The Stronghold - The Stronghold Part 10
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The Stronghold Part 10

The simplest way of roasting a fowl or joint of meat was to suspend it in front of the fire by a hempen string.

The laundry was allowed to accumulate into great monthly washings. This seems to have been the custom for a hundred years after the colony was first settled. Soft soap was made by the barrel from refuse grease and wood ashes. This soap was used for the laundry but a toilet soap was made from the bayberry, or "sweet myrtle," as it was called in Virginia.

Candles were also made from the myrtle berries, and from tallow. The myrtle berry candles were prettier and more fragrant.

The brick-floored milkhouse at these early plantations was a separate building. Besides the milk pails, bowls, skimmers and churn, this house was a storage place for pewter that needed repairing, powdering tubs for salting meat, rum casks, spinning-wheels, chamber pots, fish kettles, stillyards, hides, tanned leather and so on.

Brooms were made at home, and turkey wings were saved for brushing the hearth.

Perhaps another duty of Ursula and her indentured maids was the picking of the tame geese. Their feathers were more valuable to the colonists than their meat. Goose feathers were prized for beds and pillows, which were handed down as heirlooms. The feathers were stripped from the live geese three or four times a year, but the quills, which were used for pens, were never pulled but once. Ursula probably dreaded goose-picking because it was a hard and cruel work. Feathers from wildfowl were also carefully saved for beds and pillows.

Probably the last chore on a winter's night was the warming of the beds.

The brass or copper warming pan with its long handle hung by the fireplace where it reflected the firelight. At bedtime, which was early, the pan was filled with hot coals and thrust within the beds and moved rapidly back and forth so as to warm the bed but not burn the linen.

Sometimes a large chafing-dish was used in the bed-chambers for "knocking the chill off" the ice-cold room.

And so at last, after the last chore had been attended to, Ursula could crawl between the warm sheets, pull up her quilt, or leather coverlet, and fall into a well-earned sleep.

_THE YARD_

The surroundings of a seventeenth century planter's house, such as Coan Hall, were simple, lacking in ornament of any kind.

Near the back door was a garden in which vegetables and a few simple flowers grew side by side. Real flower gardens were not developed until the next century.

Some flax and hemp were probably included in the garden at Coan. And herbs, such as thyme, rosemary and marjoram were considered almost a necessity at that time.

There was usually an orchard, containing a few apple, pear, cherry and peach trees.

There may have been a dovecote at Coan Hall. There must certainly have been a tall pole in the yard with a bee-martin's house on top, for these birds notified the settler and his household of the approach of hawks and other enemies of the poultry. They were the watch-dogs of the yard.

There may have been a few birdhouses made Indian fashion of gourds.

The planter's dwelling, even though it was little and plain, sometimes no larger than 24 24, was referred to as the "manor house," "great house" or "mansion," in order to distinguish it from its dependencies, the kitchen, milkhouse, smokehouse, henhouse, stable, barn and cabins for servants.

According to an early order by the Assembly, all dwelling houses throughout the Colony of Virginia must be palisaded. This order was still in effect when Coan Hall was built, but as the Indians were friendly in this region and there was no one at Chicacoan to enforce the law, the yard may have been surrounded by a stout fence of locust instead, or by palings to keep out hogs and cattle which wandered without restraint.

Needless to say, a bubbling spring was somewhere close by the dwelling, and perhaps a gourd dipper.

_KITTAMAQUND_

Pocahontas was not the only Indian girl of royal blood who once lived in the Northern Neck. Kittamaqund, too, lived for awhile, died and, it is believed, was buried in the land between the Rappahannock and the Potomac.

Kittamaqund was the only child of the Tayac, or Emperor, of the Piscataway Indians. Their village was located on Piscataway Creek on the Maryland side of the Potomac. At this point the Potomac, which separated the Province of Maryland from the Colony of Virginia, was less than a mile wide.

In the winter of 1640 Father Andrew White, a Catholic missionary, came to "Piscatoe" to baptize the Indians. Among those whom Father White baptized were the Emperor and his wife.

Shortly after the missionary's visit, the Emperor brought his seven-year-old daughter, Kittamaqund, to St. Mary's "Citie," Maryland, and put her in the care of Father White. He loved his daughter very dearly and he wanted her to be educated and "when she shall well understand the Christian mysteries, to be washed in the sacred font of baptism."

The "little Empress," as she was called by the settlers, was adopted by Mistress Margaret Brent of St. Mary's. By 1642 Kittamaqund had become "proficient in the English language" and she was baptized by Father White at that time and given the Christian name Mary.

Before long romance took a hand in the situation. Mistress Margaret had a brother, Giles Brent, who had left England with her on the ship _Elizabeth_ in 1638, and they had arrived together at St. Mary's. Giles had been born in Gloucestershire, England, about 1600.

