the University of Virginia and used
The Grove in the summertime. He
died in 1958 and his widow, Nancy
George Saunders, sold the house in
1959
to Thomas Keister Greer.
A lawyer from the Greer family
in the county, Keister was a direct
descendant of Revolutionary
War Captain Moses Greer,
who also sat on the first
County Court. Keister Greer
was a member of both the
Virginia and California Bars;
he practiced on both coasts
throughout his career.He won a
noteworthy decision in the U.S.
Supreme Court, Buzard v CA,
which guarantees that people
serving in the US Military are
taxed for property in only one
state. He later wrote The Great
Moonshine Conspiracy Trial
of 1935, which chronicles the
true story of Depression-Era
Franklin County moonshiners.
These same events served as
the basis for another book,The
Wettest County in the World,
which in turn inspired the
movie Lawless.
Keister (1921-2008) andDorothy
(1921-1989)
raised three children at
The Grove. Their son, The Hon. G.
Carter Greer, is Circuit Court Judge
in Martinsville. Keister remarried in
1990
to Elizabeth [“Ibby”] Taylor
Call; they raised her son, Andrew
Taylor Call at The Grove. He went
on to earn his B.A., also from UVA,
and is now a lawyer in Chicago.
The Grove has seen entwined
histories that would have stunned
Jubal Early. There have been
two second wives at The Grove:
Margaret, after Judith’s death, and
Elizabeth (“Ibby”) after Dorothy’s.
Each was widowed. Built by an
old Virginia dynasty, The Grove
also has had two wives with old
Massachusetts ancestry. Ibby is a
direct descendant ofThomasDudley,
the first Governor of Massachusetts,
as well as the first American poet,
Anne Dudley Bradstreet. She also
numbers Cotton Mather and other
New England leaders among her
ancestors.
Keister’s wives, Ibby Greer and
Dorothy Greer, are distant cousins.
They both descend from daughters
of John and Priscilla Alden, Ibby
from Ruth and Dorothy from
Elizabeth. Ibby Greer’s great-
great-grandfather, Jacob Bunn,
was Abraham Lincoln’s banker in
Springfield, Illinois. Lincoln, in
turn, was the Bunn family lawyer.
Jacob and his brother John W.
Bunn financed Lincoln’s campaign
for the Presidency. John W. Bunn
also served as a Union spy for IL
Gov. Yates during the Civil War.
Ibby’s uncle, George Regan Bunn,
invented the drip coffee maker,
and founded the Bunn-O-
Matic Co.
Ibby also shares a
connection with the Saunders
family: Ibby’s father, Henry
Stryker Taylor, at one time the
largest individual stockholder
of the Pennsylvania Railroad,
had worked with another
distant cousin of The Grove
family: Stuart Saunders.
Through its owners, The
Grove has ties to an interesting
and interwoven tapestry of
American history…fromRebel
General Early to a banker
who helped finance Lincoln’s
Presidency…
from
early
Virginia families to early New
England ones. Incidentally,
they still enjoy homemade biscuits
and great coffee at The Grove.
Editor’s note:
As we go to press, the home
featured in this article is being
offered for sale at $649,900. For
details, contact:
Joan Griffith, Realtor
588-5180
www.joanatthelake.com
never took the oath and remained the
unreconstructed Rebel. He returned
to Lynchburg where he practiced law
and became the major chronicler of the
Southern Cause.
Many others relied on Early for
his uncanny memory of events during
the war. As president of the influential
Southern Historical Society, Early
achieved with the pen what he could
not with the sword. He became the
primary spokesman for the Lost
Cause and became the overwhelming
authority on published Confederate
history. In so doing he engineered the
near deification of General Robert E.
Lee.
The old soldier Jubal Early died in
Lynchburg in 1894 and was buried
on his old battleground there; he had
become a well-known Southern folk
hero. Senator John Warwick Daniel,
who served on Early’s staff, eulogized
him thusly: ‘Virginia holds the dust
of many a faithful son, but not of one
whom loved her more, who fought for
her better, or would have died for her
more willingly.’
Early had practiced law in
Rocky Mount before the War,
in a law office that still sits at
the top of the property, on
Floyd Avenue. He had
wined and dined at
the Grove, which was
built from bricks made
on site, in a dining
room with smooth
floor-length boards,
huge windows with
damask drapes, and
servants bearing trays of food. His
nephews, Sam and Peter Hale, had
been present many times, as their
father, John Stafford Hale, had built
the house for his new wife Margaret,
after their mother, Judith Early
Hale, had died. Judith was Jubal’s
older sister. All of the Early siblings
had names that began with “J.”
The Saunders and Hale families
had intermarried many times since
arriving in the new land from
Britain. Margaret’s younger sister,
Virginia, married John S. Hale’s son,
Dr. Peter Hale, and lived nearby.
The Saunders women were great-
granddaughters of Mary Draper
Ingles, famous for being kidnapped
in 1755 by Shawnee from the first
white settlement west of the Blue
Ridge.Her story is chronicled in the
national bestseller Follow the River,
by James Alexander Thom.
Sam Hale died on May 12,
1864,
at the Battle of Spotsylvania
Courthouse while riding with
General Gordon and Sam’s own
maternal uncle, General Jubal A.
Early. Sam’s grave is
near the Early Homeplace, which is
still standing, off what is now Jubal
Anderson Early Highway (Rt 116),
which crosses Windy Gap into
Roanoke County. Of course, back
then, the road did not have that
name, and Roanoke did not yet exist.
Margaret Hale had a reputation for
being a fine hostess. After the War
and after she was widowed, she took
in boarders.
The Grove has had only three
sets of owners: Hales, Saunders
(
descendants of the Saunders’ and
Hale family), and Greers, and each
family held the house for 50 years.
All made the choice not to list it on
the National Register of Historic
Homes, so that they would be free
to make additions and changes,
as desired, and each family did so.
A Hale Family Cemetery sits on
nearby Taliaferro Street, land that
once was part of the original estate,
of which now only 9.9 acres remains.
The Saunders and Hale men
included in their number a doctor,
a judge, legislators, businessmen,
lawyers, statesmen, and a UVA
professor. Edward W. Saunders,
Sr., gave the dedicatory
Speech in 1906 for the
Confederate Monument
at the Courthouse,
to which Booker
T.
Washington
had
donated.
His son, Edward
W. Saunders, Jr.,
“
Buck,” was Dean
of Engineering at
The Grove Continued...
Discover Smith Mountain Lake |
www.discoversmithmountainlake.com
Discover Smith Mountain Lake | Spring 2013
37
36