Jesus Christ is Lord
We at FLUVANNA have been extracting gold from metamorphic ore across North America from Fluvanna County, Virginia, to Eldorado, Siskyou and Monterey Counties in California.
The
Long Island Gold Mine was first opened by George Pace in the 1830's.
George was born in Goochland and was a descendent of John Pace of Middlesex
County in "tidewater Virginia". He was also descended from the Clements
and Houchin families. George married Catherine Lipford, daughter of Revolutionary
War veteran, Henry Lipford, who resided in Cumberland County, Virginia,
on bounty land he received for his service on the Continental Line. (Battle
of Kings Mountain in North Carolina).
George and Catherine took care of the old vet in his last years and when
Henry died he willed the property and 3 slaves to Catherine, who sold the
real estate and financed the purchase of 102 acres near Palmyra on Long
Island Creek in Fluvanna County, abutting Commodore Stockton's busy gold
mine. George and Catherine, together with their 3 aging slaves and a brood
of children, became members of the nearby Lyle Baptist Church and hand-worked
their own gold mine until the "War between the States" broke out in 1860.
The mine, like others in Virginia, was concealed from the invading "yankees"
and the Pace boys marched off with "The Sons of Fluvanna" to defend "Dixie",
a sweet little Fluvanna town near Columbia and the James River Canal.
After the war, eldest son Henry Randolfe Pace, moved to Ohio with his wife,
Jordy Flannigan, but that marriage failed and he returned to Richmond,
Virginia, to be in the real estate business. He married Margaret Callaghan,
owner of the boarding house where he lodged near the State Capitol, and
fathered a daughter, Julia Pace.
Margaret was the twice married daughter of Oliver and Elvira Callaghan
of Fincastle in Bottetourt County. Her first marriage was to a young southerner
surnamed Phelps, who was killed in the war. Her second, to a northerner
named Mr. Howard, causing her estrangement from her father, brothers and
sisters. Margaret did, however, maintain contact with her mother, Elvira,
who was the daughter of Fincastle merchant, Robert Wiley, by his first
marriage to the enchanting Mary Ann Waldron Mason, widow of "French
Mason of Pohick". She was also the sister of Sydney Major Waldron, who
eloped with 6 foot 7 inch David Henson, son of Irish linen makers, living
near the Waldron's walled deerpark at Carrick on Shannon, and founder of
Hensonville in Russell County, Virginia.
Mary Ann
and Sydney Major appear to have been the runaway daughters of Vaughn Waldron
of Carrick on Shannon in County Leitrem, Ireland, following the death of
their mother and the remarriage of their father. According to the letter
Elvira passed on to Margaret, sometime in the middle 1790s Sydney was discovered
in her bedroom with 6 foot 6 inch David Henson who escaped by leaping from
her window into the adjoining deerpark but was revealed by the hat he left
behind. The family would not give permission for her to marry the socially
inferior David Henson so she eloped with him. As she was already pregnant,
her younger sister, Mary Ann, accompanied her to help with the expected
infant. They sailed from Belfast and the baby was born at sea, dying soon
afterward. It's likely that a younger brother, Thomas Waldron, assisted
with the escape and, like the sisters, was rejected by the rest of the
Waldron family.
When the runaways arrived in Norfolk, Virginia, Mary Ann was no longer
needed to help her sister and she quickly met and married French Mason
whose Potomic plantation, "Pohick", lay between George Washington's Mount
Vernon and uncle George Mason's "Gunston Hall" in Fairfax County.
David Henson and Sydney traveled up the James River to Roanoke then south,
acquiring property a few miles west of Abingdon in Russell County. The
large home David built for them was still standing in Hensonville when
we visited in 1988.
French Mason and Mary Ann had only a few years together before he died
as the result of a thorn penitrating his boot, causing infection and leaving
her a widow with an infant daughter, Catherine. Mason family members challenged
her right to "Pohick". Robert Wiley, a successful businessman with interests
up and down the Shanadoah Valley, came to her rescue and obtained a good
settlement for Mary Ann befor marrying her and settling in Finecastle.
