LIFE OF

LIEUT.-GEN. THOMAS J. JACKSON.

CHAPTER I.

PARENTAGE, AND EARLY YEARS.

THE family from which General Jackson came, was founded in Western Virginia by John Jackson, an emigrant from London. His stock was Scotch-Irish; and it is most probable that John Jackson himself was removed by his parents from the north of Ireland to London, in his second year. Nearly fifty years after he left England, his son, Colonel George Jackson, while a member of the Congress of the United States, formed a friendship with the celebrated Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, afterwards the victor of New Orleans, and President; and the two traced their ancestry up to the same parish near Londonderry. Although no more intimate relationship could be established between the families, such a tie is rendered probable by their marked resemblance in energy and courage, as illustrated not only in the career of the two great commanders who have made the name immortal, but of other members of their houses. John Jackson was brought up in London, and became a reputable and prosperous tradesman. He determined to transfer his

rising fortunes to the British colonies in America, and crossed the seas in 1748, landing first in the plantations of Lord Baltimore. In Calvert County, Maryland, he married Elizabeth Cummins, a young woman also from London, of excellent character and respectable education. The young couple, after the common fashion of American emigrants, proceeded at once to seek for new and cheaper lands on which to establish their household gods, and made their first home on the south branch of the Potomac River, at the place now known as Moorefields, the county seat of Hardy County. But after residing for a time in this lovely valley, John Jackson, with his young family, crossed the main Alleghany ridge into Northwestern Virginia, where lands yet wider allured his enterprising spirit. He fixed his home on the Buchanan River, in what was first Randolph, but is now Upshur County, at a place long known as Jackson's Fort, now occupied by the little village of Buchanan. Here he spent his active life, and reared his family.

He is said to have been a spare, diminutive man, of plain mind, quiet but determined character, sound judgment, and excellent morals. His wife was a woman of masculine stature; and her understanding and energies corresponded to the vigor of her bodily frame. When the young couple emigrated to the Northwest, the Indians were still contesting the occupancy of its teeming valleys with the white men. The colonists were compelled to provide for their security by building stockadeforts, into which they retreated with their families and cattle at every alarm of a savage incursion. It is the tradition that, in more than one of these sieges, Elizabeth Cummins proved herself, though a woman, to have "the stomach and mettle of a man," and rendered valuable service by aiding and inspiriting the resistance of the defenders. In her industry and enterprise was realized King Lemuel's description of the ways of the vir

tuous woman: "She considereth a field, and buyeth it; with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard." Several patents are still in existence, conveying to her, in her own name, lands which were afterwards the valuable possessions of her posterity. They have usually claimed that the characteristics of their race were largely inherited from her; that it was her sterling integ rity, vigorous intellect, and directness of purpose which gave them their type.

The picturesque country, which now became the home of the Jacksons, descends gradually from the watershed of the Appalachian range to the Ohio river, but is filled with ridges parallel to the main crest, of which the nearest are also lofty mountains, while the more western subside into bold and fertile hills. The grander heights were covered with magnificent forests of spruce and fir, intermingled with tangled thickets of laurel: but as the traveller approached the Ohio, and the mountains sank into swelling highlands, he found the ridges fertile, almost beyond belief; the slopes, clothed to their tops with giant groves of oak and chestnut, poplar, linden, beech, and sugar-maple; the hills, separated by placid streams flowing through smooth valleys and meadows, and their sides everywhere filled with beds of the richest coal. The waters which refresh this goodly land flow northward, and compose the Monongahela, which contributes its streams at Pittsburg, in Pennsylvania, to form the Ohio in union with those of the Alleghany. The mingled currents then turn southward, and form the western border of Northern Virginia, separating it from the territory of Ohio. As all highlands usually decline in elevation with the enlargement of their watercourses, the northern part of this district, embraced within the boundaries of Pennsylvania, is less rugged than the southern. Settlements, therefore, naturally proceeded from the smoother regions of Western Pennsylvania, into the

hills of Northwestern Virginia; and thus it came to pass that, in the latter district, the northern counties were at first the more cultivated, and the southern bore to them the relation of frontiers. The emigrants found that they had not descended very far from the loftier ranges of the Alleghany and Cheat mountains before they left behind them the rigors of their Alpine climate. Wherever the valleys were cleared of their woods, they clothed themselves with the richest sward, and teemed with corn, wheat, the vine, the peach, and all the products of Eastern Virginia. But this fertile region could only be reached from the east by a few rude highways, almost impracticable for carriages, which wound their way among and over the ridges of a wide labyrinth of mountains.

Hither the patriarch of the Jacksons removed before the war of the American Revolution. In that struggle, he and his elder sons bore their part as soldiers; and at its close, they returned to their rural pursuits. With the practical sagacity for which the Scotch-Irish emigrant is always noted, he and his wife bent their energies to founding fortunes for their children, by acquiring the most valuable lands of the country, while they were unoccupied and cheap. In this aim they were successful, and their numerous children were all endowed with farms, which now make their holders wealthy. After a long and active life, they removed to the house of Colonel George Jackson, their eldest son, at Clarksburg, the county seat of Harrison County, now a village of note on the southern branch of the great Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and about forty miles from the Pennsylvanian border. The death of the old man, in this quiet retreat, is thus recorded by one of the most distinguished of his descendants, John G. Jackson, of Clarksburg, Judge of the Court of the United States for the Western District of Virginia. He writes to Mrs. Madison, whose sister he had married, in