Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 2.djvu/387

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VJRGIXIA BIOGRAPHY

this and all other public questions, and was thoroughly loyal to the history and traditions ot his state. His sanguine temperament and cheerful disposition, shown in his writ- ings, and in hi:> daily life, were of inestima- ble service to X'irginia in the dark forbid- ding days following the burning of Rich- mond and the surrender of Lee. He was a charming newspaper correspondent, graphic and humorous. His editorials on the "Old Virginia Ham/' "Old Virginia Fiddlers,'* etc. < in which he would pen life portraits of JcfTerson. William Wirt, Governor Gil- mer. Governor Cabell, Whitwell Tunstall, and others, who delighted in a "concord of sweet sounds." and were accomplished per- formers of the violin, as he was himself), are well remembered. Mr. Cowardin was married, in 1840. to Annie Marie Purcell, daughter of Charles and Sarah Purcell. He died at Richmond, Virginia, November 21, 1882.

Haxall, Robert William, born in Peters- burg. X'irginia. August i. 1802, son of Philip Haxall. a merchant of Petersburg, Virginia, who came from Exning. county Suffolk, England, in 1786, and Clara, his wife, daughter of Robert Walker, of "Kingston," Dinwiddie county, Virginia; graduated at Vale in 1823. attended medical lectures at the University of Pennsylvania, and re- ceived his medical degree from the Univer- sity of Maryland in 1826. After studying in Europe, he settled in Richmond. He was several times president of the Medical Society of Virginia, and was one of the founders of the American Medical Asso- ciation. He obtained two Boylston prizes for essays, and was a frequent contributor to the **Stethoscope." He died in Rich-

mond. Virginia, March 26. 1872. He mar- ried Jane, daughter of David Higginbotham, of Albemarle county, and widow of W. D. McMurdo.

Ellison, Matthew, born in Monroe county, X'irginia. November 10, 1804. He became a Iiaptist minister in Virginia, traveling over wide districts, and organized twenty- Pve churches. When seventy-five years of age he gave up preaching and settled at Raleigh. West Virginia. He is the author of "Dunkerism. a Plea for the Union of laptists." and other controversial works on the subject of baptism.

Inglis, Mary, said to have been the first white woman in Kentucky, was born in 1729, died in 1813. In 1756 one of the fron- tier settlements of X'irginia on Alleghany Ridge (now in Montgomery county. \'ir- ginia) was attacked by a party of Shawnee Indians, who killed some of the inhabitants, making others captive. Mrs. Inglis, her two sons, and her sister-in-law, Mrs. Draper, were carried by the Indians down the Kana- wha to their towns at the mouth of the Scioto, where she was separated from her children. Mrs. Inglis won the favor of the Indians by making shirts out of the colored goods purchased from the French traders, but the separation from her children and the hard life she led, moved her to escape. She induced an old Dutch woman to join her. and having obtained permission to pick grapes, set out down the Ohio valley, one hundred and forty miles, to a point opposite the Scioto towns. There they found an old horse on the Kentucky side, procured corn and wheat, then followed on to the Virginia line, where they found the Big Sandy im- passable. Going up the river, they found a

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