Person:Frederick LeStourgeon (1)

Frederick George was born 21 January 1846 in Illinois and died in Cumberland County, Virginia, 26 January 1904, aged 58.

He was a farmer and canner.

When his family moved to Virginia he remained in Bridgeton and worked in a tomato canning plant. It is uncertain whether he remained in Bridgeton to work or because he had met his bride to be.

He married Elizabeth Mary Vinyard 19 September 1875, at Bridgeton. She was born September 1854 in Center Grove, New Jersey, the daughter of William and Henrietta Vinyard. She died 22 February 1908 and is buried with her husband in the family plot at Brown's Church, Cumberland County, Virginia. William Vinyard was born Wilhelm Weinberg in Germany, and migrated to the United States in 1845 with his family. He married in New Jersey and changed his name to Vinyard, but his parents and the rest of the family retained the name of Weinberg and continued on to Cincinnati, Ohio, where their descendants remained.

After the marriage, Frederick George and Elizabeth Mary went to Virginia, where he built a house on a section of his father's farm. Here he farmed and operated the first of three canning plants under the name of Southside Canning Company.

They moved to Farmville in 1892, where they built a house on Baptist Hill in which they lived until 1897. This house is still standing (1963) and is being used as a Negro funeral home. Frederick George built and operated a tomato canning factory in Farmville. In 1897 the family moved to the final home, on a farm near Brown's Church, Cumberland County, Virginia. Here again he farmed and operated a tomato canning factory under the firm name of Southside Canning Company.

This farm was probably remembered by most of the family as the home, and with normal nostalgic memory of things connected with their youth, they were inclined to idealize the place. Be that as it may, it was a house of simple beauty, substantially built, with large rooms, high ceilings and each with a fireplace. It was painted white with red trim. Perhaps the outstanding feature was an unusually fine carved hardwood banister on the winding front stairs, which made a wonderful slide for the children. Brick for the house was made on the place and the timber came from the woods. It is believed that the house was built shortly before the Civil War. The house was located in a beautiful oak grove with a few hickory nut and walnut trees. Everything about the place indicated industry, progressiveness and an active interest in orderliness and beauty. There was a formal garden, a large vegetable garden with a formal grape arbor, two large orchards, all neatly fenced. There was rotation of crops on the farm, with plowing under of peas and alfalfa and the use of fertilizer and manure to enrich the soil. This was not a common practice in the area. A fence line along a lane leading to more distant fields was planted with small cedars. In the 1960s, these cedars, now grown to maturity, were still there.

In the house a small library provided the best in English and American literature, in poetry, fiction and history and even in mythology. Volumes of Shakespeare, Dickens, Thackeray, Gibbons, Keats, Tennyson, Longfellow, Walt Whitman, Washington Irving and many others were there for those who in their imagination wanted to travel beyond the limits of the farm. The inspiration for better things, both by precept and good books, was present in that home and continued with renewed strength in the second generation.

1.   Percy Earl LeStourgeon, "The LeStourgeon Family: a Brief History", 1963.