Democracy's Lawyer: Felix Grundy of the Old Southwest

1. The Great Road

1 The Great Road This combination of poverty and pride set the North Britons squarely apart.    —David Hackett Fischer elix Grundy was born on September 11, 1775, in Berkeley County, Virginia. Grundy’s birth near the Great Road, to enterprising parents ever questing westward, and five months after the outbreak of the Revolution, almost perfectly symbolized the enterprise and mobility of this “New American ” of the post-Revolutionary generation. Grundy’s frontier heritage had deep roots. His mother, Elizabeth Burkham, came from yeoman stock and was of the fourth generation in the Chesapeake colonies. Her great-grandfather, Roger Burkham, arrived in Virginia in 1667 as an indentured servant, probably from southwestern England. In Somerset County, Maryland, by December 1670, within four years of its founding, Roger planted tobacco on 230 acres near the Nanticoke River, served as undersheriff of the county at least in 1687 and 1697, and died in 1702. His son John and grandson Roger, however, could not maintain this modest status, and by 1725 the namesake grandson had sold the last of the immigrant’s holdings.1 Attracted by inexpensive land, Roger Burkham, accompanied by his wife, Catherine, several children, and probably a brother, Joseph, and his family, left Maryland in approximately 1735 for the expanding frontier—in this case the Shenandoah Valley, of Virginia. Roger, constable at the organization of Frederick County in 1743, lived at least until 1777 near what is now Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, north and west of Winchester, the center of the lower Shenandoah Valley. The heavily forested county was sparsely populated, with only 2,173 white and 340 black inhabitants in 1755.2 Roger Burkham appears to have been a tough man. An enlisted man in Washington’s Virginia Regiment in 1758, he was described as “well-made,” five feet seven and one-half, with a fair complexion and black hair. His name apF 7 8 � Frontier Roots pears often in Frederick County records, principally in lawsuits against adjoining landowners. All in all, the records suggest an active man at home on the frontier who was quick to protect his rights and not always a pleasant­neighbor.3 Limited evidence indicates that Roger was a close relation, probably an uncle, of Elizabeth Burkham’s and that he raised her after the death of her father , Joseph. Born about 1733 in Maryland, Elizabeth had one sister, Catherine. There are no records or descriptions of her early life; the one reference is with respect to a survey for her and her sister of four hundred acres on the north fork of Sleepy Creek, in Berkeley County, in 1751. Her education was rudimentary at best; a typical product of the frontier, she signed her will and other documents with a mark.4 Elizabeth Burkham met and married George Grundy in her early or midtwenties . A political description of Felix Grundy in 1838, presumably reflecting his input, stated that George Grundy had settled in Virginia “shortly after his emigration from England.” The Grundy family hailed from Bury, in Lancashire , in the north of England, and it has been assumed that George Grundy or his father came from that area. Exactly where Grundy, a wagon master, and Elizabeth Burkham met is unknown. It is possible that the British hired George Grundy to haul supplies after Indian hostilities broke out in 1754 and that George and Elizabeth first met along what has been called the Great Road. Originally an Indian trail, the Great Road reached from Philadelphia to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in the 1720s, but by 1760 it stretched through the Shenandoah Valley to near Bedford, Virginia, and on to Salisbury, North Carolina . Freight traffic was heavy, and the wagoner was a constant feature of roadway life. Six-horse teams drew heavy German-built Conestoga wagons.5 George Grundy settled in the Shenandoah Valley, which owed its eighteenth -century development to the Scots-Irish and, to a much lesser extent, the Germans. The Scots-Irish, who drove the settlement of the entire southern backcountry, fostered a unique environment. Largely Presbyterian, loyal to family and clan and formidably tough, they were characterized by a fierce independence , a commitment to honor, and a strong aversion to governmental control. Descended largely from lowland Scots who had originally moved to the north of Ireland beginning in the late sixteenth century, these hardy immigrants came to the American colonies in family groups to escape both economic and religious discrimination. Their numbers are hard to gauge; the historically accepted figure has been about...