Hugh West
d. 1754
Tobacco planter and operator of the Hunting Creek tobacco warehouse that anchored the commercial settlement around which Alexandria grew. His parcel and John Alexander John Alexander b. 1711 · d. 1764 Great-grandson of , the immigrant patriarch who in 1669 bought the 6,000-acre Howson tract on which the city of Alexandria was later platted. The John Alexander who held the … ’s were the two landholdings named in the 1749 Virginia Assembly act establishing the town; he sat with John Carlyle John Carlyle b. 1720 · d. 1780 Scottish-descent merchant born in Carlisle, England, in 1720; one of the eleven founding trustees of Alexandria in 1749, and builder of the stone Carlyle House at the head of what … and William Ramsay William Ramsay b. 1716 · d. 1785 Scottish-born merchant, one of the original trustees of Alexandria in 1749, and by local tradition the town's first postmaster and first lord mayor. His frame house on King Street … on the founding board of trustees.
Hugh West of the The West family The West family Tobacco-warehouse and ferry family whose 1730s landing at "Hunting Creek Warehouse" on the Potomac was the commercial nucleus around which Alexandria was platted in 1749. Hugh West … was a Stafford County tobacco planter and warehouse operator active from the 1720s. The Virginia Assembly’s 1730 Tobacco Inspection Act required tobacco for export to be inspected and weighed at designated public warehouses; under that regime West and his brother John operated the public inspection warehouse on Great Hunting Creek from 1732 onwards — the literal commercial nucleus around which the future Alexandria grew [1] Powell, History of Old Alexandria, 1928 Book . Along with the warehouse he ran the Potomac ferry and a tavern serving travellers and tobacco-traders, making the West landing the most active commercial site between Falmouth and the Maryland line.
By the 1740s the warehouse was attracting permanent merchants — the Scottish factor John Carlyle John Carlyle b. 1720 · d. 1780 Scottish-descent merchant born in Carlisle, England, in 1720; one of the eleven founding trustees of Alexandria in 1749, and builder of the stone Carlyle House at the head of what … settled at the landing about 1741, William Ramsay William Ramsay b. 1716 · d. 1785 Scottish-born merchant, one of the original trustees of Alexandria in 1749, and by local tradition the town's first postmaster and first lord mayor. His frame house on King Street … and John Pagan John Pagan Scottish tobacco merchant who in 1748 co-signed with and the petition that asked the Virginia House of Burgesses to charter the new trading town that became Alexandria. One of … followed soon after — and the cluster of merchants successfully petitioned the House of Burgesses in 1748 to charter a formal town. The 1749 act directed the town to be laid out on land “of Philip and John Alexander, Hugh West, and others,” naming West as one of the two principal landholders. He was appointed to the eleven-trustee body that platted the town, served on the Common Council, and died in 1754, before the town’s commercial centre had outgrown his warehouse landing [2] Miller, Artisans and Merchants, 1991 Book .
Sources
- 1.
Mary G. Powell, The History of Old Alexandria, Virginia, from July 13, 1749 to May 24, 1861, Richmond: William Byrd Press, 1928.
Book
- 2.
T. Michael Miller, Artisans and Merchants of Alexandria, Virginia 1780-1820, Heritage Books, 1991.
Book
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