Snickers Gap
Next time you drive rom Berryville VA east to "head over the Mountain," as they say in these parts, you will remember Edward Snickers' letter of 19 July 1758 to Colonel George Washington as you drive through Snicker's Gap. The letter is about iron and the upcoming election.
Edward Snickers has the Iron. He needs the cash. Then he can deliver it.
And oh by the way, he hopes GW can show up to campaign for his own election.
His presence would help.
All the letters of this time ask for GW to show up.
July 24, 1758 is the scheduled date for the election.
Election?
A reenactment of this election is happening this Saturday 5pm to 730pm to maybe to 8pm . . . 23 July 2022 .
The public is invited to vote out loud for the top 2 of the 4 candidates running to represent the old large Frederick County to the House of Burgesses.
But GW is at Fort Cumberland. He's pretty busy.
He's handling all the logistics of the two Virginia Regiments and the road building and handling the Indian allies for the Forbes Expedition trying one more time to "reduce" the French Fort Duquesne in what is today's Pittsburgh.
Fort Duquesne was the al Qaeda, the base from which all operations launched against Virginia and PA and MD.
Ed Snickers owned this gap in the mountain.
Today's Route 7 cuts through here.
The other colorful character John "Jack" Ashby owned the Gap south of here where Route 50 cuts across. Ashby was the 2nd Captain of a ranger fort built further into the west in today's West Virginia.
But back to Edward Snickers. Enjoy the colorful spelling. These colorful characters were literate despite the spelling. It was only 3 years before a top notch English Dictionary by Samuel Johnson was published. The language was not hardening even yet into standard spellings.
To George Washington
from Edward Snickers,
19 July 1758
From Edward Snickers July the 19: 1758
dere Coll I Shold take it as a greait faver if you wold Send the Cash for the iron by the forst opertunetey to me as i have got the order and it is in Closed in this Leter and all youere frendes are dowing all that Lyes in thare power to have you alectid and I hope it will be ⟨mead⟩ out if you wore here youere Self it wold be out of despute So no more at present from youere Redey frend and hombil Sarvent to Comand Edward Snickers
N.B. mr Balindine Sent Mr Linton up after the pay for the i[r]on ⟨mutilated⟩ mr Smith and as he Cold not geat it he give me an order.1 i am yours E.S.
ALS, DLC:GW. Snickers sent this letter “by favor of Mr Allen.”
[Dear Colonel, I should take it as a great favor if you would send the cash for the iron by the first opportunity to me as I have got the order and it is enclosed in this letter and all your friends are doing all that lies in their power to have you elected and I hope it will be mead out if you were here yourself it would be out of dispute So no more at present from your ready friend and humble servant to command Edward Snickers.]
Founders Online Footnote:
Edward Snickers lived near Buck Marsh Run in Frederick County and operated an ordinary that GW sometimes patronized. GW had paid Snickers £7.9 on his account as recently as 21 June. Snickers’s Gap in the Blue Ridge takes its name from Edward Snickers.
1. See GW to John Ballendine, 18 April 1758. The first record of GW’s paying either Snickers or Ballendine for iron after this time is his payment of £44.12.3 to Ballendine on 2 Dec. 1758, which precipitated a long dispute between GW and Ballendine.
Source:
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That's it.
That's our lead story.
Skip around and read bits and pieces.
There's always more.
Compiled and authored by Jim Moyer July 17, 2022
And there's a lot here in this neighborhood.
Cool Springs Battle of the Civil War nearby.
The Appalachian Trail.
And down below the gap is an old Stonehenge like arrangement of rocks sighting the solstices and equinoxes.
And of course there's more
Frontier Forts Google Maps:
I am looking for others to help safeguard and maintain and edit this map and shares the same vision on how to improve it.
See all the forted homes and places of interest during the French and Indian War times.
Letters from Edward Snickers
to George Washington
Between that letter in 1758 to 1784 not much in the way of spelling style changed for Edward Snickers:
Also see Founders Online footnotes telling you more about Edward Snickers.
