Unlike the New England colonies where land ownership was more widely distributed in smaller parcels of land, the Virginia was parceled out among a few land-owning families, who became within a generation or two "landed gentry" of a scale that they could not have realized back in England. The Byrd family legacy, in fact, has continued well into this century. William Byrd II seems to have had an ambivalent relationship with his patrimony. While he wanted to be an English gentleman, he could not achieve that status in England, despite his best efforts. After numerous disappointments he returned to Virginia and came to embrace his role as patriarch.
In a patriarchal landed aristocracy, precise determinations become important in two areas: the paternity of children (especially sons) and the demarcation of property. It is no wonder, then, that many of Virginia's Colonial leaders were also skilled surveyors--Byrd, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson all come to mind. The Virginia Colony had originally included what now constitutes the Carolinas, and settlers on small farms had eventually established themselves there initially under the proprietorship of Virginia.
The History of the Dividing Line and The Secret History of the Dividing Line combine several discourses: travel writing, naturalist writing, picaresque novel, and regionalist writing. Byrd organizes his text by a sequence of oppositions or comparison and contrast.
Two things strike most student readers when they read Byrd's history. First, Byrd's characterization of the Carolinians reduces them to stereotypes: he invents "white trash." In part, he needed to distinguish himself from these lower-class peasant farmers. Second, his depiction of Native Americans seems somewhat enlightened. He grants them a natural religion, and in that respect he is a thoroughgoing Enlightenment Anglican (unlike many Puritans for whom Native Americans--and anything in a natural state--was fallen and sinful). He even regards their future among European settlers as benefiting from intermarriage with English colonists.
Finally, the histories also reveal Byrd as a scientist who is interested in the details of flora and fauna in the world around him. While many New England Puritans found the wilderness to be a darkly demonic vastness, for an Enlightenment natural scientist like Byrd it was a vast bounty. This is not surprising given that he was a member of the Royal Society of London for the Improving of Natural Knowledge, which had included such scientific figures as Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, William Petty, Christopher Wren, and Isaac Newton.
As you read, consider these questions:
What stereotypes about Southerners do you already see firmly in place by the time Byrd writes these histories in the early eighteenth century? How does this account compare to other travel or exploration writings from North America? How does Byrd use the discourse of regional difference to talk about social class differences? How do Byrd's attitudes toward Native Americans differ from those of his Puritan New England contemporaries and predecessors? How might his Anglicanism account for some of those differences?
Return to William Byrd II of Westover Homepage.
Prepared by Dr. Thomas L. Long, October 1998.