ne. In Spotsylvania, Spotswood, previous to the
year 1724, had founded, on a horseshoe peninsula of four hundred acres,
on the Rapidan, the little town of Germanna, so called after the Germans
sent over by Queen Anne, and settled in that quarter, and at this place
he resided. A church was built there mainly at his expense. In the year
1730 he was made deputy postmaster-general for the colonies, and held
that office till 1739; and it was he who promoted Benjamin Franklin to
the office of postmaster for the Province of Pennsylvania. Owning an
extensive tract of forty-five thousand acres of land, and finding it to
abound in iron ore, he engaged largely in partnership with Mr. Robert
Cary, of England, and others in Virginia, in the manufacture of it. He
is styled by Colonel Byrd the "Tubal Cain of Virginia;" he was, indeed,
the first person that ever established a regular furnace in North
America, leading the way and setting the example to New England and
Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania, at this period, was unable to export iron,
owing to the scarcity of ships, and made it only for domestic use.
Spotswood expressed the hope that "he had done the country very great
service by setting so good an example;" and stated "that the four
furnaces now at work in Virginia circulated a great sum of money for
provisions and all other necessaries in the adjacent counties; that they
took off a great number of hands from planting tobacco, and employed
them in works that produced a large sum of money in England to the
persons concerned, whereby the country is so much the richer; that they
are besides a considerable advantage to Great Britain, because it
lessens the quantity of bar iron imported from Spain, Holland, Sweden,
Denmark, and Muscovy, which used to be no less than twenty thousand tons
yearly, though, at the same time, no sow iron is imported thither from
any country, but only from the plantations. For most of this bar iron
they do not only pay silver, but our friends in the Baltic are so nice
they even expect to be paid all in crown pieces. On the contrary, all
the iron they receive from the plantations, they pay for it in their own
manufactures and send for it in their own shipping."[405:A]

There was as yet no forge set up in Virginia for the manufacture of bar
iron. The duty in England upon it was twenty-four shillings a ton, and
it sold there for from ten to sixteen pounds per ton, which paid the
cost of forging it abundantly; but S