GAY, WILLIAM
William Gay, who fought at the siege of Londonderry, had at least six children who came to the Calfpasture. These were William, John, James, Robert, Samuel, and Eleanor. Robert and Samuel did not long remain in this locality. Eleanor married William Kincaid. William Gay, who owned 900 acres on what is wrongly called Guy's Run, died in 1755. His wife, who was Margaret Walkup, afterward married William Hamilton. James Gay, son of the pioneer James, and his brothers-in-law were the first men to introduce cattle of an improved breed into Kentucky. The Gays of Kentucky are derived from the Rockbridge families. They are among the largest landholders in the Bluegrass Region and are connected with scores of the historic families of that state. Henry Gay, who married Jane Henderson, was a brother to the pioneer Gays, or at least a near relative, and he lived a while on the Calfpasture. His son, John H., born in 1787, became a millionaire merchant of St. Louis. Edward J. Gay, son of John H., was the largest sugar planter in Louisiana, and left an estate worth $12,000,000. The sugar mills and plantation are still in the Gay family.
(Source: The History of Rockbridge County, Virginia, By Olen Morton, Publ. 1920. Transcribed by Andrea Stawski Pack)

GRAHAM, WILLIAM
William Graham, so prominent in the pioneer history of Liberty Hall Academy, was born at Harrisburg, Penn., Dec. 19, 1746. In his youth he was inclined to be wild, but his viewpoint changed as he neared his majority. Aided more by his mother than by his father, he then began to prepare for the ministry, and was graduated from the College of New Jersey in the same class with General Henry Lee. About the same time he was licensed to preach. In the fall of 1774 he came to Rockbridge to act as principal of the Presbyterian school that had just been authorized. He remained its head until 1796, when he resigned and went to the Ohio River with the intention of settling. But he was injudicious and the result was financially disastrous. He died at Richmond in 1799, while on a visit to the state capital in behalf of his land title. Some years later his remains were interred on the campus of Washington and Lee University. As the head of Liberty Hall Academy for twenty-two years, Graham had to struggle against some very untoward circumstances, and it is much to his credit that the school did not succumb. For the ministry he seems to have been rather less adapted. His strong point was in the teaching of political science, and he was a member of the convention that drafted the constitution of the state of Franklin, a commonwealth that had only a brief existence. It is unfortunate that this state did not come fully into being. It was not coterminous with the present state of Tennessee. The proposed boundaries, as stated by Arthur Campbell—a trustee of Liberty Hall,—included that part of Virginia sometimes called Little Tennessee, all of North Carolina west of the Blue Ridge, very small slices of West Virginia, Georgia, and Alabama, and rather less than one-half of Tennessee. It would have made a mountain state, homogeneous in geography and population.
(Source: The History of Rockbridge County, Virginia, By Olen Morton, Publ. 1920. Transcribed by Andrea Stawski Pack)

GREENLEE, MARY ELIZABETH MCDOWELL
Greenlee:  In all the annals of Rockbridge there is no individual of more striking personality than Mary Elizabeth McDowell, who became the wife of James Greenlee. So far as we have positive knowledge, she was the only woman in the little hand of home seekers, who in October, 1737, made the first actual settlement in Borden's Great Tract. At this time she was thirty years of age, and two of her eight children had been born. She lived many years a widow, and displayed much ability in managing a considerable estate. Its appraisement by William and John Paxton and Jacob Hickman showed that the personality was $2,970, inclusive of eight slaves, these being valued from $100 in the case of a child to $500 for an adult. No books are mentioned. Illiteracy relieved her husband from serving as constable, and it would seem that the wife cared little for the printed page. Yet her mental faculties were keen and alert to the end, she used good language, and in a verbal passage at arms, she appears to have been a match for all comers. Various legends cluster about her name, and it has been handed down that her wit and her nimbleness of mind came near causing her to be proceeded against for witchcraft. This is not impossible, since it was in her own girlhood that a woman was ducked by the civil authorities in Princess Anne County on a charge of being a witch. In certain Alleghany valleys a belief in the delusion exists to this day among people of German descent. In her widowhood Mary Greenlee kept a tavern, and as hostess she showed her eye for the main chance by flouting the regulations of the county court relative to the sale of ardent spirits. She moved from Timber Ridge to Greenlee's Ferry in 1780. If Mrs. Greenlee was keen in business, she was also something of a shrew. It was perhaps a victim of her caustic tongue who perpetrated the following lines of doggerel, which, let us hope, were written in pleasantry and not in malice.  “Mary Greenlee died of late; straight she went to Heaven's gate: But Abram met her with a club, and knocked her back to Beelzebub.”
As a result of a lawsuit instituted by Joseph Borden, Mrs. Greenlee was called upon for a deposition. When asked how old she was, she made this tart rejoinder: "What is the reason you ask my age? Do you think I am in my dotage? Ninety-five, the seventeenth of this instant." It is evident that her mental processes were in extraordinarily good working order, even at another deposition, taken at her home four years later, November 10, 1806. Two-thirds of a century had elapsed since she came to Rockbridge. Her reminiscences of the early pioneer days are numerous and precise, and of much historical importance; more so than any other statements given by the old residents. Mary Greenlee became a centenarian, since her span of life reached from November 17, 1707 until March 14, 1809. This tendency to longevity seems to have been inherited from her father, who reached a great age, and to have been passed onward to her grandson, John F. Greenlee, who died in 1915, when in his ninety-ninth year. Mr. Greenlee never married and was the last of the name in this county. Like his ancestress, he was in his old age a great source of information on local history. His habits were favorable to a long life, since he used no tobacco and rarely touched liquor. James, the husband of Mary Greenlee, died about 1764, leaving an estate appraised at $2,767.67. By owning six slaves he was the heaviest slaveholder of that period of whom we have any certain knowledge. Exceptional items in the inventory are seven silver watches, valued at $20 each eight geese, and five pounds of beeswax. Yet the watches were not so low priced as they would seem, since it would have taken a very good horse, or three cows, to buy a single one of them. John, the oldest son of James and Mary Greenlee, disregarded his privilege under the British law of entail, and took steps to divide the estate equally among the five brothers. He had no issue, and as only one or two of his brothers remained in Rockbridge, the Greenlee name was never extensively represented here.
(Source: The History of Rockbridge County, Virginia, By Olen Morton, Publ. 1920. Transcribed by Andrea Stawski Pack)