Page:The McClure Family.djvu/76

58 N. B. My Bob horse could not stand hard times, he quit eating a few days after I started and has hardly come to his appetite yet. During the trip he was compleaning every few days of the bots or cholic & was verry near loosing his eye sight. I have swoped him off.

J. BEATY."

In politics, John McClure was an old line Whig, strongly opposed to Secession, but when the crisis came gave his five sons to his State, two of whom paid the price in blood.

In appearance he was six feet, a man of great strength and endurance. In early life he made frequent trips to Scottsville and Richmond, marketing his produce, either driving his six horse wagon in person or accompanying on horseback his negro driver.

The following obituary written by his lifelong friend, Rev. Horatio Thompson, D. D., for nearly fifty years pastor of the Old Providence Church and one of the trustees of Washington College that elected Gen. Robert E. Lee to its presidency. "He filled a large place in the community giving moral tone wherever his shade was cast. A peacemaker, a benefactor—the poor man's friend and the idle man's dread. He was the Christian and gentleman of olden times—holding both sacred and honor bound. As he lived he died. We all say, a patriarch has fallen. He was a Presbyterian, and true to its code—a lover of all good without blushing to acknowledge it. A husband, father and grandsire, as devoted as these lofty names imply. He travelled to the tomb with manly bearing, where

H. T."

Of his wife it was written:

"She connected herself with the Presbyterian Church of Tinkling Spring under the pastorate of the Rev. John McCue about the year 1816; removed her membership to the Presbyterian Church of Bethel, being a consistent