Elizabeth Perkins Letcher And Her Daughter, Bethenia Letcher Pannill

J. E. B. Stuart Mural at Patrick County High School

Elizabeth Perkins Letcher And Her Daughter, Bethenia Letcher Pannill

In September 1852, a couple walked together through the boxwoods and cedar trees of Beaver Creek Plantation in Henry County, Virginia. The pleasant day included a hunt for blackberries and spending time near the cooling waters of a nearby spring, where the young man tried to impress her with watery exploits and her playing the piano while he secreted himself out of sight to listen. As the sun sank, in the west, they sat in the grass while nearby a rooster caused a spectacle chasing fireflies. The voices of many slaves raised in song returning from the fields came to the ears of the young people reflecting on why “the caged bird sings.” He told her in a later letter that thinking of the day that it would “revive in my heart unfading recollections of the joy I experienced during that visit. I will never forget it.” Nearby the graves told the story of their shared family history. They shared a common ancestor, his great-grandmother, and her grandmother for Elizabeth Perkins “Bettie” Hairston and James Ewell Brown Stuart descended from Elizabeth Perkins Letcher Hairston.

After the death of William Letcher, the romantic and family tradition holds that George Hairston led troops into The Hollow, captured Nichols, the assassin of William Letcher, gave him a drumhead trial, and hung him. The area for years went by the name of Drumhead, including the letters written by J. E. B. Stuart. The author believes the Stuart family associated the area near William Letcher’s grave with the tradition that the murderers of the former after capture succumbed to execution by hanging after receiving the justice of a drumhead court-martial. Laurel Hill became synonymous with the area on the bluff above the river where Archibald and Elizabeth Stuart built their home and where their son James Ewell Brown Stuart was born.

George Hairston carried Elizabeth Perkins Letcher and her baby, Bethenia, to the Hairston home, Marrowbone, in Henry County. As this was several day's journey with overnight stops and no chaperone. Honor caused George to propose marriage to the wife of his friend rather than sully her reputation. George Hairston married Elizabeth Perkins Letcher on January 1, 1781. Family tradition tells he gave her two Chickasaw ponies and buckskin saddle heavily embroidered as a wedding gift. The newly married couple rode to their home at George Hairston’s house, Beaver Creek, just north of Martinsville in Henry County, Virginia, with a groomsman carrying baby Bethenia.

George Hairston described as a man of “great firmness of character combined with elegance of manner and appearance,” began his house along with the land between Beaver and Matrimony Creeks in 1776. It burned after his death, and his son Marshall rebuilt the present structure in 1837. George gave Henry County fifty acres that, along with much of downtown Martinsville includes the site of the old courthouse.

The marriage of George and Elizabeth Perkins Letcher Hairston produced twelve children beginning with Robert in 1783 followed by George in 1784, Harden in 1786, Samuel in 1788, Nicholas Perkins in 1791, Henry in 1793, Peter in 1796, Constantine in 1797, John Adams in 1799, America in 1801, Marshall in 1802 and Ruth Stovall Hairston in 1804.

George Hairston did not forget the friend, William Letcher, he lost during the American Revolution, and family tradition points to the warm feelings he held for his stepdaughter, Bethenia Letcher. Exhaustive searches of multiple county land records in Virginia did not reveal ownership by William Letcher of Laurel Hill. In 1790, John Marr purchased the 2,816-acre tract that included Laurel Hill and two years later conveyed 550 acres to William Letcher’s daughter, who was still a minor, for five hundred pounds. Hairston and Marr had a business relationship dealing in land speculation, including the “Iron Works Tract” that today encompasses Fairy Stone State Park. Six years later, the property was appraised at $1.75 an acre for a total of $962.50. Hairston paid the taxes on the land until Bethenia’s marriage. George lived on until March 7, 1827.

Elizabeth Perkins Letcher Hairston died on January 7, 1818. Bethenia Letcher married David Pannill on October 29, 1798. On her wedding day, tradition holds that Bethenia Letcher, “a very beautiful woman,” wore white plumes in her hair, but an ill omen of a black spot marred the nuptials. The groom cut the place out, but his wedding gift to his bride of a new carriage along with two horses burned up in a stable fire within days. The couple settled in Pittsylvania County at Chalk Level east of Chatham, Virginia.

On January 4, 1801, Bethenia gave birth to her first child, a daughter she named Elizabeth Letcher Pannill. The second child, William Letcher Pannill, came into this world on September 10, 1803, just months before his father’s death. David Pannill died in November 1803, leaving a wife and two small children. His tombstone reads, “He had a warm, generous heart, was just to all men and died among many friends who sincerely regretted the death of their best friend and benefactor.” Bethenia found herself in the same situation as her mother over twenty years earlier.

William Letcher Pannill married his cousin Maria Bruce Banks on December 22, 1831, and produced fifteen children. William’s descendants became prominent founding Pannill Knitting Company, and their generosity helped preserve Laurel Hill.

Bethenia gave Chalk Level to her son and moved into a nearby home called Whitehorne in 1839. Bethenia Letcher Pannill died on February 23, 1845. Her will divided the Patrick County land between her children. David and Bethenia Pannill lie together in the Chatham town cemetery with a marker noting their relationship to their famous grandson, James Ewell Brown “Jeb” Stuart, who was born at Laurel Hill.