The Frontier in American History Part 6

Into these places, in days of alarm, were crowded the outlying settlers, just as was the case in later times in the Kentucky "stations."

In spite of such frontier conditions, the outlying towns continued to multiply. Between 1720 and the middle of the century, settlement crept up the Housatonic and its lateral valley into the Berks.h.i.+res. About 1720 Litchfield was established; in 1725, Sheffield; in 1730, Great Barrington; and in 1735 a road was cut and towns soon established between Westfield and these Housatonic settlements, thus uniting them with the older extensions along the Connecticut and its tributaries.

In this period, scattered and sometimes unwelcome Scotch-Irish settlements were established, such as that at Londonderry, New Hamps.h.i.+re, and in the Berks.h.i.+res, as well as in the region won in King Philip's War from the Nipmucks, whither there came also Huguenots.[72:1]

In King George's War, the Connecticut River settlers found their frontier protection in such rude stockades as those at the sites of Keene, of Charlestown, New Hamps.h.i.+re (Number Four), Fort s.h.i.+rley at the head of Deerfield River (Heath), and Fort Pelham (Rowe); while Fort Ma.s.sachusetts (Adams) guarded the Hoosac gateway to the Hoosatonic Valley. These frontier garrisons and the self-defense of the backwoodsmen of New England are well portrayed in the pages of Parkman.[72:2] At the close of the war, settlement again expanded into the Berks.h.i.+res, where Lennox, West Hoosac (Williamstown), and Pittsfield were established in the middle of the century. Checked by the fighting in the last French and Indian War, the frontier went forward after the Peace of Paris (1763) at an exceptional rate, especially into Vermont and interior New Hamps.h.i.+re. An anonymous writer gives a contemporary view of the situation on the eve of the Revolution:[72:3]

The richest parts remaining to be granted are on the northern branches of the Connecticut river, towards Crown Point where are great districts of fertile soil still unsettled. The North part of New Hamps.h.i.+re, the province of Maine, and the territory of Sagadahock have but few settlements in them compared with the tracts yet unsettled... .

I should further observe that these tracts have since the peace [_i. e._, 1763], been settling pretty fast: farms on the river Connecticut are every day extending beyond the old fort Dummer, for near thirty miles; and will in a few years reach to Koha.s.ser which is nearly two hundred miles; not that such an extent will be one-tenth settled, but the new-comers do not fix near their neighbors, and go on regularly, but take spots that please them best, though twenty or thirty miles beyond any others. This to people of a sociable disposition in Europe would appear very strange, but the Americans do not regard the near neighborhood of other farmers; twenty or thirty miles by water they esteem no distance in matters of this sort; besides in a country that promises well the intermediate s.p.a.ce is not long in filling up. Between Connecticut river and Lake Champlain upon Otter Creek, and all along Lake Sacrament [George] and the rivers that fall into it, and the whole length of Wood Creek, are numerous settlements made since the peace.[73:1]

For nearly a hundred years, therefore, New England communities had been pushed out to new frontiers in the intervals between the almost continuous wars with the French and Indians. Probably the most distinctive feature in this frontier was the importance of the community type of settlement; in other words, of the towns, with their Puritan ideals in education, morals, and religion. This has always been a matter of pride to the statesmen and annalists of New England, as is ill.u.s.trated by these words of Holland in his "Western Ma.s.sachusetts,"

commenting on the settlement of the Connecticut Valley in villages, whereby in his judgment morality, education, and urbanity were preserved:

The influence of this policy can only be fully appreciated when standing by the side of the solitary settler's hut in the West, where even an Eastern man has degenerated to a boor in manners, where his children have grown up uneducated, and where the Sabbath has become an unknown day, and religion and its obligations have ceased to exercise control upon the heart and life.

Whatever may be the real value of the community type of settlement, its establishment in New England was intimately connected both with the Congregational religious organization and with the land system of the colonies of that section, under which the colonial governments made grants--not in tracts to individuals, but in towns.h.i.+ps to groups of proprietors who in turn a.s.signed lands to the inhabitants without cost.

The typical form of establis.h.i.+ng a town was as follows: On application of an approved body of men, desiring to establish a new settlement, the colonial General Court would appoint a committee to view the desired land and report on its fitness; an order for the grant would then issue, in varying areas, not far from the equivalent of six miles square. In the eighteenth century especially, it was common to reserve certain lots of the town for the support of schools and the ministry. This was the origin of that very important feature of Western society, federal land grants for schools and colleges.[74:1] The General Courts also made regulations regarding the common lands, the terms for admitting inhabitants, etc., and thus kept a firm hand upon the social structure of the new settlements as they formed on the frontier.