To George Washington from Edward Snickers, 17 May 1784
From Edward Snickers May the 17. 1784
Der Generale I fulley intendid to aweaighted on you to pay you the Respeckte Due you and to Do Sume bisnees but finding by the paper that you wase not at home and parte of my Bisnees wase to no hume is to make the Deeds for the Lande you Solde at Coll mercers Salle and I have gote the five Lotes that Mr James mercer Boughte and Lote number one that William Hickman Boughte and the Lote number 21 which Sedwicke Bought1 and I have gote the Bonde you give Mr mercer and Mr Sedwick asighened to me but not hickmanes as he boughte two Lotes & peaid Mr Lunde Washington the Cash for Sedwickes bonde by the hands of Mr John melton and he never Sighened the Bond to me and I Cane not now git the Cash of Sedwick with out Bringing a sut as I hade peaid him for the Lande before I peaid of his mande and am obliged to Bring Sute in youre name against him which I hope you have no obecksion to[.]2 the persones that Loves on youre 2 Lotes have peaid the Taxes on it quar. Since the yere 1778 agreabile to youre Dereckshones to me in 1779 and I thinke thay qoughte no[w] to begine to pay you Sumthing 3 thay Colde be Rented out now verey well I wase in hopes to aseene you upe in oure Country th⟨is⟩ time—and if you Do not when I heare you are Come home I will weaighte on you and aney thing that I cane sarve you in pies to Command and it will give me plesher to Do it 4 my Complementes to youre Ladey and am with Due esteme youre Sincere frind and moste obedente Humbile Sarvnt Ed. Snickers
N.B. Sur if you will Calle to mind you and Mr James mercer told me at the Sale that if the Estate Solde for more than twelve thousand five hundrid pounds that I Shude be peaid whate Coll mercer wase in Due me I am yours E.S.
ALS, DLC:GW.
Horse trader, tavern keeper, wagoner, military supplier, plantation manager for others and planter for himself, and land speculator, Edward Snickers before his death in 1790 had become a well-to-do gentleman in Frederick County with extensive landholdings. GW used Snickers’s horses and wagons to have supplies hauled between Alexandria and Winchester for the Virginia Regiment during the French and Indian War and for his own purposes thereafter.
Beginning in the 1750s GW also sometimes stopped at Snickers’s ordinary located near where Snickers’s ferry crossed the Shenandoah River.
Snickers became a commissary for the Virginia forces on the frontier early in the Revolution, but this came to an end in 1777 when he was accused of fraud. [my note added to Founders Online: A petition for payment: https://digital.lib.niu.edu/islandora/object/niu-amarch%3A78940/web.shtml# ]
See Jones, “Snickers,” in which the scattered references to Edward Snickers’s multifarious business activities in the Frederick County records and elsewhere have been collected.
1. As one of the attorneys, or agents, appointed to dispose of George Mercer’s Virginia property, GW in November 1774 held sales, on 21–22 Nov., of that part of Mercer’s property lying in Loudoun and Fauquier counties and then, on 24–27 Nov., of his property lying along the Shenandoah River in Frederick county.
GW himself ended up buying two of the lots in Frederick. In December 1774 he also acquired George Mercer’s half of the Four Mile Run tract in Fairfax County. GW took this land in partial payment of the indebtedness of the John Mercer estate to the Daniel Parke Custis estate.
For discussion of GW’s continued involvement with the Mercers as a consequence of these sales, see GW to Francis Lightfoot Lee and Ralph Wormeley, Jr., 20 June 1784, GW to John Francis Mercer, 8 July 1784, and GW’s Statement concerning George Mercer’s Estate, 1 Feb. 1789, and the notes in the three documents.
The advertisement, placed in Rind’s Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg), 30 June 1774, by John Tayloe and GW, described the Frederick County tract of land as “5000 Acres on Shenando river . . . opposite to Snicker’s Ordinary, and binding on the River about seven Miles.” Before the sale, the tract was surveyed and divided into twenty-two lots of about three hundred acres each. Snickers seems not to have bought any land at the sale in 1774, but he subsequently had in his possession at one time or another a total of at least eight lots: lot no. 1 and those numbered 16 through 22.
On 3 June 1777 Snickers sold lots 16, 17, and 19 in the eastern part of the Mercer tract, and not on the river, to Mahlon Taylor (see Frederick County Deed Book, 17:259); and by the time he made his will in 1790, he owned three adjoining lots along the river, nos. 18, 20, and 22.
Five of these six lots were bought at the sale by George Mercer’s brother James.
Two other lots that Snickers owned and refers to here are lot no. 1, at the northwestern corner of the tract, which he bought from William Hickman of Frederick County, and lot no. 21 at the northeastern corner of the Mercer tract, which he got from Benjamin Sedwick. Snickers still held lot no. 1 but not lot no. 21 in 1790. For Edward Snickers’s will, see Frederick County Will Book, 5:296.
