William Preston

Colonel William Preston (December 25, 1729 – June 28, 1783) was an Irish-born American military officer, planter and politician who founded a political dynasty. After service in the French and Indian War, Preston served five years in the House of Burgesses before becoming one of the fifteen signatories of the Fincastle Resolutions, then a colonel in the Virginia militia during the American Revolutionary War.

Early life, emigration and education William Preston was born on Christmas Day in 1729, in Limavady, County Londonderry, Ireland, to ship carpenter John Preston and his wife, Elizabeth. Their first born son, he ultimately had four sisters who married (Letitia married Robert Breckinridge, Margaret married John Brown, Ann married Francis Smith and Mary married John Howard), and one of his younger brothers, William also reached adulthood (marrying Susanna Smith). The youngest brother, James, died as a boy. Elizabeth's father, Henry Patton, was a prominent shipwright and merchant, and his son (this man's uncle) James Patton served in the Royal Navy. In 1737 James Patton and his Virginia partner, Col. William Beverley, had secured the right to develop 30,000 acres in then-huge Orange County (in the part that became still-vast Augusta County in 1745) from Edward Barradall and John Lewis. Patton promised that if John Preston traveled to America and served as a ship-wright, he would received 4,000 acres of land, so John Preston, his wife, son and three daughters sailed to Virginia upon the 'Walpole' in 1738. The Prestons settled about eight miles south of what became Staunton, and John Preston operated an ordinary, as well as employed indentured workers on road contracts with the local government. Although John Preston became estranged from Patton before his death in the winter of 1747–1748 (before this man reached legal age), his widow moved into Staunton and helped her brother with his bookkeeping and other activities, as well as helped establish the Tinkling Spring Presbyterian Church. Meanwhile, William received a rudimentary education appropriate to his class, including with Rev. John Craig, pastor of the Tinkling Spring Presbyterian Church.

Ultimately, the Crown granted Patton's partners between 100,000 and 120,000 acres in America to permit British colonization beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains. She bore 12 children and would survive him by four decades. Somewhat complicating matters, although this man appears nearly self-educated and no relation, a contemporary of the time was Rev. William Preston (d. 1778), who had been born in Westmoreland County in England before graduating from Queen's College of Oxford University and who emigrated to Virginia in 1752 to become professor of moral philosophy at the College of William and Mary and minister of James City Parish in 1755. He married Mary Tyler, daughter of John Tyler of James City (Williamsburg), but resigned in 1757 to return to England where he became rector of Ormside. He would also lead troops in both the French and Indian War and American Revolutionary War, but his military career began a decade earlier as a diplomat and surveyor. In June 1752, William accompanied his uncle James Patton during negotiations to acquire land from native American tribes, and served as his secretary at the Logstown Treaty Conference. Patton soon arranged for his nephew to be apprenticed to Thomas Lewis, the surveyor the Augusta county surveyor and Patton's cousin, so in November 1752, William became a deputy surveyor. He later served as surveyor in Augusta, Botetourt, Fincastle, and Montgomery Counties, in particular surveying 36 tracts for Patton along the New River. Preston would later serve as county lieutenant for Fincastle County (much of which became Kentucky about a decade after this man's death) and Montgomery Counties (part of which later became West Virginia decades later), after the Virginia legislature further split Augusta County after the Botetourt County spinoff discussed below as its population continued to increase. Preston survived the Draper's Meadow massacre, an attack by the Shawnee against a settlement that was part of a property later known as Smithfield Plantation, that he purchased in 1773. About a year later, Preston constructed his Smithfield Plantation home, which became his main residence. His journal is now the only complete record of that campaign. Preston was also responsible for erecting Fort William near one of the mountain passes to protect settlers, and in early October 1756 he accompanied George Washington from Augusta Court House to the James River at Col. John Buchanan's at Luney's Ferry during Washington's survey of the frontier before taking drafted militia to relieve the company at Millar's Fort in November. In 1757 and 1758, he commanded troops at Fort Prince George in the Bullpasture area, before being qualified as major of the Augusta County militia on November 17, 1758. Despite that rank, he was captain of a ranger company stationed at Fort Young in 1759, then commissioned lieutenant colonel of the militia on August 17, 1759.

During Lord Dunmore's War of 1773–1774, while fighting against the Shawnee Indians, Preston urged Virginians to join the militia to enact revenge on the Indians and plunder their stock of horses. As the county lieutenant, one of Col. Preston's greatest contributions to the American Revolutionary War was his ability to suppress the Tories (British loyalists) from uprising in then-vast southwest Virginia during the Revolution. He also helped fight Lord Cornwallis and the British in the Carolinas. In February 1759, Preston purchased 191 acres on Buffalo Creek near the headwaters of the James River which had a block house or fort surrounded by a stockade. It became the core of Greenfield plantation where Preston moved his family by 1762. In August 1759, Preston traveled to Nanjemoy, Maryland and purchased 16 enslaved Africans from the ship True Blue for 752pounds (to avoid a 5% Virginia sales tax). Greenfield contained 1590 acres by 1765 and 2175 acres by the time of Preston's death, when it was one of Botetourt County's largest plantations. Virginia Tech, and Duke University, as well as the Swem library of the College of William and Mary,

Many prominent Americans descended from Preston and his wife Susanna, for whom he had named Smithfield plantation. His firstborn son and principal heir John Preston had served under his father in the militia, and would first represent Montgomery County in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1783 as well as serve in the Virginia Senate and as the state Treasurer. His brother Francis Preston would also serve in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly as well as the U.S. House of Representatives. William and Susanna thus were parents or grandparents to governors, senators, congressmen, presidential cabinet members, university founders, university presidents, and military leaders. The Prestons' son James Patton Preston was governor of Virginia from 1816 to 1819 and helped charter the University of Virginia. Their grandson William Ballard Preston was a congressman, Secretary of the Navy under Zachary Taylor, and later a senator from the Confederate States of America. William Ballard Preston also offered the Ordinance of Secession to the Virginia Legislature that resulted in Virginia joining the Confederacy, and he co-founded a small Methodist college, the Olin and Preston Institute, which was in financial difficulty by 1872. The trustees relinquished its charter and donated its property to the state, which reorganized the campus as the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College. Today, it is known as Virginia Tech.

Preston was memorialized on July 27, 2011, with the Colonel William Preston highway in Blacksburg, Virginia.

The city of Prestonville, Kentucky, was erected on one of his land grants and named in his honor. Before 1800, it was the most important town in the county and larger than Port William. One of the first roads built in this section of the state was from the mouth of the Kentucky to New Castle in Henry County.