Daniel Harrison Plantation.
Dayton, Virginia, 6 miles southwest of Harrisonburg, Virginia, on Route #42.
About 1749.
This house is a rectangular, two and a half story stone house with gabled roof and two brick chimneys, one on each end. There are four windows on the front double windows, with ten by fifteen-inch panes. The porch is one-story with four square columns and a flat roof. You enter the house from this porch through a paneled door, which has sidelights and an oblong transom.
The house has four large rooms and the ceiling are nine feet high. The walls are papered. There is an open string stairway going up from a wide hall. All the doors are the paneled type.
The house is constructed of limestone, with heavy walls. (Could not enter; did not see the interior of house.)
Daniel Harrison (1701-1770) the eldest son of Isaiah Harrison and his second wife, Abigail Smith, was born at Smithtown, Long Island, 1701. Isaiah’s first wife was Elizabeth, daughter of Gideon and Elizabeth (Townsend) Wright.
Isaiah Harrison came to America about the year 1688, as he first appears at Oyster Bay under that date, where at a "Town meeting he was given and granted, one whole right of commonage and upon ye old purchase of ye town, with all privileges thereto belonging as other such Particular rights have", etc. conditioned upon continuing to be an inhabitant of the town for seven years. By this grant he was made a freeholder of the town and as such freeholder, entitled to the right of participating in the town affairs. Mention is made of the old purchase; this was the purchase of 1653, from the Indians.
On the 19th. Of September, 1677, a patent of confirmation for the lands previously bought from the natives, was obtained of Governor Andros, in which the proprietors were named as Henry Townsend, Sr., Nicholas Wright, Thomas Townsend, Gideon Wright and others, "on ye behalf of themselves and their associates ye freeholders and inhabitants of ye said towne their heirs, successors and assigns". This patent was recorded by order of the Governor at the request of the inhabitants the 20th day of November 1685.
As these men were at the time of the patent, the influential townsmen of Oyster Bay, no doubt it was through the inducement of one of these or some member of their families that Isaiah Harrison came to locate
Daniel Harrison Plantation
Page 2
in the town. Oyster Bay, Long Island, was first permanently settled in the year 1653, and the first transfer of land was by Indian deed, dated that year.
It was at Oyster Bay that Isaiah’s first wife, Elizabeth, died, between 1698 and 1702, leaving him with five small motherless children, and where he married his second wife, Abigail. He sold his holdings here and purchased a tract of five hundred acres in Suffolk County, for four hundred pounds, five hundred acres in Suffolk County, for four hundred pounds, April 20, 1702, and moved to Smithtown, Long Island, where his son, Daniel Harrison was born. Isaiah Harrison sold his homeplace at Smithtown, June 21, 1721, and shortly after removed with his family to Sussex County, Delaware, where he bought nine hundred acres of land known as Maiden Plantation. About eight miles west of Lewes, on this plantation, his wife, Abigail died, about 1732. Isaiah’s children by his two marriages, were ten in number, seven of them boys.
Daniel Harrison, eldest son by his second wife Abigail, moved with the rest of the family to Maiden Plantation and after the death of Abigail, the estate was divided up among the children.
All the sons and daughters of Isaiah, with the exception of Gideon and possibly Elizabeth, settled in the region around Harrisonburg, Daniel locating at the head spring of Cooks Creek about 1738. His original tract on Naked Creek was in what is now Augusta County, just south of the Augusta-Rockingham line.
On August 20th, 1741, Daniel’s second patent was for four hundred acres on the Dry Fork of Smiths Creek, his son Robert patenting two hundred six acres at the same time along this fork and adjoining his fathers. Both of these patents embraced the tract later known as Smithland (some fifty-four acres being added by Robert by purchase) the first county Seat of Rockingham County.
Daniel Harrison married first, Margaret Cravens, in 1724; his second wife was Sarah Stephenson, widow of William Stephenson. He finally settled on the Head Spring of Cooks Creek, nor Dayton, where the old stone house now stands in the edge of the town. This house was built by him about 1749 or before. This old home plantation remained in the Harrison family through succeeding generations for one hundred twelve years, passing by inheritance first to Daniel’s son Benjamin and next to his grandson, Peachy Harrison, who lived in Harrisonburg a prominent physician and extensive land owner as well. Although Daniel Harrison and his sons were granted some four thousand two hundred ninety four acres of Augusta county lands in seventeen patents, all except three of them being issued to Daniel himself.
Daniel Harrison had his share in public affairs and took a leading part in the early development of this part of the Valley of Virginia. He was deputy sheriff of the County of Augusta and a captain in the militia in the deference of the community in the Indian Troubles.
Daniel Harrison’s sons, grandsons and descendants have been men of prominence, filling places of distinction and responsibility in the communities in which they lived, as well as in the professions of medicine, law and education. Peachy Harrison, as said before, was a prominent physician in Harrisonburg, as was his son, Peachy Rush Harrison; another son of Peachy Harrison was Gesture Harrison, one of the first nine graduates of the university of Virginia and later becoming famous as an educator in that institution. He entered her halls in 1825 and graduated in the Degrees of Medicine and Ancient languages in July 1828, and in august of that year, was appointed Professor of the School of Ancient Languages at the University. He held this position until near his death, or for over thirty years. Harrison Hall in our Virginia State Teachers College at Harrisonburg is named for him and his portrait now adorns the University Library in the rotunda at the head of the lawn. It has been said of him, "he was perhaps the most important figure in the educational history of the Southern States in the period before the War Between the States?
Daniel Harrison Plantation
Page 3
Photograph. (missing)
Rockingham County Court Records, Harrisonburg Virginia.
Settlers by the Long Grey Trail, Dayton, Virginia, 1935.
July 22, 1936 Geo. W. Fetzer Harrisonburg, VA