On Christmas morning Fithian was awakened by the guns being fired around the house. Then the boy who made the fire came in with a "Christmas Box," for a tip, and the other servants followed with their "Boxes." Mrs. Carter sent him over some spermaceti candles--"large clear & very elegant." The holidays were a round of balls and parties, which Fithian excused himself from as much as possible. He was glad when they were over--"We had a large Pye cut to-day to signify the conclusion of the Holidays."
It was so cold in January that "a cart and three pair of oxen which every day bring in four loads of wood, Sundays excepted." In the manor and other houses there were twenty-eight "steady fires & most of them are very large." It grew so cold that the cart went for wood on Sunday also.
Mail was gotten infrequently from the post-office at Hobb's Hole, which was the name of present-day Tappahannock. Newspapers from the North and _The Virginia Gazette_ brought accounts of the Tea Party in Boston, and other rumblings in the colonies. These "Golden Days" in Virginia were not to last much longer--war was in the making.
Fithian left Nomini Hall late in 1774. He could no longer stay away from his Northern "dream-girl," the "fair Laura" of his Journal. He was married to her in October, 1775. He enlisted in the Revolutionary forces in 1776 as a chaplain, but his "meagre" body could not stand the life of the army. He died shortly after the battle of White Plains.
But Fithian had not lived in vain--his Journal was a legacy to posterity.
In colonial days a small school was conducted in the forest of Westmoreland County by a Scotch minister. His own sons were his pupils, and a few children who lived close enough to walk to school through the woodland lane which was cut for several straight miles through the woods and was known as the Parson's Road.
In 1755 the "Parson" had petitioned the Court of Westmoreland County to have a road from the "new Glebe opened to Round Hill Church." The petition was granted, for the Reverend Archibald Campbell was an influential man in the region.
Mr. Campbell came to Virginia from Scotland in October, 1741. The "new Glebe" was purchased, tradition says, from Thomas Marshall, "the surveyor," about 1753. The "Parson" moved to the "new Glebe" and lived there until his death in 1775. It was there that he conducted his school.