My Genealogy Hound

VANARSDALE, J. H. farmer, Sec. 31, P.O. Rockbridge, was a native born Kentuckian, having first beheld the light of day in Mercer County, June 28, 1816. His father, Peter, married Miss Charity Demerce, both of them being of Dutch descent. The father of J. H. being a man who believed that slavery was morally wrong, and advocating this idea, with a fervency characteristic of the man, his ideas were not entertained by those people as being orthodox, and Peter, like the Pilgrim Fathers, emigrated to a clime more congenial to his conceptions of right, where he could exercise his opinions and principles untrammeled by that sectional or partisan feeling so rife in that locality, and in the year 1836 moved to Carrollton, where he remained about two years, when he removed to the country, as he had become unpopular on account of his (what was then styled) “Abolition” principles. He never lived to see the triumph of the principles which he advocated so zealously, but his children have witnessed with pride the final victory of the tenets to which he adhered, and which have now become governmentally the chief corner stone. After J. H. had arrived at his twenty-first year, he engaged for himself at farming pursuits, at which he continued up to the date of his marriage, which occurred Dec. 9, 1839, to Susan Demere, by whom he had two children: Alfred H., who is now in Colorado, and James, who died in the service. Mr. V. lost his wife in 1854; was married second time to Mrs. Sarah S. Batchelder, by whom he has five children: Sue F., born April 28, 1856; Hattie E., born March 29, 1858; Harry P., born March 29, 1858, twins; Allie J., born July 11, 1859; Ernest S., born Sept. 29, 1862, all of whom are now at home. Miss Sue is music teacher and Hattie teacher in the public school. Mr. Van. was elected justice of the peace, in 1849, which office he continued to hold by re-election until the year 1862, when he was appointed U. S. district assessor internal revenue department for the county, and in 1867 received an appointment as a member of the board of equalization for this Congressional district. Mr. Vanarsdale has always been an uncompromising temperance man, and politically is of his father’s belief, and says he voted the anti-slavery ticket when there was not another voter to bear him company; voted for Martin Van Buren in 1836. He and family are members of the Presbyterian Church. Still engaged in agricultural pursuits; has been school director twenty-five years.