Alex & Miss Kate
On Christmas Eve, 1874, Alexander Emerson married Mary Catherine Leager (“Miss Kate”), who had moved to Gloucester from Caroline County, Maryland.
Miss Kate was living in the household of the Pratt family who had also moved from Maryland. It seems that Miss Kate brought a reversal to the trend of Alex’s misfortunes. During the mid-1870s, there were several court records of transactions between Alex and Gloucester Sawmill Company. In 1874, Alexander bought a 160 acre tract of land known as “Berkeley,” located on the corner of Route 614 and Cedar Bush Road (Part of this land later became the site of Clopton’s Post Office and General Store.). This property was divided into smaller parcels and sold over a period of several years.
On December 8, 1875, Alex and Miss Kate’s first child, Emma Louise, was born in Gloucester. In 1878, a second daughter, Kate was born. “Little Kate” died in childhood; Minnie Lee (“Aunt Minnie”) Emerson (Oliver, Riley) remembered going to Little Kate’s funeral and said, “It was a real sad time.”
Sometime between 1875 and 1878, the Emerson family moved to King and Queen where they would live for the next decade. Louise Emerson, Alex and Kate Emerson’s oldest child, was born in Gloucester in 1875; Grant Emerson, Alex’s oldest grandchild, was born in King and Queen County in 1878. In September 1881, Alexander, Jr. was born, and on January 16, 1883, Alexander and Miss Kate’s last child, Joshua, was born. (U.S. census 1900)
Alex, Jr. grave at Bellamy Methodist church, Gloucester Virginia
According to family tradition, Alexander operated a “tavern” in West Point during the 1880s. This tradition seems to be verified by the 1880 census listing Alex’s occupation as “Gen. Merchant.” Apparently, the Emerson home must have been located in the southernmost part of King and Queen because Alex was a trustee of St. Andrews Methodist Church which is located in the northern tip of Gloucester; in order for him to have ties to both West Point and Gloucester, he would have to be in the southern extremities of King and Queen. It is known that later on, some of the Emersons lived just across the Mattaponi River from West Point.
In addition to operating a tavern, it seems that Alex continued having an occupational connection with the sawmill industry. Robert Carol Emerson recalls the following story:
Spring Hill parsonage with Cyprus trees.
One day in the early 1960s, my father, George William Emerson, and. I were admiring the huge cypress trees in the yard of our parsonage home on the Piankatank River in Mathews County. My father said, “My grandpa used to make his living cutting down cypress trees in the Dragon Run.”
“Which grandfather was that?” I asked.
“Grandpa Alex,” he replied. “They had to stand waist deep in cold water when they cut the trees down. They had to cut the trees down in the winter when the water was deep enough to float the logs out of the swamp. Then they would move the logs to West Point with a yoke of oxen. There they sawed the logs in blocks about 18 inches long; using axes, they would split off slabs about one inch thick to make shake shingles.” My father added, “That was a terrible way to make a living.”