ALBEMARLE IN REVOLUTIONARY DA YS 
273 
wlio ruled over England when Virginia was planted, and Rivanna 
and Fluvanna were named for his granddaughter, Queen Anne, 
for whom also were named the Rapid Anne, which we crossed 
on our way hither, as well as the South Anna and the North 
Anna, which drain the region just to the eastward. Rivanna 
w’as compounded b}’’ some enthusiast from the two words 
“ river ” and “Anna.” Fluvanna is precisely the same, except 
that he used the Latin equivalent for the word river. 
The old county of Albemarle, much larger at the beginning of 
the Revolution than now, occupied the triangle formed by the 
Blue Ridge on the west, the Fluvanna on the south, and the 
northern divide of the Rivanna basin on the north. In the 
southeastern angle of the county (which in 1777 was set aside 
in the county of Fluvanna), was the place called “ Point of 
Fork,” an important military station in the Revolution, while 
twenty miles above, on the Fluvanna or James, was old Albe- 
marle court-house, also a supply station. 
Charlottesville in 1776 had only recently become the county 
seat. A court-house and a tavern had been built, and in 1779 
a group of a dozen houses had grown up about them. A con- 
siderable number of families lived in the vicinity, recent arrivals 
from tidewater Virginia. These people lived in comfort, though 
in great simplicity, upon the vast ])lantations which they owned, 
this region being upon the very frontier. Thomas Jefferson’s 
father was one of the earlie.st settlers here, and he himself was 
perhaps the first white child horn in this region. At the time 
of his birth, in 1743, buffalo still abounded in the neighborhood. 
Ten years before a buffalo calf had been ca})tured just across the 
Blue Ridge and taken as a gift to the governor at Williamsburg. 
The Huguenot colonists at Manikintown, fifty miles down the 
James,’ ke[)t buffalo in domestication for milk and beef. A trail 
frequented by the buffalo herds crossed the Blue Ridge at Rock- 
fish gap, twenty-four miles west of Charlottesville, passed the 
Shenandoah at a ford near Staunton, and afterward over the 
ne.xt range by a passage still known as “ Buffalo Ca]),” into the 
l)eautiful valleys, then, as at present, called the “ Cow Pasture ” 
and the “Calf Pasture,” doul)tless l)ecause of the presence there 
of buffalo herds in the days when they were named. 
J'he inhabitants were still collecting bounties in tobacco for 
the wolves which they killed with their guns or enticed into pit- 
falls. The stream called “ W'olftrap branch,” near (.'harlottes- 
ville, preserves by its name the memory of those times. I have 