This practice, seen in its purity in the seventeenth century especially, was markedly different from the practices of other colonies in the settlement of their back lands. For during most of the period New England did not use her wild lands, or public domain, as a source of revenue by sale to individuals or to companies, with the reservation of quit-rents; nor attract individual settlers by "head rights," or fifty-acre grants, after the Virginia type; nor did the colonies of the New England group often make extensive grants to individuals, on the ground of special services, or because of influence with the government, or on the theory that the grantee would introduce settlers on his grant.

They donated their lands to groups of men who became town proprietors for the purpose of establis.h.i.+ng communities. These proprietors were supposed to hold the lands in trust, to be a.s.signed to inhabitants under restraints to ensure the persistence of Puritan ideals.

During most of the seventeenth century the proprietors awarded lands to the new-comers in accordance with this theory. But as density of settlement increased, and lands grew scarce in the older towns, the proprietors began to a.s.sert their legal right to the unoccupied lands and to refuse to share them with inhabitants who were not of the body of proprietors. The distinction resulted in cla.s.s conflicts in the towns, especially in the eighteenth century,[75:1] over the owners.h.i.+p and disposal of the common lands.

The new settlements, by a process of natural selection, would afford opportunity to the least contented, whether because of grievances, or ambitions, to establish themselves. This tended to produce a Western flavor in the towns on the frontier. But it was not until the original ideals of the land system began to change, that the opportunity to make new settlements for such reasons became common. As the economic and political ideal replaced the religious and social ideal, in the conditions under which new towns could be established, this became more possible.

Such a change was in progress in the latter part of the seventeenth century and during the eighteenth. In 1713, 1715, and 1727, Ma.s.sachusetts determined upon a policy of locating towns in advance of settlement, to protect her boundary claims. In 1736 she laid out five towns near the New Hamps.h.i.+re border, and a year earlier opened four contiguous towns to connect her Housatonic and Connecticut Valley settlements.[76:1] Grants in non-adjacent regions were sometimes made to old towns, the proprietors of which sold them to those who wished to move.

The history of the town of Litchfield ill.u.s.trates the increasing importance of the economic factor. At a time when Connecticut feared that Andros might dispose of the public lands to the disadvantage of the colony, the legislature granted a large part of Western Connecticut to the towns of Hartford and Windsor, _pro forma_, as a means of withdrawing the lands from his hands. But these towns refused to give up the lands after the danger had pa.s.sed, and proceeded to sell part of them.[76:2] Riots occurred when the colonial authorities attempted to a.s.sert possession, and the matter was at length compromised in 1719 by allowing Litchfield to be settled in accordance with the town grants, while the colony reserved the larger part of northwestern Connecticut.

In 1737 the colony disposed of its last unlocated lands by sale in lots.

In 1762 Ma.s.sachusetts sold a group of entire towns.h.i.+ps in the Berks.h.i.+res to the highest bidders.[77:1]

But the most striking ill.u.s.tration of the tendency, is afforded by the "New Hamps.h.i.+re grants" of Governor Wentworth, who, chiefly in the years about 1760, made grants of a hundred and thirty towns west of the Connecticut, in what is now the State of Vermont, but which was then in dispute between New Hamps.h.i.+re and New York. These grants, while in form much like other town grants, were disposed of for cash, chiefly to speculators who hastened to sell their rights to the throngs of land-seekers who, after the peace, began to pour into the Green Mountain region.

It is needless to point out how this would affect the movement of Western settlement in respect to individualistic speculation in public lands; how it would open a career to the land jobbers, as well as to the natural leaders in the compet.i.tive movement for acquiring the best lands, for laying out town sites and building up new communities under "boom" conditions. The migratory tendency of New Englanders was increased by this gradual change in its land policy; the attachment to a locality was diminished. The later years showed increasing emphasis by New England upon individual success, greater respect for the self-made man who, in the midst of opportunities under compet.i.tive conditions, achieved superiority. The old dominance of town settlement, village moral police, and traditional cla.s.s control gave way slowly. Settlement in communities and rooted Puritan habits and ideals had enduring influences in the regions settled by New Englanders; but it was in this Old West, in the years just before the Revolution, that individualism began to play an important role, along with the traditional habit of expanding in organized communities.

