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Appendix C.
Biographical.
Meadows - Pack.
The Meadows Family.
Two representatives of this family came to the New River
Valley after the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. The exact
date of their coming cannot be fixed with certainty, but was about 1782
or 1783. Jacob Meadows came from the County of Rockingham, in the
Valley of Virginia, and was a neighbor of the elder John Peters, who
came to the New River Valley in 1782. It appears by the
application of Jacob Meadows for a pension made in 1832, that in 1781 he
served in the Virginia Militia under Captain Coker, in the regiment
commanded by Colonel William Noll; his first service was for three
months, during which time he was engaged in a number of skirmishes with
the British in and around Norfolk and Portsmouth; the last three
months he served as a substitute for Adam Hansberger, and was at the
Battle of Yorktown, serving in LaFayette's Corps. John Peters, who
gives his affidavit of the service performed by Jacob Meadows, shows
that he saw him at Yorktown, serving as a soldier. Jacob Meadows
settled on lower East River, and is the ancestor of the Meadows family
in that vicinity.
The other Meadows was Josiah, who came from the County of Bedford,
Virginia. He, too, was an American soldier, having served for two
or more periods; a part of the time on the frontier against the
Indians, and another part in the American Army against the British.
The facts here stated are taken from his declaration made for pension in
1832, when he was seventy-four years of age. He enlisted in the
early spring of 1778, under Captain Joseph Renfroe, and marched with his
company to Jarrett's Fort, on Wolf Creek, now in the County of Monroe,
where the company was divided, and part thereof, he among the number,
was sent to Keeney's Fort, on the Greenbrier, where he was stationed at
the time of the attack made by the Indians on Donnally's Fort.
Upon the expiration of the term for which he enlisted he again entered
the service in the company of Captain Isaac Taylor, and with his company
and regiment, the latter commanded by Colonel John Montgomery, marched
through the Holstein country to the Indian town at Chicamauga, which
they destroyed; from thence going to the Illinois country, under
Colonel George Rogers Clark. After his return he was with a
portion of the American Army that had charge of the British prisoners
captured at Yorktown. Mr. Meadows as a Baptist minister in the
last years of his life; locating on the north of the Bluestone,
and among his sons were Josiah and John Meadows. From this
Josiah Meadows, the soldier, has descended the large family of that name
in Mercer and adjoining counties.
The name Meador came later, whether it originated from Meadows is not
definitely known, but is altogether probable. Closely connected
with this Meadows family is that of Lilley, whose first representative
in the New River Valley was Robert, who came from Franklin County,
Virginia, and who lived for a few years about the mouth of East River,
settling there in about 1790; then locating in the North Bluestone
section where many of his descendants now live. He was long a
magistrate of Mercer County. The first Josiah
Meadows, the American soldier, was the great-grandfather of Hon. R. G.
Meador, of Mercer County.
The M'Donalds.
The name suggests its Scottish origin, and Glencoe as
the original home of the family. After the close of the revolution
of 1688 many of the Scottish clans continued in arms for King James
against William and Mary. In August, 1691, the government of
William and Mary issued a proclamation offering amnesty to such
insurgents as should take the oath of allegiance on or before the 31st
day of December then next ensuing. All the chiefs submitted within
the prescribed time, except the aged Macdonald of Glencoe, whose clan
inhabited or lived in the pass of Glencoe. He went to Fort William
on December 31st and offered to take the oath, but the officer in
command, not having authority to administer it, referred the matter to
the Sheriff, before whom Macdonald took the oath on January 6th, 1692;
this, however, did not satisfy the adherents of King William, who
determined to avail themselves of this unintentional delay to effect the
destruction of the clans. On February 12th a body of 120
soldiers, commanded by Campbell, murdered Macdonald and two of his
attendants, and so wounded his wife that she died the next day.
About forty persons were killed that night. Detachments of
soldiers sent to guard the outlets of the valley arrived too late, and
many of the clans escaped half naked to the mountains, where a
considerable number of the women and children perished of cold and
hunger--("McCauley's His. of England, Vol. IV").
Shortly after this massacre, supposed to have been
between 1692 and 1700, Bryan McDonald and Mary Combs McDonald, with
their family, having first migrated to Ireland, came from thence to
America, and settled at or near New Castle, Delaware, then in the
Province of Pennsylvania, and presently purchased of William Penn, the
proprietor, a large and valuable tract of land. Bryan McDonald and
family came, in 1756, to the Virginia Valley, having been preceded some
years earlier by two of his sons, Joseph and Edward. In a battle
with the Indians, in 1761, near Amsterdam, in what is now Botetourt
County, Edward, a bright and promising young lawyer, was killed.
