JAMES SPENCER
Source: "The Spencer Family History"
Transcribed by: Brenda Collins Dillon

James was the father of 20 children, including 3 sets of twins. His second wife ,Mary Cook must have died before he did. In his later years he made his home among his children. During the years preceding his death, ( July 4, 1880) he had been living in the home of his son, Allen Spencer, who had moved down from his Fork Mountain home to a house he had built in Cherry Tree Bottoms, on the Cherry River.( today Richwood, WV area) James was a small man, very energetic, strong, wiry, and very straight. An excellent horseback rider, able to mount and dismount his mule until the week of his death.

James was a great hunter, as was most of the Spencers. When only 14 years old he kept camp on Cherry River for his father and some of his father's friends. Once when the hunters had left him working , he killed a fine deer with his bow and arrow and was busily skinning it when the adult hunters returned emptied handed.

James had a son named Smith, who lived in New Hope( now Fenwick Mountain, WV). James rode his mule the five miles to visit Smith and his family. While there he became ill with a severe intestinal disease called flux and died at the ripe old age of 95 years. He was buried in the school yard of the little one room school house which also served as a church before Macedonia was built about 1895) This building burned and was rebuilt near the home of Lloyd Spencer, a descendant of Smith Spencer.


Marker made by Glenn Spencer of Fenwick Mt. and erected with many of the descendants of James on Fenwick Mt. Cemetary use to sit behind the school house but the school burned years ago. There are just a few graves there some I am sure are not marked. I did find the marked graves of William Collins Jr. and Nancy Lambert Collins. William Jr. was the grandson of my ggggrandfather, Meredith Collins.


A man named Allen Spencer
Transcribed by: Brenda Collins Dillon

Allen Spencer was born April 18, 1817 at or near Keister, on the Greenbrier River, WV. He was the third child of James and Elizabeth Haptonstall Spencer.

As a young man Allen served as a bodyguard for Fransis Ludington, who owned a large acreage north of Frankfort,WV. The Ludington's were a wealthy slave holding family. Mr. Ludington kept several bags of gold coins in a dresser drawer in his bedroom where Allen slept on a pallet between his employer's bed and the door. One day one of them money bags was missing and Mr. Ludington hotly accused Allen of stealing it, but it was later found where it had fallen beneath the drawers.

One summer Mr. Ludington decided to sell some of his slaves, and his foreman was instructed to get them ready for the journey. He took his black snake whip from it's peg on the wall and rounded up the boys and girls who were 16 to 18 years of age and started over the road to Cincinnati to be taken down the Mississippi River to be sold. The screaming youngsters were given no time to take leave of the whip. Allen was so hurt by this inhuman treatment that he yelled to the slave driver, "Something terrible will happen to you". The slaves were sold but on the way back the foreman was taken ill with a dread disease called "Black Death" and choked with his tongue protruding from his mouth.

On December 31, 1846 Allen married Polly Clendenin Knapp. Early in 1847 they began life in their new home on Fork Mountain near the present town of Richwood, WV. These early pioneer settlers were a sturdy hardworking people. They cleared the land, grew their food , made their clothes, traded for their needs. If they were poor they never knew it. On his farm of 200 acres, Allen and Polly reared 10 children, six sons and four daughters.

Allen Spencer was a energetic man and devoutly religious. He believed firmly in the power of prayer. His sons told their children about these experiences of how prayers were answered. One autumn Allen needed seed wheat to complete the fall sowing. He knew that his good friend and neighbor, Allen McClung, who lived on the other side of Cold Knob, some 25 miles away, had plenty, so he sat out to get a couple bushels. However, Allen had no money so he took with him his trusty rife in hopes to get a deer or something in which to trade for the wheat seed. He did not get anything but when he rode up to his friends house the friend came out and invited him to get off his horse and spend the night. He also said "I have some wheat seed which I wish to give you."

In the dark days of the Civil War, Allen would go into the woods to pray, where he could be alone with God. Once he came in from his prayers so happy he was shouting. His wife Polly ask why he was so happy. He said, " God has just revealed to me the end of the war" It came soon after according to the revelation.

How truly grateful, we, his descendants are, for the Christian heritage. God grant that we may live according to the example which he sat for us.

When Allen died his body was laid to rest on the hill in what is now South Richwood, on the farm of his son Ben. When Cherry River Boom and Lumber Company bought the farms of the Spencer brothers the bodies buried there were removed to the little church cemetery on Hinkle Mountain.


The Story of Uncle Smith Spencer
Transcribed by:Brenda Collins Dillon


Smith Spencer married Mariam Kerns of Anthony's Creek, December 26, 1850, in Greenbrier County, Va.( now WV). Most of their children were born in Greenbrier Co. however they reared their family in New Hope (Fenwick) Nicholas County, WV. After their children were grown they came over to where Richwood now is and ran Grandpa Allen's Gristmill, just below where the north and south fork join to form the Cherry River. My earliest memories of when they lived there in a tiny storybook cottage, in a equally tiny flowered bordered yard. It was always neat and clean, opening on the road that lead on up a few yards farther, to the little mill. Between the road and the river, just west of the house were several sugar maples, which offered a pleasant shade on a hot summers day.

Uncle Smith was a devout Methodist (the shouting kind) and lived his religion everyday as well as Sunday in all ways but one. He had a very quick temper, which he did not attempt to control, and when things went wrong he would snatch his old battered felt hat from his head and throw it on the ground, and execute on it a war dance that would have done credit to any Comanche Chief, while informing all and sundry in his hearing of the unworthily traits of the condemned object or creature. However, he held no spite, and the next hour would find him going about his usual duties, happy and serene. So when a Spencer youngster would fling a tantrum he was often referred to as " having a Smithy"

Uncle Smith was well liked by all his kin and neighbors, in spite of his uncertain temper, and when a wen (outside tumor) started to developed folks began to worry. It grew and it grew until it reached almost from his knee to his body, and filled the roomy leg of his homemade breeches to overflowing. He was finally taken by horseback over into the "Promise Land" to consult with Dr. Kent Kessler, who decided the tumor must be removed. A few days later Dr. Kessler brought with him another physician, Dr. Houston McClung, from Summersville, WV. and Uncle Smith was laid on a crude plank operating table out under the sugar maple trees, in the presence of a large crowd of male friends and kinfolk. My father, Charles , kept the kettle boiling near to sterilize the instruments. Other nephews aided in various ways, some of the older ones wisped the flies from the operating theater while the assistant (Dr. McClung) administered the chloroform and Dr. Kessler, with sure strokes, peeled out the 33 pound tumor, tied off the feeding blood vessels, and closed the wound. As soon as Uncle Smith was conscious , the two doctors mounted their horses and started their homeward journey of 20 miles, leaving Uncle Smith to the care of Aunt Miram and his relatives. Recovery was swift and Uncle Smith was almost like a young man again. He died in 1908 at the age of 84 years.

Uncle Smith and Aunt Mirim are buried in the Macedonia Church Yard Cemetery , near Fenwick,WV.