Augusta County, Virginia was clearly Whig Country come the election of 1832. The Annals of Augusta County, a historical record, speaks of an imposing and influential political convention in 1832. Attended by people from all over the State, the delegates called themselves National Republicans and adopted resolutions which called for Henry Clay for president. Four years earlier, the Staunton Spectator...
In 1831, the news of Nat Turner's rebellion provoked a seemingly unexpected response from women in Augusta County, Virginia: a call for abolition. While the women called their actions unexampled, and they felt all the timidity incident to our sex in entering the sphere of politics, they worried that the revolt was but a partial execution of a widely projected scheme of carnage. They could not hide...
General Samuel Blackburn, a lawyer, general in the militia, prominent and popular resident of Augusta County, died on March 2, 1835. While this would be of note in itself, of special interest is that in his will, according to the Annals of Augusta County, General Blackburn liberated his forty slaves on the condition that they would immigrate to Liberia. Their trip was paid by his estate. No mention...
It was 1825, and strange happenings were occurring around the house of Dr. John McChesney in Augusta County, Virginia. According to the Annals of Augusta County, a historical record of the County, it all had started when Maria, one of Dr. McChesney's enslaved children, came to dinner one night very much frightened, apparently having been chased by an old woman with her head tied up. Soon after, stones...
At some point in the early 1830's-all the author knows is before 1840-the Annals of Augusta County, a county historical record, relate the death of a free black man who lived in Staunton, Virginia. Tom Evans was his name-or Uncle Tom as he was called. Mr. Evans had been, at one point, the body servant of a Major Willis and had served with his master in the Revolutionary War. He had lived in Staunton...