Person:Samuel Greenlee (1)

http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/va/rockbridge/bios/bio-g.txt This family was no-doubt related:

GREENLEE - In all the annals of Rockbridge there is no individual of more striking personality than Mary Elizabeth McDowell, who became the wife of James Greenlee. So far as we have positive knowledge, she was the only woman in the little hand of homeseekers, who in October, 1737, made the first actual settlement in Borden's Great Tract. At this time she was thirty years of age, and two of her eight children had been born. She lived many years a widow, and displayed much ability in managing a considerable estate. Its appraisement by William and John Paxton and Jacob Hickman showed that the personality was $2,970, inclusive of eight slave, these being valued from $100 in the case of a child to $500 for an adult. No books are mentioned. Illiteracy relieved her husband from serving as constable, and it would seem that the wife cared little for the printed page. Yet her mental faculties were keen and alert to the end, she used good language, and in a verbal passage at arms, she appears to have been a match for all comers. Various legends cluster about her name, and it has been handed down that her wit and her nimbleness of mind came near causing her to be proceeded against for witchcraft. This is not impossible, since it was in her own girlhood that a woman was ducked by the civil authorities in Princess Anne county on a charge of being a witch. In certain Alleghany valleys a belief in the delusion exists to this day among people of German descent. In her widowhood Mary Greenlee kept a tavern, and as hostess she showed her eye for the main chance by flouting the regulations of the county court relative to the sale of ardent spirits. She moved from Timber Ridge to Greenlee's Ferry in 1780. If Mrs. Greenlee was keen in business she was also something of a shrew. It was perhaps a victim of her caustic tongue who perpetrated the following lines of doggerel, which, let us hope, were written in pleasantry and not in malice,

Mary Greenlee died of late; Straight she went to Heaven's gate; But Abram met her with a club, And knocked her back to Beelzebub.

As a result of a lawsuit instituted by Joseph Borden, Mrs. Greenlee was called upon for a deposition. When asked how old she was, she made this tart rejoinder: ³What is the reason you ask my age? Do you think I am in my dotage? Ninety-five, the seventeenth of this instant.² It is evident that her mental processes were in extraordinarily good working order, even at another deposition, taken at her home four years later, November 10, 1806. Two-thirds of a century had elapsed since she came to Rockbridge. Her reminiscences of the early pioneer days are numerous and precise, and of much historical importance; more so than any other statements given by the old residents. Mary Greenlee became a centenarian, since her span of life reached from November 17,1707 until March 14, 1809. This tendency to longevity seems to have been inherited from her father, who reached a great age, and to have been passed onward to her grandson, John F. Greenlee, who died in 1915, when in his ninety-ninth year. Mr. Greenlee never married and was the last of the name in this county. Like his ancestress, he was in his old age a great source of information on local history. His habits were favorable to a long life, since he used no tobacco and rarely touched liquor. James, the husband of Mary Greenlee, died about 1764, leaving an estate appraised at $2,767.67. By owning six slaves he was the heaviest slave holder of that of that period of whom we have any certain knowledge. Exceptional items in the inventory are seven silver watcher, valued at $20 each, eight geese, and five pounds of beeswax. Yet the watches were not so low priced as they would seem since it would have taken a very good horse, or three cows, to buy a single one of them.

Source: A History of Rockbridge County, Virginia by Oren F. Morton, published in 1920.

Transcribed and submitted by: "Marilyn B. Headley" <mjbh@@ix.netcom.com>, 1997

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 Brøderbund Software, Inc. World Family Tree Vol. 12, Ed. 1. (Release date: July 28, 1997)
   Tree #1881.

   Date of Import: Oct 31, 1998

2. ↑ .

   Paxton Family Book