Leonard Stephens Diary, 1855 Trip, Part 2

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Sunday June 3rd. Resumed our journey at an early hour intent on getting to the Springs where we understand we can get accommodations for the night, as we have concluded to deffer visiting the Old House until tomorrow morning. Reached Orange Courthouse at ½ past 12 o'clock & stoped for dinner at the Douglas House. The land lady, as we understood afterwards, was a daughter of an old acquaintance, Mr. Washington Reynolds. On our way this morning we passed through Barboursville, the former residence of Governor James Barbour, an old acquaintance & friend of my Father. After dinner we again resumed our journey & were extremely anxious to see some places that would look familiar or places I had seen 50 years ago, but look[ed] in vain untill we had traveled some eight miles & for the last 5 or 6 miles through an unbroken forest, when suddenly, I being a head & on foot, I came to a road on my left that I thought I recognized & supposed it to be the one that formerly led to Old Father Bledso's. I there stoped and remarked to Napoleon that I believed I knew the road & told him that if I did the old Pamunkey meeting house stood at such a point, which turned out to be correct, for in a few minutes we were in sight of it. Here we halted & took a good observation of the old house & its grounds. Many suggestions came to my mind & my feelings were quite uncomfortable. We were then four miles from the Orange Springs & about as far from our Old Home. From the Meeting House to the Springs I saw many things that increased my feelings of sadness. Mr. Wm. Terrell's old house I found to be entirely gone. Mrs Molly Morton's house is still standing but in a dilapidated condition & entirely deserted. On arriving at the Springs, the Landlord Mr. Coleman declined to give us entertainment for the night & advised us to go on to Capt. Elijah Morton's whom I knew to be an old school mate of mine. I did not like to [go] there because I knew enough of his Virginia character that he would not consent to take compensation for our staying. We however went over and & he readily agreed to take us in & after finding out who we were he manifested that it was a pleasure to entertain us. His wife & two daughters also joined in making us welcome so that we had indeed a demonstration of true Virginia hospitality.

[June 6, 1855.] After breakfasting the next morning which was the 4th, we in company with Capt. Morton who kindly consented to accompany us over to our my home, we set out. At every turn in the way my mind was running upon the reminiscences of by gone days & emotions of pleasure & sorrow were continually succeeding each other. We shortly came is sight [of] then passed the old Mill Dam. Here I made an examination & found a good deal of the remains of what was fifty odd years ago a very profitable Mill. We then went on up the hill to the old Mansion House. There still stands three fourths of the old house as it was when I with my dear parents & brothers & sisters were its inmates. The western shed had been taken away & another house put in its place which makes quite an addition to the old building. The eastern shed is still there & the underpinning still out. Time and again I have gone under there to get Goose & duck eggs. On one occasion I treated a neighbor cousin very badly for getting under the house to hunt the eggs before me. I got whaled for treating him as I did. Well I deserved it. Mr. Morton who accompanied us there introduced us to the present proprietor Mr. Joseph D. Reynolds who we found to be a very clever gentleman. His wife and daughter too were especially clever. Mr. Reynolds desired us to feel ourselves perfectly at home & remain with him during our sojourn in the neighborhood.

Time will never efface from my recollections the very heavy & impressive suggestions of my mind during my stay at my old native house & it would be impossible for me to adequately describe them. The old orchard has scarcely a remnant of trees left & in the place of the apple trees that were in the yard there are now some six or eight large black locust trees growing which at a distance looks like the buildings were surrounded with forest trees. As we came along on the evening before we got here I told Napoleon that my old Home house might be within that grove for we could see the trees from the road leading to the Springs. The old grave yard although still there is so much changed that it is impossible to distinguish one from another. The buildings that were at Grand Father's old place are all gone & also where old Uncle Stephen Rice once lived. The old Barn is all gone & so is the Corn Crib. The truth is there is very little about the whole place that looks like it used to do. We visited the old Home spring, the horse spring, the Ann Stuart spring, the one that Grand Father used. The Recktor's spring & also the place where Brother Edmund used to live which is now occupied by a widow lady by the name of Boston. We went also to where Brother Ben once lived. There is not now any sign of buildings & the clearing that was is entirely growed up in pine trees that would make from four to 8 rails to the cut. We also went to Brother Waller's old place where Mr. Thos. Lancaster now lives. After looking over the Old Home plantation for two days that is the 4th & 5th days of June 1855, we set out on our return to our own present sweet home. We said farewell to our new friends. Mr. Reynolds however accompanied us on our way to where Mr. Ben Hide once lived. At that point we struck the plank road, as there is now a plank road leading from six miles above Orange Courthouse to Fredericksburgh. We stoped at Orange Courthouse & got dinner after which we resumed our journey & made thirty two miles & stayed all night at a place called Stoney Point with Mr. Beck with whom we stayed on our way down.

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Notes:

The town is now known simply as Orange (elev. 506). Many early Virginia Counties were almost entirely rural, lacking settlements of any size. The site chosen for the courthouse was often a centrally located crossroads, which only later grew into a village or town. Return.

William Douglass, age 68, was listed as a Tavern keeper in 1850. Return.

Lucy Ann Reynolds (1829- —) had married Rice J. Douglass 28 May 1850. She was a posthumous child of Washington Reynolds, who had died suddenly in 1828. Lucy's husband may have inherited the tavern, which also served as the Post Office. Return.

James Barbour (1775-1842) moved from the governor's mansion (1812-1815) to the United States Senate (1815-1825), and then to the cabinet, as John Quincy Adams' Secretary of War (1825-1828). Like most of the early Virginia governors, he gave his name to a county (which is now in West Virginia). Return.

