Ben Cole

Location: the Upper Farm, Alleghany County, Virginia

Ben Cole was appraised in 1847, $400.00. He was sold together with Tom Cole to John Lewis Peyton, $800.00.

Peyton lived in his law office in Staunton, Virginia prior to his marriage and later at his farm, “Shirley,” near Staunton. Peyton also inherited his father’s lower farm in Alleghany County, Virginia. During and after the Civil War, Peyton lived in England and Guernsey, the Channel Islands. In 1876 he returned to Virginia and purchased a former part of “Spring Farm,” much of which is now Gypsy Hill Park in Staunton, where he built “Steephill.” Peyton lived briefly in Ohio, but returned to “Steephill” until his death there in 1896.

Maria and her daughter, Hannah, were also sold to John Lewis Peyton in 1847. Bob, Henry Rideout, and Andy Primus were sold to Peyton in 1851. Sarah Moore and her daughter, Harrietta, were sold to Peyton in 1856. John Cobb Washington, Peyton’s father-in-law, gave enslaved African-Americans to Peyton at the time of his marriage to Washington’s daughter, Eliza Clark “Bettie” Washington. One of these enslaved men, George, 22, died of pneumonia in Augusta County, Virginia in 1856. John Cobb Washington lived at “Vernon” in Lenoir County, North Carolina.