We often talk of the men who shaped Laurel Hill’s history, but lost is the impact that many women had on the history of the birthplace of James Ewell Brown “Jeb” Stuart. Seldom does one woman become the matriarch of several families, but that is not the case for Elizabeth Perkins Letcher Hairston.
On November 20, 1778, William Letcher married Elizabeth Perkins and moved to Henry County, present day Ararat in Patrick County. Elizabeth, born on May 13, 1759, to Nicholas and Bethenia Hardin Perkins, grew up at Perkins Ferry in Halifax, now Pittsylvania County.
The first Nicholas Perkins came to Virginia in 1641 and settled in Charles City County. His son, Nicholas, married Sarah Childress, lived in Henrico County, and produced a son, Constantine. He married Ann Pollard and lived in Goochland County. They were the great-grandparents of General Stuart. William and Elizabeth were both descended from Nicholas Perkins and Sarah Childress. Sarah Perkins married Thomas Hughes, and their daughter Hannah married Giles Letcher.
Elizabeth’s brother Peter Perkins married Agnes Wilson and built the historic home Berry Hill near Danville on land willed to him by his father. The home’s name comes from the many soldiers from both sides of the American Revolution who were believed to be buried on the property. Today, a large cemetery contains many prominent family members, including J. E. B. Stuart’s sister, Columbia, who married into the Hairston clan.
It is through the Perkins family that William and Elizabeth Letcher came to present-day Patrick County. John Marr married Susannah Perkins, sister of Elizabeth Perkins Letcher. Constantine Perkins married John’s sister Agatha Marr. Marr’s sons had a business relationship with the Perkins Family. John Marr died in Henry County before 1797. Marr, a land speculator, acquired the land that is the Laurel Hill Farm in 1790 from John Dawson. Two years later, he owned over 3,000 acres in the county.
The Perkins family connection stayed strong in the area. In 1801, Thomas Perkins bought a plantation in adjoining Surry County called Mount Airy. In 1819, Thomas’ son Constantine inherited Mount Airy along with land on present-day Main Street, where he built the first of many lodging establishments (most named Blue Ridge). The Perkins home, Mount Airy, was located on high ground above the Ararat River between present-day Hamburg Street and Quaker Road in present-day Mount Airy, North Carolina. In 1780, Thomas Smith purchased 400 acres nearby for fifty shillings. The property contained a large granite outcropping. Today, it is the largest open-faced granite quarry in the world, and North Carolina Granite Corporation operates it in Mount Airy, North Carolina.
Elizabeth and William Letcher left little documentation except a list of possessions and the significant events in their lives. They grew corn and tobacco in the bottomland along the river. They held livestock, including twenty head of cattle, ten hogs, and five horses. There were nine slaves named David, Ben, Witt, Abraham, Dick, Look, Nunn, Randolph, and Craft. William Letcher’s estate inventory in the Henry County courthouse includes many household and farm items you would expect. These included saddlebags, rifles, three feather beds, and a looking glass.
On March 21, 1780, Elizabeth gave birth to her first child, Bethenia. This small child became the connection that led to her famous grandson’s birth at Laurel Hill over fifty years later. Bethenia’s daughter wrote of William Letcher then, “He had the promise of long years of happiness and usefulness and domestic felicity, but a serpent lurked in his path, for whom he felt too great a contempt to take any precautions.”
The clouds of war reached the home of William and Elizabeth Letcher that summer with tragic results in the form of Tories, those loyal to the British. John Adams said of the Tories, “A Tory here is the most despicable animal in the creation. Spiders, toads, snakes are their only proper emblems.”
Oral tradition abounds today in Patrick County about the death of William Letcher. One version has Letcher shot from a nearby ridge while stepping onto his porch. Another has him shot through a window of his home by a coward lurking outside at night. The most romantic and accepted story tells that Letcher was in his fields on August 2, 1780, when a stranger came to the house and asked Elizabeth Perkins Letcher about her husband’s whereabouts. She replied that he would return shortly and invited the visitor to stay. When Letcher entered, the man identified himself as Nichols, a local Tory leader, and said, “I demand you in the name of His Majesty.” Letcher replied, “What do you mean?” Nichols shot Letcher. The Tory fled the home leaving the dying Patriot in the arms of his wife, his last words reportedly being, “Hall is responsible for this.” Hall reportedly fled towards Kentucky, but Indians along the Holston River killed his entire family.
Today, William Letcher rests in the bottomlands along the Ararat River in Patrick County’s oldest marked grave. His tombstone, placed by his daughter before she died in 1845, states the following. “In memory of William Letcher, who was assassinated in his own house in the bosom of his family by a Tory of the Revolution, on August 2, 1780, age about 30 years. May the tear of sympathy fall upon the couch of the brave.”
Elizabeth and baby daughter Bethenia’s stories were only beginning. After the death of her husband, the family tradition holds that George Hairston led troops into The Hollow, captured Nichols (the supposed assassin of William Letcher), gave him a drumhead trial, and hung him. For years, the area went by the name Drumhead, including the letters written by J. E. B. Stuart. The author believes the Stuart family associated the area near William Letcher’s grave with the tradition that the murderers of the former, after capture, succumbed to execution by hanging after receiving the justice of a drumhead court martial.
George Hairston carried Elizabeth Perkins Letcher and her baby, Bethenia, to the Hairston home, Marrowbone, in Henry County. As this was a journey of several days with overnight stops and no chaperone, honor caused George to propose marriage to his friend’s wife rather than sully her reputation. George Hairston married Elizabeth Perkins Letcher on January 1, 1781. Family tradition states he gave her two Chickasaw ponies and a buckskin saddle heavily embroidered as a wedding gift. The newly married couple rode to their home at George Hairston’s house, Beaver Creek, just north of present-day Martinsville in Henry County, Virginia, with a groomsman carrying baby Bethenia.
George Hairston did not forget the friend he lost during the American Revolution, and family tradition points to his warm feelings for his stepdaughter, Bethenia Letcher. Exhaustive searches of multiple county land records in Virginia do not reveal ownership by William Letcher of Laurel Hill. In 1790, John Marr purchased the 2,816 acre tract that included Laurel Hill and two years later conveyed 550 acres to William Letcher’s daughter, who was still a minor, for five hundred pounds. Marr and George Hairston were known to have a business relationship.
Elizabeth Perkins Letcher Hairston died on January 7, 1818. A few years before her death, a visiting officer met her and said she reminded him of Meg Merriless, a poem by John Keats.
Old Meg was brave as Margaret Queen
And tall as Amazon,
An old red blanket cloak she wore,
A chip-hat had she on.
God rest her aged bones somewhere –
She died full long agone!
Elizabeth Perkins Letcher Hairston Genealogy
Birth: May 13, 1759, Pittsylvania County, Virginia
Marriages
William Letcher 1750-1780 married 1778
George Hairston 1750–1827 married 1781
Elizabeth Perkins Letcher Hairston Death: January 26, 1818 (aged 59)
Henry County, Virginia, USA
Burial: Hairston Family Cemetery-Beaver Creek Plantation, Martinsville, Henry County, Virginia, USA
Children with William Letcher
Bethenia Letcher Pannill
1780–1845
Children with George Hairston
Robert Hairston
1783–1852
George R. “Old Rusty” Hairston Jr
1784–1863
Harden Hairston
1786–1862
Samuel Pannill Hairston
1788–1875
Peter Hairston
1796–1810
Constantine Hairston
1797–1816
John Adams Hairston
1799–1849
America Hairston Callaway
1801–1826
Marshall Hairston
1802–1882
Ruth Stovall Hairston Hairston
1804–1838
