The James River Batteau And Festival History
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In 1771, the Albemarle Furnace Company was organized to work the iron mines on or near the Hardware River of which Dr. William Cabell along with Thomas Jefferson were among the original eleven investors.

When Dr. Cabell settled in the new frontier in 1726, it was a wilderness of wild forests filled with wild animals, wild Indians and wild legends. When he died this forest was a fairly settled country. A foundation had been laid for a respectable and advancing society.

Early families claimed lands along the mighty James, establishing communities, mills, tobacco farms, apple orchards, raised crops, sold animal hides, traded goods and were continually looking for a more economical way of getting goods to the markets and ports in Richmond. They quickly found that the James River with its shallows, rapids and falls was practically impassible using their rafts and flat boats. So they turned to Indian dugout canoes.

There was already a lightly established trade on the river. Traders used Indian dugout canoes although they were not large enough or stable enough to carry much cargo. About 1740, Robert Rose, a circuit parson, who immigrated from Scotland in 1728 and after exploring the Piedmont and discovering the Tye River, was granted an extensive tract of land on the Tye River by order of the English Council, where he cultivated a large tobacco farm. In 1748, Dr. Cabell and Parson Robert Rose surveyed Rose’s Piney Woods property being 1,870 acres. The lands on the Piney and Tye Rivers, named for Allen Tye, noted hunter and later pioneer of Tennessee, had been granted to Rose in 1744. Dr. Cabell was a member of St. Anne’s vestry and good friends with Parson Rose, who frequently preached and stayed at the Cabell’s.

Knowing the problems of getting his crops to market overland, he watched the Monican Indians in their dugout canoes and devised a method of lashing two canoes together in order to transport goods. They were reasonably stable and especially suited to tobacco hogsheads. These double dugout canoes were later known as tobacco canoes.

In 1750, Reverend Rose visited John Sallings, who lived at the junction of the Maury and James Rivers near Balcony Falls. Land was rich and furtile and had all the advantages of the lower James property except for water carriage. To claim land you only had to mark some trees at the four corners of your claimed property. These new land owners were leaving a civilized culture and moving into a wilderness. A hidden land frought with all kinds of danger, where the unexpected happened. They built crude cabins, sometimes only 10’ square, just enough to house their families to keep them relatively safe and warm. They existed with the very barest of necessities. It was a very hard, rough and difficult life. A settler wrote, “My mind has been severly tried under the great fatique endured by myself and my horse. This country will require much to make it tolerable. The people are the boldest cast of adventurers.” After a few years had passed, the Rose type of “tobacco canoes” were traveling down from the valley of central Virginia, over Balcony Falls. The Rose invention encouraged tobacco planters to place large areas under tobacco and further opened the Piedmont to other tobacco planters. Doing away with the long hogshead roll to Richmond enabling planters to keep at home his teams and hands during the vital spring months or alternately not having to hire teams and rollers to get their crops to market. A crew of two or three men could take a double dugout of goods replacing nine men and nine teams. Also the broad platforms of the dugouts, scotched in place with wooden chocks, could be sold at the destination port for lumber and two canoes could be taken back upstream with needed supplies. Thus was initiated the first multiple freight transportation of the James River and its tributaries. It was far reaching.

Regardless of all the faults of this system of navigation, it allowed for the development of the whole central Piedmont and that part of the valley near the James during the late formative colonial years and the early formative years of the Commonwealth. This too, had a great deal to do with the building up of Richmond, as Richmond was the eastern port for this trade.

Parson Rose was a permanent resident of current Nelson County and ministered to the parish until his death in Richmond, June 30, 1751. He was a man of great ability and genius and in recognition he was “invited to lend his counsel when the city of Richmond was laid out and while he was there was stricken with an illness that caused his death. He is buried in old St. John’s church yard in Richmond. His tombstone reads: His extraordinary genius and command of all the polite and useful arts of life, though equalled by few, were yet exceeded by the great goodness of his heart. Never again would a single individual be as influential, as cosmopolitan, and represent so many interests and talents that contributed to the spiritual and material growth of the region.

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