This tragedy occurred in the year 1799, when Sir Henry Clinton formed the plan of humbling the pride and destroying the resources of Virginia. He sent a powerful fleet to Hampton Roads and landed a force under General Mathews to advance and perfect this project. General Mathews took possession of Norfolk and Portsmouth and the surrounding country, burning Suffolk and committing depredations everywhere. The family of an English nobleman, frightened by the devastation, fled for safety to a point on the Nansemond where a part of the English fleet was lying in waiting. Passing Sandy Bottom the driver stopped to water his horses. He was urging them farther up stream where the water was deeper and clearer, when a runaway negro named Isaac sprang from the bank, shrieking out a warning of the terrible quicksand. His warning being disregarded, he snatched the sleeping baby from the nurse's arms, saying:
"Dis po' li'l chile can't he'p itse'f en I gwine to sabe it anyhow fum bein' gulched down dat quicksandy debil's th'oat, ef de yuthers won't be sabed."
Before the last echo had followed the negro's words--before the frightened child could catch breath for another shriek--carriage, horses, driver, footmen, maids, children and mistress were all sucked in by the dark water. A few bubbles here and there were the only sign of its treachery. The horrified riders had followed so close that the dash of their horses' feet splashed the water simultaneously on the screaming child and over the swirling waves which marked the fatal spot of its mother's doom.
As a reward for his warning and for saving the life of the child, Isaac, the negro, was given his liberty and a home--the first of his race ever _set free_ in Virginia--and was thereafter impressively distinguished by the (to those of his own color) opprobrious epithet of "Free-Negro-Isaac." This name was soon jargoned into Frenigike, and afterward, through culture and prosperity, into Freeling, the present family name of the descendants of Frenigike. The old place near Sandy Bottom is still called Free-Nigger-Town.
Past this spot of gruesome history I was borne in the unconsciousness of infancy through the little village of Chuckatuck and beyond until the carriage drew up at my grandmother's door and Uncle Charles, her foreman, came out with the little negroes running after him to welcome us.