Our Ancestors of Adams County

This week we will continue to delve into the children of Robert and Katherine (Anderson) Glasgow. Just to review, Robert was the brother of Nancy Campbell of Adams County. All of Robert and Katherine’s children were born at the Green Forest plantation near Lexington, Virginia.

Francis “Frank” Thomas Glasgow was the third son of Robert and Katherine Glasgow. He was born in 1829 and graduated from Washington and Lee University with a law degree. His passport states he was six foot tall with brown eyes and dark hair. In 1850, he left his law practice and became the Superintendent for the Richmond Tredegar Iron Works, the largest supplier of ordnance and munitions during the Civil War. Frank’s uncle, Joseph Reid Anderson, his mother’s brother, was the owner of Tredegar. Frank married in 1853, in Richmond, Virginia to Anne Jane Gholson, daughter of William and Anne (Taylor) Gholson.

Anne was born in 1831 and was descended from the Tidewater gentry with a cultivated and gracious background. Anne’s father, William Y. Gholson, helped found the University of Mississippi. In the late 1840s, Anne’s father left the South and moved to Cincinnati and formed a law practice with Salmon P. Chase (future governor of Ohio). He later served on the Ohio Supreme Court between 1859-63. During his campaign, his son by his second marriage stated that his father had owned slaves in Mississippi and had sold (not freed) them when he moved to Ohio. His son (William Yates Gholson, Jr.) also stated that he felt that his father would uphold the Fugitive Slave Law.

Frank and Anne had 10 children. Three of their children died of diphtheria at a young age. Their marriage was very tumultuous. Frank was domineering and had adulterous tendencies. Anne was prone to nervous exhaustion and depression. Anne died in 1893 and Frank in 1919. They are buried in the famous Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia.

Their children were raised in wealth and went to the best schools. However, their lives were far from perfect. Their oldest daughter, Emily was born in 1855 and lived at home until she married in 1901. Sadly, she died of liver cancer in 1913. Frank and Anne’s second child, Annie, married at age 33 and had two children. Her husband, Frank Clark, was the President of a wholesale company. She died in 1917 of cancer.

Frank and Ann’s third child, Sally “Cary” Glasgow, was born in 1863. She married Walter McCormick in 1892. His father was a cotton merchant. Walter was a brilliant lawyer but sadly he committed suicide in 1894. Cary died in 1911 of cancer.

Finally, Frank gets his long-awaited son with their fourth child. They named him Francis “Frank” Thomas Glasgow, Jr. He was born in 1870. He suffered from severe depression and at the age of 38, committed suicide by using a revolver to shoot himself in the head. He was never married and worked with his father at the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond. So besides losing three children at a young age, Frank lost his wife and four more of his children before he died in 1919.

The last three children of Frank and Anne Glasgow made a mark on the world.