The opening of the Vermont towns revealed more fully than before, the capability of New Englanders to become democratic pioneers, under characteristic frontier conditions. Their economic life was simple and self-sufficing. They readily adopted lynch law (the use of the "birch seal" is familiar to readers of Vermont history) to protect their land t.i.tles in the troubled times when these "Green Mountain Boys" resisted New York's a.s.sertion of authority. They later became an independent Revolutionary state with frontier directness, and in very many respects their history in the Revolutionary epoch is similar to that of settlers in Kentucky and Tennessee, both in a.s.sertion of the right to independent self government and in a frontier separatism.[78:1] Vermont may be regarded as the culmination of the frontier movement which I have been describing in New England.

By this time two distinct New Englands existed--the one coastal, and dominated by commercial interests and the established congregational churches; the other a primitive agricultural area, democratic in principle, and with various sects increasingly indifferent to the fear of "innovation" which the dominant cla.s.ses of the old communities felt.

Already speculative land companies had begun New England settlements in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania, as well as on the lower Mississippi; and New England missions among the Indians, such as that at Stockbridge, were beginning the noteworthy religious and educational expansion of the section to the west.

That this movement of expansion had been chiefly from south to north, along the river valleys, should not conceal from us the fact that it was in essential characteristics a Western movement, especially in the social traits that were developing. Even the men who lived in the long line of settlements on the Maine coast, under frontier conditions, and remote from the older centers of New England, developed traits and a democratic spirit that relate them closely to the Westerners, in spite of the fact that Maine is "down east" by preeminence.[79:1]

The frontier of the Middle region in this period of the formation of the Old West, was divided into two parts, which happen to coincide with the colonies of New York and Pennsylvania. In the latter colony the trend of settlement was into the Great Valley, and so on to the Southern uplands; while the advance of settlement in New York was like that of New England, chiefly northward, following the line of Hudson River.

The Hudson and the Mohawk const.i.tuted the area of the Old West in this part of the eighteenth century. With them were a.s.sociated the Wallkill, tributary to the Hudson, and Cherry Valley near the Mohawk, along the sources of the Susquehanna. The Berks.h.i.+res walled the Hudson in to the east; the Adirondacks and the Catskills to the west. Where the Mohawk Valley penetrated between the mountainous areas, the Iroquois Indians were too formidable for advance on such a slender line. Nothing but dense settlement along the narrow strip of the Hudson, if even that, could have furnished the necessary momentum for overcoming the Indian barrier; and this pressure was lacking, for the population was comparatively spa.r.s.e in contrast with the task to be performed. What most needs discussion in the case of New York, therefore, is not the history of expansion as in other sections, but the absence of expansive power.

The fur-trade had led the way up the Hudson, and made beginnings of settlements at strategic points near the confluence of the Mohawk. But the fur-trader was not followed by a tide of pioneers. One of the most important factors in restraining density of population in New York, in r.e.t.a.r.ding the settlement of its frontier, and in determining the conditions there, was the land system of that colony.

From the time of the patroon grants along the lower Hudson, great estates had been the common form of land tenure. Rensselaerswyck reached at one time over seven hundred thousand acres. These great patroon estates were confirmed by the English governors, who in their turn followed a similar policy. By 1732 two and one-half million acres were engrossed in manorial grants.[80:1] In 1764, Governor Colden wrote[80:2]

that three of the extravagant grants contain,

as the proprietors claim, above a million acres each, several others above 200,000. * * * Although these grants contain a great part of the province, they are made in trifling acknowledgements. The far greater part of them still remain uncultivated, without any benefit to the community, and are likewise a discouragement to the settling and improving the lands in the neighborhood of them, for from the uncertainty of their boundaries, the patentees of these great tracts are daily enlarging their pretensions, and by tedious and most expensive law suits, distress and ruin poor families who have taken out grants near them.

He adds that "the proprietors of the great tracts are not only freed from the quit-rents, which the other landholders in the province pay, but by their influence in the a.s.sembly are freed from every other public tax on their lands."

