Greenbrier County, West Virginia Biography of GEORGE ALDERSON This biography was submitted by Sandy Spradling, E-mail address: This file may be freely copied by individuals and non-profit organizations for their private use. All other rights reserved. Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other means requires the written approval of the file's author. This file is part of the WVGenWeb Archives. If you arrived here inside a frame or from a link from somewhere else, our front door is at http://www.usgwarchives.net/wv/wvfiles.htm History of Greenbrier County J. R. Cole Lewisburg, WV 1917 p. 312-317 GEORGE ALDERSON. In the old marriage book in the clerk's office at Lewisburg the first recorded marriage, after Greenbrier was organized as a separate county (1777), was that of George Alderson and Sarah Osborne, Rev. John A. officiating. She was the daughter of Rev. Josiah Osborne, born March 5, 1750, a Baptist minister, who lived in the Big Levels of Greenbrier, but who came from Lost River, Hardy county, before the close of the Revolution. George Alderson was the eldest son of Elder John Alderson, Jr., and was horn August 30, 1762, in Rockbridge county, and soon after his marriage moved to what is now Kanawba county, and settled at the mouth of George's Creek, which was named for him. Some time after his settlement there the new county of Kanawha was formed (1789 and he was one of its first justices when Charleston was incorporated, December 19, 1794. He had four children, three sons and a daughter, who moved hack to Greenbrier with their mother after his death about 1805. Of the sons, John, Levi and James 0. (the daughter, Pollie, married a McClung), the first lived at Western View (on the outskirts of Alderson) and will be mentioned later. James 0. was a very devout Baptist preacher, but died young. He was the father of James G. Alderson, who is now 86 years old. Joseph Alderson, the second son of Elder John Alderson, was born June 17, 1771. He married wben sixteen years of age, Mary "Polly" Newman, the daughter of Jonathan Newman, of Botetourt, Virginia, who was in the battle of Guilford. Tradition says that the first Newman migrated to America with Sir Walter Raleigh at the first settlement of Virginia. Joseph Alderson, known as "Squire Joe," settled after his marriage on what is known as the Perry farm, one mile south of Alderson. After a few years his home was burned while the family was absent from home. Mf. Alderson then built the house which still stands on this farm, and with his own hands cut his initials and "1799" in a rock near the top of the chimney, which today can be seen from the roadway. After living there seYeral years, during which time he was engaged with his brother George in the manufacture of salt in Kanawha, he purchased the farm where Hon. J. S. Thurmond now resides, which at that time embraced all of the lands from the mouth of Muddy Creek. and with the creek to Palestine, and with the side of the mountain to Greenbrier River above where P. B. Patton now lives. The purchase price on this place was paid in salt from the Kanawha Works delivered in Cincinnati. He afterwards acquired adjoining lands west of him as far as the top of Keeny's Mountain. A short time after removing to his new home he was appointed a justice of Greenbrier county. He represented Greenbrier county in the Legislature of Virginia for several terms, riding horseback from his home to Richmond to attend the sessions. In the absence of Mr. Alderson upon public duties, his wife, who was a capable business woman, superintended the large farm, overseeing his many slaves, and dispatched large quantities of home spuns and farm products to the Lynchburg market in exchange for household commodities. Joseph Alderson was a very devout Christian and always attended the meetings of the General Association of Virginia and his church meetings. He and his wife were very charitable and their doors were always open to the poor, and when large meetings were held at the Grembrier church they made it their special busi-ness to see that the more humble and poor were provided with homes during the meeting. He gave the ground upon which the Greenbrier church stands, and the cemetery adjoining, and left in his will the spring near the church "to the church and the public." He also gave the land for the Baptist church at Lewisburg. To Joseph Alderson were born eight children, George, Sarah, Mary, Martha, Margaret, Newman, Joseph Keyser and Lewis Allen. Colonel George Alderson was born November 20, 1789. He farmed and merchandised a few years, but was best known as a hotel keeper at De Kaib, in Fayette county, and through his con-nection with the James River and Kanawha Improvement Co., the hundreds of drovers from Kentucky, and the thousands of travelers to and fro on the old James River and Kanawha Turnpike knew and respected Colonel Alderson as a kind and hospitable man. He represented Fayette county in the Legislature several times. His first marriage was to Jeannette Creigh McClary, a classmate at the LAwisburg Academy (taught by Dr. McElheney). Her husband said of her: "None surpassed her in piety, affection, in love to her family as a wife and mother." To this union were born fourteen children; of these only one, John Marshall, resided in Greenbrier county, a sketch of whose life will be given later. His second marriage was to Eliza Ann Davis, daughter of Captain Charles Lewis Davis, of Amherst, Va., who was connected with the Ellison and Floyd families of Virginia. He died in De Kalb, the homestead in which he passed much of his time, on January 2, 1871, at the ripe old age of 8i years. Sarah, eldest daughter of Joseph, married Mr. Smithson and lived and died on the Perry farm, near Alderson, leaving