William Deacon

Citations

1. [S694] Nathaniel Chittum Buried ...For The Second Time: Relatives Celebrate The Life Of Their Ancestor, Rockbridge Weekly, Rockbridge Co., Virginia, April 2000, transcription online Ancestry.com, Born on July 11, 1798, Nathaniel Chittum had four brothers and four sisters and he had thirteen children of his own.
   
   Records on his life are a bit scanty. He was the youngest child of John and Nancy Sly Chittum and was born in Goochland County on July 11, 1798. Apparently he moved with his parents to a South Buffalo Creek farm in 1817 It is known that he married Elizabeth Betsy Deacon (daughter of William and Nancy Peel Deacon) from the Collierstown North Buffalo) area about 1820. The couple had eleven children (see page 14A). He traveled extensively, but his profession wasn't known. Some think he might have been a blacksmith or a cabinet maker, but there are no records known to substantiate this. He moved to Jefferson County, Tennessee, to Cole County, Missouri, to Fayette Co., Kentucky and returned to Botetourt County in 1841. In an account of his death in the Rockbridge County News (a newspaper that later merged with the News-Gazette), it was noted that "All these long journeys were made in a common road wagon."
   
   Chittum married Margaret Kessler of Botetourt County in 1851 and fathered two more children. He later moved to Bedford County where he lived until 1878 and later came back to Rockbridge County after the death of his second wife. At the time of his death, the newspaper indicated that he was "probably the oldest man in the county and certainly the oldest in this section" when he died at the residence of his son-in-law, John A. Nicely.