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Excerpt from History
of
Patrick
County
,
Virginia
, published by
Patrick
County
Historical Society, Post Office Box 1045,
Stuart
,
Virginia
24171 (Compliments of Lynda Rangeley)
Rangeley Family –
Pages 380-81
Two brothers, John and
James Rangeley, born in
Leeds
,
England
, came with their parents to the state of
Maine
in the early 1800s. They
acquired considerable land there and the town of
Rangeley
,
Maine
is named for this family. Some
of the descendants remained in
Maine
, but the father moved to
Henry
County
,
Virginia
to the area near present Fieldale which today is known as the Rangeley
community.
The two sons, John and
James, settled in
Patrick
County
before 1840. John Rangeley,
born in 1810, served as president of the
Danville
and Wytheville Turnpike Company. He
had a son, John James Rangeley (1841-1861) who died of typhoid while
serving in the Confederate Army. John’s
second wife was Maria Stone, a music teacher in
Taylorsville
(sic) who was also born in
England
. In 1844 John was
commissioned by the county court to make repairs on the Patrick Count
jail. In later life he moved
to
Henry
County
where he died.
James Rangeley, born in
1806 in
England
, moved to
Patrick
County
before 1840, operated a tannery for a time and then a store in
Taylorsville
(sic). His wife was Harriet
Weir. Two sons, Joseph Ellis
Rangeley and James Henry Rangeley served in the Confederate Army during
the Civil War. James Henry
Rangeley married
Alice
Via and was a merchant in Stuart. He
served as a member of the Board of Supervisors and was member of the first
Town Council of Stuart also.
Joseph Ellis Rangeley
(1846-1928) married Penceanna Conner and lived for a time near the present
Jack’s
Creek
Bridge
on
Smith
River
. He operated a store that
included a post office named Rangeley.
He later moved to Stuart. After
the death of his first wife, he married Mary E. Hanby of
Peters
Creek
. She served for a time as
postmaster at Stuart, and her husband, Joseph E., later succeeded her.
Two daughters were born of the second marriage, one of them,
Caroline Virginia (Carrie) Rangeley, was a long-time teacher in the
Patrick
County
school system.
Dr. Frank Fairfield and
Dr. Clarence Rangeley were dentists but did not practice in
Patrick
County
. Alfred J. “Fred”
Rangeley was a merchant in Stuart. Harriet
Rangeley married Judge E. J. Harvey who practiced law and served as a
Circuit Court Judge. Sarah
Rangeley married Murray Turner, a court justice and sheriff of the county,
who also operated a store in Stuart.
"A
couple of comments on this article. It has Taylorsville.
I believe the correct name is Traylorsville. Also,
the comment that descendants remained in
Maine
is not correct."
Lynda
Rangeley
"James
Rangeley III's wife's correct last name was Were." Penelope
Loughhead
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Some Rangeley Family
History from Lynda Rangeley:
Clarence Leonard King
CLARENCE LEONARD KING is one of the ablest bankers of Southwestern
Virginia. His name is identified with a number of banking and business
organizations in that part of the state, but ho is best known as the
organizer and for over twenty years the executive officer of the First
National Bank of Pearisburg.
He was born in Henry County, Virginia, May 27, 1873. The Kings were
of English ancestry and on coming to America in Colonial times settled
on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, where they remained until 1835, when
John King moved from King and Queen County to Henry County. His son,
Camillus King, accompanied him. At the junction of North Mayo River and
Horsepasture Creek they became planters, and there spent the rest of
their days. Jeremiah C. King, youngest son of Camillus King, was born on
this plantation September 3, 1846. In the early years of his majority a
successful merchant, later, in 1880, he succeeded his father in the
ownership of the plantation, and remained a progressive and successful
planter until his death, which took place at his home on February 12,
1908. He served as a soldier in the Confederate army during the latter
year of the war. He was a democrat and a member of the Christian Church.