no heirs. Joseph Keyser Alderson, the second son of Squire Joe, seems to have been a talented young man. He took the academy course under Dr. McElheney and devoted the few years of his life to the study of surveying, but his promising young life was closed by death at the age of 21. Rev. Lewis A. Alderson was born May 5, 1812, and was the youngest of his father's sons. He attended the Lewisburg Acad-emy about four years, and then graduated with the highest honors of his class at the University of Ohio in 1832. Dr. Hoge, of Richmond, Va., the late Dr. Thomas Creigh, Charles and John Stuart, Charles L. Arbuckle, and others of Greenbrier were his classmates at Athens, and were among his warmest friends. While at Athens be experienced a change of heart and rode all the way back to the Greenbrier church to make a public profession of religion and receive baptism in the church of his parents. Mr. Alderson entered the ministry soon after graduation and preached his first sermon in the old "Powder Horn Church" at Williamsburg, Virginia, in which General Washington stored his powder during the Revolutionary War. The day after he graduated he married Lucy B. Myles, of Athens, Ohio, who lived only a few months. While pastor of Grace Street Baptist church in Richmond, Virginia, he married Eliza Floyd, daughter of Capt. John Coleman, of Amherst county, Virginia, by whom he had eight children, seven sons and one daughter: Major Joseph Coleman Alderson being the eldest. After the death of his father in 1845, Mt. Alderson moved to this county and took charge of the homestead at Alderson. His diary up to 1859 shows that he had preached 676 sermons and traveled 13,-6~ miles. He preached for many years at the Greenbrier Baptist church and at Red Sulphur Springs, in Monroe county, besides became one of the most successful farmers in the county. In 1853 he visited most of our leading farmers and stock raisers and succeeded in getting them interested in the organization of the Green-brier Agricultural Society. He was elected President of the society and remained as such until the spring of i858, when he moved with his family to Atchison, Kansas. He was one of the most learned and scientific men in the West and was offered time and again the presidency of different colleges, which he declined, believing that his life would be of more benefit to his fellowmen in the sphere he had chosen. He died in Atchison City, May 19, 1881. Patsy Feamster was born February 19, 1797, at the old stone house on the outskirts of Alderson; she was the second daughter of Joseph Alderson and Mary Newman Alderson. On March 17, 1824, she was married to William Feamster, of Greenbrier, who was a direct descendant of Thomas Feamster, one of the pioneers of Bath county, Virginia. The children of this union were Mary Martha, Thomas Louis, Sarah Elizabeth, Joseph Alderson, Newman, Patsy Jane and Sabina Creigh. See sketch of Lieutenant Claude N. Feamster. John Alderson, the youngest son of Elder John Alderson, was born September 4, 1783. In order to distinguish him from the other John Aldersons, he was called "River Jack." He was born and lived his entire life on the old homestead which stood on the site now occupied by the lower cottage of the Alderson hotel. At his father's death, he inherited the land on which the town of Alderson now stands and the lands adjacent; this site of the home-stead remaining in the family for 140 years. John Alderson first married Miss Walker, by whom he had six children. By his second wife, Nancy Mays (nee Robinson), he had six children; one son, George, a sketch of whose life will be given later. John ("Captain Jack") Alderson (1786-1856), eldest son of George and and Sarah (Osborne) Alderson, was born in Kanawha county. The 15th of August, 1815, he married his cousin, Frances Alderson (1783-1856), daughter of Thomas Alderson, and granddaughter of Rev. John Alderson, Sr. He was cpatain of a militia company. Besides "Captain Jack's" inheritance of land in Kanawha county, town property in the present city of Charleston and the salt works, he also inherited and accumulated large tracts of land in what is now Greenbrier, Monroe and Sum-mers counties. He was a man of unbounded energies and unusual ability. He had four sons and four daughters. Joseph Granville, a lawyer, who established the Greenbrier Independent in 1859. His nephew, R. D. Alderson, has a copy of the Greenbrier Independent, dated August 16, 1859, Volume I, Number 27, J. G. Alderson, Editor and Proprietor. Virginia Eliza, who married Thomas Patton; Sarah married Zach Woodson; Thomas George married Margaret, daughter of Rev. James Alderson; Martha; Rufus Davis married Hester Ammen, and John Marcus (1831-1863), the youngest son, inherited "Western View," the home of his ancestors. He was first taught by the governess, who had charge of his sisters' education, then went with his older brother, Rufus, to Rev. James Remley's school for boys near Lewisburg, and afterwards to Prof. Oscar Stephenson, who later became a celebrated judge in Minnesota. He served in the Confederate army, first under his cousin, Major J. Coleman Alderson, and later in the Valley of Virginia in Edgar's battalion. He was detailed with a munition party? where he contracted typhoid fever, and died at the early age of 23. He married Malinda (Patton) (1833-1911), daughter of Elizabeth (Reaburn) and William M. Patton. Elizabeth Patton was the daughter of Charles and Mary (Hamilton) Reaburn, and granddaughter of William and Patience (Craig) Hamilton, who was a daughter of Rev. John Craig, of Augusta county, Virginia. To Mr. and Mrs. Alderson were given two sons: M. Judson (1858-1885) and Charles Rufus (1860- 1908), and one daughter, Elizabeth Marcus, "Bettie" (1864-1918).