Alexander Balmain

Originally from Scotland, and trained as a Presbyterian, Balmain traveled to Virginia to become teacher to the children of Richard Henry Lee.

Apart from his duties in the clergy, Balmain also helped George Washington map the most convenient route from the Potomac to the Ohio.

Born and raised in Scotland, Balmain went on to study to be a Presbyterian minister at the University of St Andrews, receiving a Master of Arts in 1758.

These rights we are fully resolved, with our lives and fortunes, inviolably to preserve, nor will we surrender such inestimable blessings, the purchase of toil and danger, to any Ministry, to any Parliament, or any body of men upon earth, by whom we are not represented, and in whose decisions, therefore, we have no voice.

[6] Shortly after the end of the war, on September 6, 1784, George Washington met with Balmain and noted his account of the distance from Staunton to the Sweet Springs.

Balmain settled in Winchester, Virginia, where he served Christ Episcopal Church, as its minister, and also as rector of Frederick Parish.

[6] He mentored several clergymen, including parishioner William Meade, who also become a priest and later served as rector of Cunningham Chapel Parish for 27 years as well as becoming the third Episcopal Bishop of Virginia.

[4] Balmain lived a frugal life as his primary source of income was a meager military pension for his service during the war supplemented by subscriptions from his parishioners and rent from leases of the glebe lands, which were generally donated to the poor.

Balmain's last will and testament gave his wife Lucy the power to emancipate their slaves, whom Meade remembered them treating as their children, during her life or as part of her last will.

It includes personal and household accounts, those who subscribed to his salary from 1787 to 1797, paid mostly in wood, wool, and beef, the marriages and funerals he conducted, a list of his books, information about his Revolutionary land warrants, prayers, and copied newspaper articles from the politics of the day.