William Beverley, Request for a Shenandoah Valley Land Grant (excerpt), 1732

In 1716, Virginia's royal lieutenant governor Alexander Spotswood led an expedition over the Blue Ridge Mountains into the Shenandoah Valley. The explorers located Swift Run Gap, which provided relatively easy passage over the mountains, and Spotswood claimed the land for the king. The colonial government wanted to attract European colonists to settle in the region to counteract threats of French expansion from the west and to serve as a buffer between the Indigenous-occupied lands to the west and the established English settlements in eastern and central Virginia. Colonial leaders also feared that enslaved people who escaped bondage might establish free communities in the sparsely-settled Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah Valley. 

Early in the 1730s, William Gooch, the lieutenant governor at that time, granted almost 400,000 acres of land west of the Blue Ridge Mountains to wealthy land speculators. One of those speculators, William Beverely, wrote this letter to an unnamed government official in 1732 seeking a large tract of land in the region, which was often referred to as the backcountry. He planned to sell land to immigrants then living in Pennsylvania at a price that induce them to take the risk of moving to an unstable region. The General Assembly also incentivized settlement with an act in 1734 that provided those who settled west of the Shenandoah River by a certain date with an exemption from paying taxes and parish levies for three years. Such incentives succeeded, and within a decade about 10,000 Europeans were living in the region. In 1736, Beverley received a grant of more than 100,000 acres in what is now Augusta County. By 1750, he had sold more than 80,000 acres of land to new settlers.

Many of the settlers were Germans and Scots-Irish who followed the Great Wagon Road from Pennsylvania to the Shenandoah Valley. As they settled in the Valley, small towns emerged that reflected the cultures of the immigrants. The limestone soil was fertile and well-drained and excellent for agriculture. Farmers there raised cattle and grew grain in contrast to the larger tobacco producers of central and eastern Virginia. The farms were often smaller and relied on the labor of family members and hired or indentured servants, although the use of enslaved labor increased in the nineteenth century. Small industries, such as grist mills, lumber mills, and iron furnaces were also established. The Great Wagon Road enabled Valley farmers to profitably send their wheat and flour and other products to markets in Alexandria and Philadelphia.

Citation: Excerpt from William Beverley letter, April 30, 1732, Colonial Papers (box 146, folder 36), Accession 36138, Library of Virginia (see the complete letter online in Colonial Papers Digital Collection).


Learn more about William Beverley in his Dictionary of Virginia Biography entry online at Encyclopedia Virginia.

Learn more about the Backcountry Frontier of Colonial Virginia online at Encyclopedia Virginia.

Preview Activity

Scan It: What words stand out to you, and why? What words are familiar, despite the spellings?

Post Activities

Analyze: Analyze Beverley’s argument. Why is he asking the Governor's Council for land? Why does he think he can persuade people to move to the Shenandoah Valley?

Up for Debate: Imagine you are a family in Pennsylvania deciding whether to settle in the Shenandoah Valley. What would your arguments be for and against moving? If it were up to you, what would you have decided to do, and why?

STEM STAT: Identify your region and list its attributes. How are those attributes similar or different to those of the Shenandoah Valley? How does geography impact land use for farming and immigration purposes?