Our Ancestors of Adams County

This week we will dig into the lives of Robert and Katherine (Anderson) Glasgow’s nine children. Their oldest daughter, Margaret, born in 1822, never married and died at the home of her brother, W.A. Glasgow in 1907 at the age of 85. Their oldest son, Joseph Reid Glasgow. was born in 1823, and died of typhoid at age 24 in 1847. John McNutt Glasgow died in 1837 at the age of six.

Their youngest son, Robert Arthur, was born in 1836. Robert enlisted into the Confederate Army, Company A, Virginia 4th Infantry, and rose to Bvt. Second Lieut. Company H, 4th Va Reg. Inf. Robert wrote a letter on June 25, 1861, to his sister Rebecca in Lexington, Virginia, while he was serving. In the letter, he commented on his fellow soldiers, difficulty in getting newspapers and the distribution of food. Rebecca received a second letter from Rev. Francis McFarland on Nov. 6, 1862, regarding his hospital visit with her brother shortly before his demise. Robert died May 10, 1862 at age 26 of typhoid fever in a Civil War hospital and was later buried at Stonewall Jackson Cemetery, in Lexington, Virginia.

William Anderson Glasgow, the third child of Robert and Katherine was born February 9, 1825 at their Green Forest plantation. William graduated from Washington College in Lexington, Virginia with a degree in Law. He joined a partnership with his uncle’s law firm. His uncle was Judge Francis Thomas Anderson, who sat on the Supreme Court of Virginia. William was a virile and forceful lawyer with a commanding personality and positive character. He served in the Virginia Senate and was also a trustee of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. In 1847, he married Elizabeth “Lizzie Spears, daughter of Charles and Margaret Spears, of Rockingham County, Virginia. William and Lizzie had eight children. William bought his uncle Judge Francis T. Anderson’s home near Fincastle, Botetourt County, Virginia. The home was called “Montrose” after William’s great-great-grandmother, whose father was the Earl of Montrose. William enlisted in the Confederate Army but was discharged on account of ill health. He rendered service, however, by the manufacture of iron, a much-needed commodity for the Confederate Army.

Lizzie, his wife, died February 21, 1862 of Erysipelas, (an illness caused by streptococcus, which can spread to the blood causing a condition known as Bacteremia or septic shock). She had lost two of her children in the two weeks preceding her death. Kate, age 9, died on February 7 and William died on February 16, age nine months, both of diphtheria. The Civil War was in its early stages when William lost his wife and two children within two weeks of each other. His whole world had changed and with the war, even more changes were ahead of him. Two of his children died of diphtheria and a set of twins died at birth.

William married two years later on July 21, 1864, to Grace Ellen (Shanks) Woodson, daughter of Colonel Thomas and Grace Metcalfe (Thomas) Shanks. Grace was born on May 12, 1826. Grace had previously been married to Dr. Thomas Woodson, who died in 1857. Grace had one son, Thomas Shanks Woodson, who died in 1864.

In 1887, William and Grace moved to Lexington, Virginia. Grace died ten years later in 1897. William died on October 1, 1910 at his home, at the age of 85. He had been semi-invalid for the past six years from a broken hip, resulting from a fall on the steps leading to the courtyard of his home from Washington Street, while getting ready to take a horseback ride with Hon. William A. Anderson, his kinsman. They are buried in the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery in Lexington, Virginia.

We will continue with more next week on the family of William Anderson Glasgow son of Robert Glasgow and nephew of Nancy Campbell of Adams County, Ohio.