It has been impossible to locate with exactness Charles Porter's house, thus rendered historic, but it is believed to have been near the old Raccoon Ford, some distance above the present ford, it being known that the Marquis was delayed some days there awaiting reenforcements. In an order of March, 1786, laying off the County into districts for overseers of the Poor, Middle District begins "at Charles Porter's and runs along the Marquis's road to Brockman's Bridge," which almost identifies the house as being on the river where this road crossed it.

Mary Bell, for entertaining William Clark, express rider and his horse, stationed at her house by H. Young, quartermaster general, State volunteers.

This Mary Bell was afterwards County jailer for several years.

Andrew Shepherd, for a mare rode express, by order of the County Lieutenant, to give notice to captains of militia to assemble their companies, May, 1781, by order of the Executive.

Other items pertaining to the Revolution, and giving names of Orange people who participated in it will be found in condensed form in an appendix. The curious reader is referred to the order book for 1782, April Special Terms, for further information.

In order to verify the statement heretofore made as to the Orange soldiers being designated at first as Culpeper Minute Men," the following petition, from the original, now on file in the State library, is published at length. It is endorsed, "The Petition of

Philip Ballard praying for a pension, December 28th, 1829, referred to Revolutionary claims, and is in the words following:

THE PETITION OF PHILIP BALLARD, AN OLD SOLDIER: To the Senate and House of Representatives of Virginia— Your petitioner begs leave to represent that he enlisted in the service of the State of Virginia as early as 1775 in what was then called the Minute Service in Captain Joseph Spencer's Company from Orange County, Va., who was attached to Col. Tolerver's (Taliaferro), of said County, Regiment, and was from thence marched to Culpeper C. H. and thence to what was called the Great Bridge, at which place your petitoner was engaged in the Battle that took place between the British and General Wolford, after which your petitioner was discharged. Your petitioner then enlisted in the service for two years in Captain Burley's (Burnley) Company who was commanded by Major Robert and Col. Francis Taylor. After the expiration of that time your petitioner enlisted two years more and was attached to Captain Chapman's Company who was commanded by Major Wails (?) and Colonel Crocket, etc.

The affidavit of G. Stallings was filed in verification of this petition.

CHAPTER X.

Germanna and the First Settlers.

Who were the first English settlers may be best ascertained from the family names mentioned in the earlier court proceedings as narrated in other chapters. In most instances these were the people who resided in the County before and at the time of its formation, though some that are oftenest named, and appear to have been of the most conspicuous of the landed gentry, never became actual residents. The great Baylor and Beverley grants, and other very large ones, appear to have been speculative only, for the grantees never lived in the County. Their lands were under the management of bailiffs, as they were then called, who had large numbers of servants under their control. Thus the census of 1782 (Appendix) shows that on the Baylor estate there were 84 blacks and not one white person. The real owners of the land attended court regularly, to acknowledge their many deeds of bargain and sale, and then returned to their homes in Tidewater.

Yet a good many people did actually take up their abode in this frontier county while it was still a part of Spotsylvania, and some of their names are household words to-day; Spotswood, Chew, Cave, Madison, Moore, Willis, Taliaferro, Thomas, Barbour, Scott, Smith, Taylor, Waugh, Porter, Head, Fry, Lightfoot, and

many more; the general narrative must be looked to to learn who they were, and what they did. They all appear covetous of great landed possessions, but they appear also to have been resolute and public-spirited citizens, an ancestry of which their descendants may well be proud.

Far and away the most ancient and most historic settlement was Germanna, "in the peninsula formed by the Rapidan." Indeed there are few places in all Virginia, which is to say in all America, that surpass Germanna in historic interest during the colonial period; Jamestown, Williamsburg, York, and a few more; yet to-day Germanna constitutes not much more than a name and a memory, rich as are its associations with the past, with the beginnings that foreshadowed Orange at its zenith.

It is first mentioned in a statute, that somehow escaped the vigilance of Hening when compiling that vast treasure house of Virginia history, the "Statutes at Large." In the State library is an old volume entitled "Acts of Assembly passed in the Colony of Virginia from 1662 to 1715," printed at London in 1727.

About the last Act in it is one to exempt certain German Protestants from the payment of levies for seven years, and for erecting the parish of St. George, passed in 1714: "Whereas certain German protestants, to the number of forty-two persons or thereabouts, have been settled above the falls of the River Rappahannock, on the southern branch of the said river, called Rapidan, at a place named Germanna, in the County of Essex, and have there begun to build and

make improvements for their cohabitation, to the great advantage of this colony and the security of the frontiers in those parts from the intrusions of the Indians," it is enacted that they shall be free from the payment of all public and county levies for seven years, as should be any other German Protestants who might settle there, always providing, however, that they did not leave Germanna and settle elsewhere.

The next section creates the parish of St. George, extending for five miles on each side of the town, exempts it from all parish levies from the Parish of St. Mary, in Essex, and from the cure of the minister thereof, and "from all dependencies, offices, charges and contributions" of the same, and of "all levies, oblations, obventions and all other parochial duties whatsoever" relating to the same.

Here are disclosed some interesting historical facts: that Germanna was in Essex County at that time; that a special parish was established of which the ecclesiastical historians have taken no note whatever, the St. George parish of subsequent years being a wholly distinct one, though embracing the original parish of that name; and, most of all, that these "Strangers in a strange land" were placed there as a sort of buffer against the Indians, a rather cool and somewhat cruel thing to have done.

These German Protestants who came in 1714 were in fact the "First Settlers" of Orange, then a part of Essex, afterwards of Spotsylvania, and not called Orange until 20 years later; and as such their names ought to be chronicled, and something of their history narrated. In brief it is as follows: