University of Virginia Library

Johnny Yeargan The Miser.

ABOUT the beginning of the
last century, when Charlottesville
was in its youth,
there came to the village from
Pennsylvania a young man, evidently
of German extraction, named
Johnny Yeargan. Like most young
fellows he was fond of ladies' society,
and was a regular attendant at all the
dances that took place in the town.
On one occasion some one tied a dish
cloth to Johnny's coat tail, which
caused roars of laughter at his expense,
he being unconscious of the cause of
the mirth. When he discoverd the
cloth at the close of the dance, he was
so mortified that he became a recluse
and a miser. The home he occupied was
situated about where the law office of
Mr. Valentine Southall now stands,
just east of the Colonial Hotel. Giving
up his trade, he began to sell whiskey,
which he bought by the wagon load
from the old "Mountain Schooners"
which plied between the Valley of
Virginia and the eastern part of the
State. The writer has seen as many
as fifty of these wagons in one convoy
passing through Charlottesville. Johnny
would put his whiskey away, and
keep it until it improved by age, and
then sell it. This made his goods the
best that could be obtained in the
town, and his trade grew to be quite
an important one. His windows were
strongly secured, and his front door
was so chained that it could be opened
just wide enough for a jug to be passed
in and out. He only came out of his
house once a year, and then to pay his
taxes and license to sell. My father,
who was clerk to Mr. Alexander Garret,
the Clerk of Albemarle County,
used to receive his taxes, and probably
knew Johnny as well as any one else in
the town. I cannot ascertain the exact
year of his death, but he must have
died about the time of my birth (1834),
for I remember well that every "fourpence
ha'penny," or "ninepence" that
we saw that was rusty or blackened
from age, was called a "Johnny Yeargan
piece." One day two of Yeargan's
nearest neighbors noticed that his windows
had not been opened for several
days, and they became alarmed for
the old fellow and broke into his
house and found him dead upon the
floor, where he had probably been
lying for some days. As his heirs were
unknown and his property would
revert to the State, a Mr. Southall, of
Williamsburg, was appointed his executor.
He came to Charlottesville,
and after digging up the yard and cellar,
he found $13,000 buried in the
basement in pots and jars, and over
the fireplace in Johnny's room a lot of
"tally sticks," on which were fourteen
notches. It was supposed that one thousand
dollars was buried somewhere,
which has never yet been found. The
cellar in which the $13,000 was found
was full of empty whiskey barrels,
and Mr. Southall in clearing them out
found one almost dropped to pieces
from age, and in it about ten gallons
of whiskey, which must have been
from twenty-five to thirty years old.