Huguenots in Southside Virginia.

Vide Southern Literary Messenger, April 1841: Letter from Charles Campbell.

INDIANS.

Indian relics and sites are found on Sweathouse Creek; stones for grinding purposes, it is thought, on the southeastern hill. Many bowls and pots were in possession of Mr. Ely Craddock at Mannboro in 1890.

Dr. Southall wants to know if Flat Creek was not called Wyanoke by the Indians.

DUELS.

THE DROMGOOLE-DUGER50 DUEL.

Dr. Pryor related to me the Dromgoole-Duger duel. The latter kept a hotel at Lawrenceville and it was for some insulting allusion to this51 by Dromgoole at his (Duger's) table that Duger smacked his face. Thereupon General Dromgoole's military subordinates told him that if he took the affront they would throw up their commissions and refuse to serve under him longer. Dromgoole was drinking. Tucker, 52 of Brunswick, was Duger's second. He made a mistake in giving orders, saying, "One, two, three-fire!" instead of "Fire" first. Duger was killed; Dromgoole, a poor shot, killed him accidentally, perhaps. 5:

MASON-MCCARTHY DUEL.

53

On February 6, 1819, General A. T. Mason,54 United States senator, was killed at Bladensburg, Md., by John McCarty. For particulars see the Richmond Enquirer of February 9, 1819. In the Senate, James Barbour, who was Mason's colleague, spoke in an eloquent manner, on a resolution on Mason's death. seems that McCarty was an officer in the navy and this resolution was to authorize the President to strike his name from the rolls of the government. Barbour asserted, in his speech, that he was the author of the first law against duelling upon the statute books of Virginia.

50 Also spelled Dugger.

51It has been stated that the allusion was to Duger's mother having been a midwife, a more likely explanation.-cf "The Public Life of George C. Dromgoole," by Edward James Woodhouse (The John P. Branch Historical Papers, of Randolph-Macon College, No. 4, June 1904, p. 270). 52Thomas Goode Tucker.

53cf account of duel in William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Papers, Vol. 1, p. 270.

54 Armistead Thompson Mason, senator from Virginia, 1816-1817, in place of William B. Giles, resigned.

Richmond Enquirer April 7, 1854: Account from Charlottesville of the rencontre between Edgar Garth and David W. Flournoy, a student of the University on the court green. Bowie knives and pistols used. Mr. Garth shot and terribly cut. Flournoy but slightly wounded. Took place at the Monticello House.

CRIMES AND TRIALS.

Charles Knight was referred to as a Tory and harborer of Tarleton. He was at one time apprehended, together with a man named Burke, in counterfeiting money. Their apparatus was kept in a fodder stack, or at least a pen with stack of tops over and around. They were raided one night while at work in their covert by some dozen citizens of whom Captain Fowlkes was one, tied to a tree and severely whipped.

My grandmother thinks the first white man hung in Nottoway was named Wicks (or Weeks), who killed old Mr. Hood, a blacksmith, at or near the courthouse about 1824. She attended the hanging, and a thousand or more people were present.55

Peter Kendal, tried in 1809 for the murder of his wife, lived at Newman's Old Field between Mrs. Newman's and Fowlkes's. He was cleared on the evidence of Dyce Hardaway, a woman living in the house.

TRIAL OF THOMAS WELLS.

On May 29, 1816, Captain Thomas Wells, a militia officer, a member of the House of Delegates at the time, and owner and keeper of a tavern at the court house, shot and dangerously wounded Peter Randolph, judge of the Fifth Circuit of the Superior Court, and Colonel William C. Greenhill, commander of the militia regiment of Nottoway. He shot them after sunset for entering his yard. They both fell in the open space north of the courthouse square, in front of the tavern, which stood where Fuqua's Tavern stood, and may have been in part the same. Judge Randolph was carried to William Verser's, somewhere between the present Dean's store and Goodwyn's house, where he lay for six weeks. Colonel Greenhill, after falling, got up and walked to the tavern of C. D. George (Dr. B. B. Jackson's house).

The Richmond Enquirer of June 1, 1816, gives an account of this affair. This paper on June 5 printed an extract from

55 A hanging in that time and section was an event of importance which gave opportunity for a public gathering. Many of those who attended, especially ladies, were not spectators of the hanging itself. It is said that they attended as a protest against crime and to uphold the laws.

a letter of Dr. James Jones to a gentleman in Richmond, giving a brief diagnosis of Judge Randolph's condition. Dr. Jones was the attending physician. On June 10, this paper printed a letter from Thomas Wells explaining in detail his view of the tragedy, the actual shooting and attendant circumstances. He said that the judge fell fourteen yards from his door and that when he came from the garden to the house he found the servant holding three horses (two of Judge Randolph's and one of Colonel Greenhill's) within seventeen yards of his piazza and in front of his dining-room door.

The trial was held before the county court (sitting as an examining court only) at the August term, 1816. The commonwealth was represented by William Yates, commonwealth's attorney, and Peter Bland; the defense by Major James Robertson, State senator, and Edward Bland. The trial lasted several days and the prisoner was discharged.

Thomas Wells was subsequently hung for the murder of Captain Perry in Georgia. The Petersburg Republican of November 14, 1820, contains in full the sentence passed upon him, Judge Clayton presiding.

THE MUIR MURDER.

The trial of William Dandridge Epes for the murder of Francis Adolphus Muir is given in a pamphlet published by J. M. H. Brunet, 1849.56

BACON-HARDAWAY AFFAIR.

This affair occurred some time in July, 1818. A short notice of it is in the Richmond Enquirer of July 21, 1818; an editorial on it is in an earlier issue of the same month. This paper stated, on October 13, 1818, that "the case has caused considerable interest throughout the globe."

