William Beverley acquired land on the Little Calfpasture River
Source: Library of Congress, Colonial land patents and grantees: Calfpasture Rivers, Augusta County, Virginia (by Meredith Leitch, 1947)
William Beverley acquired land on the Little Calfpasture River
Source: Library of Congress, Colonial land patents and grantees: Calfpasture Rivers, Augusta County, Virginia (by Meredith Leitch, 1947)
Governor Gooch decided to issue large land grants west of the Blue Ridge, but Lord Fairfax's agents protested the authority of the colonial officials in Williamsburg to dispose of land within the boundaries of the Fairfax Grant. The dispute delayed final issuance of tile to grants made to John and Isaac Van Meter and to Joist Hite, in the lower (northern) part of the Shenandoah Valley.
In 1736, as surveyors were marking the boundaries of the Fairfax Grant, Governor Gooch and his Council in Williamsburg approved a large (118,941 acre) grant to William Beverley. The boundaries of the Beverley grant were located south of the "back line" of the Fairfax Grant, the line connecting the headsprings of the Rappahannock and Potomac rivers.
William Beverley was a member of the gentry, the elite Virginians who acquired land, slaves, wealth, and status. In 1716 the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe had stopped at his family's plantation on their expedition to cross the Blue Ridge, and his father Robert Beverley had accompanied Governor Spotswood into the Shenandoah Valley.1
Willim Beverley was elected to the House of Burgesses from Orange County and then from Essex County. His grant included much of modern-day Augusta County and the city of Staunton.
According to the generous terms of the grant, Beverley was entitled to 1,000 acres for every family that he recruited to settle on his tract.2
1. Jim Glanville and Ryan Mays, "William Beverley, James Patton, and the Settling of the Shenandoah Valley," Essex County Museum and
Historical Society Bulletin, Volume 55, November 2010, p.1, http://www.essexmuseum.org/archive/bulletin-vol-55.pdf (last checked December 23, 2015)
2. Thomas Perkins Abernethy, Three Virginia Frontiers, Peter Smith, 1962, p.56, https://books.google.com/books?id=XmgatAEACAAJ (last checked April 5, 2018)