Spotsylvania Memory: The Alsops and the Graubes

Alpheus Atwood Alsop

One of the great privileges I have enjoyed during my years of researching and writing about old Spotsylvania has been the unfettered access I have had to the photo archive of my cousins and fellow researchers, Kathleen and Donald Colvin. Today I am writing about two families about whom I know comparatively little and probably would not have chosen them as subjects for Spotsylvania Memory had I not come across their charming family photographs in the Colvin Collection. So please indulge me, won't you, as I share a few of them with you today. [All images in my blogs can be clicked on for larger viewing]
Alpheus Atwood Alsop (1854-1942), known as "Allie" to friends and family, was a son of Joseph Matthew Alsop and Susan Jane Beazley. The Alsop family farm was located at the intersection of Brock and Gordon Roads, opposite Goshen Church. Joseph Matthew Alsop was, among other things, a farmer, a slave owner and a long time constable and sheriff of Spotsylvania County. His signature appears on this 1867 tax receipt to my great grandfather:

Sheriff Alsop tax receipt to George W.E. Row, 1867

Allie Alsop assumed ownership of the family farm some time after the death of his parents. In the spring of 1897 he married Annie Bowker Pritchett, who lived just across Brock Road (Annie's younger brother Larkin Pritchett married my grandmother's sister, Cora Kent). Eleven months later Annie Alsop died suddenly at two in the morning on March 25, 1898.

Anna Graube

Seven years would pass before Allie Alsop decided to give matrimony another try. In 1905 he married Anna Ruth Graube, the twenty eight year old daughter of Charles and Wilhelmina Graube, whose farm lay nearby. She was twenty three years younger than Allie.
Anna Graube's parents were German immigrants who arrived in America from Saxony in 1871. Charles Graube made the trans-Atlantic voyage first, alone, a few months ahead of his wife and two daughters. Wilhelmina embarked with infants Maria and Milda, but only two would arrive in the new world. Maria died at sea.

Charles Graube

Wilhelmina Graube

Charles and Wilhelmina Graube lived in Pennsylvania for a time, where Anna was born in 1877. Two other daughters, Rosa Katherine and Elsa, were also born in Pennsylvania. The Graubes then made their way to Virginia, where they bought the farm near the Alsops. Their remaining children were born in Virginia--Fanny Meyer, John Hartman and Charles Henry.

Home of Charles and Wilhelmina Graube

Graube home on Gordon Road

The Graube farm in Spotsylvania extended from Gordon Road east to the Bloody Angle battlefield. The first home shown above was that of Charles and Wilhelmina near the battlefield (she is sitting second from left, he is at far right). The second house was, I believe, that of their son Charles Henry Graube. Their other son John Hartman Graube moved to Ohio in 1903.
The Graube children were, from all appearances, bright children. Their names appear often in The Daily Star in the 1880s for being on the honor roll. Rosa and Milda became seamstresses, and worked as dressmakers in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Milda, who never married, moved to Washington, DC after 1905, and continued to ply her trade there. She underwent an unsuccessful operation during the summer of 1915 and died in March 1916. Rosa had returned to Spotsylvania and married Joseph Clarence Mitchell in 1912. Her brother John committed suicide in Ohio in 1921, a year before the death of his father. His brother Charles felt certain that John was murdered, and said as much to a reporter for The Daily Star. John Graube's Ohio death certificate listed his cause of death "gun shot wound head, suicidal intent."

Washington Times, 3 July 1921

The Daily Star, 29 June 1921

The remaining Graubes lived long lives. They are shown below in this photograph taken with their mother some time before 1927. Left to right they are: Fanny, Elsa, Charles, Wilhelmina, Anna and Rosa.

The Graubes

Allie and Anna Alsop's daughter, Anna Allene, was born in 1907. She lived for 104 years. Her brother, Charles Atwood, followed in 1910. Charles would marry Anna Chandler and Allene married Howard Curtis. Below, in no particular order, are a few of the Alsop family photographs.