Colonel William C. Greenhill and Colonel Tyree G. Bacon were prominent citizens of Nottoway. Greenhill lived in the lower end of the county, I think, a place called "Greenhill" on Cellar Creek. He was a man of education.

Colonel Greenhill and Colonel Bacon, who had been a delegate in the Legislature, had some personal or political differences, it seems. Randolph, when elected judge of the General Court about 1812, was colonel of the militia regiment and Bacon was the major. To the vacancy Greenhill, a cousin of Randolph, was elected by the officers of the regiment, being pro

56"Trial of William Dandridge Epes, for the Murder of Francis Adolphus Muir, Dinwiddie County, Virginia Petersburg, Va., J. M. H. Brunet, 1849. 76 p.

Mr. Watson had compiled a general account of this case, taken from the above work; it is not reproduced here.

moted over the head of Bacon. This was probably the beginning of the feud which led to the unfortunate affair.

Colonel Bacon's son, Dr. Bacon, was at the time living in Charlotte or Mecklenburg county. Dr. John S. Hardaway bore a challenge of some sort to Colonel Bacon for Colonel Greenhill, and it was this that gave offense to Dr. Bacon. They met at Nottoway court afterwards and got into a stabbing match, in which Hardaway was killed.

The trial of Dr. Bacon for the murder of Dr. Hardaway occurred in the autumn of 1818 at Nottoway Court House. The Nottoway records are as follows:

Superior Court Order Book, No. 1.

At a Superior Court held at Nottoway Court House on the 8th of September 1818, Peter Randolph, Esq., Judge, a Grand Jury, of which James Dupuy was Foreman, presented Wm. C. Greenhill and Tyree G. Bacon and Wm. C. Greenhill and Roland Ward for fighting each other at Nottoway Court House on June 4th last, on information of Robt. Dickinson and Joseph B. Ingram. An indictment was presented against Geo. S. G. Bacon for the murder of John S. Hardaway-a true bill.

George S. G. Bacon, who stands bound by a recog. entered into before an examining court, held for the County of Nottoway to appear this day to abide trial for murder of Dr. Hardaway, appeared in discharge of his recog. and on motion of Com. Atty. was committed to jail.

Sept. 29th.-George S. G. Bacon, late of the County of Nottoway and parish of Nottoway in county aforesaid, who stands indicted of the murder of John S. Hardaway, was led to the Bar in custody of the Jailer, etc., whereupon came the Jury, John Robertson, Richard Ligon, Daniel Verser, Samuel Dunnavant, William Dillon, Henry Jennings, William Dunnavant, William Fowlkes, Micajah Jennings, John Overstreet, Hampton Waller and Nathan Depriest, partly heard evidence and adjourned.

The case occupied the day, September 30, and on October 1, the jury brought in a verdict of "not guilty."

PETITION TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF VIRGINIA FOR PAY.

A petition of James Borum, constable for Nottoway, and Jos. H. Fowlkes, James Jackson, Basset Watson, Jennings Robertson, William Vaughan, Polaski B. Bell, Henry H. Cook, Peter Ellington, Lygnol [?] Moore and Peter R. Bland, representing that about the month of April 1810, by virtue of a warrant issued by a justice of the peace in Nottoway, they were employed three days and two nights in Prince Edward County in appre

hending and bringing to Nottoway Jos. Watson and others charged with forcible entry, or housebreaking, in Nottoway, for which service they ask the Legislature pay, as Nottoway refuses allowance.

INCIDENTS OF THE REVOLUTION AND WAR OF 1812.

TARLETON'S RAID.

Cornwallis's order to Lieutenant-Colonel Tarleton, dated Cobham, July 8, 1781, directed him to set out the next day on his raid of Southside Virginia. The force consisted of "the corps of cavalry and mounted infantry under your command" and the destination was "Prince Edward Courthouse, and from thence to New London in Bedford County." The object was the destruction of military stores, to cripple the subsistence of Greene's army in Carolina. The order set forth, "all public stores of corn and provisions are to be burned, and if there should be a quantity of provisions or corn collected at a private house. destroy it, leaving enough for the support of the family," etc.; "all persons of consequence, civil, or military, brought to me before they are paroled."

Tarleton's force consisted of the British Legion and eighty mounted infantry (the returns of the surrender at Yorktown show 241 men in the Legion). A detachment was left at Suffolk to receive him on his return; also to intercept any American light troops on the way northward from Carolina, or any British prisoners. The command left Cobham on July 9 and made long movements in the mornings and evenings, thus avoiding heat and darkness. The troops soon reached Petersburg and advanced to Prince Edward Courthouse, and from there toward the Dan River. The stores, which were the principal object of the expedition, had been sent from Prince Edward and all that country to Hillsboro and Greene's army about a month before. Tarleton halted two days in Bedford. He returned by a different route, completing an expedition of 400 miles in fifteen days, and rejoined the troops at Suffolk.57

Tarleton's dragoons captured old James Cooke (Fred Cooke's father) at Jennings Ordinary. He lived there at the time and was perhaps the first resident of the Ordinary. A dragoon made Cooke mount behind him on the horse and carried him to Tarleton's headquarters, which were then at the home of old Charles Knight, who lived at Burkeville or a little above (at Billy Horner's, it is thought). On the way, the soldier took Cooke's silver shoe and knee buckles. At headquarters, Tarleton made the man restore them and sent Cooke home. The soldier, however, waylaid him on the return and got the buckles, anyhow.

57The foregoing information is found in Tarleton, Sir Banastre, "A History of the Campaigns of 1780 & 1781, in the Southern Provinces of North America." London, 1787, p. 358-359.