In 1870 Jeremiah C. King married Eliza Rangeley, of
Henry County, daughter of John Rangeley, an Englishman
by birth, who came to the United States in 1820, when ten years of age,
with his father, James Rangeley. The Rangeley family
first lived in Portland, Maine. They then moved to what was then the
wilderness of Northern Maine, where James Rangeley
owned a large tract of land. Within the limits of this land were a
number of takes, to which he gave the name Rangeley Lakes, and by this
name they are still known. Subsequently the family returned to Portland,
and later moved to Brooklyn, New York, where John Rangeley
met and married Mary Webster, of Brooklyn. About 1840
the family moved to Patrick County, Virginia, and soon afterward to
Henry County.
Jeremiah C. and Eliza (Rangeley) King reared a
family of eight children, namely: John C., a physician at Radford,
Virginia, and a graduate in the University of Maryland; Clarence L.;
Nannie, wife of John W. Price; Thomas E., who is also a well known
banker, being vice president and cashier of the Marion National Bank;
Sallie R., who died at Newport in 1921, wife of James D. Miller, a
farmer and merchant; Mamie, wife of Charles B. Price, of Leaksville,
North Carolina; Gertrude C., wife of William H. Wheelwright, who is
connected with the Federal Reserve Bank at Richmond; and Helen, wife of
Harvey V. Price, a dentist it Martinsville, Virginia.
Clarence Leonard King was reared on his father's plantation in Henry
County, attended public schools there, and in 1890, when seventeen years
of age, left the farm and for a time was employed by the Norfolk &
Western Railway and in 1896 became teller in the First National Bank of
Bluefield, West Virginia. This position he resigned in 1899, and, coming
to Pearisburg, organized the Bank of Giles, becoming its cashier. In
1906 the Bank of Giles was nationalized as the First National Bank of
Pearisburg. Mr. King has been vice president and cashier and in every
important sense the active head of the bank throughout its history. He
has made it one of the strong financial institutions of Southwest
Virginia. It has capital stock of $100,000, surplus and profits of
$70,000, and deposits averaging $750,000. The president of the bank is
M. L. Harrison, of Wytheville, and the assistant cashier is Mrs. Frances
E. Miller.
Mr. King is also president of the Sinking Creek Valley Bank of
Newport in Giles County, and is a director in the Bank of Pembroke and
the Bank of Eggleston and in the Shenandoah Life Insurance Company of
Roanoke. He has a farm and a very fine country home a mile east of
Pearisburg. Mr. King as a banker naturally took a leading part in
financing the war, and was chairman of the Liberty Loan Committees of
Giles County and interested in all the drives .for the Red Cross, the
Young Men's Christian Association, and other causes.
Mr. King is an independent republican in politics. He is a member of
the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and is affiliated with Giles
Lodge No. 196, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, at Pearisburg;
Pearisburg Chapter No. 29, Royal Arch Masons; Graham Commandery No. 22,
Knights Templar, and Kazim Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Roanoke.
At Lynchburg, January 22, 1903, Mr. King married Miss Katharine
Randolph Oglesby, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Loderick Oglesby, now
deceased. Her father was a farmer and was a Confederate soldier. Mrs.
King finished her education in private schools in Bedford County. To
their marriage were born three children: Robert L., who attended
Washington and Lee University two years and is now a student in the
University of Virginia at Charlottesville; Katherine, attending the
Pearisburg High School; and Clarence Leonard, Jr., a pupil in the
grammar grades at Pearisburg.
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The
Rangeley Highlander
July 2, 1976
, p. 6
Article
written by Wanda Ferguson
A
Bicentennial Salute to Rangeley
The history of Rangeley does not, chronologically, relate to the
nation’s bicentennial in that the area was still virgin forest populated
mostly by caribou, moose and wandering Indians 200 years ago.
Rangeley is, in this year of 1976, officially only 121 years old.
