ALEXANDER POLAND

- Lois Gardner Neergaard's great-great grandfather -

A mystery:  who were his parents;  where did the family come from?


Alexander Poland was shot dead during the Civil War, in his house which was (and still stands) at 246 West Loudoun Street, Leesburg, Virginia.  He was an affluent cattleman, resident of a Confederate town but sympathetic to the Union, and a provider of supplies to the Union army when they were occupying Leesburg.  On 11/27/1863, he was presiding over his dinner table where sat his family and four Union officers when several of Moseby's men, disguised in Union uniforms, got past the guards, burst in, and assassinated him.  That incident, and his life in the preceding few years, are well documented.  But of his ancestral background no trace can be found.

The 1860 Census and the Leesburg Directory confirm that the Alexander Poland family was then in Leesburg;  the 1870 census shows Alexander's widow and several younger children still there.  But we cannot find the family in the 1850 or 1840 census of Virginia, or of any other state.  Yet in the hearings before Congress to settle the government’s debt to the Poland estate, residents of Leesburg testified that they had grown up there with Alexander (“Sandy”).  A deed which transferred collateral for a loan from Alexander Poland to George Feaster (Alexander’s father- or brother-in-law?) is recorded in the Loudoun County Court 6/8/1850.  And Alexander is recorded as having joined the Odd Fellows Lodge in Leesburg 5/13/1853;  he listed himself in the 1860 Leesburg Directory as a butcher, at his home address.  So where was Alexander from his birth in 1820 to 1850?   Why does no 1840 census list him, his wife and child;  and no 1850 census list his family, by then with seven children.   

A possible explanation for the 1840 absence:  Alexander's will states that it was specifically written to insure that his oldest daughter Mary got her fair share of his estate, which in all other respects was to be divided up by the rules which Virginia would have applied had he died intestate.  This clearly indicates there was a potential controversy over Mary's rights of inheritance that Alexander wanted to avoid.  Mary was born in 1839 when both Alexander and his wife Margaret were 19 years old.  Mary may not have been Alexander's daughter;  or she may have been illegitimate, perhaps leading the couple to keep a low profile at the time of Mary's birth, possibly explaining their absence from censuses and early local records.

Another possible explanation for Alexander's absence from early records:  there's a story of a Poland family in Pennsylvania in which the husband died some 60 years before Alexander was born. The widow's wealthy father offered to adopt her orphaned sons, his grandsons, if the boys would agree to take his name.  What might have happened is that they did this, later having children and grandchildren of their own who, when they discovered that their real family name was Poland, changed their names back to it.  If this happened in Alexander's case, it could account for his absence under the Poland name from all records in the town he grew up in, and then his sudden appearance as a prominent and well-to-do citizen in his mid-30's with a farm, a house in town, and a large family.

Alexander's daughter (our great grandmother) claimed that the Civil War Battle of Ball's Bluff in Leesburg, had actually taken place on her mother's (Poland née Fiester) land, and that Ball's name had been assigned to the event only because Ball was a prominent politician.  But there is no Fiester or Poland name on a real-estate map of Leesburg at the time of the battle.  A possible explanation:  in later testimony before Congress (for a widow's pension and payment for the supplies Alexander provided the Union forces;  transcripts of the extensive testimony given are at hand) it was stated that Alexander had owned, as well as the house in town, 221 acres of land 2 miles west of town on the "Winchester Pike" (his business was cattle and tobacco), and indeed the battle had involved fighting over a wide area for several days, though the decisive fight did occur on Ball's Bluff, east of town.  Moreover, a contemporary lawsuit shows Alexander to have been in partnership with a man named Albert Best;  thus his land may not have been listed under his name, but rather the name of a partner or nominee.

The mysteries surrounding Alexander get more vexatious.  His family graves are missing.  That they are there in Leesburg is sure.  There's a notice in the Mirror that wife Alexander's wife Margaret, who died in Washington DC 1889, was returned to Leesburg to be buried.  Much more to the point, Alexander's great-granddaughter (our mother) clearly remembers visiting the Poland family plot in a Leesburg cemetery in 1937.  She recalls the cemetery was "not far" from the Poland house, and that the plot contained, as well as Alexander and Margaret, their son Benjamin, a Civil War veteran, with the headstone having iron palm fronds in commemoration.

We've had the opportunity to visit Leesburg three times in the past five years, and each time we've attempted to find the Poland plot.  The Thomas Balch Library has an index of the residents of all cemeteries, save one, around Leesburg.  The list contains no Polands.  The one cemetery not indexed is that of the old Methodist Church at North and Liberty streets.  This now-defunct church became the northern-sympathetic branch of Leesburg's Methodist Church when its congregation, split over the issue of abolition, established a separate, Southern, Methodist Church, the now surviving one on Market Street.  We've visited that old Northern Methodist cemetery but to no avail.  We've also viewed the records of the Methodist Church pre-split, and could find no Polands as members of the congregation.  A modern extension of Liberty Street to the north, bordering the cemetery, has been put in, possibly after the 1937 great-grand daughter visit but prior to the library's indexing of cemeteries.  It might have paved over some of the old church graves, perhaps those of the Polands.


