The James River Batteau And Festival History
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convinced a jury, who was to decide about the new clergy, to refuse to acknowledge the authoirity of the Burgesses, and that the old church was “wellneigh worthless”. From this time, the old religious order was doomed, for the up-country, the dissenters and the reformers had combined against it. But the passing of the Stamp Act hastened the catastrophe and gave the leaders of the new combination an opportunity to humiliate the British Ministry, whom not even the tidewater party could defeat.

Some of the early families came to the colonies looking for various things, religious freedom, prospect of making their fortunes, all were brave, and undaunted by the challenges that lay ahead. These men seemed to live in the future, seeing only what this new land would bring and how it would grow.

In 1690, Peter Rucker, a French Huguenot, arrived with a splash as his ship wrecked off the coast of Virginia, near the mouth of the James River. As the story goes, Peter drew cards with three other gentlemen for the last remaining barrel of rum which would keep him afloat until he reached land. His grandsons, Anthony and Benjamin Rucker, settled in the Tobacco Row Mountains in Amherst Count in the mid 1700’s, were responsible for enabling the settlement of the Piedmont with their invention of the James River Batteau.

Another family of Irish Catholic descent, whose son ran away from home and jumped a ship for America in 1720. His dreams of prosperity were shared by thousands of immigrants, but this 15 year old boy was different. His name was Charles Lynch, and his son, John, was the founder of Lynchburg. In November of 1747, Dr. William Cabell surveyed for Captain Charles Lynch two tracts, one for 425 acres and the other for 165 acres, both granted by patents in 1745 to Colonel John Bolling, later conveyed to Captain Lynch located on the James River at Blackwater Creek. It was noted that “one half was barren and one half was plantable”.

John Lynch turned out to be as enterprising as his father. At the age of 17, he established a ferry across the James River to accommodate travelers to New London. The ferry proved popular. Before it was established, travelers sometimes had to wait several days until a walkway, or ford, across the river was passable for horses. The ferry led from the mouth of Blackwater Creek to what is now Amherst County at Madison, later to be known as Madison Heights. Before the ferry, travelers would cross at Percival’s Island, then up the bank on what is today Horseford Road.

Charles Lynch died in 1752 leaving his son a great deal of land along the James River. In 1768, the young Lynch erected a ferry house which was also used as a tavern and a home. Later that same year, John Lynch was granted a charter to establish a town along the banks of the James River. Forty five acres were set aside for Lynchburg, which Lynch sold in half acre lots. John Lynch died at age 80 in his home on Court Street in 1821. A large granite rock on the river bank, above Blackwater Creek, marks the ferry crossing.

Doctor Willaim Cabell, a ships surgeon was the first settler in present day Nelson County. On one of his trips to the new colonies, he traveled up the James River above the falls for approximately 120 miles and was said to have stopped on the Buckingham side of the James at Wingina. Being impressed with what he saw, he returned to England, resigned his position and traveled back to the Virginia colony to settle. In 1726, he first settled at Licking Hole Creek, then in large Henrico County. where he married Elizabeth Burks and started a family. With settlements having extended so far westward as to be inconvently situated for attendance in the County Court, the House of Burgesses formed another county from Henrico called Goochland for Governor Gooch. The September 1728 court records listed William Cabell as having 1,850,906 tobacco plants. The total crop for that year being 5,549,811 plants owned by 1,132 people. From May 1728 to May 1730, only forty nine surveys were made in the new County of Goochland. Few people, if any had regularly settled above the mouth of the Rivanna at Columbia.

Governor Gooch, in 1738, granted Dr. Cabell a patent of 4,800 acres. In those days land grants or patents stipulated that three acres of every fifty should be cultivated and improved within three years of the contract or the land would revert back to the crown. Dr. Cabell owned over twenty miles of James River frontage property on both sides of the river stretching from modern Howardsville to Gladstone in the middle of the Indian hunting grounds. In 1741, Dr. Cabell moved from Licking Hole Creek to the mouth of Swan Creek in Nelson County. where he erected a home, a grist mill, warehouses, and a store, calling this place Warminster, for his old English home, from here a regular line of batteaux was run to Westham. For over 50 years, this now extinct town was one of the more important points in Virginia’s internal commerce.

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