Page 267 [267]
TODDSBURY
HERE is no more ideal place in America for coun¬
try seats than along North River, an estuary of
Mobjack Bay. The name of this sheet of water
VY CA was given it by the sailors of long ago, who, when
Kt Fad se 44, the echoes of their songs and voices were thrown
ESZES zi back by the lush green shores, accused these silent
banks of mocking ‘“‘Jack”’ the sailor. Hence the name Mock Jack,
now known no more, but substituted by the meaningless one of
Mobjack.
Early in the seventeenth century Thomas odd, emigrant,
patented extensive lands in Maryland and Virginia; he was Burgess
of Baltimore County in 1674-75, and in 1676 died at sea while
on a voyage in the "good ship Virginia." With his will filed in
the clerk’s office at Towson, the county seat of Baltimore County,
Maryland, and in which he left Toddsbury to his son, [homas,
there is a letter addressed ‘this to my son, Thomas Iodd, at his
home on North River, Gloucester County, Virginia, with all speed,’’
and an old record says of the emigrant “he was very riche.’’ [here
are many descendants of Thomas Todd of Maryland and Virginia
scattered over the United States. Many of them have taken high
positions, an ancestor of the Kentucky branch of this family having
been a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
In their veins runs the blood of the poet Lovelace and of our
first Virginia poet, George Sandys. In Virginia, three of the de¬
scendants of Thomas Jodd are on the bench—Judge Beverly
Crump, Judge Crump Tucker and Judge John Rutherfoord. An¬
other, Dr. Beverly Tucker, an eminent nerve specialist, is also a
writer and poet of promise. In Maryland the families of Moale,
Hofttman and Poultney are direct descendants, and in New York
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