iO2 Singing Valleys 



of Virginia and drops through a series of water gaps into the 

 Carolinas. 



Americans were not slow to realize and seize on the wealth 

 of that fertile, limestone soil. The Tidewater planters appro- 

 priated large tracts on agreement to place settlers there. Gov- 

 ernor Spotswood carved out a generous slice for himself and 

 his heirs one of them was to be the beloved second wife of 

 Patrick Henry. His first wife brought him three hundred acres 

 of pine slashes; by his second marriage he entered on miles of 

 rich valley land. Sir John Randolph took some 118,000 acres 

 and Lord Fairfax added 6,000,000 acres of the northern end of 

 the vale to his Virginia holdings. 



Fulfilling their agreement, these gentlemen offered acreage 

 in tracts of various sizes up to one thousand acres. They did 

 not wait long for takers. There were many small planters in 

 Virginia, whose lands had been exhausted by the voracious 

 tobacco, who welcomed a chance to move onto new and richer 

 upland soil. So the parents of George Rogers Clark left the 

 Tidewater for the Piedmont. So came the Jeffersons. So came 

 younger sons and cousins and sons-in-law of the Byrds and 

 Carters and Lees and Randolphs. 



New arrivals from Europe, learning of the Shenandoah, 

 bought claims, sight unseen, bought pack-horses and cattle in 

 Williamsburg and moved up the rivers to the hills. Even in 

 London, word went round that the Plantation in Virginia had 

 entered on a new era of prosperity. People went "new land 

 mad" as they called it, and the ships sailing westward were 

 jammed with emigrants. 



Other settlers came from the north. It is said that the first 

 white man to overlook the Shenandoah after Lord Spots- 

 wood's Knights of the Golden Horseshoe returned to the 

 Tidewater, was the Dutch fur trader, John Van Meter. Com- 

 peting against Colonel Byrd's trade caravans to the Cherokees, 

 he had gone afoot into the Back Woods country and wandered 

 through a gap in the hills into the Shenandoah. Van Meter 

 returned to New York and called his sons together. He told 