It's highly likely Robert Wiley was in the whiskey business because
at that time there was a Wiley's Inn in nearby Wileysburg now called Mt.Pleasant
on the edge of Washington, D.C. and he was a frequent visitor to" Callaghans
Inn" at the beginning of the Allegheny Turnpike, run by his good friend,
Dennis O'Callaghan. Robert seems to have been from a clan of Wileys who
settled at Sinking Springs in Craig County, southwest of Roanoke. He and
Mary Ann had two children, Elvira and Ferdinand. Elvira married Oliver
Callaghan, first clerk of Allegheny County and son of Dennis O'Callaghan.
Julia Pace, granddaughter of Elvira and Oliver Callaghan married Howard
T. Pitts of West Point on the York River, son of Captain Simeon Pitts,
a Norfolk shipbuilder, and Amanda Richardson of "Croaker", a plantation
near Williamsburg.
Julia Pace's father, Henry Randolfe Pace, had bought out his mother Catherine
and brother Andrew's interest in the mineral rights to the gold mine though
Catherine Pace retained lifetime tenency on the property. Henry then leased
the mineral rights to a mining company that never did any thing with the
lease, because Catherine's tenency prevented any explority development
until after her death, being that she was very old. Well, she lived to
be 110 and outlived both of them so they never mined any of the gold. Henry
died when Julia was very young so she only knew of the gold mine because
of stories told to her by her mother, Margaret and Margaret did not know
Catherine. Catherine Pace died in the 1920s. The mine became a vague family
legend and there was no remembrance of the old lady in Fluvanna County.
Meanwhile, in Fluvanna County, an old gent by the surname of Page had moved
on to the property to assist the aged Catherine and after she died he continued
to live in the Pace log cabin until his own death in the 1930s. The property
was then auctioned off by the county to pay back taxes, everyone locally
thinking it was Page property. They even referred to the mine as the Page
Mine.
Julia Pace, the only child of Henry Randolfe Pace and Margaret, had moved
to Norfolk where her new husband, Howard, was in the shipbuilding business.
But the family business folded and she and Howard went north to New York
where he obtained employment building elaborate sets in the "Hippodrome
Theatre", including designing and building a rotating stage that permitted
horses to pull chariots in the staging of Ben-Hur. Julia herself went on
the stage as a singer but after a mishap when they were stranded in Philadelphia
because of nonpayment of wages they quit the theatre and returned to Norfolk
where Howard learned from an old waterfront character the formula for making
rat poison out out of inexpensive chemicals. Soon Howard was exterminating
rats in every port from Boston to New Orleans and became very wealthy forming
the "Pitts Chemical Corporation" headquartered in New Jersey.
Howard then bought an old plantation on the James River near Williamsburg
and settled down to raise his children, Howard T.Pitts Jr., Addis Pitts,
and Margaret Cora Pitts while he ran a Chandlery in Norfolk servicing the
large ships that came and went from Norfolk Harbor. One of his employees
at the end of World War I was former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Stith Jones Kidd
of Norfolk. Stith had the responsibility of going out in a fast motorboat,
meeting the incoming vessels, taking their orders for provisions, and scooting
back to the warf to have everything ready when the larger vessels docked.
When Margaret Cora Pitts, the granddaughter of Henry Randolfe Pace, saw
Stith Jones Kidd marriage soon followed.
As prohibition was in full swing, high paying jobs existed in Boston for
experienced open sea motorboat operators. Stith and Margaret moved
to Boston where Jewel Cornelia Kidd was born. Stith died soon after and
Jewel was raised on the Pitts, James River Plantation by her grandparents,
Virginia and Howard Pitts, and uncles, Howard and Addis.
When World War II broke out Jewel went to work on an airbase in San Antonio,
Texas, where she met and married Army Air Force pilot, Meyer Morris, who
was killed a year later in combat with the Germans while serving under
General George Patton, leaving Jewel a young widow with an infant son,
Tommy Morris. She met and married another pilot, George Finnie Kimble,
from Lakeville, Connecticut. She had 8 children with him, including
two sets of twins, one being Jennie Sue Kimble, aka Abigail Storm, or Mrs.
Daniel Francis Eggink, who is sole deeded owner of the mineral rights to
the Long Island Gold Mine, registered in the Palmyra Court House, Fluvanna
County seat. (to be continued..., the story of how Daniel discovered
the location of the mine and the records revealing a separate mineral estate
with precedence over surface rights, and secured the deeded mineral and
water rights for Abigail and her descendants.)
All inquiries should be addressed to Abigail Storm.
liberty@woodstocknation.org
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1998 EGGINK "a family business"
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