The Personal Sorrows of Patrick Henry

 

It is not generally known that during the time when he was becoming one of the leading Patriot leaders of Virginia Patrick Henry was under severe pressure in his personal life. Henry’s wife Sarah began to show signs of mental illness after the birth of her sixth child (some speculate that this was post-partum depression). Patrick Henry’s mother wrote a letter in which she stated, “We feel Sarah is losing her mind after the birth of Neddy.”

Sarah's doctor strongly recommended that she be sent to the new Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg. Built in 1773, this was the only facility in Virginia at the time devoted to the care of the mentally ill. Patrick Henry refused to send his wife to the asylum and decided to keep her confined to the basement of the family home. This may actually have been a kindness, for although the new hospital was created with the best of intentions the treatments were harsh.  Patients were bled, blistered, subjected to pain, shock, and terror. They were dunked in water and restrained.

Sarah’s behavior was reputed to be unmanageable, and she was confined in a cellar room, bound in a straitjacket and attended by a servant. This secret was kept from the public. After several years of confinement, Sarah died in the spring of 1775 at the age of thirty-seven. She may have killed herself.

Love, Sex, and Marriage in Colonial America 1607-1800

Murder in Colonial Virginia

William Grayson the First Member of Congress to Die in Office

 

At the outbreak of the American Revolution, William Grayson served as a captain of the local militia but left the Virginia forces to become an aide-de-camp to General Washington. He later took command of one of the sixteen regiments of the Continental Army. After a bloody battle at Monmouth, New Jersey that virtually destroyed his entire regiment, Grayson, now a Colonel, went on to serve on the Board of War. After the war, Grayson served as a member of the Continental Congress and was later one of Virginia’s first two Senators. 

 Grayson died in Dumfries on March 12, 1790, the first member of the United States Congress to die in office. He was interred in the Grayson family vault in Woodbridge, Virginia on a hill overlooking Marumsco Creek. The family burial vault was originally located on a one-thousand-acre plantation. Now less than five acres remain undeveloped. The burial vault, now sitting in the midst of a Woodbridge residential neighborhood, was encased in concrete in the early 1900s by the Daughters of the American Revolution. The Reverend Spence Grayson, a “fighting parson” of the Revolution and lifelong friend of George Washington is also buried in the vault.

Love, Sex, and Marriage in Colonial America 1607-1800

Murder in Colonial Virginia

Fielding Lewis, American Patriot

 

Wealthy merchant Fielding Lewis, the husband of George Washington’s only sister, Betty, was a colonel in the Spotsylvania County militia. More importantly he provided saltpeter, sulfur, powder, and lead for the production of ammunition. 

In 1775, Lewis was appointed with four others to establish and equip a manufactory of small arms for the newly formed Virginia government. Most of the operating capital for the new enterprise was provided by Fielding Lewis. By May 1777, the Fredericksburg Gunnery was producing twenty muskets, complete with bayonets each week. Lewis also outfitted ships for the Virginia Navy, most notably the Dragon which was built in Fredericksburg. The Dragon was initially used to protect the Rappahannock River from British and Loyalist raiders but was later used in the Chesapeake Bay.

Fielding Lewis’ patriotic zeal ruined him financially as he advanced increasingly large sums of money for the Patriot cause. Fielding Lewis died in December 1781, two months after the defeat of General Cornwallis at Yorktown.

Love, Sex, and Marriage in Colonial America 1607-1800

Murder in Colonial Virginia