Colonel William Preston (December 25, 1729 – June 28, 1783) was an Irish-born American military officer, planter and politician who founded a political dynasty. After service in the French and Indian War, Preston served five years in the House of Burgesses before becoming one of the fifteen signatories of the Fincastle Resolutions, then a colonel in the Virginia militia during the American Revolutionary War.[1] His descendants became leaders of the South for nearly a century and played crucial roles in developing the Southern Colonies under plantations operating using slaves.[2][3] Preston also supported education, as would his descendants. He was a founding trustee of Liberty Hall when it was transformed into a college in 1776.[4] His son, Virginia governor James Patton Preston, helped charter the University of Virginia roughly five decades later. His grandson, Congressman William Ballard Preston founded Olin and Preston Institute, which was in financial difficulties by 1872, when another grandson, former CSA Col. James Preston, sold three plantations (including Smithfield Plantation which this man purchased in 1773 and made his main home), to the Commonwealth of Virginia to become the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College, which is now the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.[5]
William Preston | |
|---|---|
| Member of the Virginia House of Burgesses from Augusta County | |
| In office 1765–1770 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | December 25, 1729 Limavady, Ireland |
| Died | June 28, 1783 Price's Fork, Montgomery County, Virginia |
| Resting place | Smithfield Plantation |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | surveyor, officer, planter, politician |
| Signature |  |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance | United Colonies |
| Branch/service | Virginia militia |
| Years of service | 1765–1781 |
| Rank | Colonel |
| Battles/wars | Draper's Meadow massacre Sandy Creek Expedition Lord Dunmore's War American Revolutionary War |
Early and family life
editWilliam Preston was born on Christmas Day in 1729, in Limavady, Ireland, to Col. John Preston and his wife, Elizabeth. Elizabeth's father, Henry Patton, was a prominent shipwright and merchant. Her brother (this man's uncle) James Patton served in the Royal Navy. The Crown granted him between 100,000 and 120,000 acres in America to permit British colonization beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains.[6] Col. John Preston immigrated with his family (including young William) to then frontier--then-vast Augusta County, Virginia in 1738.[7] After this man reached legal age (and after his first military service described below), the treaty ending the French and Indian War, led to the Royal Proclamation of 1763, reversing British policy and limiting the family's grants, although Prestonsburg, Kentucky was named in John's honor.[8] William received an education appropriate to his class, no public schools existing in that era.
William Preston married Susanna Smith on January 17, 1761, and together they had 12 children.
Career
editFrom surveyor to military officer
editPreston served in both the French and Indian War and American Revolutionary War, but his military career began a decade earlier as a diplomat and surveyor. In June 1752, William accompanied his uncle James Patton during negotiations to acquire land from native American tribes, and served as his secretary at the Logstown Treaty Conference. Patton soon arranged for his nephew to be apprenticed to Thomas Lewis, the County Surveyor and Patton's cousin, so in November 1752, William became a deputy surveyor.[9]: 3 He later served as surveyor in Augusta, Botetourt, Fincastle, and Montgomery Counties, surveying 36 tracts for Patton along the New River.[10]
In July 1755, Preston survived the Draper's Meadow massacre, an attack by the Shawnee against a settlement that was part of a property later known as Smithfield Plantation, that he purchased in 1773.[11]: 41 About a year later, Preston constructed his Smithfield Plantation home, which became his main residence.[9]: 25
Preston was a captain with the Virginia Regiment on the Sandy Creek Expedition in 1756. His journal is now the only complete record of that campaign.[12] During Lord Dunmore's War of 1773–1774, while fighting against the Shawnee Indians, Preston urged Virginians to join the militia to enact revenge on the Indians and plunder their stock of horses. As the militia colonel, one of Preston's greatest contributions to the American Revolutionary War was his ability to suppress the Tories (British loyalists) from uprising in southwest Virginia during the Revolution. He also helped fight Lord Cornwallis and the British in the Carolinas.[13]
Planter
editPreston moved his family to Smithfield Plantation, in present-day Blacksburg, Virginia, in 1774, and it served as his final home.[14] He previously lived at Greenfield Plantation in Fincastle, Botetourt County, Virginia.[15] At least 216 people were enslaved as workers at the Smithfield Plantation.[16] In August 1759, William Preston purchased 16 enslaved people from a slave ship in a single purchase.[16]
Politician
editPreston was elected to Virginia colony's House of Burgesses in 1765 to represent Augusta County and served until the county was divided around 1770.[17] In 1775, Preston was one of the signatories of the Fincastle Resolutions.
