PACK Family of Summers County

Source: "History of Summers County, West Virginia", Pages 447-452, Published 1908
by Judge James H. Miller

Transcribed for Genealogy Trails by Andrea Stawski Pack

The ancestor of Samuel Pack was a hunter and trapper with Swope and Pitman, and the first heard of him was at the mouth of Indian, and discovering Indian signs, he went to the settlements to inform the settlers, and reached there too late, but it led to and resulted in the fight of Captain Paul with the Indians at the island at the mouth of Indian (which was then known as Turkey Creek). This was in 1763. We are unable to learn the name of this hunter. Samuel the settler, was born in Augusta County in 1760, and members of this family were found along New River in 1764 between the mouth of Indian and the mouth of Greenbrier.
We insert something of this family's history from Judge Johnston's "New River Settlements," and from information given us by Mrs. Ellen Shanklin, who was a daughter of Richard McNeer and the wife of John Pack Shanklin, now residing near Hamilton, Ohio, and whose mother was the wife of Dr. Richard Shanklin, and a Pack and from other sources.
The Packs in America first consisted of several brothers, who came across the sea early in the foundling of the colony of Virginia, but the hardships were such that they returned to England, and later three of them returned. Two of them went to the South and the other came to Virginia. This one settled in Augusta County, and had two sons, one of whom was named Samuel, born in Augusta in 1760. He had seven sons, John, Mathew, Samuel, Bartley, Loe, William and Anderson; the daughters were Betsey, who married Jackson Dickinson; Polly, who married Joe Lively, and Jennie, who married Jonah Morris.
John and Bartley settled at Pack's Ferry, in what is now Summers County. Samuel settled on Glade Creek, now Raleigh; Loe lived on Brush Creek, now Monroe County; William went West; Polly and Betsey lived in Monroe, and Jennie in Missouri.
John, who lived at Pack's (Landcraft's and now Haynes') Ferry, had a great many troubles with the Indians, and plowed in the field with his gun strapped over his shoulder. General and afterwards President Hayes' wife was a Pack, and when John Pack, a son of Anderson Pack, was captured and taken to General Hayes' camp, he recognized him, and the family connection, and gave him the freedom of the camp at Raleigh Court House. President Hayes' wife's mother was Jennie Pack, who married Jonah Morris, and their daughter married General Hayes, the Federal soldier and President of the United States.
The Packs are English. Alderman Pack, and ancestor, was a member of the Long Parliament, and while a member of Parliament moved the Parliament to make Oliver Cromwell Protector. One of the Pack ancestors was a general in the English Army and fought under Lord Wellington in the Peninsular Wars in Spain and Portugal and against the Emperor Napoleon at Waterloo, and his name will be found in a history of that wonderful battle. Samuel Pack, the grandfather of Anderson, was English, and wore the English custom-made trousers-knee breeches and frock coat, and his hair with a queue.
The John Pack referred to married Jane Hutchinson, of an old Monroe family. His children were Samuel, who married Harriet French; Rebecca, who married Robert Dunlap; Archibald, who married Patsy Peck; Polly, who married Dr. Richard Shanklin; Rufus, who married Catharine Peters, a sister of Mrs. L.M. Alderson and Mrs. Columbus Wran Withrow; and Julia, who married Elliott Vawter. John Pack was a lawyer, and practiced and lived in Giles County; Samuel Pack, who married Harriet French, had four sons and one daughter. The sons were Captain John A., who married Mary Gooch; Allen C., who married Susan Lugar; Samuel, who married Sarah Douthat, and Charles D., and the daughter, Minerva, married Dr. J.W. Easley.
The children of Anderson Pack were Conrad B. Pack (Coon), who emigrated to Kansas; Samuel B., who also went to Kansas; John A., who is living in McCloud County, Oklahoma; Allen C., in Kansas; Loe L., who died at Ansted; Charles H., now living near Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, having entered the territory at its opening; he married Louisa s. Skaggs, a daughter of James A. Skaggs, of Lindside, Monroe County. The daughters of Anderson were Virginia, wife of Dr. John G. Manser; Clara, who married E.B. Meador, his first wife, and Kate, who married Captain Bob Saunders, of Raleigh. These Packs were Confederate soldiers.
