The great majority of whites were small farmers whose condition was anything but desirable. It was their sweat and toil which made the machinery of colonial life work. Their existence was tedious and humdrum, bounded by seasons and crops. These small farmers were more and more being crushed beside the great plantations, flourishing from the labor of many slaves. So profitable did the large planters find the use of negroes that by 1740 negroes outnumbered the white population in the colony.

The 1745 population of all the colonies were as follows: New Hampshire 26,000, Massachusetts 168,000, Rhode Island 29,000, Connecticut 84,000, New York 71,000, New Jersey 58,000, Pennsylvanna and Delaware 125,000, North Carolina 65,000, Maryland 120,000 and Virginia with 237,000. Tobacco was the leading staple of Maryland and Virginia with these two colonies shipping 70,000 hogsheads to the mother land. Two hundred ships were engaged in this service and the revenue yielded to the British treasury was more than one million dollars annually. The majority of blacks over whites soon gave way before the influx of white immigrants, and in 1756 there was a population of 292,000, of whom only 120,000 were negroes. The small farmer class had grown so rapidly that the old tidewater aristrocracy was in danger of being overwhelmed. They were hostile to the established church and suspicious of slavery.

The "West" had now appeared in American history. This first "West", made up of the older small farmers, of the Scottish settlers, of the Germans and the Scot-Irish, far outnumbering the people of the old counties, demanded the creation of new counties. Unequal representation in the House of Burgesses denied them a fair voice in the government of the colony. They demanded proportionate representation. The settlement of the valley also threatened the hunting grounds of the surrounding Indians which provoked hostility. The Indians had been peaceful or out of contact with the whites for nearly 75 years. It also alarmed the French, who desired to establish their control over the Ohio Valley; the Seven Years' War between England and France (1756-1763) was prefaced by two years of conflict along the Virginia frontier.

Convinced that settlements were essential to controlling lands, Virginia promoted western expansion by offering seculators 1,000 acres for every family they could place. At age 17, an ambitious George Washington was hired by Virginia's greatest landowner, Thomas, Lord Fairfax to survey lands in western Virginia. After three years, George Washington knew western Virginia as well as anyone and was well aware of its great value. For the next several decades, Washington pursued two intertwined interests, military arts and western expansion.

Virgina was thought to have the greatest natural advantages, minerals and otherwise, of any other colony. Along the James River alone, blue limestone and blue marble was found at Walker Ford, Allen Creek and Riverville which was burned to make lime for agricultural purposes and to make mortar. Limestone was also used later in the iron furnaces up and down the river. Thomas Jefferson described natural white marble varigated with red, blue and purple along the Rockfish River. Soapstone was used by the Indians for pots and pipes while the settlers used it for hearths, chimneys and tombstones. Quartz was mined at Wrights Shop and gneiss, a granite like rock used in Lynchburg for building and street construction. Greenstone quarried in Amherst was used in Lynchburg's Quaker Meeting House. Slate found at Snowden, glass sand found near Stapleton, iron ore, brown hematite and limonite were found in the Galt's Mill to Allen Creek corridor. Copper was discovered in The Glades near Buffalo Ridge and rutile and ilmenite was found in the Roseland area. Stretching all the way out to the Ohio River, the other colonies were envious of all of these natural resources and it was thought that Virginia was going to take advantage of all this and tap the great future western trade leaving the other colonies wanting.

In 1763 through 1765, an investigation of the finances of the colony forced by the "up-country party", showed widespread corruption and resulted in the collapse of the tidewater oligarchy, which had been in power since 1660.

In the meantime, the Presbyterians, who had been officially recognized in Virginia under the Toleration Act of 1699, and had been guaranteed religious autonomy in the valley by Governor Gooch in 1738. The Baptists entered the colony about the same time and established scores of churches. The new denominations vigorously attached the methods and immunitites of the established church, whose clergy had grown lukewarm in zeal and lax in morals. Patrick Henry, at Hanover Court in 1763, easily

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