William Byrd (II) was a superb writer but he did not publish his writings to the public at large. Nothing that he wrote was published in his life time; it was only decades later that his writings which could be found were published. Some have never been found, especially some of his secret diaries. One thing of which he was an author was " A Progress to the Mines in the year 1732 ". Some parts of this have been published by the Germanna Foundation. I thought that we might look at some of the omitted pages.
"September 1732. For the pleasure of the good company of Mrs. Byrd and her little governor, my son, I went about halfway to the falls [on the James River] in the chariot. There we halted, not far from a purling stream, and upon the stump of a propagate oak picked the bones of a piece of roast beef. By the spirit which that gave me I was better able to part with the dear companions of my travels and to perform the rest of my journey on horseback by myself."
[We should not assume that Byrd meant he was totally alone. He would have been accompanied by servants. ]
"I reached Shacco’s before two o’clock and crossed the [James] river to the mills. [This would have been near the site of the future town of Richmond which Byrd laid out in 1737.] I have the grief to find them both stand as still for the want of water as a dead woman's tongue for want of breath. It had rained so little for many weeks above the falls, that the naiads had hardly water enough to wash their faces. However, as we ought to turn all misfortunes to the best advantage, I directed Mr.Booker, my first minister there, to make use of the lowness of the water for blowing up the rocks at the mouth of the canal. For that purpose I ordered iron drills to be made about two feet long, pointed with steel, chisel fashion, in order to make holes into which we put our cartridges of powder, containing each about three ounces. There wanted skill among my engineers to choose the best parts of the stone for boring, that we might blow to the best advantage. They made all of their holes quite perpendicular, where as they should have humored the grain of the stone for the more effective execution. I ordered the points of the drills to be made chisel fashion, rather than diamond, that they might need to be seldomer repaired, though in stone the diamond points would make the most dispatch. The water now flowed out the river so slowly that the miller was obliged to pond it up in the canal by setting open the floodgates at the mouth and shutting those close to the mill. By this contrivance he was able at any time to grind two or three bushels, either for his choice customers or for the use of my plantations."
[William Byrd may have read Latin, Greek, and Hebrew but he was still able to bring his mind to practical problems.] (09 May 05)
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.