In 1769 it was estimated that at least five-sixths of the inhabitants of Westchester County lived within the bounds of the great manors there.[81:1] In Albany County the Livingston manor spread over seven modern towns.h.i.+ps, and the great Van Rensselaer manor stretched twenty-four by twenty-eight miles along the Hudson; while still farther, on the Mohawk, were the vast possessions of Sir William Johnson.[81:2]

It was not simply that the grants were extensive, but that the policy of the proprietors favored the leasing rather than the sale of the lands--frequently also of the stock, and taking payment in shares. It followed that settlers preferred to go to frontiers where a more liberal land policy prevailed. At one time it seemed possible that the tide of German settlement, which finally sought Pennsylvania and the up-country of the South, might flow into New York. In 1710, Governor Hunter purchased a tract in Livingston's manor and located nearly fifteen hundred Palatines on it to produce naval stores.[82:1] But the attempt soon failed; the Germans applied to the Indians on Schoharie Creek, a branch of the Mohawk, for a grant of land and migrated there, only to find that the governor had already granted the land. Again were the villages broken up, some remaining and some moving farther up the Mohawk, where they and accessions to their number established the frontier settlements about Palatine Bridge, in the region where, in the Revolution, Herkimer led these German frontiersmen to stem the British attack in the battle of Oriskany. They const.i.tuted the most effective military defense of Mohawk Valley. Still another portion took their way across to the waters of the Susquehanna, and at Tulpehockon Creek began an important center of German settlement in the Great Valley of Pennsylvania.[82:2]

The most important aspect of the history of the movement into the frontier of New York at this period, therefore, was the evidence which it afforded that in the compet.i.tion for settlement between colonies possessing a vast area of vacant land, those which imposed feudal tenures and undemocratic restraints, and which exploited settlers, were certain to lose.

The manorial practice gave a bad name to New York as a region for settlement, which not even the actual opportunities in certain parts of the colony could counteract. The diplomacy of New York governors during this period of the Old West, in securing a protectorate over the Six Nations and a consequent claim to their territory, and in holding them aloof from France, const.i.tuted the most effective contribution of that colony to the movement of American expansion. When lands of these tribes were obtained after Sullivan's expedition in the Revolution (in which New England soldiers played a prominent part), it was by the New England inundation into this interior that they were colonized. And it was under conditions like those prevailing in the later years of the expansion of settlements in New England itself, that this settlement of interior and western New York was effected.

The result was, that New York became divided into two distinct peoples: the dwellers along Hudson Valley, and the Yankee pioneers of the interior. But the settlement of central and western New York, like the settlement of Vermont, is a story that belongs to the era in which the trans-Alleghany West was occupied.

We can best consider the settlement of the share of the Old West which is located in Pennsylvania as a part of the migration which occupied the Southern Uplands, and before entering upon this it will be advantageous to survey that part of the movement toward the interior which proceeded westward from the coast. First let us observe the conditions at the eastern edge of these uplands, along the fall line in Virginia, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, in order that the process and the significance of the movement may be better understood.

About the time of Bacon's Rebellion, in Virginia, strenuous efforts were made to protect the frontier line which ran along the falls of the river, against the attacks of Indians. This "fall line," as the geographers call it, marking the head of navigation, and thus the boundary of the maritime or lowland South, runs from the site of Was.h.i.+ngton, through Richmond, and on to Raleigh, North Carolina, and Columbia, South Carolina. Virginia having earliest advanced thus far to the interior, found it necessary in the closing years of the seventeenth century to draw a military frontier along this line. As early as 1675 a statute was enacted,[84:1] providing that paid troops of five hundred men should be drawn from the midland and most secure parts of the country and placed on the "heads of the rivers" and other places fronting upon the Indians. What was meant by the "heads of the rivers,"

is shown by the fact that several of these forts were located either at the falls of the rivers or just above tidewater, as follows: one on the lower Potomac in Stafford County; one near the falls of the Rappahannock; one on the Mattapony; one on the Pamunky; one at the falls of the James (near the site of Richmond); one near the falls of the Appomattox, and others on the Blackwater, the Nansemond, and the Accomac peninsula, all in the eastern part of Virginia.

Again, in 1679, similar provision was made,[84:2] and an especially interesting act was pa.s.sed, making _quasi_ manorial grants to Major Lawrence Smith and Captain William Byrd, "to seate certain lands at the head [falls] of Rappahannock and James river" respectively. This scheme failed for lack of approval by the authorities in England.[84:3] But Byrd at the falls of the James near the present site of Richmond, Robert Beverley on the Rappahannock, and other frontier commanders on the York and Potomac, continued to undertake colonial defense. The system of mounted rangers was established in 1691, by which a lieutenant, eleven soldiers, and two Indians at the "heads" or falls of each great river were to scout for enemy,[85:1] and the Indian boundary line was strictly defined.

