I had an
adventure last week that took me back to the areas of Virginia
and North Carolina where my ancestors lived in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
The trip began with a 9 hour drive through Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia and across the Blue Ridge Mountains to Patrick County,
Virginia, where my great-great-great
grandfather, William Joyce, married in 1804, and his son, also named William
Joyce, married in 1828. I had visited Patrick County almost 40 years ago but my memories of the area had grown dim.
While
Patrick County may be dear to me because my ancestors married there, the county
is better known as the birthplace of General
J.E.B. Stuart (CSA), who fought and died during the Civil War. It seemed
fitting that we entered the county via the
J.E.B. Stuart Highway.
I must
confess that I have a personal reason
for being interested in J.E.B. Stuart. His great grandmother, Elizabeth Perkins
Letcher Hairston, was a sister to my great-great-great grandmother,
Bethenia Perkins Bostick (1739 VA - ca 1811 Stokes County,
NC). That makes us cousins, doesn't it?
The Patrick
County courthouse in Stuart was built in 1852 and is still in use today.
Stuart, Virginia
On the
courthouse lawn is a statue dedicated to honoring all Confederate soldiers who served during
the Civil War. On the bottom of the statue J.E.B. Stuart is honored as a hero.
Statue honoring all CSA soldiers
Plaque honoring J.E.B. Stuart
After
visiting the courthouse, we headed toward the town of Ararat, Virginia, which
is located about 25 miles from Stuart and just a few miles from Mt. Airy, North
Carolina. This property is where J.E.B. Stuart's great grandparents settled
after their marriage in what was then Pittsylvania County, Virginia in 1778.
This is a
beautiful location for a home. The Stuart property was called Laurel Hill and includes
a cemetery, where J.E.B.'s father, Archibald Stuart, was buried in 1855. In 1951 his remains were moved and
reburied beside his wife, Elizabeth, in Saltville, Virginia.
First burial site of Archibald Stuart,
Father of J.E.B. Stuart
Overlooking
the Ararat River is the grave of William Letcher, J.E.B.'s great-grandfather.
Letcher was murdered by a Tory during the Revolutionary War. His tombstone, the
oldest in Patrick County, states "In memory of William Letcher who was
assassinated in his own house in the
bosom of his family by a Tory of the Revolution, on the 2 day of August, 1780,
aged about 30 years. May the tear of sympathy fall upon the couch of the
brave." His death left a wife of
two years, Elizabeth Perkins Letcher, and a baby daughter, Bethenia, who much
later married David Pannill. Elizabeth, the daughter of Bethenia and David
Pannill, married Archibald Stuart and they had James Ewell Brown Stuart, also
known as J.E.B., on 6 February 1833.
We spent a
day and a half in Patrick County and wish it could have been longer, but we
needed to go on to Rockingham County, North Carolina, where dozens of Joyce
descendants were gathering for the first annual family reunion on September 23. I'll tell you more about that in a later blog
post. In the meantime, if ever you have
the chance to visit Patrick County, Virginia, do so and be sure to visit Laurel
Hill.
Published 28 September 2017, Western Kentucky Genealogy Blog, http://wkygenealogy.blogspot.com/
