Family Tree - The Addington family

My Great-Grandparents

Now we will go up to Nickelsville, Virginia, in the area of the Addington Frame Church.  This was where my great-grandfather, Joseph Washington Napoleon Bonaparte Addington was from.  He was married to my great-grandmother, whose name was Sarah McKilgore.  They were my mother's grandparents. Their daughter, Nancy Elizabeth Addington was my grandmother.

Grandma’s Corncob Pipe

I never saw my great-grandfather, but I can remember my great-grandmother very well.  She was getting pretty old and had been crippled with a stroke.  She was not able to walk and was in a wheelchair.  She would roll her chair up in front of the fireplace and smoke her pipe.  I think it was a corncob pipe and the stem was every bit one-foot long.  She was the first woman I ever saw smoking tobacco.  The tobacco was homemade. This is the place she lived when she passed away.  My Mammie-Mee and her brothers took care of her. 

Mammie-Mee

Mammie-Mee was what we called my grandmother Porter. (image)  She was a beautiful woman with black hair and fair skin like my mommy.  After my grandfather, Charles Walter Porter passed away, I have been told that several young men in the area wanted to date her but she remained loyal to the memory of her husband.

They said, so my mommy told me, that he was hurting so badly and they thought he had locked bowels.  They gave him a dose of quick silver and he died.  It was his appendix that busted but people didn't know about appendix back then. 

My grandmother, Nancy Elizabeth Addington was married on September 20, 1894, to Charles Walter Porter, who was from Russell County.  They were not married very long when my grandfather died, leaving my grandmother before their child was born.  Their child was my mother, Myrtle Charles Porter.  My grandmother never married again.  So, my mother was their only child. She was born July 24, 1895.

At The Horseshoe Bend

The house where my grandmother lived was in the Horseshoe Bend area of Copper Creek just below the Addington Frame Church.  This is where they all went to church.  The creek just about circled this house and land area.  I think this house was built by my great grandfather Addington.  I recall my mother talking about the house being built when she was a little girl.  There was an older home that was just a few yards away from the newer one.  I can remember seeing part of it before it was torn down. 

Great Uncles

Going back to where my grandmother lived.  She had two brothers, Henry K. and Bent Addington, (image) who were never married.  After my grandfather died, they just all lived together at the home place.  She did the housework and cooking and her brothers did the farming.