, 1741, we find him dining with William Byrd, perhaps in Coles's own new house
• it was the first house built on Church Hill
• during this period, roughly between 1730 and 1750, planters were crossing the tide line, flocking in numbers into the new Piedmont country
• from the Journal of the Council of VA, which, on April 29, 1741 rejected Coles's request that he be allowed to ship his wheat to Lisbon
• Land and slaves went together
• The land that Coles favored most seems to have been in Lunenburg Co (now Halifax) on the Staunton River
• also land in brunswick co and albermarle
• fork creek, near Anna, near Fork Creek Meeting house, seemed to be home plantation
• possible claim house erected at other holdings, simple  log cabin
• it was coles, in fact, who stood up in the henrico county council meeting in the spring of 1742 and proposed that the small collection of houses on a river should be incorporated as the city of Richmond
• bought the most lots from byrd
• his house chosen by benedict arnold for barracks
• "at the time of his majority in 1769, Isaac was already established as a planter on his father's land in Halifax Co. He was glad to sell his Richmond property to his father's old friend, Col. Richard Adams."
• supposed to have view of river and town; Adams describes flood of 1771 from the porch of his house
• the names of slaves whom John Coles II inherited from his father echo the ties to the old world: S. John, Betty, Tabey, Sebrey, Richmond, Wexford, England, Phyllis, and Bristol.
• the existence of a Coles Rolling Road mentioned in the Albermarle Co Road Orders of 1791 and 1792 indicates that at least during the first years, slaves rolled the hogsheads of tobacco to a point on the James River, whence they could be floated on the flat-bottomed bateaux to the collection point at Westham
• bought a little land from neighbor John Fortune, who was a free black
• ...[Rebecca Travis (motherinlaw)]she paid her own way, as so many widowed and single women did, through the hire of slaves in her possession; many of them accompanied her to her soninlaws plantation
• financial/currency problems around revoluntion. Andrew Drummon, "that you intend, my good sir to lay out the vile trash, which we call money - in young Negroes is wisely determined, everybody's doing the same with us, and that there has been so many belonging to the absent Tories sold..."
• such large acquisitions of land required additional slaves. "required"?
• slave cabins at monticello - 12x14 ft, wooded, earthen floor, wooden chimney perhaps standing a bit apart so that it could be torn loose
• at all the coles houses we find english yew trees, a distinguishing feature of their gardens like the mayduke cherries of their orchards
• watson was paid in beef, pork, bacon, a bottle of rum, a bottle of brandy, a pound of wool, and eight days work of George
• read Memoirs of a Monticello Slave, Isaac
• pinion - small additional wing
• "It is my wish that my old and faithful servant Sally Carr, Fanny and Peter shall have the selection of their masters among my children"
• Virginia custom no longer followed the english law of primogeniture
• 1793, John still paying bounties on wolves, Isaac goes off to william and mary
• punkah, the great fan hung over the diningroom table and operated by a Negro boy pulling a rope, standing out of sight in the back hall
• In 1827 [John III], for example, the plantation showed a profit of 4572.79, about half of which came from the sale of tobacco. In this year he was working with thirty-seven slaves.
• Isaac was working Enniscorthy with thirteen slaves of his own and eighteen of his mother's, yielding in 1809 the not small return of 4340 for the year's work
• new law that freed slaves must leave the state
• 1808 Edward inherits land and slaves, 1819 travels west,
• at the request of his family, Edward had not revealed his plans for their freedom to Ralph and others before leaving Virginia
• "How will you live if you set us free?"
• "They seldom speak of their freedom," Edward noted, "without speaking, and that too rather in a consequential way, of their lands"
• Edward moves to Philly, Edward's son Robert fights for south and dies; Edward heartbroken
• "the age of the plantations had come to an end; of that past era only the buildings, and perhaps a lingering tradition, remain"   ??
• "it is, not one family alone, but a whole vanished culture that these houses represent" ??