One of the earliest white settlers had been a Potomac planter, Derrell Judson. His vigorous descendants had grown up with the town, and left their touch upon the whole somnolent section. There was a disused Judson's Landing three miles up stream, and a ramshackle Judsontown on the Greenville Road to the southwest. Two of the family had been mayors of the village; there had been a wartime lieutenant-governor, and at least one congressman, with a proud host of lesser officials. None of the family had meant more to Judson eyes than a grandson of the early settler, Judge Tom Judson, whose flashing spirit had broken from his last year at college, in the troubled early spring of '61, to enter the gray cavalry. A year later, a captain now, he had hurled himself in daily desperate charges against the imperturbable Army of the Potomac, following his beloved Stonewall. At last an exploding shell carried off an arm, and with it his military usefulness to the Confederacy. When he walked weakly out of the hospital, two years later, the cause had become too hopeless for his capable direction to be of value. With the war's end came the order, signed by his own governor, calling for emancipation. In front of the weather-etched pillars of the portico, Judge Judson lined up his slaves, and dismissed them from servile happiness into precarious freedom. Close beside him were his three sons, Derrell, Pratt, and Paul, the eldest only six; their young minds were black with tearful rage against the "damn Yankees" who were causing the exile of the loved negroes. The black faces were grimed with tears; this changed social condition seemed nothing but a calamity to the well-tended household. Many of the slaves could not be persuaded to leave. Old Isaac, the coachman, hung onto the reins until he dropped dead at the cemetery, one broiling Decoration Day. Aunt Jane, who superintended the cooking, dared "them Bureau-ers" to meddle around her kitchen. The younger negroes gradually straggled away; but their places were filled with servants as well known to the family. The masters' attitude toward them, as might have been expected, remained almost the same as during "slavery times."