Jim Glanville

When we think about the way in which America grew, we most commonly think of the creation of a series of fifty states, beginning with the 13 original states that were English colonies before the American Revolution.

Although the historic creation of states was obviously central to the growth of America, in some ways it was the creation of counties that was more fundamental to the development of the nation. Of all the original states, it was Virginia that contributed most to the process of county formation.

This writer will be making an open-to-the-public presentation titled “William Preston and the Making of America” to a meeting of the membership of the Wilderness Road Regional Museum at 2:00 pm on Sunday March 19, 2017, in Newbern in Pulaski County. The museum is reached by taking exit 98 south off of Interstate Highway 81 and going about ½-mile down Old Route 100 to the sign to the museum turnoff on the left.

The talk uses many illustrations to describe Preston’s role in the creation of Virginia counties and the role that those counties played in the grand story of the creation of Anglo-America. The museum records the history of the western spur of one of America’s first highway systems. The wall boards in the museum are well worth seeing and make one of the best public cases anywhere for the role of western Virginia in the expansion and founding of America.

The origin of the county as a unit of local government goes all the way back to the Norman conquest of England, begun in 1066 by Duke William of Normandy, known to history as William the Conqueror. The Normans originated in Scandinavia in the 10th century and by the 11th century had established a vigorous culture in the French province of Normandy, where they became patrons of the Catholic Church and the arts. It was from Normandy that William and his army of knights invaded the south coast of England and won the decisive Battle of Hastings.

The Norman government system proved to be exceedingly efficient and Anglo-Saxon England was soon organized into a series of counties, each having a local Lord Sheriff as William’s personal representative. In the year 1085 William commissioned the preparation of the Domesday Book.

This famous document cataloged the land holdings in the 39 Norman counties and became the basis on which most of the Anglo-Saxon land was transferred to Norman ownership. William formally accepted Domesday Book in 1086 at his Old Sarum castle in the county of Wiltshire. The historian Stephen Baxter has persuasively argued that Domesday Book sanctioned the great Norman land grab.

Over the next five centuries, the English county system evolved into Europe’s best method of local government. By the reign of Elizabeth I (monarch from 1558-1603), it was well honed. Thus, with the settlement of Jamestown in 1607, the Virginians arrived in the New World with a tested method of local government that served them very well indeed.

By 1651 the Virginians had created 10 counties around the Chesapeake Bay. By 1734 they had created 31 counties, including Spotsylvania County that brought Virginia for the first time into contact with the Blue Ridge Mountains. Then, like the Normans before them, the Virginians made a land grab. In 1734 they created Orange County, most of which in 1738 was quickly converted to Augusta County.

With the creation of Orange and Augusta, Virginia stretched to the Mississippi River and around the Great Lakes. Its area increased some eleven-fold. This was the great Virginia land grab.

 

With the creation of Orange and Augusta, Virginia stretched to the Mississippi River and around the Great Lakes. Its area increased some eleven-fold. This was the great Virginia land grab.

The ten-year-old William Preston arrived in modern-day Staunton with his family in 1740 immediately after the creation of Augusta County. The first court in Augusta County was held in 1745 in Staunton, at a place then called Beverley’s Mill.

Augusta County lasted unchanged from 1738 until 1769. The two great 18th century events that prevented its subdivision were the French and Indian War (1755-1761) and King George’s 1763 Proclamation that banned settlers from crossing beyond the Blue Ridge.

By late 1769, revolutionary sentiments had become widespread in Virginia and the process of county formation began anew with the creation of a gigantic Botetourt County. Botetourt was rapidly followed in 1772 by Fincastle County. In 1776 Fincastle was dissolved into Montgomery, Washington, and Kentucky Counties.

Today, America has approximately 3,000 counties. About 1,000 of those occupy land that was once Orange and Augusta, and perhaps another 1,000 follow the Virginia model of local government.

I will flesh out this story with maps and illustrations in my talk on March 19 in Newbern.

Jim Glanville is a retired chemist living in Blacksburg. He has been publishing and lecturing for more than a decade about the history of Southwest Virginia.