Lincoln County, West Virginia The Biography of Walker J. SANFORD The Biography of Walker J. SANFORD was submitted by Pat R. Adkins, 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 Source Hardesty, Henry H. Hardesty's Historical and Geographical Encyclopedia, New York: H. H. Hardesty and Company, 1884. Rpt in West Virginia Heritage Encyclopedia. Ed. Jim Comstock. Richmond; Comstock. 1974 WALKER J. SANFORD: Among the early settlers in the Guyandotte Valley was Robert Sanford. For many years he resided in Orange county, Virginia, but in 1809 removed west and settled on Guyandotte river, near where Barboursville, the county seat of Cabell county, now stands. His son, Walker J. the subject of this sketch was born in Orange county on the 3 day of June, 1797; he still lives, now in his eighty-seventh year. At the age of twelve he accompanied his father to their new home in the Guyandotte country. He well remembers the formation of Cabell county and the attempt to hold the first court in 1810 at which time the people informed the judge who came to preside, that they did not care to be bothered with judgments, indictments, etc. and that he would do better to return east, where they had more need of law. When the war of 1812 broke out he was in his fifteenth year and he remembers the names of many of those from Cabell county who enrolled their names and carried arms in defense of "free trade and sailors' rights." In 1817 Mr. Sanford was united in marriage with Sarah Brumfield. They reared a family of nine children, two girls and seven boys. Of the latter Marine, the eldest, born in 1819, is a merchant at Hamlin, and although now in his sixty-third year, has never resided more than three miles from his present location. Five of the sons are prominent ministers of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Henry C. is the presiding elder of the Charleston district. Vanlinden resides four miles west of Charleston, and has been in the ministry more than twenty-five years; William D. has charge of a circuit somewhere in the Elk River valley; James L. was for several years in charge of Weston station; but some time since was transferred to an Ohio conference and is now laboring in the northern part of that State; Robert lives at West Columbia, West Virginia where he preaches occasionally and George W. resides at New Haven, in the same State, prominently identified with the church and Sabbath schools of that town. The father, though having lived seventeen years beyond the scriptural allotment, still retains all his mental faculties, especially that of memory, which does not appear to be in the least impaired, and if one visits Hamlin and can induce "Grandpa Sanford," as he is familiarly called, to abandon his work and engage in conversation, he will learn much of the early history of the Mud and Guyandotte valleys, from one who has long outlived his own generation.