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No history of Nitro would be complete without a section devoted to the families who first settled here. The following family sketches were collected from the West Virginia Department of Archives, Kanawha County Records, from old family Bibles, and from many personal interviews.
Descendants of these early families now number in the thousands and have scattered to all corners of the United states. While checking with some of these people we discovered just how little the average American knows about his/her own people. This is probably due to most parents failure to instill in their children any sense of pride in family heritage and tradition. After all it is an accepted fact that our American way of life is best kept intact by the Historical background of the families.
The Dudding Family
According to Atkinson’s history of Kanawha County, John Dudding was the first permanent settler in this area coming in 1798. However early Kanawha County Court records indicate that George Blake, John Persinger and Samuel Gillispie were here around the same time. An early history of the Dudding family was furnished us by Dr. EARL ELLIOTT DUDDING of Washington, D.C., and his son, Earl B. Dudding, who lives in in Provo, Utah. With all due respect to these two gentlemen, after a very thorough search, we were forced to take some exceptions to their findings. Perhaps the local records available to us have been more complete than the sources they have had at hand.
Dr. Dudding claims the original family name was Duddingston. He says that A. Earl Duddingston with his brother-in-law John Ellicott sailed from England to Virginia in 1650. That they settled on the Potomac River where the city of Washington now stands. He further states that the grounds on which the National Capitol now stands was once known as Duddingston Manor.
According to our research, this land was first settled by the Carroll family from England and was named Duddingston Manor for the Duke of Duddingston who was a near relative. However this may be one of those incidents where family tradition is more accurate than the historical data which has been recopied many times. Dr. Dudding tells us that A. Earl Duddingston’s only son, Alfred Wellington Duddingston, became involved in a dispute with the English authorities when he was a young man. To escape persecution, he changed his name to Dudding and moved to the back country of Virginia.
The only record of any Dudding we could find during this period was one Andrew Dudding who appeared on the quit rent records of Essex County, dated 1704. (ref: Vol 33, p. 362, Va. state Papers). We further found the will of Andrew Dudding in an Essex County will book, dated 1719 which stated that he was a planter of South Farmham Parish. That he left sums of money to four godchildren (no relation) and his estate to a Mary Richards, his housekeeper (no relation). Since he died without any apparent relatives, we could assume this was the end of this original Dudding line. However, again, we cannot discount Dr. Dudding’s record on mere assumptions.
If it were not for the next Dudding reference we came up with, we would never have raised a question in the first place.
In Vol. II, p 47 of the Virginia state Papers, we found an enlistment roll dated 1776 of Capt. Christopher Gist’s Company made up of Augusta County Troops. This Company fought under Col. George Washington during the French and Indian War. Included in this list was a John Dudding who was 5' 41/2" tall (short and stocky was a Dudding family trait), he enlisted Oct. 10, 1756 and it stated he was born in England.
The record of John Dudding, [and] the French and Indian War, is interesting since it could have a direct bearing on the reason the Dudding family eventually settled in the Kanawha Valley. Capt. Christopher Gist, who was Dudding’s Company Commander, was one of the first white men to explore the Kanawha Valley. In 1749 he passed through this area looking for lands for the Ohio Land Company.
The next coincidence was that Nitro was originally part of a 21,941 acre Military Land Grant which was awarded to certain veterans of the French and Indian War. There is no record that we could find to indicate that John Dudding ever received any of the Military Grant. However since he served with the officers that were awarded this land, it is possible that one of them allowed him to settle with the right to buy when it was clear for sale.
This possibility is supported by Mr. Earl E. Dudding who states that according to family tradition, the first Dudding to settle in the Kanawha Valley came in connection with a Land Grant.
We next checked the records of Augusta County and the other counties that were formed from within its original boundaries. In Court Records of Botecourt County we found a John Dudding who was married twice. First to Sarah Bellamy and second to Rebecca Persinger, daughter of Christopher Persinger.
At this point we can quit assuming and begin accepting facts. For instance, the John Dudding who first settled here, (according to his will) had a wife named Rebecca and his nearest neighbor (according to the census of 1810), was John Persinger.
John Dudding with his wife Rebecca and his younger brother William settled on the banks of the Kanawha River below present Nitro about 1798. This was only ten years after the Indians captured Fort Tackett at the mouth of Coal River and caused the lower Kanawha Valley to become unsafe for settlement. As late as 1794, Shadrack Harriman became the last white man to be killed by the Indians in this area.
As early as 1813, William F. Styles conveyed 150 acres to John Dudding that included the section known as Dudding’s ln.
William F. Styles was one of the first surveyors for Kanawha County, which gave him opportunities to capitalize on certain land deals. John Dudding was the father of William Dudding who was the first permanent settler on Blake’s Creek. In Hardesty’s History of Kanawha County, published in 1883, he states that John Dudding was the first settler in this area, sometime around 1798.
In 1843, W. F. Styles conveyed 138 1/2 acres to Lewis Bowling. This marked the beginning of the famous Bowling estate which by 1836 included approximately 3,500 acres. It took in all the land except one small strip that fronted the river from the mouth of Armours Creek to the General Chemical Co. plant. The back line ran parallel with the river about one mile east of Route 35.
The only tract that he did not own and could not buy belonged to Anderson Dudding, a grandson of John Dudding. It was a triangular shaped tract, 200 yards wide at the river, with sides running back to a narrow point located in the present Ortin Heights sub-division.
In the 1850s, Lewis Bowling had one of the largest and most prosperous farms in the Kanawha Valley. He had built the Bowling Mansion (still standing at the entrance of Ortin Heights, but not on the Fry tract). He had amassed 3,500 acres of land and he owned more than 100 slaves. All he needed now was one little tract of land called “Dudding ln”, which split his great plantation half-in- two. Try as he may, however, he could not get Anderson Dudding to sell.
Anderson Dudding was different from Lewis Bowling. He lived in a log cabin on the river bank and he barely had enough land to provide a road across the bottom to his house. He owned an operated a boat mill that was anchored to a large rock below Johnson’s Shoals. This was located nearly opposite the Monsanto Chemical Co. His father before him had also operated a mill and his cabin was the old home place. It seems that Anderson Dudding was satisfied with his lot in life and did not want it changed even for silver or gold.
According to local tradition, however, one Sunday afternoon, Lewis Bowling appeared at the front gate of Anderson Dudding’s cabin carrying a large sack over his shoulder. When Dudding came out, he surprised to see Lewis Bowling carefully laying out dollar bills side-by-side all over his front yard. Bowling confidently explained that he was prepared to cover the entire front yard with dollar bills as payment for the land. This made Dudding angry and he told Bowling “that he didn’t care if he laid down 5 dollar bills the land was not for sale, and besides he never discussed business on Sundays.”
The Dudding Family (Part 2)
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