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:
brandi52339 at yahoo  dot com


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