By the opening years of the eighteenth century (1701), the a.s.sembly of Virginia had reached the conclusion that settlement would be the best means of protecting the frontiers, and that the best way of "settling in co-habitations upon the said land frontiers within this government will be by encouragements to induce societies of men to undertake the same."[85:2] It was declared to be inexpedient to have less than twenty fighting men in each "society," and provision was made for a land grant to be given to these societies (or towns) not less than 10,000 nor more than 30,000 acres upon any of the frontiers, to be held in common by the society. The power of ordering and managing these lands, and the settling and planting of them, was to remain in the society. Virginia was to pay the cost of survey, also quit-rents for the first twenty years for the two-hundred-acre tract as the site of the "co-habitation."

Within this two hundred acres each member was to have a half-acre lot for living upon, and a right to two hundred acres next adjacent, until the thirty thousand acres were taken up. The members of the society were exempt from taxes for twenty years, and from the requirements of military duty except such as they imposed upon themselves. The resemblance to the New England town is obvious.

"Provided alwayes," ran the quaint statute, "and it is the true intent and meaning of this act that for every five hundred acres of land to be granted in pursuance of this act there shall be and shall be continually kept upon the said land one christian man between sixteen and sixty years of age perfect of limb, able and fitt for service who shall alsoe be continually provided with a well fixed musquett or fuzee, a good pistoll, sharp simeter, tomahawk and five pounds of good clean pistoll powder and twenty pounds of sizable leaden bulletts or swan or goose shott to be kept within the fort directed by this act besides the powder and shott for his necessary or useful shooting at game. Provided also that the said warlike christian man shall have his dwelling and continual abode within the s.p.a.ce of two hundred acres of land to be laid out in a geometricall square or as near that figure as conveniency will admit," etc. Within two years the society was required to cause a half acre in the middle of the "co-habitation" to be palisaded "with good sound pallisadoes at least thirteen foot long and six inches diameter in the middle of the length thereof, and set double and at least three foot within the ground."

Such in 1701 was the idea of the Virginia tidewater a.s.sembly of a frontiersman, and of the frontier towns by which the Old Dominion should spread her population into the upland South. But the "warlike Christian man" who actually came to furnish the firing line for Virginia, was destined to be the Scotch-Irishman and the German with long rifle in place of "fuzee" and "simeter," and altogether too restless to have his continual abode within the s.p.a.ce of two hundred acres. Nevertheless there are points of resemblance between this idea of societies settled about a fortified town and the later "stations" of Kentucky.[87:1]

By the beginning of the eighteenth century the engrossing of the lands of lowland Virginia had progressed so far, the practice of holding large tracts of wasteland for reserves in the great plantations had become so common, that the authorities of Virginia reported to the home government that the best lands were all taken up,[87:2] and settlers were pa.s.sing into North Carolina seeking cheap lands near navigable rivers. Attention was directed also to the Piedmont portions of Virginia, for by this time the Indians were conquered in this region. It was now possible to acquire land by purchase[87:3] at five s.h.i.+llings sterling for fifty acres, as well as by head-rights for importation or settlement, and land speculation soon turned to the new area.

Already the Piedmont had been somewhat explored.[87:4] Even by the middle of the seventeenth century, fur-traders had followed the trail southwest from the James more than four hundred miles to the Catawbas and later to the Cherokees. Col. William Byrd had, as we have seen, not only been absorbing good lands in the lowlands, and defending his post at the falls of the James, like a Count of the Border, but he also engaged in this fur-trade and sent his pack trains along this trail through the Piedmont of the Carolinas,[87:5] and took note of the rich savannas of that region. Charleston traders engaged in rivalry for this trade.

It was not long before cattle raisers from the older settlements, learning from the traders of the fertile plains and peavine pastures of this land, followed the fur-traders and erected scattered "cow-pens" or ranches beyond the line of plantations in the Piedmont. Even at the close of the seventeenth century, herds of wild horses and cattle ranged at the outskirts of the Virginia settlements, and were hunted by the planters, driven into pens, and branded somewhat after the manner of the later ranching on the Great Plains.[88:1] Now the cow-drovers and the cow-pens[88:2] began to enter the uplands. The Indians had by this time been reduced to submission in most of the Virginia Piedmont--as Governor Spotswood[88:3] reported in 1712, living "quietly on our frontiers, trafficking with the Inhabitants."

After the defeat of the Tuscaroras and Yema.s.sees about this time in the Carolinas, similar opportunities for expansion existed there. The cattle drovers sometimes took their herds from range to range; sometimes they were gathered permanently near the pens, finding the range sufficient throughout the year. They were driven to Charleston, or later sometimes even to Philadelphia and Baltimore markets. By the middle of the century, disease worked havoc with them in South Carolina[89:1] and destroyed seven-eighths of those in North Carolina; Virginia made regulations governing the driving of cattle through her frontier counties to avoid the disease, just as in our own time the northern cattlemen attempted to protect their herds against the Texas fever.

