February, 2026
Washington — After helping to win American independence from the British, often heroically as described in a previous post, what kinds of lives did our Virginia ancestors and their offspring pursue? What happened to the Smith, Eastham, Strother, Hull, Simmons, Hoover, and Wimer families?
It is not a story easily told. Several of our families fractured and later fought on opposite sides of the Civil War. Several survivors eventually left for Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska, driven out under judicial and economic pressures.
After victory over the British, soldiers received government rewards of land in the Virginia interior and its mountains. Veterans who accumulated large tracts of land acquired enslaved people to clear and farm the properties. All of the individuals identified in the earlier blog post, or their direct descendants, became slaveholders, if they weren't already.
John Smith's sons, led by Abraham, acquired land in several counties, including Pendleton County around Smith Creek, a tributary of the South Branch of the Potomac. They farmed the properties with slaves inherited from their father. The Wimer family expanded along the North Fork of the South Branch, near Strother, Simmons, Hull, and Hoover properties, all with the labor of enslaved people combined with that of their own families. Peter Hull was the largest slaveholder in the county.
There was, however, inner warfare and resistance within the households of the Virginia gentry, even among families who considered themselves benevolent enslavers. In Rockingham County, Abraham's brother Daniel Smith's coffee was poisoned by his slave Charlotte. He survived; she was arrested, tried, and executed.
Within two generations, the steep hillsides of the North Fork were increasingly difficult to farm due to soil erosion and exhaustion. Part of the Wimer and Zicafoose (Hull line) families moved in a chain migration to better soils in Ohio, without slaves. Francis Strother, son of Anthony, moved to Indiana, while Francis's son Nathaniel remained in Pendleton County and spelled his name Strawder.
This relocation set up cousin-against-cousin, uncle-against-nephew, and even brother-against-brother conflicts in the Civil War.
Francis E. Strother of the Indiana Strothers fought for the Union with the 10th Indiana infantry at Chickamauga. Nathaniel Stother's son Isaac Strawder fought for the Confederacy with the 62nd Mounted Infantry (Imboden's Brigade) in the Shenandoah Valley and at New Market. Henry and Elias C. Zickafoose of Ohio fought for the Union with the 83rd Infantry, while their half-brother Sampson Zickafoose of Pendleton County fought in the 46th Virginia Infantry. Sampson died of disease in 1863, as did Elias in 1865. Ohio Wimers fought for the Union while their Wimer cousins Ephraim, Jacob, and Aaron (and probably Peter B.) fought in the 62nd Virginia Mounted Infantry. Ephraim was a prisoner of war at Camp Chase, Ohio.
Family members faced off against each other at least twice on Civil War battlefields. At the 1864 Battle of Lynchburg, private Isaac Strawder's Confederate forces under Jubal Early prevailed over Union General Hunter's army, whose chief of staff was David Hunter Strother, also known famously as Porte Crayon. But Porte Crayon succeeded in burning VMI for its role in teaching treason, as he described it. Isaac Strawder's Company B, 62nd Mounted Infantry's victorious captain was Immanuel Hull, a descendant of Peter Hull of the Revolutionary War.
The most consequential Civil War engagement involving our families was the Red River csmpaign in the western theater in 1864, where Henry and Elias C. Zickafoose, fighting under Union general Nathaniel Banks, faced Confederate general Richard Strother Taylor, son of Zachary Taylor, cousin of Porte Crayon, and at one time the largest slaveholder in Louisiana (but admired by Frederick Law Olmsted for the way he ran his plantation). The Battle of Mansfield was won by the Confederates, but the next day's Battle of Pleasant Hill was a recovery by the Union to allow its forces to retreat. These were exceptionally bloody battles that caused leadership changes: Ulysses Grant relieved Nathaniel Banks and Confederate general Kirby Smith reassigned Taylor's forces, weakening Taylor's strategic position.
A year later, Henry Zickafoose's 83rd Indiana infantry stood by near Citronelle, Mississippi, when Richard Strother Taylor surrendered, a few days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox, to end the Civil War. (Notably, Taylor declined the Union band's playing of "Dixie," wanting to get on to reuniting the nation.) Henry's brother Elias C. Zickafoose had died a few weeks before, and is buried at the U.S. National Cemetery in Natchez.
Meanwhile, in 1850 Peter B. Wimer, son of Philip Wimer, Jr. and Mary Ann Hoover, had married Sarah Strother in Pendleton County and become, in 1860, the parents of Susan Wimer, who later married William Clark Zickafoose, son of Sampson Zickafoose. Little did they know what lay ahead.
After the war, Peter B. and other Confederate veterans were sued for restitution for their roles in fierce intra-Pendleton fighting between the Dixie Boys and the Swamp Dragons. After Sarah Strother died in 1875, he married Catherine Kile and moved the following decade to Nebraska. They were followed by his Wimer/Strother daughter Susan, her Zickafoose/Hull husband, and their child, my grandmother Ressie Mae Zicafoose, born on Dry Run, Pendleton County, in 1884.
In the early 1890s, Peter B., surrounded by Union-veteran farmers in Nebraska, moved to Barton County, Missouri, a nest of Confederate veterans. Isaac Strawder left Pendleton County even earlier, moved to Kansas and died there in 1869. His wife Lucinda Wimer and their son Isaac Newton Strawder moved to Nebraska thereafter, eventually near the Zicafooses in Lancaster County.
William Clark and Susan Wimer Zicafoose moved to Nebraska's Red Willow County early in the 20th century and the Strawders moved to nearby Lincoln County. In 1930 Ben and Mae Zicafoose Oberg traveled to the Strawder home near Wallace and spent several days with them. An Isaac Strawder descendant still lives in Lancaster County.
Cousins Richard Strother Taylor and David Hunter 'Porte Crayon' Strother, both gifted writers, left behind the two best accounts of the incredibly destructive Civil War, as written by Confederate and Union generals, respectively. Once close cousins, they never reconciled.
For decades, the stories of these Virginia families have been lost to history, at least among us in Nebraska, and we would be wise to take note of them.