BACKGROUND

Alexander Poland is shown as a drover (cattleman) in the 1860 census, with $13,000 worth of real estate.  His age is given as 40 (therefore born ~1820).  By 1860 he and his wife had 15 children, several grown.  The Leesburg Courthouse vital statistics books do not show his birth or marriage, but a number of deeds in his name are recorded, as are his will and the proceeds of sale after his death.  The only mentions of Poland in the library's Mirror index are of a daughter's marriage in 1866, a son's death in 1874, and of Alexander's widow Margaret's death in 1889.  Neither Alexander nor Margaret appears to be in the Tatterson book on Polen (and other spellings) Family genealogy which the Balch Library has (Alexander seemed to have used the Poland spelling consistently, and was called Sandy as well as Alexander).

Margaret Pfichter Poland, born in Leesburg about 1821, was from a family of Dutch origin:  Pfichter or Phiester or Fiester, probably anglicized to Feaster.  Other mentions of this family in Leesburg include a Feaster family plot in the Leesburg Union Cemetery containing George W Feaster (1827-8/29/1891), possibly Margaret's brother;  Laura (1840-12/11/1906) probably George's wife;  George W (died an infant 4/71857);  and Fannie Moss (1861-9/19/1941) with two of her children, Walter L., b:3/9/1881, d:10/2/1918 (his father was William);  and Myrtle O., b:10/28/1901, d: 11/23/1912.  

Leesburg vital statistics provide some data on Feaster families:  a Henry A Feaster, parents George W. and Laura, wed Susan A Bauchman 2/26/1833 (year wrong?).  The Leesburg Mirror reported the death of the infant son b:12/28/1875 of Henry A and Susan Feaster.  A William F Feaster was shown to be baptized as an adult 4/11/1875 in the Methodist Church records (then enrolled as Fiechter), and to have withdrawn when he married.  The Mirror reports that a William F Feaster married Amelia F Moss 9/7/1880.  An earlier Mirror article reported that George F Feaster married Laura Jane Currey 3/8/1849.  Another states that Sarah Feaster, b:~1818, married James Underwood 1/19/1858, but her parents are listed as Dr George Pritor and M. Bigley, and her age as 40, so she may have been the widow of a Feaster.  


Hypothetical Feaster relationships implied by these mentions:  the original Feaster siblings were the husband of Sarah Feaster (she was born 1818);  Margaret, b:1821, married Alexander Poland;  and George W., b:1827, married Laura --.   George and Laura had sons George W (died as infant) and George F., who married Laura Jane Currey 1849.  This junior George and Laura in turn had sons Henry, who married Susan Bauchman in the 1870's, and William F., who married Amelia Fannie Moss 1880, producing two children, Walter and Myrtle.


Dr Charles Poland of North Virginia College has traced his family from England in 1758 via New York and Philadelphia to Leesburg by 1769, but our relationship to his branch has not been established.  Daniel Baronet Polen arrived from Sussex in Brooklyn 1759, married Hannah Pegg Stephens in Philadelphia 1760.  Their only children were twin sons Nathaniel and William born in Loudoun County 1769, mother dying in childbirth.  William had a son John, born 1804, who married Harriet Cross (Dr Charles Poland's ancestors).  Both Nathaniel and William migrated to Ohio, date and location unspecified, followed by William's son John 1830 with wife and infant son Robert, to Springfield Ohio.  Robert later returned to Virginia, settling near Pleasant Valley.  


As data additional to the above, there are several other Poland mentions in Leesburg's 19th century records.  Nathaniel Polen's marriage to Rachel Palmer is recorded on 9/10/1822, and a Benjamin Polen's to Elizabeth Woford 2/26/1833 in the New Jerusalem Church (Evangelical-Lutheran).  In the History of Clermont County, Ohio, Nathaniel Poland is listed as a property holder in 1829.

A Robert Poland is shown in the 1860 Leesburg tax records;  in birth records as father of "a boy" in 1854;  and, with Julia A. E. as mother, as the father of James B. in 1857 and of Lena R. in 1874.  

There is a Hester A. listed as having been born 1853, a William A. in 1854 and an Alberta in 1857;  no parents' names are given but probably they are the children of Alexander and Margaret.  Also two of Alexander and Margaret's daughters' marriages are shown, Susan E. to James H. Gatton 1/31/1866, and Mary F. to Henry Clay McFarland 8/11/1867.  

The marriage of a Richard T. to Elizabeth Rutter is recorded for 1/9/1873.  Richard Poland and Elizabeth A., are listed as parents of a stillborn child 8/26/1873.  There is a Poland family plot with Richard T., b:7/5/1850, Sarah E., his wife, b:9/20/1853, and Richard C, their son, b:1/11/1886, in the Ebenezer (New) Cemetery at Round Hill, west of Leesburg.  

A Fannie Poland is listed in the vital statistics records as having had 2 illegitimate children, Martha in 1875 and Clayton in 1878.  

There is no mention of Alexander Poland in Clerissa Tatterson's book, History and Genealogy of the Poling Family, in the Balch Library.

R. H. NEERGAARD, 9/14/92