We have been looking, for several notes, at a history of Virginia as seen through the eyes of people in London, especially at the Board of Trade and Plantations. I will now stop that and give Alexander Spotswood the chance to reply to some of the charges being made against him. On June 16, 1724, he wrote to the Board and enclosed a copy of another letter. I will quote from both of these letters by paraphrasing his comments. The text of the documents may be found in " Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies, 1724-1725 (vol. 34) ", as edited by Cecil Headlam, and published by the Public Record Office, London, in 1936. The letters of Spotswood start on page 112. [In the following, comments by John Blankenbaker are set off by the brackets as this is.]
June 16, 1724. Germanna. Col. Spotswood to the Council of Trade and Plantations:
"During the twelve years that it was incumbent upon me to render an account of my administration to your Lordships' Board, I was never faulted for any remissness or impertinence in my correspondence. On the contrary, our Lordships gave me many signal approbations of my conduct. Permit me now to offer this to your consideration as I continue to be as devoted to the service of my Prince and country as when I ruled a Province."I would have come to England but the pirates have placed a price upon my head and it has made travel by ship unsafe.
"On my return from Albany [attending the Indian conference of a few months duration] I judged it prudent to retire from Williamsburg [the seat of government where a new Governor was present] and I took up residence a year and half ago here in the wild woods [that is, at Germanna where he was building a residence]. This is as far away as I could get from Williamsburg, 140 miles distant, and it is the extreme western settlement of H. M. Dominions [the Second Colony Germans were west of Germanna]. In my retirement, I applied myself to pursue the scheme which I had laid while I was Governor of raising in this part of the world all manner of Naval Stores. I have now made such progress therein that I believe I will be able to render to your Lordships an agreeable accounting of that undertaking.
[At this point, Spotswood complained about Larkin Chew, his bitter enemy, who, Spotswood says, is planning to take away the lands Spotswood is using for building a wharf and a warehouse for the naval stores he is shipping. Chew wants to build a town on this site. Though most people have said the wharf was for shipping iron, Spotswood says it is for shipping naval stores and, again, he emphasizes naval store s. Probably the original motivation was for the naval stores, but he later used it for iron.]
"I request that I will be fairly heard when I personally attend the Board."With respect to the lands in the new counties of Brunswick and Spotsylvania, I am enclosing a copy of a letter I wrote to the Auditor which gives an accounting of the lands I have taken up". [A. Spotswood]
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.