On New Soil

Yesterday, I introduced the earliest traveler on the dusty road- Margaret Lynn Lewis, Scottish wife of John Lewis who "slew the Irish Lord, settled Staunton, VA.,"and yadayada...read yesterday's post. These two and their covey of children apparently fled Loch Lynn and "its crown rocked summits and purple heather" after Margaret's castle burned and John became a fugitive. Margaret says it better. In her words:

"Bidding farewell to the bonny Loch and knows of Lynn, though along with the gallant Huguenot I had taken for my husband, caused surely a woman’s grief to my heart, nay something like a child’s I might say. It was not for the band of retainers, the powerful clans and castle splendors I had grown up withal surrounded, but I almost cried aloud for my mother, for good Dame Darley, our blessed English tutoress, and for Old Elliot, my nurse. I thought the first night I came to my husband’s mother’s, and was set up as a lady, to receive Court, I should blubber like a great child. This with remembrance, that at that very time, my mother was taking her cup of comfort, as she called her tea, ---that the children were with her in their place, and that my chair, the one that was my sainted father’s, stood empty. I stood as long as endurance was good, then stole away to a more retired apartment. Then they sought me, and after a time found me sleeping in a great chair, like an overgrown baby. I did not like to give cause of offense, but I thought then as I have often since, of the significance of the Blessed Apostles sleeping for sorrow and heaviness of heart, as the Master’s time drew nigh."

Alas, Margaret Lynn and her gallant Huguenot set sail for the new country, Margaret with heavy heart and her journal as her most intimate companion, the only one with whom she could share her most sacred joys and grief. Here's her comment about her trusted keeper of truth:

"The commonplace book of me, Margaret Lynn Lewis, Nee Lynn, of Lock Lynn, Scotland, being a rest for my soul’s repose in the troublous times which hath befallen. Here nothing burdening myself with style ornate, I can retreat when toil and tumult of the day are past---Speaking as into a faithful ear, some of my woman’s sorrow. So shall I not add to their weight who have, heaven knows, enough of woe to bear for themselves."

Tomorrow, more on the early days of Margaret, her five or seven(records vary on the exact number) children and their new neighbors, Ungeewah-wah and his tribe.