Hacker, of the Hacker's Creek settlement,
and others, freely furnished their notes and statements for the work.
Mr. Withers, under these favorable circumstances, became quite well
equipped with materials regarding especially the first settlement and
Indian wars of the region now comprising West Virginia; and, to a
considerable extent, the region of Staunton and farther southwest,
of the French and Indian War period, together with Dunmore's War,
and the several campaigns from the western borders of Virginia and
Pennsylvania into the Ohio region, during the Revolutionary War.
Alexander Scott Withers, for his good services in the field of Western
history, well deserves to have his name and memory perpetuated as a
public benefactor. Descending, on his father's side, from English
ancestry, he was the fourth child of nine, in the family of Enoch K.
and Jennet Chinn Withers, who resided at a fine Virginia homestead,
called Green Meadows, half a dozen miles from Warrenton, Fauquier
county, Virginia, where the subject of this sketch was born on the
12th of October, 1792--on the third centennial anniversary of the
discovery of America by Columbus. His mother was the daughter of
Thomas Chinn and Jennet Scott--the latter a native of Scotland, and a
first cousin of Sir Walter Scott.
Passing his early years in home and private schools, he became from
childhood a lover of books and knowledge. He read Virgil at the early
age of ten; and, in due time, entered Washington College, and thence
entered the law department of the venerable institution of William and
Mary, where Jefferson, Monroe, Wythe, and other Virginia notables,
received their education.
Procuring a license to practice, he was admitted to the bar in
Warrenton, where for two or three years he practiced his profession.
His father dying in 1813, he abandoned his law practice, which he did
not like, because he could not overcome his diffidence in public
speaking; and, for quite a period, he had the management of his
mother's plantation.
In August, 1815, he was united in marriage with Miss Melinda Fisher, a
most estimable lady, a few months his junior; and about 1827, having a
growing family, he looked to the Great West for his future home and
field of labor, and moved to West Virginia, first locating temporarily
in Bridgeport, in Harrison County, and subsequently settling near
Clarksburg in the same county, where he devoted much time in
collecting materials for and wr
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