WILLDEN Family---HUDDLESTONs Go West

Blue Ridge Mountains

Bedford County, VA

In the last blog, we mentioned that Abraham HUDDLESTON and several of his brothers moved from Pennsylvania to Bedford County, Virginia around 1770. Abraham HUDDLESTON is the 4th great grandfather of Tonya Kim WILLDEN via her mother Clara Archer WILLDEN.
When Abraham left for Virginia, the County of Bedford was only 16 years old, and didn't have a County seat of its own until 1782, making the HUDDLESTON brothers some of the first frontiersmen in western Virginia, along with Thomas Jefferson. Abraham had been born on January 6, 1744 in Bucks Co., PA, and married 18 year old Mary PATTERSON in 1761 prior to leaving for Virginia. They settled in the southern part of the County, near present day Chamblissburg, and bought land on the Stony Fork of Goose Creek, an area bordered on the west by the majestic Blue Ridge Mountains which drained its springs and creeks down into the fertile farm lands below. Unlike his father who remained near Philadelphia, Abraham HUDDLESTON did not experience the closeness to the American Revolution way out in the mountainous west of Virginia, but most likely had his hands full during the French and Indian War on the frontier. There is no record of any HUDDLESTON being involved in any of these military events as a soldier, and that could be due to lack of records, or the Quaker influence within the family. When the American Revolution ended, the local citizens decided to place a County Seat in the middle of Bedford, and named it Liberty in 1782...it later became Bedford, Virginia. Liberty had a two-room 700 sq. ft. courthouse, and a 240 sq. ft. "prison".
On a cold November morning in 1785, Abraham HUDDLESTON died at the old age of 41, and was buried on the Sheldon Epperly farm (as of 2013) on a hillside pasture grave next to a telephone pole, on property at 12895 Dickerson Mill Road (hwy 746) just east of Chamblissburg, leaving his young wife Mary and eight children on their own. But Mary HUDDLESTON's life was far from over, and the new widow continued to farm the land with the help of her teenage children.
In 1798, the widow Mary HUDDLESTON met a Revolutionary War Veteran whose wife had died only three years earlier....his name was Abraham SLACK (more about him later). As fate would have it, Mary's daughter Nancy and Abraham's son John became engaged and planned a wedding for November 29, 1798....so the widow Mary HUDDLESTON and widower Abraham SLACK decided to make it a double wedding, and the two couples were married the same day. To make matters even more confusing, Mary HUDDLESTON's son George married Abraham SLACK's daughter Susannah the following year in 1800. If you missed all of that....here it is briefly....two HUDDLESTON brothers married two SLACK sisters, and then their widowed parents also married. It would not be the last time in the WILLDEN family story that the widowed parents of married children would find each other. At any rate, Mary PATTERSON HUDDLESTON SLACK died in the 1820's in Bedford Co. Virginia, followed by her second husband Abraham SLACK in 1833. They are buried with Abraham HUDDLESTON on the Epperly farm, the only marker for the three being the Revoluntionary War headstone of Abraham Slack, put there in 1930.  There is also a town of HUDDLESTON in Bedford County, Virginia, but its' namesake is no immediate relation to our line here. And the HUDDLESTON story continues......... Comments/Questions to graveyardgossip@gmail.com

Headstone is on far right side just below horizon

 

Next to this grave are rocks marking the graves of Mary Patterson Huddleston Slack and Abraham Huddleston