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Descendants of William Wellford

5. BEVERLEY RANDOLPH³ WELLFORD (ROBERT², WILLIAM¹)¹⁶ was born July 29, 1797 in Fredericksburg, VA ^17,¹⁸, and died December 27, 1870 ¹⁹. He married (1) BETTY BURWELL PAGE, daughter of ? NELSON. He married (2) MARY ALEXANDER February 1824, daughter of LEAH SEDDON TALIAFERRO.

Notes for BEVERLEY RANDOLPH WELLFORD:
May 1, 1816, the Virginia Herald runs ad reporting that Robert Wellford has associated with his son, Beverley R. Wellford.

The following is an excerpt from a 1908 document written by Beverley Randolph Wellford, Jr. to Mary R. Wellford Wilson (original held by Susan Schueler of Akron, Ohio):

"Then came my father, born July 29, 1797, and died after after a noble, laborious, but always honored life, Dec. 27, 1870 . . ."

". . . He inherited his father's name and practice and was chained down by it and the exacting obligations of parent of a large family to a very limited sphere of duty. He was tempted to remove to a larger field, but could not do so until after he was fifty years old. He accepted a professorship in the University of Virginia, and had been in the early years of the National Medical Association elected as one of the first Presidents of that society.

He married very early and was left a widower with a little daughter before he was 21 years old. Her mother was a Page and her Grandmother a Nelson, historic names in Colonial Virginia history. She married the Rev. Dr. Atkinson, a brother of Episcopal Bishop Atkinson, but himself a Presbyterian, and for many years Pastor of Presbyterian Church in Raleigh, N.C. She died in 1902, more than 83 years old.

My father's second wife was Mary Alexander, through her father a lineal descendant of the John Alexander whose name is perpetuated in Virginia Geography in the City and County of Alexandria, to no small extent built upon his original purchase from the Crown as the first emigrant of the name in Northern Virginia. She was the youngest child of a large family. One of her oldest sisters, with whom, after her mother's death, when she was a girl of 12 or 13, she generally resided and from whose home she was married to my father in February 1824, was Mrs. Susan Seddon, the mother of James A. Seddon, Secretary of War in the C.S.A., and of my wife's mother, Mrs. Leah Seddon Taliaferro."

In January 1953, the Virginia Medical Monthly ran an editorial about Beverley Randolph Wellford. Following are some excerpts:

"About the middle of the last century there occurred three events of great moment to the medical profession of Virginia: (1) the founding of the American Medical Association, (2) the reorganization of the Medical Society of Virginia on a state wide basis, and (3) the reorganization of the Medical College of Virginia. In each of these projects Dr. Beverley Randolph Wellford played an important part.

The first meeting of the American Medical Association was held May 5, 6, and 7, 1847 at Philadelphia when Nathaniel Chapman was elected president. The fifth annual session was at Charleston, South Carolina where Dr. Beverley Randolph Wellford of Fredericksburg, Virginia was elected vice president. At the next meeting May 4, 5, 6, 7, 1852 in Richmond, Dr. Wellford become the sixth President.

. . . After studying under his father he attended two sessions at the University of Maryland and graduated in the year 1817 with the degree of M.D. In the same year he received a certificate from the Baltimore Medical Socity and Institute. He then returned to Fredericksburg and entered into active practice with his father. For two years, however, 1818-19 and 1819-20, Dr. Wellford returned to Baltimore and attended the Winter Session of the Medical School of his Alma Mater.

Like his father, the young doctor loved his profession and was devoted to his patients, no sacrifice being too large, no trouble too great, if, by it he could benefit any of those who had entrusted themselves to his care. He subscribed to and read assiduously the London Lancet and the Medico Chirurgical Review.

In 1832 when an epidemic of Asiatic cholera invaded this country, he went to New York to help combat the disease and by observation and experience to fit himself to better serve the people of his own community. Returning safely to Fredericksburg he at once set about providing an abudant supply of what were then considered the best cholera remedies. In this he was assisted by several young men who were studying under him.

Although medicine was his chief concern, as a good citizen, Dr. Wellford had other interests. He was a "Justice of the Corporation" and a member of the commission appointed in 1849 to contract for a new Court House, and later supervised its construction. He was a partner in the great stage line known as Peck, Wellford & Company and was first president of the Fredericksburg & Gordonville Railroad.

