sale. The town charter required that owners must construct a building of at least twenty-by-sixteen within one year. Its location at the intersection of the Great Wagon Road and Wilderness Road meant that it became a bustling center of travel and trade. It remained so until the formation of Campbell County in 1781 and the subsequent relocation of the county seat. The New London courthouse was an important landmark of this time. The John Hook trial took place in the courthouse. During the Revolutionary War John Hook, a Scottish-born merchant living in New London, was accused of being sympathetic to the British. In 1781, John Venable, the commissary for the American army seized two of John Hook's steers for the army to eat. John Hook brought a case against John Venable for taking his property. The case stays on the docket until 1789. During the trial Patrick Henry defended the state and John Venable against John Hook. On September 19, 1789, Patrick Henry delivered his famous "beef speech". John Hook One of the best-documented merchants in Virginia and an early member of the town of New London, John Hook demonstrated how consumerism worked in Colonial and Post Colonial Virginia. He squabbled with rivals, complained to the firm's partners in Scotland, and grew discouraged that he had not achieved the dream of great wealth. Yet in only a quarter-century, Hook went from doing menial tasks in an established Tidewater store, to managing a store in Piedmont, to imagining expanding his business as the line of European settlement roared westward. Early years and move to New London Born in Scotland, John Hook (1745-1808) arrived in America as an apprentice at the age of 13 in 1758. He began his training as a shopkeeper and clerk learning the tobacco trade under the training of the Donald family, a Scottish family that dealt in tobacco in the Chesapeake area. In 1764 Hook traveled from Chesapeake to New London, Virginia, where he partnered with William and James Donald to establish a store. By 1768 Hook was doing well in New London and wrote to his partner in Scotland stating "this and the adjacent Frontier counties is settling unaccountable fast from people below (the fall line of the James River) and from the Northward". In 1770 John Hook married Elizabeth Smith, daughter of Colonel John Smith of Goochland. John and Elizabeth had six children. Hook the