TODDSBURY 



HERE is no more ideal place in America for coun- 

 try seats than along North River, an estuary of 

 Mobjack Bay. The name of this sheet of water 

 was given it by the sailors of long ago, who, when 

 the echoes of their songs and voices were thrown 

 back by the lush green shores, accused these silent 

 banks of mocking "Jack" the sailor. Hence the name Mock Jack, 

 now known no more, but substituted by the meaningless one of 

 Mobjack. 



Early in the seventeenth century Thomas Todd, emigrant, 

 patented extensive lands in Maryland and Virginia; he was Burgess 

 of Baltimore County in 1674-75, and in 1676 died at sea while 

 on a voyage in the "good ship Virginia." With his will filed in 

 the clerk's office at Towson, the county seat of Baltimore County, 

 Maryland, and in which he left Toddsbury to his son, Thomas, 

 there is a letter addressed "this to my son, Thomas Todd, at his 

 home on North River, Gloucester County, Virginia, with all speed," 

 and an old record says of the emigrant "he was very riche." There 

 are many descendants of Thomas Todd of Maryland and Virginia 

 scattered over the United States. Many of them have taken high 

 positions, an ancestor of the Kentucky branch of this family having 

 been a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. 



In their veins runs the blood of the poet Lovelace and of our 

 first Virginia poet, George Sandys. In Virginia, three of the de- 

 scendants of Thomas Todd are on the bench — Judge Beverly 

 Crump, Judge Crump Tucker and Judge John Rutherfoord. An- 

 other, Dr. Beverly Tucker, an eminent nerve specialist, is also a 

 writer and poet of promise. In Maryland the families of Moale, 

 Hoffman and Poultney are direct descendants, and in New York 



[164] 



