Volume 14 , Issue 6

Highland County Virginia

I believe almost everyone had someone's ancestry that passed through or near Highland county, Virginia at some time in their lives. That is why we are giving a history of Highland, Virginia in the OkieLegacy. This week we have been reading about the America in 1745, in Oren F. Morton's book, History of Highland County..

There was no United States. Only thirteen colonies all owning a certain degree of allegiance to the British crown. Pennsylvania and Delaware were under the authority of the same governor. The thirteen colonies were with respect to one another thirteen independent, English speaking nations. It was reported that nine-tenths of the white people were of British origin. Each colony was jealous of its own rights and more or less distrustful of its neighbors.

Georgia was the youngest of the colonies. Virginia was the first founded and was not so old by thirty years as was the settlement of the Bullpasture Valley. The occupied area of the colonies extended a thousand miles along the coast. It reached inland scarcely more than a hundred miles.

West of the Alleghanies no settlement had yet been made The entire Mississippi Valley was claimed by the French, and in a slight degree had been colonized by them. Travel was by rowboat because roads were few and far between and bridges were few.

In America there were only three colleges: Harvard, yale and William and Mary. Outside of new England there were no systems of public schools, illiteracy was common. Yet in every colony there were not a few persons who were well versed in the higher education of that day. It was little else than a classical training, conducted to a style of discourse that was heavy, stilted and full of Greek and Latin names and allusions.

The men of best education were the ministers and lawyers. The daily newspaper was yet in the future. The very few weeklies were in size about like our Sunday School papers. The mails were few, slow, and irregular, and the frontier settlement did well if it received its letters once a month.

Religion was free only in Rhode island and Pennsylvania. Other s had a state church supported by general taxation, and all people were expected to attend a certain number of times in the course of the year. In Virginia this church was the Episcopalian, known also as the Church of England.

It was also a very dark age with respect to medical knowledge. Hygiene was little understood or practiced. Quacks were numerous, and in the South physicians were held in low esteem. As to legal procedure, its methods were always conservative. With respect to society, it was colored by aristocratic ideas. Even when the Federal government went into operation in 1789, only one person in twenty-five was a qualified voter.

There were taverns in every county, they always kept liquor, the use of which was general. Southern taverns were poor, but the traveler was sure of free entertainment in the homes of the planters. His visit was an appreciated break in the sameness of life in a sparsely settled country.

In 1745 England was in a very broad sense the mother country of the colonies. Not only their language, but their laws and usages were derived from England. And yet the causes which have made the American a very different person front he Englishman had begun to operate with the coming of the first immigrant ships.

Each neighborhood was a little world in itself. They were interested in little else than its own petty affairs and content in its narrowness with prejudice shown toward a stranger. I truly hope we have grown from that mentality of the mid-eighteenth century. If not, we are in trouble for sure.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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