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Note: http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/13430882/person/1388391723 ------------------------- FOLLOWING FROM "MAKERS OF AMERICA" JOSEPH EDWARD RAGLAND 575 son married Miss Mary Fisher Luckett, who is still living, as is their daughter, Mary Bailey Ragland. Of Mr. Ragland's second marriage there are two children. Janie H. married W. C. Slate, President of the Slate Seed Company. They have five children: Lucile, Mary Elizabeth, Joseph Edward, Martha and Elise Slate; and Mr. Ragland has a son, David Lawson Ragland, who was educated at Randolph-Ma- con Academy and the Eastman Business College of New York. He married Mary W. Stovall, and has five children : Mary L., Charles Dabney, David L., Jonathan B. and William W. Ragland. His eldest son, Joseph E. Ragland, Jr., died at the age of 10. David L. Ragland is a business man of Lynchburg. Mr. Ragland's brother, Major Robert L. Ragland, was the founder of the R. L. Ragland Tobacco Seed Company, the largest growers of tobacco seed in the world, with their plant near South Boston, Virginia. Mr. Ragland's son-in-law, W. C. Slate, suc- ceeded Major Ragland in this enterprise, and now conducts the business under the name of the Slate Seed Company. Of late years, Mr. Joseph E. Ragland has taken a very keen interest in the affairs of the Confederate Veterans, of which society he is an honored member, and was one of the active pro- moters in the erection of the beautiful monument to the mem- ory of the Confederate Soldiers who went from Halifax County. He is the author of the inscription which appears upon this monu- ment, which is as follows : "THIS MONUMENT IS ERECTED BY AN APPRECIA- TIVE PEOPLE, IN LOVING REMEMBRANCE OF THE CON- FEDERATE SOLDIERS OF HALIFAX COUNTY WHO FOUGHT FOR CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY IN THE WAR OF 1861-65. "These patriots laid their all upon the altar of their country. Their valor will ever remain a part of her history." At the unveiling of this monument, on April 17, 1911, Mr. Ragland delivered a short but very interesting address. The Ragland family is now of Welsh origin, but descended from Norman stock which goes back to the Herberts who fol- lowed William the Conqueror to England. They settled in Mon- mouthshire, Wales, and some three hundred years after their com- ing to England one Robert, youngest son of Evan Thomas Her- bert, had a son, John, who was brought up by his uncle, Sir Wil- liam Thomas Herbert, of Raglan. This Sir William Herbert was a contemporary of Sir Roger Vaughan, who with him was knighted by Henry V on the battlefield of Agincourt, in 1415, before the battle was fought. Sir Roger Vaughan fell in the battle. His daughter, Elinor, married Robert Herbert, father of John, and John Herbert took the name of Raglan. Raglan Castle, in Mon- mouthshire, one of the great strongholds of the Middle Ages, and one of the famous places of Great Britain, passed from the Her- 576 JOSEPH EDWARD RAGLAND berts to the De Clares, from them to the Berkeleys, and on the failure of the main line of the family passed to the Somersets about the beginning of the sixteenth century, and has since re- mained in the possession of that noble family. Lord Raglan, who commanded the British forces in the Crimean Wars, was the chief of the line in his time, and was succeeded by his son as the holder of the title and property. The old Castle, which was a very ex- tensive one, and one of the greatest strongholds of the feudal period, is now chiefly in ruins, and is used only occasionally by the owners. The Herberts intermarried with the Beauforts, who were descendants of John of Gaunt, who was a son of Edward III. The old name of Ea-glan is Cymric or Welsh, and the accent is on the last syllable. When it became anglicised, the English added a "d," making the present form. The family belonged in England to what is known as the gentry, and had a coat of arms which was brought to Virginia by the American founder of the family, John Ragland, who mar- ried his kinswoman, Anne Beaufort, in Wales. They immigrated from Monmouthshire, Wales, to Virginia, probably about 1720, for in 1723 they were settled in "Ripping Hall' 7 on Mechumps Creek, near the mouth of the Chickahominy River, in Hanover County, Virginia. The old home was occupied up to its destruc- tion by fire in 1823. John Ragland took out land patents which aggregated over fifteen thousand acres in the Counties of Hanover and Louisa. John Ragland had, by his wife, Anne Beaufort, six sons and three daughters. The sons appear to have been James, Samuel, Pettus, John, Evan and William. The three daughters married one a Tinsley, one a Jones, and one a Bowe. The fight- ing qualities of the family may be judged by the fact that the Virginia roster of Revolutionary soldiers shows eleven Raglands : David, Dudley, Edmund, Evan, Finch, Gideon, John, Pettus, Pettus, Jr., Shelton and Thomas. The late Major Robert L. Ragland worked out in great detail the family history from John down, but we are not concerned here with other than the direct line of Joseph E. Ragland. It is sufficient to say that in every generation there were large numbers of children, and that they scattered over Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama and other States. Samuel Ragland, son of John (the immigrant) had two sons. Pettus Ragland evidently had sons, but Major Ragland could not get the record. John Ragland (2) had eleven children. Evan Ragland (son of John, the immigrant) married Susanna Lips- comb, and moved from Louisa County to Halifax County, settling on Banister River, a few miles above its confluence with the Dan River. They had five children: Nancy, Lipscomb, Evan, John and Anne. Two of his sons, Evan and John, were both very zealous churchmen in the Episcopal Church of that day, and Evan was a gallant Revolutionary soldier who was severely wounded in the war, his wound never healing. He never married JOSEPH EDWARD RAGLAND 577 and bequeathed the bulk of his estate to the Antrim Parish of the Episcopal Church. John, son of Evan (grandson of John, the immigrant) married his cousin, Elizabeth Pettus, and they had nine children : Susanna, Evan, Nancy, Dabney, John, Lips- comb, Anne, Martha and Samuel. Dabney, son of John, married in December, 1822, Harriet Byron Faulkner, and had six children : Robert Lipscomb, Samuel H., John Pettus, Joseph E., Elizabeth A. and Harriet 1). Ragland. This makes Joseph E. Ragland fifth in descent from John, the immigrant, the line being: John, Evan, John (2), Dabney and Joseph E. John (2) was a Revo- lutionary soldier. His son, Dabney, was a soldier in the War of 1812, and the four sons of Dabney were Confederate soldiers. There is evidently an old Roman strain in the family, because at the outbreak of the Civil War, Dabney called his four sons to- gether and told them it was their duty to go to fight for their country. From the extended family history, of which we have touched upon only a few points here, it can be gathered that these Rag- lands, through their Herbert ancestry, are descended from two Royal lines that of Charlemagne and the Plantagenets. The history of the family in Great Britain and in America is a most honorable one. Burke (the English authority), in his description of the Rag- land coat of arms, only gives the main shield, but the coat of arms brought by John Ragland (the immigrant) to Virginia shows a crest, and is thus described : "Argent, three unicorns passant in pale sable. "Crest : A unicorn statant gules, armed, crined and unguled or.'
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