Our Ancestors of Adams County

This week we will begin to delve into the lives of the siblings of Ann “Nancy” Campbell, who had chosen to stay and live in Rockbridge County, Virginia. In 1780, when the three Glasgow brothers left Pennsylvania and settled in Rockbridge County, Nancy’s father, Arthur settled in what was called “Green Valley” and is now the town of Buena Vista, Va. He built a large log house for his family of ten which contained an immense chimney of stone. Log houses were the rule for several decades, there being few houses on the frontier of brick or stone before the Revolutionary War. Arthur had three sons, Joseph, John and Robert. Of Arthur’s three sons, Joseph, the oldest settled at Balcony Falls and built “Glasgow Manor” around which the town of Glasgow grew; John settled and built “Tuscan Villa” near old Buena Vista. Robert decided to remain on his father’s homestead and built “Green Forest.” It is interesting to note that the word Glasgow in a Scottish dialect means Green Forest in our language.

We will begin with Arthur and Rebekah’s oldest son, Joseph. Joseph was born on October 14, 1783, in Rockbridge Co., Virginia. Joseph was a cavalry soldier in the War of 1812. He married in 1816, in Verdant Vale, in Amherst County, Virginia, which is just south of present-day Glasgow, Virginia, in Rockbridge County to Nancy E. McCulloch, daughter of Roderick & Elizabeth McCulloch. Nancy was born in 1786. Joseph’s father, Arthur, willed his oldest son and wife, Nancy, land just south of Green Valley (Buena Vista) in 1822. Arthur obtained the land from a grant that had been given to the McNutt family. Rebekah, Arthur’s wife’s maiden name was McNutt.

Joseph settled at Balcony Falls and later built a new home which he called “Union Ridge” (aka Glasgow Manor or locally known as the McCorkle House) circa 1823. The home stood at 1005 Fitz Lee Street in Glasgow, Virginia, which is located in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Rockbridge Co., Virginia. The house was built for a thousand dollars. Two and a half stories tall, the house had four main rooms and boasted five exits. A tin gabled roof extended over the entire structure. The house sat on 641 acres of land. Joseph owned other parcels of land around the valley as well. In 1984, the home was torn down. The town of Glasgow, Va. is named for Joseph. Joseph was a farmer and used slave labor on his plantation. In 1820, Joseph and Nancy owned eight slaves and by 1840, they had increased that to twenty-two slaves. Joseph and Nancy had two daughters, Rebekah Jane, born in 1817 and Elizabeth, born in 1819. Rebekah died at the age of nineteen. Elizabeth married Hobson Johns but remained childless. Hobson had previously served as mayor of Danville, Virginia.

Joseph died in 1856, at the age of 73, of kidney disease. Nancy died in 1868, at the age of 81. Joseph never saw the end of slavery but his wife Nancy lived through the Civil War with all its death and destruction. She only lived three years after the end of the war but I am sure her life was never the same. Joseph and Nancy were buried in Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery, in Lexington, Va. which is about twenty miles from the town of Glasgow.

Joseph left “Glasgow Manor” to his only living daughter, Elizabeth Johns. Elizabeth’s husband, Hobson died in 1863, during the Civil War. Shortly after the end of the war, Elizabeth was living alone except for some hired help. She had lost all of her immediate family. She did have four nieces on her husband’s side of the family which stayed with her at times. Elizabeth died in 1902, at the age of 83. She was buried with her parents in the Stonewall Jackson Cemetery.