Page:Annals of Augusta County.djvu/170

 " Wednesday.—This day I moved my camp to William McPheeters's.

" Thursday and Friday.—Continued at the same place, spending my time chiefly in study."

On New Year's day, 1776, he preached at Peter Hanger's to a large assembly, and next day set out down the Valley.

The Rev. James Waddell came to Augusta from Lancaster county about the year 1776, and bought the Springhill farm on South River, originally owned by Colonel James Patton. The deed of James and William Thompson, Patton's son-in-law and grandson, describes the tract as 1,308 acres, and states the price as _;^i,ooo ($3,333^)- Dr. Waddell resided at Springhill, and preached at Tinkling Spring and occasionally in Staunton, while he remained in the county. One of the subscription papers circulated in Tinkling Spring congregation, for raising the pastor's salary, has escaped destruction, and is interesting as showing in some degree the state of the times. The subscribers promised to pay the Rev. James Waddell " the sum of one hundred pounds, current and lawful money of Virginia, for the whole of his labours for one year; ' ' payment to be made " in clean merchantable wheat at three shillings (fifty cents) per bushel, or in corn or rye of like quality at two shillings per bushel, or in other commodities he may want at said rates." James Bell, Sr., promised to pay £2,, os. gd. (about $10), the largest subscription on the lis^. Other subscribers were John Ramsey, Thomas Turk, John Ramsey, Jr., William Black, William Guthrie, John Collins, John Caldwell, Benjamin Stuart, Robert Thompson, A. Thompson, Thomas Stuart, and Walter Davis. The subscription for 1783 was £^0 in cash for half the minister's time, the other half to be bestowed in Staunton.—[Foote's Sketches, First Series, page 376.]

In the early part of 1776, the county committee of Augusta adopted a memorial to the Convention, of which we have no account except in the journal of that body. The purport of the paper, presented to the Convention on the loth of May, is thus awkwardly stated in the journal: "A representation from the committee of the county of Augusta was presented to the Convention and read, setting forth the present unhappy situation of the country, and from the ministerial measures of revenge now pursuing, representing the necessity of making the confederacy