A reader asks for a fuller explanation concerning William Byrd. Without deviating from the longer purpose of reviewing the Board of Trade minutes, a short note on Byrd might be appropriate to aid in understanding the minutes. The William Byrd that I have been writing about was the son of another William Byrd, the founder of the family in Virginia. William I, with the assistance of an inheritance from his father-in-law, amassed a considerable fortune and was not adverse to spending part of it on the education of his children in England. As a consequence, William II knew England very well, as he lived and worked there many years. Upon the death of his father, in 1705, William II returned to Virginia and the family estate at Westover, at the age of 31, and took Lucy Parke for a wife. When her father died, William II assumed his lands in exchange for payment of his debts. Unfortunately for William II, the debts were much larger than he had imagined, and he spent much of his life trying to recover from the debtor position. However, he maintained the life style which his father had initiated, and for which William II had received many years of training in England. William II served the colony of Virginia in many capacities.
About 1713, he came into conflict with Lt. Gov. Spotswood over the manner of collecting the quit rents (Byrd was the Receiver General). Also, in the Council he led the opposition to Spotswood on the question of who, the Governor or the Council, had the power to appoint people to the courts. In 1715, Byrd was in England, partly on personal business and partly to oppose Spotswood. (Spotswood attempted, unsuccessfully, to get Byrd removed from the Council.) When Byrd went home to Virginia in 1720, he was sent with instructions to made peace. England was becoming tired of the bickering that was going on. Spotswood and Byrd did reconcile their differences and they became friends once again. We know Byrd best as the author of " Progress to the Mines ", which tells of his visit to Spotswood and his family in 1732. Even though Byrd lived on the frontier at the future site of Richmond, his life could not be characterized as living on the frontier. His library contained thousands of volumes.
When Byrd testified before the Board of Trade on 13 March 1717 (NS), concerning iron ore, he would have mentioned that Spotswood had an iron furnace if Spotswood had a furnace. All that he mentioned was iron ore. Perhaps he did not even tell the Commissioners that the ore he had in mind was on his (Byrd's) property. He was hoping that the colony or the King would develop this and in the process give him a management job which would be another way of earning money to pay his debts. The Commissioners ignored his comments about iron.
Five days later, Byrd testified about the production of hemp and naval stores in Virginia. Two days later, the Commissioners decided to issue a report on obtaining naval stores from the American Plantations. They worked on the report more the next day. Again the next day, they worked on a report and the encouragement required to stimulate the production of naval stores in the American Plantations. Over the next week, they continued their work on the encouragement to be given to the production of naval stores. On 28 March, they forwarded the report on naval stores to Mr. Methuen, the Secretary of State.
(29 Aug 00)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.