Maria
Location: the Upper Farm, Alleghany County, Virginia, formerly at Montgomery Hall in Augusta County, Virginia
Maria was appraised in 1847, $300.00. She was appraised separately from her infant daughter, Hannah. Maria and Hannah were sold together in 1847 to John Lewis Peyton, $400.00. Maria previously lived at Montgomery Hall and worked in the house.
Tom Cole and Ben Cole 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 John Lewis Peyton at the time of Peyton’s 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.
John Lewis 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 arm in Alleghany County, Virginia. During and after the Civil War, Peyton lived in England and Guernsey, the Channel Islands. He returned to Virginia in 1876 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 in 1896.