Among the first settlers of the New River Valley in this section was Samuel Pack. The people of this name thirty years ago were numerous in this county. The Packs were among the most thrifty of the first settlers in all this region west of the Alleghenies, but in recent years, since the Civil War, the majority of the name have gone West with the advancement of civilization, into the great Middle West. There still remains, however, some families of the name in summers, Fayette and Raleigh Counties, and descendants, relations and connections by marriage are still numerous in numbers in the surrounding region, though the name of Pack is not.
The Packs at one time owned a large part of the most fertile lands along New River, including from the mouth of Greenbrier to War Ford, on the eastern side of the river, and some of the bottoms on the western side, including the lands around the mouth of Bluestone River. Samuel Pack, the original ancestor of the generations of this region, married a daughter of Captain Mat Farley, a famous Indian scout and brother of Drewry Farley, from whom the present generation of Farleys in this county descended. The other child of Captain Mat Farley emigrated while a young man to Indiana. Captain Mat Farley at one time lived on Gatliff Bottom, now known as the Calloway Barker place.
The sons of Samuel Pack were John, Anderson, Lowe, Bartley and Augustus. Lowe settled in Fayette County, in the Ansted country; Augustus, in Raleigh County; Anderson, at the mouth of Bluestone River, owning the Gatliff Bottom, and where Lark M. Meador's widow now resides, and on the Jonathan L. and John W. Barker lands. John Pack lived on the Rufus Pack place, opposite the mouth of Bluestone River, and owned the land from the mouth of Bluestone to the mouth of Greenbrier.
The children of John Pack were William, who owned the lands at the mouth of Greenbrier River, now owned by C.L. and A.E. Miller; Sarah Ballangee, the wife of Lafayette Ballangee, the Sam Pack and James W. Pack places. Rufus Pack lived for many years on the east side of New River, immediately below the mouth of Bluestone; Archie settled on New River, where the descendants of A.L. Harvey now live, above the mouth of Indian; Sam, who married Harriet French, lived in Giles County, Virginia.
The children of John Pack were William, Rufus, the preacher, Archie, Sam and Polly, who married Dr. Richard B. Shanklin, of Monroe County, father of John Pack Shanklin, who married Miss Ellen McNeer, and now lives near Cincinnati, Ohio. He was a brave Confederate soldier, who fought throughout the Civil War, and now holds a pardon, granted to him by President Andrew Johnson, for offenses committed by reason of his being a so-called "rebel" soldier.
The minister, Rufus Pack, moved with his family to Kansas about 1880. It was his son, John H. Pack, who was the first county superintendent of schools of Summers County and the first merchant in Upper Hinton. It was over his storehouse the courts were held for the county for some time, until that building was washed away in the flood of 1878. Rufus Pack had one other son, Archie, and several daughters, among them being Miss Emma and Miss Clara, who married E.B. Meadows; the other daughters and Archie removed to Kansas with their father, Rufus. Archie lived to be a very old man, and died near Red Sulphur Springs. His daughter, Malindy, married A.L. Harvey, and his son, James emigrated West.
Anderson Pack was a large land and slave owner; he married Rebecca Peters, a daughter of Christian Peters, who married Clara Snidow. Rebecca Pack was born February 14, 1811, near Peterstown, Monroe county, Virginia. She married Anderson Pack May 5, 1829, and lived at the mouth of Bluestone river until the death of her husband, after which time she lived with her daughter, Virginia Manser, and moved to the mouth of the Greenbrier River in 1872; thence to Hinton in 1884, and then to Burden, Kansas, where she still resides with her grandson, Dr. William Henry Manser. The is a very remarkable lady, being now ninety-seven years old, retaining fully her physical and mental faculties. She remembers, after her marriage, he father-in-law, Samuel Pack, Charles Gatliff and William Wiley, who had all been Indian spies and scouts, meeting at her home and talking over their experiences in Indian warfare. She remembers that there was a fort on the Gatliff or Calloway Barker farm. At one time the settlers were driven from this fort by the Indians, the fort burned, and all their property destroyed. It is on this bottom that in recent years the prehistoric graveyard was washed up from beneath the surface of the earth. After the Indians destroyed this fort, they went up New River to Indian Creek to the mud fort on Rich Creek. she also remembers the fort on Crump's Bottom. A number of the slaves of Anderson Pack and the descendants of others still live on New River, and in Hinton. Among them is William Pack (colored), Tandy's children, and Allen.