2. GW bought lots 4 and 5 on the river after the sale.
3. On 8 Aug. 1785 John Sedwick of Frederick County and GW exchanged letters about this piece of property. Sedwick wrote GW that his father, the late Benjamin Sedwick, bought lot no. 21 at the Mercer sale in November 1774 and in 1776 sold it “to Edward Snickers who by Agreement was to pay of the bond as a part of the Price. Mr Snickers in 1779 or 1780, Paid of[f] the Bond in your Absence to Mr Lun Washington and obtained the Bond, and though he has had the Land in possession ever since 1776, he has now brought A Suit in your Name, I dare say without your knowledge, on my Fathers Bond against his Executors and Security.” GW assured Sedwick he knew nothing of the suit, and on 11 April 1786 John Sedwick wrote from Leesburg that Snickers did pursue his suit but lost and had withdrawn a similar suit that he had instituted in the Virginia General Court. For Snickers’s holdings in the Mercer tract, see also Jones, “Snickers,” 26–27, 40–41.
4. For GW’s response to this, see his letter of 25 June.
Source:
Letters between GW and Edward Snickers
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Edward Snickers land
Page, Mann-plat of 1730 Fairfax grant. the original 1730 grant was for 8007 acres, and when the survey was ordered in 1765 it found an area of 11,716 acres.
Owned in 1765 by
Ralph Wormley,
Edward Snickers,
John Hough & Joshua Corell.
Neighbors:
Geo. Wm. Fairfax,
Robert Rutherford,
Christopher Beeler,
Capt. Thomas Speak,
George Mercer,
Thos. Rutledge,
for whom the survey was ordered by Lord Fairfax.
A house with the name 'Pyles' is on plat.
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A petition for payment:
Bio on Edward Snickers:
From this source:
Virginia was one of the earliest of the American colonies to be established – with settlements on the Atlantic seaboard from the early 1600s. How is it then that Bluemont village did not get started until the early 1800s?
One reason is that much of Northern Virginia--from the Rappahannock to the Potomac--was held in reserve for generations by the Fairfax family.
Loudoun County, with Leesburg as the county seat, was not incorporated until 1757.
A tract of 2941 acres on the eastern and western sides of the Blue Ridge was transferred first to George Carter, then to John Augustine Washington (George Washington’s brother).
Edward Snickers (born about 1735 - died 1790) purchased 624 acres of this tract in 1769.
Snickers operated the Shenandoah Ferry at the Gap and kept a tavern on the river. First referred to in early legal documents as a “yeoman,” by 1772 Snickers was called a “gentleman.” At various times Snickers hauled goods and produce for sale, operated a tavern, was a builder and overseer of roads, ran a ferry, and was owner of a merchant mill, a blacksmith shop, a grist mill, and a sawmill. He made his fortune, however, by buying and selling land. He married Elizabeth Taliaferro about 1755 and they had four children.
George Washington rode through the Gap, that mainstay of the Bluemont landscape, on trips to survey land in the Shenandoah Valley. Washington knew Edward Snickers. At least 7 diary entries mention Snickers and several business letters between them survive.
Set out from Charles West’s [an inn near present-day Aldie] dined at Snickers and got to Mr. Wr [Warner] Washington about 5 o’clock. [August 8, 1769] … Continued my journey and reached Charles West’s ordinary [a price-regulated inn] after baiting [fishing] under the ridge at the blacksmith’s shop [that is, at Snickers Gap]. [August 11, 1769]
--George Washington’s diary, in Edward Snickers Yoeman, p. 31
Washington may have first known Snickers as a wagoner hauling supplies out of Winchester during the French and Indian war (1754–1763). In 1777 Snickers received a personal letter from General Washington asking him to sign on as Wagonmaster General for the patriot army. Snickers declined, probably due to ill heath. In December 1777 there were allegations of fraud on a job provisioning the army, but no legal action took place. As the war wore on, an Edward Snickers is listed on the roster of wagoners with the 11th Brigade Artillery of Jean de Rochambeau, commander of the French Expeditionary Force in America. After the war Washington asked Snickers to serve as his land agent in Frederick County.