He left four daughters, two of whom married Campbells, one married a
Greenway, and one a Russell. Their descendants are
numerous, prominent and influential people; one of them, David
Campbell, was Governor of Virginia; William went to Tennessee;
Dr. Edward McDonald Campbell and Judge John A. Campbell were their
descendants. The Russells lived in south-west
Virginia, and the Greenways in Lynchburg and Baltimore.
Joseph McDonald married Miss Elizabeth Ogle, whose
ancestors had come from Castle Ogle, Northumberland County, England.
They, the Ogles, came to England with William the Norman.
Joseph McDonald, who was born April 4th, 1722, after his marriage came,
in 1763, over the Alleghanies and settled in what is now Montgomery
County, then Augusta. He died in 1809. In the American
Revolution he served in Captain Kirkpatrick's Company. He had six
sons in the American Army; Richard was a Major, Edward was a
Captain, and Alexander served in Captain Thompson's Company.
Powder for the Patriot Army was manufactured on his farm, and a
government tannery established, as well as provisions gathered there.
All these supplies had to be largely, if not altogether, transported to
the army on horses, and this proved a dangerous business, on account of
Indian forays. Captain Edward McDonald was in the Border Wars
against the Indians, and in scouting expeditions toward the Ohio.
Joseph McDonald had ten children in the following order
as to ages: Bryan, who married Mary Bane; John,
who married Miss Sawyers, second Miss Cannaday; Joseph, who
married Nancie Sawyers; Edward, who married Keziah Stephens;
Richard, who married Mrs. Mary Martin; Alexander, who married
Elizabeth Taylor, niece of President Taylor; William, who married
Ursula Huff, daughter of Dr. Huff; Elizabeth, who married Samuel
Ingram; Jonas, who married Elizabeth Foster; James, who
married, first Elizabeth New, second Mary Flournoy.
The descendants of Joseph McDonald have scattered over many states of
the union, and have held many prominent positions, many of them able and
distinguished persons. A great many of them were slain, or
died, in the war between the states.
Joseph McDonald Sanders, a bright young lawyer of Mercer
County, West Virginia, who served eight years as Judge of the 9th
Judicial Circuit of West Virginia, and who was recently elevated to the
bench of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, is a
great-great-grandson of Joseph McDonald, and great-grandson of Edward
McDonald and Keziah Stephens McDonald.
During the American Revolution one David Hughes,
formerly of North Carolina, and a Tory, while scouting through the
wilderness country toward the Ohio River, discovered that beautiful body
of valuable land on the Clear Fork of Guyandotte, in the now County of
Wyoming. He informed the above mentioned Edward McDonald of his
discovery, with whom he agreed for one blanket and a rifle gun to show
him this land, which he did, and in 1780 McDonald entered and surveyed
the same; and in 1802, together with his son-in-law, Captain James
Shannon, removed to the Guyandotte Valley and took possession of his
valuable property; his son-in-law, Captain Shannon, settling a few
miles away on the Big Fork of the Guyandotte. When Captain Shannon
took possession of his land he found still standing on the bottoms the
Indian wigwams.
Edward McDonald had several sons and daughters.
The sons, Joseph, William and Stephen, settled on the lands given them
by their father out of the homestead. One daughter
married Captain James Shannon; one Captain Thomas Peery;
one Augustus Pack; one William Chapman. Joseph McDonald
married Nancy Chapman, daughter of Isaac Chapman and his wife, Elian
Johnston Chapman, and their children were Sallie, who married John
Sanders; Juliett, who married John Tiffany;
Elizabeth, who married John Anderson, and Nancy, who married Lewis
McDonald. W. W. McDonald, of Logan, married Miss
Scaggs; Lewis, the son of Joseph, married, first Miss McDonald,
second Miss Keffer. John C., Floyd and Colonel Isaac E. were never
married; the two former died in the army during the Civil War.
Colonel Isaac E. lived on the McDonald homestead, in Wyoming County,
until 1876, when he purchased, by exchange, the valuable farm of Mr.
George Pearis George, on Bluestone, in Tazewell County, Virginia.
Colonel Isaac E. was a member of the Virginia Legislature in 1861, and
of the West Virginia Senate for several years.
The family of William McDonald, son of Edward, consisted
of one son, Edward, who married a Miss Black, of Montgomery County, and
daughters, of whom one married Harmon Newberry, one William G. Mustard,
one Zachary T. Weaver, and one Captain Robert H. Bane.
Stephen McDonald's family went west many years ago.
