Chapter 17
THE MCKENDRICKS HAD played second fiddle to the Billingtons for nearly two centuries. The Billingtons had a substantial head start, by more than a hundred years, thanks to a land grant from George II in return for favors to the Crown from the Fifth Earl of Hemsly, Lord Billington. The fifth earl sent his fourth son, rendered a useless appendage through the practice of primogeniture, off to the New World to oversee the holdings in the Colony named in honor of the Virgin Queen. Over the next three hundred years the property that once extended, in theory, from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Ohio River dwindled to slightly less than four thousand acres; a mere speck of the original, but still a handsome and valuable hunk of real estate.
A Billington antecedent chose the name “Mon
