Figure of the Week

John Savage (1706-c.1743) was one of the surveyors chosen in 1736 to ascertain the boundaries of the Northern Neck Proprietary.  My mid-October of that year, then party of surveyors and their assistants were deep inside the Virginia wilderness and were short of food.  Col. William Byrd wrote that the party was “almost reduced to the hard necessity of cutting up the most useless person among them, Mr. Savage, in order to support and save the lives of the rest.”  Byrd was noted for his sense of humor, presumably writing the statement in that vain.  John Savage owned a good deal of land in what’s now the Marine Corps reservation in northern Stafford County.  He was the official surveyor of Stafford from at least 1723 to 1731.