Divisions in the War of Independence among the peoples of northwest Virginia reflected different streams of immigration – German, Quaker, Irish, and Scots-Irish, generally from north of the Potomac or the Shenandoah Valley-- as well as settlers from the older settlements closer to the Atlantic coast. Indentured servants were more the norm than slaves – with slavery in Loudoun most prevalent in the south and eastern areas.
In the spring of 1778, Edward Snickers took it on himself to aid the war effort by rounding up several young men from the Quaker settlement now called Lincoln (about 10 miles east of the Gap), bringing them north under armed guard to the Revolutionary Army camp. “I know some of these men,” Washington reportedly told Snickers on meeting the young Quakers. “They neither swear nor fight.” Then he admonished the reluctant recruits to go home and cultivate as much food as possible for the support of the patriot troops. [J.V. Nichols, Legends of the Loudoun Valley.]
Several colonial and early American roads converge near Bluemont, and for good reason. Snickers Gap — along with Ashby’s Gap (Route 50) to the south and Vestal’s Gap (approximately Route 9) to the north — was a major trade outlet from the fertile Shenandoah Valley to the markets in the East. Colchester Road, which ran from the Gap to the Little River and thence to Alexandria, was in use since at least the 1730s. The name survives on a road cutting into Snickersville Turnpike (Route 734) a few miles east of present-day Bluemont.
Snickersville Turnpike’s beginnings lie in 1731, when Warner Toward received a land grant for “a road that leads to Williams Cabbin in the Blew Ridge” to the road from Ashby’s Gap to Alexandria (Jean Herron Smith, From Snickersville to Bluemont, p. 7).
By 1785 the Virginia legislature appointed commissioners to manage the turnpikes in the Western part of the state. The 1809-10 Virginia General Assembly provided state funds for the 13.7-mile turnpike (now Snickersville Turnpike) from Snickers’ Ferry. Toll gates were probably set up at Aldie, Mountville, and the Gap. The Leesburg and Snickers Gap Turnpike (present Route 7) was completed in 1831.
In 1777 Edward Snickers sold his 624 acres on the east side of the Blue Ridge to Richard Wistar of Philadelphia. In 1769 Richard’s son Dr. Caspar Wistar sold it to William Clayton, who established a farm on the eastern shoulder of the Blue Ridge just south of the Gap—the site of present-day Bluemont. It was his son Amos Clayton who built the handsome stone manor house, Clayton Hall, which today still graces the corner of Snickersville Turnpike and Clayton Hall Road.
The Claytons (and the Osburns, another early family) were loyalists in the Revolutionary War. William Clayton may have been the “Tory Spy” who brought about the September 20, 1777, “Paoli Massacre” of 300 men under Brigadier General Anthony Wayne in Pennsylvania. Clayton then became a member of John Butler’s Tory Rangers. Harrison Williams, Legends of Loudoun.]
The Claytons sold off several lots to different families, while the Osburns may have already settled here.
Early families of Bluemont include John Chew (married Margaret Reeder),
John Osburn (married Sarah Morris),
Nicholas Osburn (married Mary Lumm),
Mordecai Throckmorton (married [1] Mildred Washington Throckmorton [2] Sara McCarty Hooe),
William Lodge (married Christiana Purcell),
Thomas M. Humphrey, Jr. (married Mary Marks),
William Bradfield (married Elizabeth Latimer Alder),
James Murphy (married Nancy J. Alder),
and the Reverend John Marks (married Uriah Ledyard).
(See genealogies in From Snickerville to Bluemont.)
From this source:
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[Jim Moyer, author of this wix blog notes:
It is interesting that Edward Snickers was born the year Lord Fairfax left for Virginia to nail down his land holdings.]
1 Thomas Fairfax, sixth Baron Fairfax of Cameron (1693–1781), was born at Leeds Castle, County Kent, and educated at Oriel College, Oxford. Somewhat of a recluse and misogynist, he led a quiet life at Leeds Castle until about 1733, when an awakening interest in his inheritance in America interrupted his fox hunting and horse breeding.
In 1735 he went to Virginia to protect his estate against attack by the colonial legislature.
Successful in his efforts, he returned to England in 1737, but in 1747 settled permanently in Virginia and for the rest of his life engaged in the development of the proprietorship.
In 1752 he established Greenway Court, his permanent residence in the Shenandoah Valley, where he lived the life of a country gentleman and participated actively in the affairs of his domain. He served as a justice of the peace in all the counties created
And here's a list of ship leaving Ireland.
www.Ancestry. com
mentions Snickers as more from Scotland though. ]
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