Those hardy pioneers who first settled the area did, however, share
in spirit, the same hardships as the pilgrims who first landed at Plymouth
Rock. The winter climate was
harsh, the land yielded edible produce begrudgingly during the short
growing season, and the region was closed to the outside world except for
a narrow mountain trail that descended into
Madrid
.
It wasn’t until 1796 that Township 3, Range 2 was purchased from
the
Commonwealth
of
Massachusetts
by a group of four, James Rangeley, Sr. of
Philadelphia
being one of the shareholders. It
was some 29 years later that James Rangeley, Jr. inherited his father’s
interest and bought out the other three.
The English gentleman, late of
Yorkshire
,
England
, had operated a tweed mill at
Leeds
in that country, but had come to
New York City
some years prior to 1825. Reports
of gold deposits in the 70,000 acres now known as the
Rangeley
Lakes
region drew him northward, and it is said he had a visionary dream of
establishing a colony similar to the lord and tenant system which existed
in his native
England
. As one account states,
however, “a system of peasantry was an exotic that would not flourish
among rough and independent pioneers of a new country.”
When Mr. Rangeley arrived here in 1825 with his wife, two sons and
two daughters, he found his lands to be already settled by the now
legendary 1 st settler, Luther Hoar, who had, eleven years earlier, found
his was over Saddleback Mountain from Madrid.
Here also were John Toothaker, Dave Quimby and about six other
pioneers families who had followed Luther’s “spotted line” across
the mountain. Because of
their presence, a settlement of sorts had sprung up west of the
present-day village, along the “Mingo Loop” area and the shores of
Oquossoc
Lake
, now called Rangeley, and this pleased the Englishman.
He asked no payment of the settlers for the land they had taken,
but the proud homesteaders took it upon themselves to clear land and help
the Rangeleys' build a house in payment for the land.
He soon became known to them as the Squire, and most found him to
be a pleasant, energetic man who put his ideas and his wealth to work
developing the area.
When his first endeavor, a brick kiln, failed to produce solid
bricks due to the inferior clay found on the bottom of a local stream, the
Squire began a charcoal pit to manufacture fuel for a blacksmith shop.
This proved successful and existed until about 1849.
The outlet of the lake became the site chosen for his saw and
shingle mills. Then a grist
mill, built on the same outlet, ended the need for the settlers to make
the long tedious journey down the “spotted line” on horseback, with
sacks of grain bound for the grist mill in
Madrid
.
His most historically important contribution was the building of
ten miles of road, which climbed
Dallas
ridge, wound on through the foothills of Saddleback to Sandy River Ponds,
climbed Beech Hill and descended into
Madrid
. This “
County Road
” ended the use of the “spotted line” and opened the region to wagon
trade with the outside world.
Another road of future importance was a “winter” road cleared
by the Squire from the inlet of the lake (at Sandy River Pt.) to Long Pond
(re-named Beaver Mtn. Lake) and on
to the lower Sandy River Pond where it joined the “
County Road
” at Beech Hills. This road
he used to transport the products of his mills to the outside markets.
Shingles, boards and clapboards were floated up the lake from the
mills (in Oquossoc) on a large flat-bottomed sailboat and transported out
on the “spur” road by wagons.
The era during which the Squire made his mark on the land came to a
close during the winter of 1827 when his 19-year-old daughter, Sarah died
of influenza. There had
previously been much discord in the Rangeley household because his wife
and daughters had found it impossible to adjust to the wilderness life and
the frigid winters, and Sarah’s death seemed to be the final blow.
Then, too, his fortune had been badly depleted by the improvements
he had made in his township, and the English gentleman became so
discouraged and remorseful, that his ambition and drive were gone.
In 1836, he sold the last of his holdings to Daniel Burnham and
David Webster for $60,000 and soon thereafter moved south to
Portland
and then on to
Virginia
.
Those settlers remained behind would continue on, however, and on
March 8 th,1855, they incorporated the town bearing his name.
It encompassed 25,792 acres and had a population of 222.
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