A F Walden letter
The following transcription, with spelling as written, was provided by
Sandra Prosser, a descendant of Abednego Walden.
Abednego is an older brother of Austin F Walden the author of the letter
below.
Sandy's email address is:
Mr. L. C. Draper
Livingston City, MO. May 14th. 1854
Dear Sir,
Yours of April has come duly to hand and, in answer to your request, I
will amplify as I am able so to do. My previous communication to you perhaps
was not as specific as should have been. Elisha Walden, the pioneer of the
West, was a Great Uncle of mine, a brother of my Grandfather, by the name
of William, there being three brothers that came from England together who
were of English and Welch extraction.
My Grandfather married Sarah Hampton and lived in Halifax County, Virginia,
until some time about the commencement of the Revolutionary Struggle
for Independence, from whence he moved into Shenandoah County on the Shenandoah
River, and some time during that struggle my father, whose name was Joseph
and was about eighteen, together with three other brothers enlisted during
the war. My father was first Sergeant in a company of mounted infantry
Virginia line. The name of the capt I do not recollect.
I have often heard my father speak of being esperess (?) and passing in
sight of his father's and seeing his property laid waist by the Toris and,
at the close of the struggle or soon after, being paid off in constitutional
paper which was of no value, and his father being plundered of all that he
possessed.
He went to the fronteer settlement in western Virginia where he was annoyed
very much by the Indians as to have to form stations Burgan station and
remained until about the year 1790, marrying in the time to a to a wife
Rachel Knoe, a daughter of Samuel Knoe from there or in about.
The year '94(?), he emigrated to Kentucky and settled on South Elkhorn,
at which place he suffered much affliction, remained two years, and from which
place he moved to Woodford some 14 miles south of Frankfort, where
he remained until about the year 1822 from whence he removed to Indiana,
in the year '24 or '25 when off some distance from home procuring to secure
his pension, he was siezed by disease and died.
He was about sixty three years of age, six feet high, square built. and
a man of remarkable temperal habits, and was a man that had the confidence
of all who knew him, and lived a worthy member of the Baptist Church for
some 40 years previous to his death.
PS The foregoing narration is from recollection as I have heard my father
state previous to the 15 years of my age, at which I was put as an apprentice
to the tanning business and never enjoyed the association of my father thereafter
as I emigrated from Kentucky in the fall of 1820 to Missouri and never spent
more than one day and night with him after I went an apprentice.
If the foregoing is of any interest to you, you are at liberty to use it.
Yours Respectfully,
A. F. Walden