Virginia Jane Rakes Hall
By Beverly Belcher Woody
One hundred and ninety-nine years ago this month, a true pioneering mountain woman was born in the Charity community along Poplar Camp Creek.
Miss Virginia Jane Rakes was born on the 10th of March 1822 to Samuel Jackson Rakes, Sr. and Lucinda Nowlin. She was the second child of thirteen children. Her siblings were Charles, Judith, Mary “Pollie,” German, Richard, Malinda, Samuel Jr., John, Nancy, Chesley, Christopher, and Lucinda. Most of the Rakes children remained in Patrick County and married into the Who’s Who of the Charity and Endicott communities: the Allens, Cannadays, Griffiths, Nolens, Spencers, Thomases, and Turners.
When Virginia Jane was twenty-one years old, she married seventeen-year-old David Thomas “Jack” Hall, the son of Thomas Rowland Hall and Sarah Fuson. A year later, their daughter Lucinda was born. Over the next fourteen years, Artamincea, Sarah, James, Millie, Malinda, and Violet were born to the union.
In the mid 1850’s, the young family moved to Shockley in Raleigh County so that Jack could work in the mines along the Big Coal River. Early settlers in the region discovered that outcrops of Cannel coal could be utilized as an excellent source of heat and light. The availability of large seams of Cannel coal was used to replace whale oil for lighting. Cannel coal oil burned bright and produced very little smoke.
By 1861, turmoil had come to the region. Jack and Virginia Jane brought their young family back to Patrick County. Baby Violet was just a year old when her father was mustered into the 51st Virginia at Elamsville on the 14th of June 1861. Eight months later to the day, Jack was killed in Tennessee at the Battle of Fort Donelson.
Virginia Jane was now a young widow with seven children ranging in ages from seventeen to a one-year-old. Now was the moment that coming from hardy pioneer stock would come in handy. Virginia Jane’s grandfather was Charles Rakes, one of the first settlers of Patrick County. He purportedly was married to a Tutelo or Saponi woman named “Jane.” Charles and Jane had several children. After Jane passed away, Charles married Nancy Hubbard in 1827. By the time of Charles’ death, he had amassed 662 acres along Poplar Camp Creek.
Fast forward to 1925, a reporter from the Danville Bee visited Virginia Jane in honor of her 103rd birthday. One hundred and fifty of her descendants were in attendance to celebrate that impressive milestone in her life. When the reporter asked her how she had managed all those years, Virginia Jane said that her recipe for a long life was plenty of hard and honest work. “Hard work never hurt anyone,” she said. She stated that her father and mother expected everyone in the family to do their share of hard work. After her husband was killed, “We fell on hard times,” Virginia Jane said, “and I had to care for the farm and spin the cloth during the day and run the still by night. I had to cut and haul wood to the site of the still too.”
Virginia Jane said that she had been blessed to “have never felt a rheumatic pain and was able to read without the use of spectacles.” She said that her only dissipation was she still enjoyed smoking her pipe.
Two years later, Registrar D. W. Warner had the distinction of perhaps registering the oldest woman first-time voter in the South. The 19th Amendment had only been ratified seven years before. When asked how she would vote, Virginia Jane expressed that she would vote the same party that her father voted and added, “If it was good enough for him, it is good enough for me.”
Virginia Jane lived through some of the momentous events in American history. She was born the year President James Monroe began his second term. She was a newlywed during the Mexican American War, a young mother and a widow during the War Between the States, a grandmother during the Spanish-American war, and a great-great grandmother by the time of World War I.
Virginia Jane witnessed lighting evolve from the fireplace to the Hardwick candle, to the kerosene lamp, and to the electric light bulb. She saw the arrival of the railroad, the automobile, and the airplane. She experienced the telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the radio, and moving pictures.
When Virginia Jane died only six days short of her 106th birthday, she had the admirable distinction of being the longest serving member of the Primitive Baptist church in Virginia and North Carolina. Four score years before, Virginia Jane had joined the church when it was in a little log cabin. Elders Cockram and Jefferson paid tribute to her long and meritorious life and she was laid to rest in the North Spray cemetery.
(Information about Virginia Jane was obtained from the Danville Bee archives. Woody may be reached at rockcastlecreek1@gmail.com.)