He served as a founding trustee of Liberty Hall (chartered in 1782), formerly named the Augusta Academy, when in 1776 it was renamed in a burst of revolutionary fervor and moved to Lexington, Virginia.[18] Other founding trustees Preston worked with were prominent men in the area, including Andrew Lewis, Thomas Lewis, Samuel McDowell, Sampson Mathews, George Moffett, and James Waddel.[4] It is the ninth-oldest institution of higher education in the country.[18]
Death and legacy
editThis section needs additional citations for verification. (August 2023) |
Preston died during a military muster near Price's Fork, Virginia, in 1783. Given the limited medical diagnoses of the day, he either suffered from a heat stroke or a heart attack. His remains were returned for internment at the family cemetery near Smithfield Plantation. His final home, Smithfield Plantation, now restored and listed on the U.S. Historical Registry, is open for tours from April through the first week in December.[19]
Many prominent Americans descended from Preston and his wife Susanna, for whom the plantation is named. They were parents or grandparents to governors, senators, presidential cabinet members, university founders, university presidents, and military leaders. The Prestons' son James Patton Preston was governor of Virginia from 1816 to 1819 and helped charter the University of Virginia. Their grandson William Ballard Preston was a congressman, Secretary of the Navy under Zachary Taylor, and later a senator from the Confederate States of America. William Ballard Preston also offered the Ordinance of Secession to the Virginia Legislature that resulted in Virginia joining the Confederacy, and he co-founded a small Methodist college, the Olin and Preston Institute, which was in financial difficulty by 1872. The trustees relinquished its charter and donated its property to the state, which reorganized the campus as the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College. Today, it is known as Virginia Tech.[20]
Preston was memorialized on July 27, 2011, with the Colonel William Preston highway in Blacksburg, Virginia.
The city of Prestonville, Kentucky, was erected on one of his land grants and named in his honor. Before 1800, it was the most important town in the county and larger than Port William. One of the first roads built in this section of the state was from the mouth of the Kentucky to New Castle in Henry County.
Further reading
edit- The Smithfield Review, Volumes I-XV.
- Johnson, Patricia Givens, William Preston and the Allegheny Patriots. 1976
- Osborn, Richard Charles, William Preston of Virginia, 1727–1783: The Making of a Frontier Elite. UMI Dissertation Services. 1990
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ The Smithfield Review, Volume XIV, "The Fincastle Resolutions," Jim Glanville. page 81
- ^ Colonel William Preston Gravestone, Preston Family Cemetery, Smithfield Plantation, Blacksburg, Virginia
- ^ The Smithfield Review, Volume XIV, "The Fincastle Resolutions," Jim Glanville. page 91
- ^ a b Williams, Richard G (2013). Lexington, Virginia and the Civil War. The History Press, 2013. Retrieved online https://books.google.com/books?id=SnlXXMRrD3MC&pg=PA22
- ^ https://liberalarts.vt.edu/news/events/2022/02/plantation-histories-and-the-university--rethinking-the-past-dur.html
- ^ Preston, F.L. "John Preston 1699-1747". 2007. Accessed 28 September 2013.
- ^ Osborn, Richard Charles. William Preston of Virginia, 1727–1783: The Making of a Frontier Elite.1990, Dissertation, University of Maryland College Park. pages 9–10
- ^ Rennick, Robert. Kentucky Place Names, p. 242. University Press of Kentucky (Lexington), 1987. Accessed 1 Aug 2013.
- ^ a b Ryan S. Mays, "The Draper's Meadows Settlement (1746-1756) Part II," Smithfield Review, vol 19, 2015
- ^ Jim Glanville, "William Preston the Surveyor and the Great Virginia Land Grab," Smithfield Review, volume 17, pp. 43-74, 2013
- ^ Ryan S. Mays, "The Draper's Meadows Settlement (1746-1756)," Part I, The Smithfield Review, Volume 18, 2014
- ^ Lyman C. Draper, "The expedition of the Virginians against the Shawanoe Indians, 1756," Virginia Historical Register and Literary Companion, Vol. V, Number II. Richmond: McFarlane & Fergusson, April 1852
- ^ The Smithfield Review, Volume XII. "William Preston, Revolutionary (1779–1780)," Richard Osborn. pages 5–24
- ^ Family Tree, Historic Smithfield Plantation Museum
- ^ Michael J. Pulice & John R. Kern (April 2010). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory/Nomination: Greenfield" (PDF).
- ^ a b "Historic Smithfield Plantation History". Historic Smithfield Plantation. Retrieved October 7, 2020.
- ^ Johnson, Patricia Givens. William Preston and the Allegheny Patriots, 1976. pages 89–108
- ^ a b "A History: Washington and Lee University". Wlu.edu. Retrieved February 28, 2011.
- ^ "Historic Smithfield". Smithfield Foundation, Inc. Retrieved November 6, 2020.
- ^ Kinnear, Duncan Lyle. "A Short History of Virginia Tech". Retrieved September 15, 2017.