Last week, we learned how Bart and Andrew Clifton walked from their home in Price, North Carolina to the Brushy Mountain Quarry in Blacksburg to acquire millstones for their father’s new gristmill.
The young men depended on families along the route to give them food and shelter. One of the families they stayed with was Chesley and Sallie DeHart Rakes where Bart fell in love with their daughter Sarah. Another family who gave the young men shelter in the Round Meadow area was Henry and Sarah Nancy Cockram Boyd. It was there that young Andrew met their daughter Miss Martha Jane Boyd.
After helping their father set up the gristmill in Price, North Carolina, Bart and Andrew returned to the Blue Ridge Mountains and began courting Miss Sarah and Miss Martha Jane.
Andrew Martin Clifton and Martha Jane Boyd were married on the 24th of June 1858 in Patrick County. The young couple’s first son, John was born in 1859 followed by Andrew Jackson, born in 1861.
According to military records, Andrew enlisted in the 12th Virginia Infantry on the 25th of March 1862 in Patrick County. This record is confusing because the 12th Virginia was mostly raised in Petersburg, Virginia. I can’t confirm if he possibly enlisted in the 50th or 51st Virginia and was transferred to the 12th Virginia, but I suspect that is what happened. Further military records show that Andrew was mustered out on the 15th of June 1862.
Tragically, Andrew and Martha’s oldest son, John, died in 1862; he was only three years old. John was likely a victim of the diphtheria that was tearing through Patrick County in the fall of 1862. Martha’s uncle, John Bishop Cockram and his wife Mahalia Nannie Cruise Cockram lost nine of their eleven children to diphtheria in the last months of 1862, with some of the children even dying on the same day.
Andrew and Martha’s sons, Lupert Morton was born in April of 1863 and William Robert in May of 1865. The couple’s fifth child was a daughter, Nancy Harriet, born in 1869. The couple had three more children, Emory Dean, Leahvannie, and Mary.
In 1963, Andrew and Martha’s grandson, the late Fred Clifton, wrote down some memories of his grandmother…. “She always wore a black bonnet and carried a clay pipe in her apron pocket. She would smoke an herb she called Life Everlasting to help with her asthma.” Most folks know Life Everlasting by the less poetic name of rabbit tobacco, and it has been used for lung maladies by Indigenous Peoples for centuries.
Andrew and Martha’s son, Andrew Jackson married Rosa Rakes and served as postmaster of the Cruise post office. Lupert Morton married Laura Rosabelle Cockram, and their oldest son was Fred Clifton. William Robert married Mahalia Adeline Rakes and Nancy Harriet married traveling optical glasses salesman, Putnam Napoleon Boyd. Emory Dean married Ruhama Jane Hylton and moved his family to Roanoke where he worked as a jeweler. Leahvannie and her husband Russell Brice Cassell and Mary and her spouse James Matthew Cruise also moved to Roanoke to work and raise their children.
Andrew and Martha continued to live on their farm in Vesta, with Martha passing away first, at the age of 78. Andrew passed away at age 91, three days before Christmas Day, 1930. The couple is buried in the Lewis Cemetery in Vesta.
Woody may be reached at rockcastlecreek1@gmail.com or (276) 692-9626.