Giles and the little Indian "Empress" were married when she was about twelve years old. Giles had a home on Kent Island where they lived for part of the year and the rest of the year they stayed with Margaret at her home "in St. Maries, where he had certain goods &C"--"divers cattle and other commodities ... linen, shoes, stockings, sugar ... and also a little cabbonett containing Jewels &C."

About 1646 Giles took his Indian bride and crossed the Potomac to the Northern Neck of Virginia. He settled on the north shore of Aquia Creek and there built a house which he called Peace. This name seems to indicate that he may have had troubles, probably religious persecution, in Maryland. He had also failed in his attempt to claim Kittamaqund's royal domain, which was most of Maryland.

The home of Giles and Kittamaqund in the Northern Neck was in the midst of the wilderness. They were the northernmost English residents in Virginia. When in 1651 settlers pushed northward to patent land above the Brent home they all stopped at Peace for refreshments and information. It was the point of departure into the unknown.

Giles built another home in the same region which he called Retirement.

Their second son, Giles, was born there.

Giles traded with the Indians and continued to keep open house for the settlers from the southern region. He also patented thousands of acres of land in Westmoreland and Northumberland.

Kittamaqund, the little wilderness flower, wilted and died before she scarcely had time to blossom. She left three children, Richard, Giles and Mary. Before she died Kittamaqund made a deed of gift to her daughter of her inheritance in Maryland, since she herself had no brother or sister to inherit it.

Giles again laid claim to most of Maryland in his daughter's name, but the Indians opposed the claim as being contrary to their tribal customs.

They chose a king of their own instead.

Thus Kittamaqund lost her royal heritage. According to traditions she was buried somewhere in the upper Northern Neck.

Giles Brent became a great landowner in his own right. He was largely responsible for opening up the northern part of the "Chicakoun country"

to the white settlers. His homes at Peace and later at Retirement were outposts of civilization.

_THE GIFT_

While the settlers of the Northern Neck of Virginia were hacking away at the forest, planting crops in the land thus cleared and building houses of the felled timber, events were taking place across the sea that would eventually change the history and culture of the land between the Rappahannock and the Potomac.

For some time a civil war had been in progress in England and early in the year of 1649 Charles I was beheaded by Oliver Cromwell's men. A new government, known as the Commonwealth, was immediately established in England, under the direction of Cromwell.

The late king's oldest son, Charles, had escaped from England and was now living in exile in France. His misfortune was shared there by some of his father's supporters, who now had plenty of time to brood over their lost estates back in England. These gentlemen with the flowing hair had little left except the clothes on their backs, plumed hats and buckled boots. Some of them were walking the streets of Paris in search of cheap board and lodging, for which they would pay with their jewels--pawned or sold. Some had already gotten into the clutches of money-lenders. Their only hope was that Charles would be restored some day to the throne of England.

Charles wished that he could in some way repay these noblemen, soldiers, diplomats and favorites of his parents who had proved their loyalty. But what, he may have wondered, did he have to give? Apparently nothing remained. Then he thought of land--other land to replace the estates his followers had lost. This was not a new idea of his own for the English government had at times awarded frontier lands to deserving soldiers.

But where could lands-to-give-away be found? It was then that Charles remembered the colony across the sea--Virginia. That was the answer--a slice of the Virginia wilderness as a grant to his courtiers!

Charles apparently knew little about Virginia, or about the size of the slice which he selected as a gift to his friends--"all that entire Tract, Territory, or porcon of Land situate, lying and beeing in America, and bounded by and within the heads of the Rivers of Rappahannock and Patawomecke," and "said Rivers."

A patent was written, dated September 18, 1649, at St. Germaine-en-Laye, France. It was written in close fine writing on both sides of a small piece of parchment and bore "Our Great Seale of England." Charles signed it simply in the upper left-hand corner of the front page "Charles R." Thus the deed was done.

True, the grant was worthless unless Charles was restored to the throne of England, which event seemed improbable at the moment. However, he had paid off his obligations as best he could. The courtiers may have appreciated his gesture but some of them placed no value on their part of the patent.

Meanwhile, back in Virginia the colonists went on as usual for news was slow in crossing the ocean. The pioneers of the Northern Neck had their own problems--fevers and bloody flux, Indians, wolves, witches, and taxes to be paid to the Colonial Government at Jamestown. It would be a long time before they would know that their land had been given away lock, stock and barrel, for Charles had given his followers not only the land and the rivers, but all rights pertaining to them, even to the "wild beasts and fowle," the fish and the "wrecks of the Sea."

And should the grant ever become valid, future generations in the Northern Neck would have landlords over them and pay rent for the land that their forefathers had believed to be their own.

_THE CAVALIERS_