There was another son of Samuel Pack named Bartley. Samuel Pack owned all the land from the mouth of Greenbrier to Gatliff Bottom. Bartley inherited the Landcraft and Dunn places, which decended to his children, Miss J. Dunn, who married John H. Dunn, Mrrs. Isaac Young, Mrs. Emily Landcraft, Mrs. J.M. McLaughlin, and Josephus Pack, who was the first clerk of Summers County Court, were all children of Bartley Pack.
Conrad Pack, son of James W. Pack, of the mouth of Leatherwood, a relative namesake of Coon Pack heretofore referred to, is another prominent member of the Pack family in this region. He is now, and has been for several years, general manager of the Buckeye Coal & Coke Company at Bramwell, West Virginia, and has represented Mercer County in the Legislature. He has amassed a considerable fortune in coal lands speculation and in the manufacture of coal and coke. He is an enterprising gentleman, and was for a number of years located at Athens as a partner in the mercantile business with Hon. Rufus G. Meador. He, like his relative, James P. Pack, has departed from the faith of his fathers, and is now a follower of President Roosevelt. The Captain Mat Farley referred to above was also a scout under General George Washington in the Continental Army of the Revolution.
The only families of the Packs remaining in Summers County are James W. and Samuel Pack, who live just above the mouth of Greenbrier. Their sisters married Charles R. Fox, Lafayette Ballangee and E.B. Meadows (first wife). They were children of William Pack, who owned the land at the mouth of Greenbrier, as was also Richard who died many years ago, leaving two sons, Evan B. and Erastus, who inherited the Greenbrier Ferry property. There were two Pack ferries across New River, one at the lower end of the Rufus Pack place near the mouth of Leatherwood, where the State road crossed New River, and the other above the mouth of Bluestone, on the Landcraft place, over which the famous suit of (Tommy Tight) Meadows vs. Joseph N. Haines was fought through the court.
There were three brothers living in the Jumping Branch District some thiry years ago: James M., Samuel, and Preston. Some of their decendants still live in that region, but I do not know from what branch of the Pack family they are derived.
James P. Pack, a representative of the Pack family now residing in the county, is a son of the first clerk of the county, Josephus B. Pack, and a grandson of Bartlett Pack. He is now about forty-seven years of age, and is a gentleman of varied accomplishments, intelligent and patriotic towards Hinton, the town in which he has made his home the greater portion of his life. He was at one time a guard at the West Virginia penitentiary; later, under Cleveland's first administration, a post office inspector for the national government; later, he studied law, passed the examinations with honor, and entered into practice in Summers County in co-partnership with Col. James W. Davis, under the firm name of Davis & Pack. Later, he formed a co-partnership with Hon. William R. Thompson, and practiced the profession for a number of years under the firm name of Thompson & Pack. Tiring of the law, he later retired from the active practice, and became a traveling salesman, in which occupation he continues, and , and has made a success, having accumulated a competence. He is a bachelor. As a lawyer he was successful, becoming an able, conscientious and reliable counsellor, especially in chancery practice.
The other children of Josephus Pack were Luke and John B. The former was a railway conductor, and was accidentally killed. John B. is engaged in the manufacture of lumber in Raleigh County. There was one daughter, Miss Emma. The widow of J.B. Pack was a Miss Kate Dunn, and, after the death of Mr. Pack, married Mr. Erastus H. Peck. She and her husband still reside in Hinton, Mr. Peck having been county clerk for twenty-four years, and was the second agent of the Central Land Co., having succeeded John H. Gunther, the first and only other agent for that corporation in Hinton.
There is a settlement of Packs in South Carolina and a town called Packsville, and numerous Packs in that region who are descendants, no doubt, of the Pack emigrant who went South. All the Packs in all America are descendants of this English stock, as above described, beyond a question.
Matthew Pack had a son John, who settled in Raleigh County. He left surviving him his sons, Samuel, James M., William and John, who lived and died in Jumping Branch District, this county. John was killed during the war, being shot in the leg, from which he died. It was claimed to have been accidental.
William's children were John, James M. and Lewis A. Lewis A. is now a resident of Jumping Branch, and was the Democratic nominee for justice of the peace in 1904, but was defeated by factional differences. He has held the position of president of the Board of Education, and is an intelligent gentleman. Preston left one son, Alexander, who is a telegraph operator at Montgomery. James M. was a justice of the peace and a constable, holding each position for four years. He died in Jumping Branch. Samuel was the owner of the old Little Bluestone Mill and was a man noted for his honesty in that community.
James M. left surviving him the following sons: John A., Chris., William, Lee and Grover. He married a Cook as his second wife, his first wife having been a Miss Goodall.