Dr. Wellford's fame spread beyond the Rappahannock country, and justly so. In 1851 he was elected president of the Medical Society of Virginia and in 1852 he was president of the American Medical Association. He was tendered a professorship in the medical department of the University of Virginia which he declined, but, when the Medical College of Virginaia became an independent school in 1854, he was named in the act of incorporation as a member of its first Board of Trustees and in the spring of that year, he was elected to and accepted the chair of Materia Medica and Therapeutics there. He held this position until his retirement in 1868 when he was elected Professor Emeritus. During the war he was in charge of one of the numerous Confederate hospitals in Richmond. Dr. Wellford died of apoplexy after a protracted illness on December 27, 1870. He was married twice. His first wife was Miss Betty Burwell Page, who had one daughter and died the second year after her marriage. His second wife was Miss Mary Alexander who bore him seven sons and two daughters. Two of these sons become prominent physicians, John Spotswood (1825-1911) and Armistead Nelson Wellford (1826-1884). The latter was the father of Dr. Armistead Landon Wellford (1857-1933) and the grandfather of Dr. Beverley Randolph Wellford of the present generation.

More About BEVERLEY RANDOLPH WELLFORD:
Occupation: Physician

Child of BEVERLEY WELLFORD and BETTY PAGE is:

?⁴ WELLFORD¹⁹, d. 1902; m. DR. REV. ? ATKINSON.

Children of BEVERLEY WELLFORD and MARY ALEXANDER are:

ii.

JOHN SPOTTSWOOD⁴ WELLFORD, b. January 04, 1825; d. 1911.

Notes for JOHN SPOTTSWOOD WELLFORD:
The following is an excerpt from a 1908 document written by Beverley Randolph Wellford, Jr. to Mary R. Wellford Wilson (original held by Susan Schueler of Akron, Ohio):

"My brother Dr. John Spotswood Wellford, Emetrius Professor in the Medical College of Virginia, now living with his wife in a childless old age in Richmond. He was 83 years old January 4 (1908), and thus some three years and four months my senior. I was married March 3, 1858, and he April 8, 1958. We have both recently celebrated our Golden Wedding, he in Richmond, and my wife and self were in Columbia."

"My two older brothers were both physicians, and faithfully served the Confederate cause in hospital service. John Spotswood had gone to Europe in 1860 to pursue postgraduate study in the European hospitals. He was like my dear father and the elder Wellfords, both males and females, intense Whigs, and cherished to the last their old partisan antagonism to the Democrats as the promoters and prophets of an improbable future, and never believed in the possibility, even after the secession of South Carolina, of the impending crisis. They looked upon me and my brother Philip as pariahs in our before breakfast, as they stigmatized it, secession ideas. John Spotswood, however, in Europe, from the talk of Northern visitors, had his eyes somewhat opened. He was in Italy when the news flashed across the water of the outbreak of war, and without one moment's delay he hastened to Liverpool to secure passage for his wife and himself to America. When he arrived at New York, the gates of immediate access to Virginia were closed and every Southern man was an object of suspicion. Through some of our Southern friends, however, in New York, he secured a circuituous railroad route through Ohio and Indiana to Kentucky, and thus came in touch with his own people and through East Tennessee roads was landed safely in Richmond. He immediately proffered his services and was commissioned as Surgeon, C.S.A., and sent to the Norfolk seaboard. While there he was a spectator of the battle of the Merrimac and Monitor, and after the evacuation of Norfolk, was sent to the field as surgeon of General Armistead's command.

In this service, he had abundant experience in active military movements, accompanying the army up to the battle of Gettysburg, where Armistead was slain just as he had ascended the hill and captured a Surgeon in charge of one of the largest hospitals in Richmond and there the evacuation of our city found him at the post of duty."

8.	iii.	ARMISTEAD NELSON WELLFORD, b. 1826; d. 1884.
9.	iv.	BEVERLEY RANDOLPH WELLFORD, JR..
10.	v.	PHILLIP A. WELLFORD.
	vi.	ROBERTA CATHERINE WELLFORD.

Notes for ROBERTA CATHERINE WELLFORD:
The following is an excerpt from a 1908 document written by Beverley Randolph Wellford, Jr. to Mary R. Wellford Wilson (original held by Susan Schueler of Akron, Ohio):

"[A] lovely girl, called after both paternal grandparents, Roberta Catherine, whose bright and beaming promise was cut short by her death in her 18th year. . ."

vii.

CHARLES EDWARD WELLFORD.

Notes for CHARLES EDWARD WELLFORD:
The following is an excerpt from a 1908 document written by Beverley Randolph Wellford, Jr. to Mary R. Wellford Wilson (original held by Susan Schueler of Akron, Ohio):

"]T]he next of our family was Charles Edward, named for my father's two brothers, a bachelor now living in Richmond, where he has been for many years the Secretary of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Co."