Aaron Bledsoe (1732-1809?), who along with the better-known Elijah Craig established the Pamunkey congregation in 1774. He was noted for "unabating zeal." "Having a singular degree of boldness he would not be abashed. Great man, little man, rich man or poor man were all equal with him, as it respected his confidence. He was never to be swayed from his point or put to the blush." Later Bledsoe was "accused of fraudulent dealings, which he denied, though too plainly proven." He was excluded from the congregation and moved from the state about 1806, possibly to Georgia. Robert Baylor Semple, A History of the Rise and Progress of the Baptists in Virginia. Revised and extended by G. W. Beale (Richmond: Pitt & Dickinson, 1894), 219-220; William Wallace Scott, History of Orange County, Virginia (Richmond: Everett Waddey, 1907), 48. Return.

The upper reaches of the Pamunkey River are known as the North Anna and South Anna. The former divides the counties of Orange, Spotsylvania and Caroline on the north from Louisa and Hanover on the south. The Indian name, which seems to have coexisted with the English for centuries, was applied to the Baptist congregation and (much later) to a compilation of area genealogical records. Ruth Trickey Sparacio and Sam Sparacio, Pamunkey Neighbors of Orange County, Virginia (Baltimore: Gateway, 1985), and two Supplements (1991, 1994), provide a wealth of information on early families. Return.

The building Napoleon and his father saw was probably the fourth on the site, constructed in 1849 to replace a log structure. Scott, 48. Return.

Probably the William Terrill (known as Junior) who had married Jane Morton in 1793, two years after Leonard Stephens was born. Return.

Mary Tandy (1766- —), who had married John Morton 24 Apr 1788. She was widowed by 1802. Their six children included Elijah and John Morton. See below. Return.

Scott notes that James Coleman was licensed to keep a tavern at the springs in 1794. It was a popular resort in its early years, where "gentlemen used to indulge in a quiet game," but its fortunes had declined by mid-century. Scott, 125. John P. Coleman and his brother Robert were listed in an 1852 statewide directory as merchants at Orange Springs. Elliott & Nye's Virginia Directory and Business Register. [Richmond?]: Elliot & Nye. 1852. Return.

Elijah Morton (1789- —) had married Mary G. Webb 25 June 1812. Return.

The location of the mill not identified. Perhaps the mill referred to is that of James Nelson and Hawes Coleman, purchased by William T. Burrus sometime before he wrote his will in 1831. From General Stephens' description the location was probably on Riga Run or close by. Return.

The old Stephens Place stood, as best we can tell, just east of Riga Run. After a century and a half of property consolidations, all visible traces of the structures have vanished. Return.

Joseph Dent Reynolds (1808- —) was an elder son of Washington Reynolds (1775-1828) and Catherine Dent Swann (1775-1851). He had married on 5 Nov 1832 Elizabeth M. Henderson (1818?- —). Their teenage daughter was Sarah (1840?- —). Return.

Stephen Smith (d. 1799), who had married the widowed Blessing Stephens (Leonard's grandmother) in 1773. Return.

Stephen Smith Rice; although named for Stephen Smith, Leonard's step-grandfather, his connection to the Stephens family is not known. Return.

The widow Ann Reed had married Alexander Stuart in 1796; he had previously been married to one of Stephen Smith's daughters, and hence a step-sister to Leonard's father. Return.

The word is unclear. Possibly Proctor for one of the families of that name who lived in the area. Return.

Edmund Waller Stephens (1777-1864), Leonard's eldest brother, who was living in Boone County, Kentucky, not far from Leonard. Return.

Possibly Fanny Waugh Boston, 32 in 1850, with a husband, John P., who was 17 years her senior, or else Sarah Powell Boston, 35, whose husband, William, was only eight years older. Both were apparently widows by 1860. Return.

Benjamin Stephens, Jr. (1779-1855) migrated to South Carolina about 1804, but relocated to Boone County, Kentucky in 1806, near Leonard and his other siblings. Return.

Waller Stephens (1780-1815) may not have joined the exodus. He died either in South Carolina or Virginia. His widow, Lucy Adams (1785?-—), married William Willoughby in Orange County in 1824 and after his death in 1827 moved to Boone County, Kentucky and then to Cass County, Missouri, where she was listed with her son Waller Stephens in 1850. Return.

Thomas Lancaster was 55 in 1850, with spouse Mary, 54, and three children. Thomas is missing from the 1860 list, but Mary was counted. The Civil War "Map of Orange County &c" shows a Lancaster home about a mile north of Orange Springs. The Official Civil War Atlas [New Title] (New York: T. Yoseloff, 1958). Return.

Benjamin Hyde appears on a tax list in 1810. Netti Schreiner-Yantis, A Supplement to the 1810 Census of Virginia (Springfield, VA: author, 1971), O-7. Return.

The new plank road was built in response to the opening of a rail connection between Richmond and the Valley. W. W. Scott (131) notes that it was "a splendid highway at first but soon wearing out." See below, June 20, 1857, when Leonard found the road "much out of order and the riding quite uncomfortable." Plank roads had originated in the forests of Russia and came to the United States from Canada in 1844. The novel method of roadbuilding met with great enthusiasm due to its supposed low cost. The roads, however, proved far from durable and the fad was killed by the Panic of 1857. George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution: 1815-1860 (New York: Rinehart, 1951), 29-31. A few years later the road figured in the Battle of the Wilderness. Return.

Still to be found on maps, the crossroads of Stony Point lies about halfway from Charlottesville to Barboursville on Virginia Route 20. The Gazetteer of Virginia identifies it as a 'post village.' Return.