Thomas Farley [3352]

  General Notes:

Farley's Fort was built by Thomas Farley Sr., a Revolutionary War soldier born about
1730 in Henrico County, Va. This builder of Farley's Fort married a cousin of Henry Clay, the great "peacemaker" of United States Senate renown. She was Miss Judith Clay
before her marriage.

In 1775, Farley took up land on Culbertson's Bottom, later Known as Crump's Bottom, or Harmon's Bottom. He disposed of his interest in Culbertson's Bottom to John Burnside around 1783 and move back across the mountains to Giles County, then Montgomery County. There on Walker's Creek where he lived, he died in 1796 at the age of 66
years.

One of the things that led Farley to move to Walker's Creek was the massacre of Tabitha and Mitchell, the children of Mitchell Clay, at what is now Shawnee Lake in Mercer County.

There in 1783, Indians killed those two Mitchell children and captured another one of the children, Ezekiel Mitchell. Ezekiel was taken to Ohio, where he was burned at the stake by the savages.

THE CULBERTSON tract, where Farley built Farley's Fort, comprised 355 acres. He and his two brothers, Francis and John, were in the battle of Point Pleasant, "the big Shawnee battle" of Oct. 10 1774, When General Andrew Lewis defeated the red army under the leadership of Chief Cornstalk.

There was always some doubt about Thomas Farley's title to the 355 acres of the Culbertson land. However, it was never contested, so in 1775 Farley set about constructing a large log house as a fort against Indian attack. It was a substantial structure known among the frontiersmen as Farley's Fort. It was built on a spot at the lower end of the bottom about 200
yards below the mouth of Tom's Run. This spot was just above Bull Falls and the Warford ferry in Summer County.

DREWRY FARLEY SR. was the first white man to permannently settle in Pipestem District. He was born in Bedford County, Va., in 1770 and died in Pipestem District, Summers County (then Mercer County) in 1851.

His sister, Nancy Elizabeth Farley, was married to James Ellison II, son of James Ellison I, in Farley's Fort about 1777. James Ellison II was born Feb. 28, 1758, and died Feb. 18 1839.

His father, James Ellison I, was born in New Jersy in 1735 and died in December, 1791. The latter's wife was Ann English, whom he married Feb. 11, 1757, James Ellison I came to Culbertson's Bottom about 1770. The couple had seven children.

James Ellison III was born in Farley's Fort on April 29, 1778, and died May 12, 1834. He married Mary Calloway in 1796. They reared a family of 12 children, of whom four sons became ministers.

BEST KNOWN of the four ministers was the Rev. Matthew Ellison, born Nov. 19, 1804, and died April 3, 1889, at Alderson. It was he who organized the First Baptist Church of Beckley, then known as Raleigh Court House.

>From 1850, when the church was organized, until 1879, Ellison pastored the church at Beckley. It was the longest pastorial tenure in the church's 120-year existence.

Ellison is buried at the rear of Old Greenbrier Baptist Church at Alderson. His wife is buried in Wildwood Cemetery in Beckley.

Mrs. J. Lewis Baumgartner (Feb. 22, 1883-March 13, 1967), who outlived her attorney husband by 23 years before dying in Beckley, was a grandduaghter of the Matthew Ellisons.
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Thomas Farley from Albemarle County, Virginia, came to New River Valley shortly after the coming of Culbertson and immediately on locating on the land referred to, erected a fort near the lower portion of the bottom on the south bank of the river, near what is known as "Warford." (note: Shortly after the opening of Dunmore's war in 1774, a fort was erected at the mouth of Joshua's Run, on Culbertson's Bottom, called Fort Field.)This fort was known as Farley's and in which James Ellison, whose father came from the State of New Jersey, was born in May, 1778. The father of James Ellison was in the battle of Point Pleasant, and after his return to his home on Culbertson's Bottom, was on the 19th day of October, 1780, while at work about a corn crib, attacked by a party of seven or eight Indians, wounded in the shoulder, captured, and carried some fifteen miles, escaping the day after his capture. In 1774 a woman was killed on Culbertson's Bottom, by the Indians, and about the same time a man by the name of Shockley, on a hill above the bottom, which still bears the name of Shockley's Hill."The James Ellison spoken of, became a distinguished and successful Baptist minister, and was instrumental in planting a number of Baptist churches in this section, among them the Guyandotte Baptist church, in 1812, where Oceana, in Wyoming County, is now situated. He was the father of the late Matthew Ellison, of Beckley, West Virginia, and who was regarded the most distinguished Baptist preacher in this section in his day

Thomas married Judith Clay [3353] [MRIN: 1166] in 1754.