University of Virginia Library

TIMBERLAKE.

John Timberlake was the first clerk of Fluvanna County.
He died in 1820, at the age of eighty-nine. His sons, Walker,
John and Horace, lived in Albemarle. Walker was a Methodist
minister, and withal an active man of business. He
resided for a time at Glenmore, and subsequently at Bellair,
below Carter's Bridge. He died in 1864. His children were
Gideon, Clark, John W., William, Ann, the wife of B. C.
Flannagan, Elizabeth, the wife of John H. Timberlake,

Sarah, the wife of H. H. Gary, Mary, the wife of Abraham
Shepherd, and Christiana. Gideon, who lived on the east
side of Dudley's Mountain where it abuts on the north fork of
Hardware, and Clark married respectively Lucy and Letitia,
daughters of Nathan C. Goodman. John was admitted to
the Albemarle bar in 1812, and was associated with James
and John B. Magruder in the purchase of the Shadwell Mills,
and a large tract of timber land in the Buck Island section.
He died in 1862. His wife was Sarah, daughter of John B.
Magruder, and his children were Wilhelmina, Edward J.,
Ann, the wife of Dr. John C. Hughes, and Henry. Horace
had two sons, John H. and Horace. John H. was appointed
a magistrate of the county, lived at Greenwood Depot and
Brownsville, built at the former place a large edifice in which
Rev. William Dinwiddie conducted a flourishing school before
the war, and died in 1881. His wife was his cousin
Elizabeth, daughter of Walker, and his children were Virgilia,
the wife of Rev. Paul Whitehead, John H., who was
killed in 1876 by a fall from his horse above Mechum's
Depot, and James W., who married Sarah Patrick, and lives
on the old Patrick place west of Batesville. Horace lived in
the Buck Island neighborhood.

A brother of the first John Timberlake was Lewis, one of
whose daughters was the wife of Warner Minor, an original
hotel keeper at the University. Another daughter, Louisa,
while visiting in her sister's family, became the wife of William
Wertenbaker.

Another brother of the first John was James, a purser in
the United States Navy. He married Peggy O'Neal, daughter
of an Irish hotel keeper in Washington City, a woman of
great beauty and brilliant natural gifts. After Timberlake's
death, she became the wife of John H. Eaton, General Jackson's
Secretary of War, and by her elevation to the cabinet
circle occasioned such violent social disturbances as eventually
produced the disruption of that body.