Crusade Against Slavery: Edward Coles, Pioneer of Freedom

1. River and Opportunity

7 1 River and Opportunity I n the early 1730s, when John Coles arrived, Richmond was a rough smudge of a Virginia frontier camp.1 It was a river town of sorts; people called it “the Falls.” But the Falls was more bottom than river. The James River at Richmond was an impassable, frothy confusion of water and boulders rising gradually for seven miles west. The river then found its depth again, filling out for seventy or eighty navigable miles inland. From his father, William Byrd II inherited the Falls and twenty-six thousand acres surrounding the rocky-watery barrier to the expanding upland enterprise that was central Virginia. He took his father’s beginning in land and location and built it into a commercial empire. John Coles arrived, rode the boom, and shared in the building. John Coles knew something about commerce. His father, Walter Coles, had been the local customs officer—or portreeve—in the Irish town of Enniscorthy, Wexford County.2 No doubt, John became well acquainted with the trade of goods along the River Slaney and the money to be made in their transshipment to the Irish countryside. The first decade of his life in Richmond made John Coles. He became a wealthy merchant, shipping wheat and other commodities to England and importing goods for sale in Virginia. Like most Virginians, he put his money into land to protect his investments and ensure his legacy. By 1741, he had purchased fifteen parcels of Richmond property, three thousand acres of land on Albemarle County’s Green Mountain from the heirs of pioneer settler Francis Eppes (sometime between 1740 and 1747), some lands in Louisa County north of there, and additional plantation lands farther south on the Staunton River.3 PART ONE 8 Coles became an active and visible colonist and a faithful man of business whose skills and personal qualities appear to have been the leaven for some of Richmond’s growth. His election as a member of the vestry of the old Curles Church solidified his position and status in the community. On 10 June 1741, the Council of Virginia appointed John Coles and two others as commissioners of the peace for the County of Henrico. The following year, Coles presented a petition to the legislature requesting recognition of Richmond as a new town.4 Within a decade, Coles had built a business and established himself as a leader in the civil and sacred spheres of life in Richmond. He had become a gentleman of note—no small achievement. At some point, Coles married Mary Ann Winston, youngest daughter of Isaac Winston, a prominent Quaker.5 They had five children; one was John Coles II (born 29 April 1745), father of Edward Coles.6 Nineteen years after his father’s death, John Coles II, now twentyone years, claimed his inheritance, Enniscorthy (named in homage to the family home in Ireland).7 Enniscorthy sits on the Green Mountain, part of a modest ridge called the Southwest Mountains. Generous folk might call it a foothill range of the Blue Ridge. It runs for forty miles, following the line of the Blue Ridge but sets apart about ten miles east. John Coles’s land was at the southern end of the range. On the same hill but a day’s easy ride northeast is James Monroe’s Ashe Lawn plantation. Carter’s Mountain is beyond that, next to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. A break in the ridge provides a pass to Charlottesville . Continuing farther along the ridge is Montpelier, home of the James Madison family. A nearly straight line joins these four great plantations of Central Virginia. Each was well located for delivery of tobacco and other produce to market: Enniscorthy was closest to Richmond and was situated by the Hardware River, a tributary of the James. Monticello was on the Rivanna, another James River tributary. Montpelier was close to the headwaters of the Rapidan that, flowing north and east through Fredericksburg, provided a second route for trade and development of the Virginia interior that the Madison family had followed for three generations. The Southwest Mountains, of which Green Mountain was a part, was the perch for some of central Virginia’s loftiest families. John Coles II began to develop Enniscorthy almost immediately from hunting camp to profitable farm. His account book shows an entry dur- RIVER AND OPPORTUNITY 9 ing that first year, 1766, in payment...