He had two sons, Andrew McDonald and Crockett McDonald; the latter
married Miss Ellen Hall, then of Princeton, West Virginia. He died
several years ago, leaving three children, two sons and a daughter, who,
with their mother, live in the state of Kansas. Joseph, William
and Stephen all died about the beginning of or during the Civil War.
Colonel Isaac E. died a few years ago, leaving the major part of his
valuable estate to his nephew, Walter McDonald Sanders, who also died
some two or three years ago, leaving a widow and three or four infant
children, who, with their mother, reside on the Bluestone farm.
Before closing this sketch of the McDonald family it is
desirable to present a photograph of the oldest dwelling go that family
now standing in Virginia, which is at Greenhill, in Montgomery County.
The Packs
The progenitors of this family now in this section of
the country were on the New River, about the mouth of Indian Creek, as
early as 1763. Pack, Swope and Pittman, hunters, discovering
Indian signs, started, one for the Jackson's River, and the other for
the Catawba settlements, to warn the people, but the Indians had
traveled faster than the hunters and the warning did not reach them.
The given name of this hunter, Pack, is not obtainable; it is
probable that he was the ancestor of the Samuel who was born in Augusta,
in 1760, as members of this family, soon after 1764, are found along the
New River between the mouth of the Greenbrier and Indian Creek. A
history of this family, from the Pack MSS., is interesting and is here
inserted:
A Mr. Pack and several sons came to Jamestown, from
England, with the early settlers on the James. Owing to the
hardships encountered there they went back to England; later,
however, three of the sons returned to this country; two of them
went to the South, and the other remained in Virginia. There were
born to the last mentioned Pack two sons, one of whom was named Samuel,
who was born in 1760, in Augusta County. He had seven sons, whose
names were: John, Matthew, Samuel, Bartley, Lowe, William and
Anderson; the daughters were: Betsey, who married Jacob
Dickinson; Polly, who married Joe Lively, and Jennie, who married
Jonah Morriss.
John and Bartley settled at Pack's Ferry, now Summers
County; Matthew died on the west side of the New
river, opposite Pack's Ferry; Samuel settled on Glade Creek,
in what is now Raleigh County; Lowe lived on Brush Creek, in what
is now Monroe County; William went West; Polly Lively and
Betsey Dickinson lived in Monroe; Jennie Morriss moved to
Missouri.
John, the son of the above named Anderson Pack, was
taken prisoner on Flat Top Mountain during the Civil War, and Colonel
Hayes, afterward President of the United States, claimed relationship
with John and told him that his wife's mother was a Pack (this was
Jennie, who married Jonah Morriss), and by reason of this John was
allowed the privilege of the camp.
John Pack, who lived at Pack's Ferry, had great trouble
with the Indians; he frequently had to plow with his
rifle strapped to his shoulder. After friendly relations
were secured with the Indians, an old Indian came to John Pack's house
one day and told him that on one occasion he conceived the idea to steal
two of John's little girls, and when he saw them coming he hid in
an old stump to capture them as they came by, but that they were in the
course of a foot race when they came up, and they passed so quickly that
he could not catch them.
Alderman Pack, an ancestor of the above mentioned Packs,
was a member of Parliament during Cromwell's time, and he moved that
body to confer the title of Protector on Cromwell. There is
authority for saying that a Mr. Pack, an English General, who fought in
the Peninsula Campaign and in France and Portugal against Napoleon, was
one of the ancestors of the Packs who came to America and settled on New
River. Mrs. Emily Landgraff, who lived near Pack's Ferry, said
that she had seen her grandfather, Samuel Pack, the first Samuel, and
that he was an old gentleman of the English type, who dressed in the
frock coat and knee breeches peculiar to the eighteenth century and that
he wore a cue.
The aforesaid John Pack, who married Jane Hutchinson,
was the father of the following named children: Samuel, who
married Harriet French; Rebecca, who married Robert Dunlap;
Archibald, who married Patsey Peck; Polly, who married Richard
Shanklin; Rufus, who married Catharine Peters, and Julia, who
married Elliott Vawter.
Samuel Pack and his wife, Harriet French Pack, who was a
daughter of Captain David French, had four sons and one daughter;
the sons were: Captain John A., who married Miss Mary Gooch;
Allen C., who married Miss Sue Lugar; Samuel, who
married Miss Sallie Douthat; Charles D., who died unmarried;
the daughter, Minerva, married Dr. John W. Easley. Samuel Pack,
who married Harriet French, was a lawyer by profession, and long
practiced in Giles and adjoining counties.
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