Thus cattle raisers from the coast followed the fur-traders toward the uplands, and already pioneer farmers were straggling into the same region, soon to be outnumbered by the tide of settlement that flowed into the region from Pennsylvania.

The descriptions of the uplands by contemporaneous writers are in glowing terms. Makemie, in his "Plain and Friendly Persuasion" (1705), declared "The best, richest, and most healthy part of your Country is yet to be inhabited, above the falls of every River, to the Mountains."

Jones, in his "Present State of Virginia" (1724), comments on the convenience of tidewater transportation, etc., but declares that section "not nearly so healthy as the uplands and Barrens which serve for Ranges for Stock," although he speaks less enthusiastically of the savannas and marshes which lay in the midst of the forest areas. In fact, the Piedmont was by no means the unbroken forest that might have been imagined, for in addition to natural meadows, the Indians had burned over large tracts.[89:2] It was a rare combination of woodland and pasture, with clear running streams and mild climate.[89:3]

The occupation of the Virginia Piedmont received a special impetus from the interest which Governor Spotswood took in the frontier. In 1710 he proposed a plan for intercepting the French in their occupation of the interior, by inducing Virginia settlement to proceed along one side of James River only, until this column of advancing pioneers should strike the attenuated line of French posts in the center. In the same year he sent a body of hors.e.m.e.n to the top of the Blue Ridge, where they could overlook the Valley of Virginia.[90:1] By 1714 he became active as a colonizer himself. Thirty miles above the falls of the Rappahannock, on the Rapidan at Germanna,[90:2] he settled a little village of German redemptioners (who in return for having the pa.s.sage paid agreed to serve without wages for a term of years), to engage in his iron works, also to act as rangers on the frontier. From here, in 1716, with two companies of rangers and four Indians, Governor Spotswood and a band of Virginia gentlemen made a summer picnic excursion of two weeks across the Blue Ridge into the Shenandoah Valley. _Sic juvat transcendere montes_ was the motto of these Knights of the Golden Horse Shoe, as the governor dubbed them. But they were not the "warlike christian men" destined to occupy the frontier.

Spotswood's interest in the advance along the Rappahannock, probably accounts for the fact that in 1720 Spotsylvania and Brunswick were organized as frontier counties of Virginia.[91:1] Five hundred dollars were contributed by the colony to the church, and a thousand dollars for arms and ammunition for the settlers in these counties. The fears of the French and Indians beyond the high mountains, were alleged as reasons for this advance. To attract settlers to these new counties, they were (1723) exempt from purchasing the lands under the system of head rights, and from payment of quit-rents for seven years after 1721. The free grants so obtained were not to exceed a thousand acres. This was soon extended to six thousand acres, but with provision requiring the settlement of a certain number of families upon the grant within a certain time. In 1729 Spotswood was ordered by the Council to produce "rights" and pay the quit-rents for the 59,786 acres which he claimed in this county.

Other similar actions by the Council show that large holdings were developing there, also that the difficulty of establis.h.i.+ng a frontier democracy in contact with the area of expanding plantations, was very real.[91:2] By the time of the occupation of the Shenandoah Valley, therefore, the custom was established in this part of Virginia,[91:3] of making grants of a thousand acres for each family settled. Speculative planters, influential with the Governor and Council secured grants of many thousand acres, conditioned upon seating a certain number of families, and satisfying the requirements of planting. Thus what had originally been intended as direct grants to the actual settler, frequently became grants to great planters like Beverley, who promoted the coming of Scotch-Irish and German settlers, or took advantage of the natural drift into the Valley, to sell lands in their grants, as a rule, reserving quit-rents. The liberal grants per family enabled these speculative planters, while satisfying the terms of settlement, to hold large portions of the grant for themselves. Under the lax requirements, and probably still more lax enforcement, of the provisions for actual cultivation or cattle-raising,[92:1] it was not difficult to hold such wild land. These conditions rendered possible the extension of a measure of aristocratic planter life in the course of time to the Piedmont and Valley lands of Virginia. It must be added, however, that some of the newcomers, both Germans and Scotch-Irish, like the Van Meters, Stover, and Lewis, also showed an ability to act as promoters in locating settlers and securing grants to themselves.