Pictured are Daniel and Rebecca Jane Walker, Stephen Kelley’s great, great grandparents.
(By Stephen Kelley from the People’s Defender 1983)
The village of Fairfax was platted and recorded in February 1845. It was laid out on the old West Union Road with the west half of the new settlement situated in Concord Township and the east side in Jackson Township.
The ridge on which Fairfax was founded had been settled at a fairly early date, the first pioneers moving into the area shortly after 1800. Among those early settlers were included the brothers, Elijah and Charles Walker. They were natives of Rockbridge County, Virginia, moving to Highland County in 1808. Together, the Walkers bought an eight hundred thirty-five acre tract of wilderness lying just west of where Fairfax would be settled.
Elijah and Charles Walker were the sons of John W. Walker, a soldier of the Revolutionary War who had served in the Greenbrier Militia out of Rockbridge County, The brother’s grandfather John Walker, had been born in Scotland and was among the Ulstermen (Scotch-Irish) pioneers of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. When Elijah and Charles first moved to the wilds of Southern Ohio, the Shawnee had already departed, leaving the area for the final time in 1805. This probably suited the brothers just fine. Their uncle, Samuel Walker, had been killed by the Shawnee on the Clinch River in Virginia in 1778 and their grandfather’s sister, Jane Walker Moore with her husband and six children were slaughtered by the same tribe in 1786. Ironically, Jane had been brought across the mountains by her savage captors into the Ohio Valley and burned at the stake at present-day Old Town in neighboring Ross County.
Interestingly, Elijah and Charles had married sisters, daughters of Daniel Doyle, another solider of the American Revolution. And, the brothers both died in February 1820, leaving their land to their wives and children. Part of the original Walker acreage purchased by Elijah and Charles is still owned by their descendants today, completing one hundred seventy-five years of continuous family ownership. Daniel Walker, fourth son of Charles was born in 1812 and raised on the ridge near the site of Fairfax. According to family tradition, his first wife, Sarah was killed by a bolt of lightning while she was rocking the cradle. Daniel was married a second time to Rebecca Jane Guthrie who was raised in Leesburg in northern Highland County. She was a granddaughter of James Guthrie, a native of the Richmond, Virginia area who had moved to Ohio in 1820.
In February 1874, Daniel retired from a life of farming and moved into Fairfax. He and Rebecca bought the little frame home on the corner of Main and Cross Streets which had been built in 1849 by Captain William Vannoy. During the 1850’s and 60’s, Vannoy owned and operated a number of businesses in the village including that of selling “good whiskey to all and sundry. Within weeks after the Walkers bought the Vannoy home, Daniel died, Rebecca lived out her remaining thirty six years a s aa widow in the little house supported by her nine children.
Probably as a result of her widowhood, Rebecca began wearing nothing but the color black. Floor length black gowns, black bonnets and black shawls. She acquired the habit of smoking a stone pipe, and was well known for her knowledge of herbal medicines. She was regularly called upon to act as midwife in the area and proudly listed herself as a nurse in the 1900 census.
During the last years of her life, her deeply wrinkled face, long black dress and bonnet, stone pipe and her herbal potions lee many children in Fairfax to believe she was a witch. The adults, however, realized her quaint ways were a throwback to the pre-Civil War days when life in America still retained a colonial flavor. Several of the older residents in the area today remember “Aunt Becky Jane’ living alone on the corner and tending to her herbal garden behind the house. she passed away in 1910 at the age of eighty-two.
In 1913, Rebecca’s heirs sold her old Fairfax home to Raymond and Viola Vaughn. Ray was a native of Sugar Tree Ridge, situated a few miles west of Fairfax. He was married to Viola Cox in April 1911. She was a great granddaughter of Rebecca Walker so the little home remained in the same family. In the early years of their marriage, Ray worked in construction. The most notable project on which he labored was the construction of Camp Sherman, the World War I training camp erected on the north side of Chillicothe.
Following the war, Vaughn returned to Fairfax, where he decided to open a general store. About 1920 he moved the old Beechwood School off of Whiskey Road and attached it to the south side of his house. In this structure he and Viola maintained their store until ca. 1935 when the effects of the Great depression forced them to close. Ray died in 1944 at age fifty nine. Viola continued to live in the Fairfax home until ill health compelled her to enter a nursing home. She kept possession of the priority until her death in 1982. Her heirs sold it early this year ending one hundred nine years of continues family ownership.
