What Did John Davis Really Think of Occqouan?

When you walk into the Occoquan Historical Society’s Mill House Museum, almost directly across from you in an alcove you’ll see the following quote:

“Yet no place can be more romantic than the view of Occoquan to a stranger, after crossing the rustic bridge, which has been constructed by the inhabitants across the stream. He contemplates a river urging its course along the mountains that lose themselves among the clouds; he beholds vessels taking on board flour under the foam of the mills, and others deeply laden expanding their sails to the breeze; while every face wears contentment every gale wafts health, and echo from the rocks multiples the voices of the waggoners calling to their teams.”

These words were written by the English novelist, John Davis, in his work, Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States of America; During 1798, 1799, 1800, 1801, and 1802, dedicated to Thomas Jefferson and published in London in 1803.

Davis came to America in late 1797, arriving in New York with the desire to set himself up as a private tutor for a family. Before eventually coming to Occoquan in 1801, he travelled up and down the east coast a number of times, translating and writing, becoming friends with Aaron Burr, attending the presidential inauguration of Thomas Jefferson, and writing about how strongly he detested the institution of slavery that he witnessed in the South. In the summer of 1801, Davis had gone to Washington, believing that through the intercession of Aaron Burr he was to receive a diplomatic position in the Department of the Treasury. It was not to be, however, the supposed job offer apparently based on a misunderstanding. A dejected Davis thus soon found himself in the middle of July in an excessively hot Alexandria, Virginia. There he put an advertisement in the Gazette and within a few weeks a Quaker gentleman approached him about a job tutoring the children of a Quaker named Nathaniel Ellicott along the banks of the Occoquan. During this entreaty, the gentleman, according to Davis “lavished his eloquence on the romantic beauties of the river Occoquan, and the stupendous mountains that nodded over its banks.”

Accepting the invitation, Davis left Alexandria for Occoquan, where Ellicott engaged him to educate his children for a quarter year in reading, writing, and arithmetic, but thought French and Latin an abuse of time and asked Davis “not to say another word about it.”

Davis described his introduction to Occoquan thus: “On crossing a little bridge, I came within view of the Settlement, which is romantic beyond conception. A beautiful river rolls its stream along the mountains that rise abruptly from its bank, while on the opposite rocky shore, which appears to have been formed by a volcano, are seen two mills enveloped in foam, and here and there a dwelling which has vast masses of stone for its foundation. The eye for some time is arrested by the uncommon scene; but it is soon relieved by a beautiful landscape that bounds the horizon. In a word, all the riches of nature are brought together in this spot, but without confusion.”

That quotation and the one with which I opened this segment are the two most used Davis quotes in Occoquan promotional literature. And, in fact, in multiple places in his work beyond just these two instances, Davis extolled the natural beauty of the area. He even wrote two odes about it entitled, “Evening at Occoquan” and “Morning at Occoquan.” Yet, Davis’s view of the then settlement, its people, and his time here, was not always as flattering as these references might lead one to believe.

Though he initially appeared to think well of Ellicott, Davis noted the failed vision of his employer, writing that due to “the richness of the adjacent country, and the healthfulness of the climate,” the proprietor had been induced to project the plan of a city, but his visions were never realized and Occoquan “consists only of a house built on a rock, three others on the riverside, and a half a dozen log-huts scattered at some distance.” “Occoquan,” he noted, “scarcely supplied more literature than Ovid’s place of banishment on the Black Sea,” and it was friendship with a Frenchman near Fauquier Court-house that cheered “the gloom of [his] solitude at Occoquan.” To alleviate this gloom Davis also rode to Alexandria every Saturday, visited what he considered to be an excellent tavern by the bridge that crossed the Occoquan near its mouth at the Potomac, and wrote letters – in one instance “execrating the honeypromises of the great men of power, who had doomed [him] to the obscurity of Occoquan.”

But it was the people of the area and his pupils that generated Davis’s most unflattering descriptions of Occoquan. They possessed more “curiosity than breeding,” he remarked when they assembled around a party of Indians who had turned from the road to visit a grave on the north bank of the river. After three months at Occoquan, Davis had had his fill of the people and his pupils. He was, he wrote “surrounded by a throng of oafs, who read their lessons with the same tone that Punch [a popular English puppet show character at the time] makes when he squeaks through a comb.”

Three months later Davis held even Ellicott in lower estimation. Upon informing Ellicott of his resignation, Ellicott chose as Davis’s replacement “an old drunken Irishman of the name Burbridge,” who according to Davis “was so drunk that he could with difficulty stand on his legs” when addressing Ellicott. Davis alleges that he protested to the Quaker that it was improper to employ such a person to educate his children, to which Ellicott allegedly responded, “Friend, of all the schoolmaster I ever employed none taught my children to write so good a hand, as a man who was constantly in a state that bordered on intoxication. They learned more of him in one month, than of any other in a quarter.”

It was not without some melancholy that John Davis left Occoquan, but one can easily imagine him saying to a tavern acquaintance some years later, “Occoquan? Yes I know it. I spent three months there one night.”

If you are interested in John Davis’s work, it’s in the public domain and available online.

Learn more about the Occoquan Historical Society at occoquanhistoricalsociety.org!