"My youngest brother Edward (Charley Ned) was a boy cadet in the Virginia Military Institute when Breckinridge called for aid in the valley and as one of the heroic band of the flower of Virginia youth he bore his share of the hazards and honors of the Victory at New Market. His metal badge of merit as one of the survivors of that field is now proudly cherished and worn by his pet niece, my own youngest daughter. His experience at New Market bore a great similarity to that of your grandfather at the battle of North Point in 1814, when the British assault upon Baltimore was repulsed. "

viii.

MARY ALEXANDER WELLFORD.

Notes for MARY ALEXANDER WELLFORD:
The following is an excerpt from a 1908 document written by Beverley Randolph Wellford, Jr. to Mary R. Wellford Wilson (original held by Susan Schueler of Akron, Ohio):

"And the youngest of all is a widowed sister bearing my mother's name, Mary Alexander. She married a grand nephew of Chief Justice Marshall, who died leaving one daughter and two sons. They live in Fauquier County, the old home county of the Marshall family."

6. CHARLES CARTER³ WELLFORD (ROBERT², WILLIAM¹) was born December 19, 1802¹⁹, and died December 29, 1870¹⁹.

Notes for CHARLES CARTER WELLFORD:
The following is an excerpt from a 1908 document written by Beverley Randolph Wellford, Jr. to Mary R. Wellford Wilson (original held by Susan Schueler of Akron, Ohio):

"Then came the youngest of them all, Charles Carter, so called to gratify Aunt Carter's loving memory of her husband of her early youth, born Dec. 19th, 1802 and died two days after my father, Dec. 29, 1870. He left three daughters and three sons. The oldest Betty Burwell married Dr. Geo. L. Nicolson, and died leaving descendents, one of whom is now, I believe, a prominent physician in Atlanta, Georgia.

The next daughter, Lucy Gray, married very late in life the Rev. Dr. William Brown, for many years Editor of the Central Presbyterian Church. He was then a very old and almost helpless widower, partially if not quite blind. Lucy ministered to him most faithfully in his southern home near Tampa Florida, and after his death continued for some time to reside there. On a visit to Fredericksburg some five or ten years ago she fell dead in a flash in the garden of the old Wellford home in Fredericksburg, then and now occupied by her surviving sister, Mrs. Mary Catherine Roy and her only child, Elisa. Her husband was my first cousin on my mother's side.

Uncle Charles' three boys led successful and useful lives. Charles Beverley, about ten months younger than myself, after the war went to Memphis, and was soon followed by his younger brothers, John Leavitt and Thomas. Charley died unmarried. The other two survived and died leaving large families. They were prominent men in business and in church circles. Both of them were elders in the Presbyterian Church and left behind them in the Mississippi Valley to thier children and people the heritage of an honored and spotless name."

The following is the account of the damage that was sustained to the Wellford House during the Battle of Fredericksburg, December, 1862, by Charles Wellford's grandson. (Historic Fredericksburg Foundation, Fredericksburg Civil War Sites, Vol. Two, Noel G. Harrison)

When the family finally returned to their home it was to find it battered and torn by shell fire, the house having been struck between thirty and forty times, and pillaged by the Federal Troops who had been twice in posession of the town (December 1862 and May 1863). Of course no windows were left, doors had been blown or taken from their hinges .. . . portraits, glass and china had been stolen or destroyed and in the garden several Yankess dead had been buried. Many years after the war a volume of the family Bible was recovered in Chicago, though only after a resort to legal measures . . . at least two Federal soldiers were killed in the Wellford house . . . -James M. Wellford

The following appeared in the Fredericksburg Ledger, June 7, 1854: "Charles C. Wellford was assaulted and beaten . . . by some soldiers belonging to a battery (comprosing part of the postwar Federal garrison) stationed near the city . . . Mr. Wellford was standing in front of his residence, when the parties came up and attacked him, striking him three or four times about the head. His son, Thomas Wellford, coming to his aid, was also attacked and beaten severely. The parties were at once arrested.

Children of CHARLES CARTER WELLFORD are:

	i.	THOMAS⁴ WELLFORD²⁰.
	ii.	BETTY BURWELL WELLFORD²¹, m. GEO. L NICOLSON²¹.
	iii.	LUCY GRAY WELLFORD²¹, m. WILLIAM BROWN²¹.
11.	iv.	MARY CATHERINE WELLFORD.
	v.	CHARLES BEVERLEY WELLFORD.

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