At the outset, we can state that none were really illustrious people but had good traits and exhibited qualities that helped to make America a great country. They are a mixture, not only of nationalities but of family characteristics. Some of the genes from some of them have made us the individuals that we are. We are grateful that the parts of them which became us are as substantial as they are.
It would probably be easier to back up on this journey, taking a family at a time.
Otis W. Danner, eldest son of Frank M. Danner and Mary Ophelia Landsdown born near Goodes, Bedford Co., Virginia on Jan 7, 1899, had three brothers; Melville, deceased, had one son who never married; Guy M., no children and Ray V., one daughter and son, who has a daughter. There is no Danner sons with sons as issue except the sons of Otis W.. There is no Danner sons with sons as issue in Frank M. Danner’s family. So the only Danner males as issue or originating from the Bedford County Danners is now limited to Lewis, William and Robert Danner.
Frank M. Danner was the eldest son of George W. Danner Jr. and Mary (Molly) Fletcher Freeman who is Frank’s second wife. Frank was born ________ near Peaks of Otter, died Thaxton, Virginia on 1/26/54. Farmer, R.R. construction, equipment operator, and skilled in making things of wood and iron. Deep seated temper, not easily aroused but terrible to see when aroused.
George W. Danner Jr. was the youngest son of George W. Danner Sr.. Born Sprout Springs about 1850 moved near Staunton, Virginia. Coming to Bedford County after the Civil War, having found on being mustered out that his fathers home, mill and outbuildings completely destroyed by the Yankees.
All the Danners that I knew or knew about had similar physical characteristics, brown eyes, dark hair and complexions. They were hard, dependable workers on the job and not seriously concern with appearance and upkeep of their homes, friendly, hospitable.
Mary F. Freeman (Molly), my grandmother, wife of George W. Danner Jr., was a clear, blued eyed lady daughter of Edwin H. and Elizabeth F. Freeman of Peaksville, Virginia. Edwin was a millwright specializing in the construction of heavy wood buildings - mills and barns. Elizabeth F. was the daughter of Matthew P. Sturdivant and Agnes Kent of Halifax County, married on Nov. 24, 1813.
Refer to Lazenby’s History of Methodism in Alabama and West Florida, M.P. Sturdivant is variously described as "a modern St. Paul" and "wanting in energy and tact in business matters". Know nothing of the man other than what is recorded in Methodist history. Not being a land owner nor skilled any crafts, he had little chance to eking more than a bare existence in Colonial Virginia. The negro slaves would have fared better than he and his family. His wife, was very likely a member of a landowner family from Kent County, Va. but having failed in making a match in her own society and accepted life with a Methodist preacher rather than become an old maid servant in a brother’s or sister’s home. It was and still a cruel society, designed to maintain in elegance a favored few, who live in big houses, ran the county and state governments, supplied the teachers, lawyers, and doctors, built and ran the churches, in the process grinding up human beings, both black and white much as their mills ground grain to provide the aristocracy with sumptuous living on the finest foods, with the fastest of horses. The Civil War, engineered by the landowning aristocracy but fought by their serfs, did not change this society because the landowner did not lose his land, only his cattle, crops and sometimes outbuildings. He was back in business at the same old stand, allotting cabins on his own terms, usually 1/4 of the crops to the tenants. Bondage was enforced the landowner "keeping the books". He was meticulous in making the entries in the ledger, credits in one column and debits in the another. He alone set the price of the items furnished the tenants, not being negotiable nor competitive, it was always exorbitant. He use his own scales, weights and measures and practiced his thievery as an honest way of life to him. He could pay the preacher $10 a year, sit in the Amen Corner, sleep through the dull sermons and would be known as a great church worker.
No tenant family, regardless of how hard or how long they worked ever got ahead of the books. Extra work done on the farm, for which a credit was expected was ignored by the landowner as work he expected as part of the contract never written, therefore subject to his interpretations. For the tenant, there no hope and no escape.
I thank God, that only some of the ancestors of our children were caught in this merciless treadmill of misery and that some escaped it by pushing back into the mountains beyond the reach of its murderous tentacles.
