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Elizabeth Cummins Jackson, Biography by Prudence Sarah Hinkle, great great granddaughter of Elizabeth Cummins Jackson Elizabeth Cummins was born in England in 1724 and died in 1825. She was a passenger on the sailing vessel of Captain John Jackson. They were married in 1755. When the ship on which Elizabeth Cummins crossed the Atlantic reached the port in Baltimore, the British Custom House officers wanted to open her big chest stored with her wardrobe, heirlooms of silver, linen, and an inheritance of one thousand pounds in gold. She seated herself upon the chest, refusing to allow the search. She and her chest were undisturbed. When she arrived in New York she found that her sister's family who preceded her had died of yellow fever. She returned to Baltimore to the home of English friends until 1755 when she married Captain John Jackson. In 1769 they moved to Upshur County, West Virginia, where they built a cabin and Jackson Fort. One of the first noted acts of Elizabeth Cummins Jackson was to win her new home on the Buckhannon River obtaining, in her own name, a patent from the commonwealth of Virginia for three thousand acres of land. This included the site of Buckhannon, West Virginia. It was paid for with the gold she had brought from England. At the outbreak of the Revolution there began a long period of Indian warfare. John Jackson and his four sons, George, Edward, John, Jr., and Henry, bore an active part. The first company of soldiers in the country was raised by George Jackson in November 1778. The Indian wars began in 1777 and lasted continuously until 1795. While her husband and sons were serving in the Continental troops of the Revolutionary war, she was left commander of the fort, a trust she bravely and loyally kept. She had studied the Indian tactics so thoroughly that she apprehended them from afar. The Indians' "war whoop" did not frighten her and she fought them like a man. She was a kind, gentle woman with a sympathy for the frightened women and terrorized children. She gathered them into the fort at the approach of danger. Later John Jackson and Elizabeth Cummins Jackson moved to Clarksburg and it was there her last Indian fight was made on Main Street at Elk Creek. On July 20, 1784, the first court of Harrison County was held at her house. When she and her husband gave up their home they moved into the home of their son, George Jackson. After George moved to Ohio in 1807, she made her home with her grandson, John G. Jackson, in his palatial mansion on the hill of Clarksburg. This was the home he built for his first bride, Mary Payne, a sister of Dollie Madison. Their marriage took place in the White House in 1801 and has the distinction of being the first wedding in that historic mansion. Elizabeth Cummins Jackson was a pure Saxon type in personal appearance. She was tall with a commanding physique with fair skin, blue eyes, and light hair. She was well educated, lived to the great age of one hundred and one, and died at the home of her grandson, Judge John G. Jackson. She was buried in the old Jackson graveyard in East Clarksburg. She was the great grandmother of "Stonewall" Jackson, of Civil War fame. ~~~~~
Elizabeth Zane
images are provided courtesy of the West Virginia State Archives:
http://www.wvculture.org/history
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