Page:Annals of Augusta County.djvu/32

 a liberal spirit; at any rate, there is no proof or tradition of anything to the contrary. On February 21, 1738, he conveyed to John Lewis 2,071 acres, a part of the Beverley Manor grant, the deed being on record in Orange county, within which the grant then lay.

In the spring of 1736, Benjamin Borden, the agent of Lord Fairfax, came up from Williamsburg, by invitation, on a visit to John Lewis. He took with him, on his return, a buffalo calf, which he presented to Governor Gooch, and was so successful in ingratiating himself with the Governor as to receive the royal patent for a large body of land in the Valley, south of Beverley Manor. The first settlers in Borden's grant were Ephraim McDowell and his family. His daughter, Mary Greenlee, related in a deposition taken in 1806, and still extant, the circumstances under which her father went there. Her brother, James McDowell, had come into Beverley Manor during the spring of 1736, and planted a crop of corn, near Woods' Gap; and in the fall her father, then a very aged man, her brother John, and her husband and herself came to occupy the new settlement. Before they reached their destination, and after they had arranged their camp on a certain evening, Borden arrived and asked permission to spend the night with them. He informed them of his grant, and offered them inducements to go there. The next day they came on to the house of John Lewis, and there it was finally arranged that the party should settle in Borden's tract.

As early as 1734, Michael Woods, an Irish immigrant, with three sons and three sons-in-law, came up the Valley, and pushing his way through Woods' Gap, settled on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge.

At an early day, the people living on the east side of the Blue Ridge received the soubriquet of Tuckahoes, from a small stream of that name, it is said, while the people on the west side were denominated Cohees, as tradition says, from their common use of the term "Quoth he," or "Quo' he," for "said he."

Beverley and Borden were indefatigable in introducing settlers from Europe. James Patton was a very efficient agent in this enterprise. He was a native of Ireland, was bred to the sea,