Later as industry moved into the South, particularly in the coal mining and knitting mills, the same old system of exploitation used by the landowners was refined and used to grind men down to bits of dust, scattering his entrails over a blackened, wasted landscape, hardly paying enough for him more peons for servitude to them.
The Danners with all their property wiped out by the ravages of the Civil War in Augusta County in the valley of Virginia, moved westward, one brother, Daniel to Buffalo Creek, Carter Co., Ky., one brother reputedly going to New Orleans, my grandfather George W. , stopping at Peaksville, Bedford Co., Va., not knowing that it would take he and his family over 100 years to regain some of the status he enjoyed as a boy before the Civil War.
My mother, Mary Ophelia Landsdown was born on 3/24/1866. Died on 12/30/49. Daughter of William A. Landsdown and Joanna St. Clair was red headed, left handed, intelligent, with high opinion of herself and her father, Bill, whom my Daddy always downgraded. She spent a lot of time at Granny St. Clairs and fell in love with one of her first cousins whom her father would not permit her to marry. She, not to be out done, married a likable visitor, whom Bill ran off after he showed no inclination to work. My mother was a rarity in those days, a divorcee and considering her status as such at that time, probably married my father, 10 years her junior, more in desperation than in fancy. Being an educated person, she attempted to teach my father reading and writing but somehow he had a mental block which prevented him from such learning other than sign his name. His ability at mental arithmetic was amazing.
They lived on at my mother’s home on Otter Creek, farming and looking after her patents, who died without making a will. The other heirs had the property sold, forcing my parents to start a new life, losing their status as landowners, creating a bitterness against her lot which my mother never overcame. My mother was a character, outspoken, at ease in any company, too intelligent for her own happiness in her circumstances, believing always she was somebody, refusing to associate with or permit her children to associate with trash, a very hard and meticulous worker, always after my Daddy to take a bath, something a Danner considered a waste of energy.
Her father Bill, William A. Landsdown was a son of Joel Landsdown and Nancy Glover. He was well educated as evidenced by his writing and was very careful about his appearance taking great pains to clean his and face after a day’s work. He was a skilled millwright, having a shop at Big Lick, now Roanoke, near the present site of the Virginia Bridge and the Iron Company, using several men in the building and repair of farm vehicles and equipment. Although apparently successful here, he moved back to Bedford Co. buying a farm about 1 mile east of the creek from the Lynchburg turnpike which crossed Otter Creek a few miles east of the Bedford City. He built a shop at the intersection of the creek and turnpike, dividing his time between farming and backsmithing. My father was working for him on the farm when he met and married my mother. Bill Landsdown died apparently in good financial condition, with no indebtedness - not foreseeing how quickly the children long ways from home would dissipate what he and my parents had accumulated. This left a bitterness so deep that I knew nothing of my maternal grandparents and my parent’s early life till I was middle-aged. These things were never mentioned by my parents as they attempted to hide a chapter in their life which was painful and humiliating. They did the best they could and although it is too late to show them my appreciation I am very thankful for their efforts and so sorry that life could not bring them more happiness than it did.
My mother’s mother, Joanna St. Clair was the daughter of Christopher and Prudence St. Clair who owned a large acreage of land near Shady Grove, Bedford County. They lived simply and well, becoming a part of the hills and streams about them, forming a community, active in church and the county school system. They came to stay and build and 140 years later, some of their descendants still stay and farm the land. Some will never move nor stray very far.
This ends what I know of my people the Danners, Landsdown, Freemans, St. Clairs, Sturdivants and Kents none famous, none notorious but each in their way facing up to life as they found it. They were just people, ordinary people.
We will try to piece together in readable form the bits of information which we have gathered over the years about our forebears. Some of it is documented and the rest if fairly reliable considering that the whole truth about any individual is difficult to ascertain even during their lifetime and impossible after their deaths. While we have carefully sifted the information contained herein and will adhere to what we consider the truth, we are only human beings with the usual bent of seeking to glorify our forebears and ourselves.
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