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MONROE COUNTY WEST VIRGINIA - BIOS: BEIRNE, Andrew
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Submitted to the West Virginia Biographies Project by:
SSpradling@aol.com
September 20, 1999
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A History of Monroe County, West Virginia
Oren F. Morton, B. Lit.
Staunton, VA
The McClure Company, Inc.
1916
p. 308-311
ANDREW BEIRNE
Andrew Beirne and his wife, (?) Plunkett, had three sons who built themselves
largely into the history of Monroe. He was himself of of the Irish gentry and
of classical education and comfortable circumstances. Andrew, Jr., decided
after coming to manhood that he would leave the old home in county Roscommon
and come to America. He saw a better future for himself in the land that had
just gained its independence than by remaining in his native Ireland which
was so grievously oppressed by the British government. At the age of 22 he
arrived at Philadelphia with about $150 in money. This sum he handed to a man
who agreed to take him in a while so that he might have opportunity to gain a
practical knowledge of the new country. The tradesman soon failed and the
money was a total loss. Nevertheless the young man decided on a mercantile
career, and a worthy countryman named Flanagan became his security for a few
hundred dollars worth of goods. This supply he soon sold Out and the same
Quaker merchant, having faith in the young Irishman, furnished a larger
stock. After about two years of very successful exertion Beirne found his way
to this county and opened a small Store on the farm of Edward Keenan, whose
daughter, Ellen G., he married. As soon as Monroe and the town of Union were
established, Mr. Beirne moved his store into the village, and his brother
George arriving in 1800, the firm of A. and G. Beirne was formed and it
continued many years. In 1824 Mrs. Royall speaks of its success as "without
a parallel, taking into view the nature of the country."
Andrew Beirne soon became a great landholder. He acquired an estate of 2200
acres just north of the county seat, the half lying near the village being
unsurpassed even in the famed bluegrass belt of Kentucky. There is running
water in every field and the land is worth from $125 to $150 an acre. Near
the Beirne mill, which is yet standing, he built a house which he painted
red, and from this circumstance it was known as the "Red House." It has since
disappeared. Later he built midway to Union a large brick dwelling which he
painted white, and thus it became known as the "White House." As captain of a
rifle company he led his command to Norfolk in 1814, all the more willingly
because of his resentment at the injustice of England toward Ireland. But the
news of peace came before there was any need for his further service. At the
disbanding at Norfolk he very generously offered the homebound expenses of
any member of his company who might need such help, regardless of whether it
were repaid or not. Afterward he became colonel of the Monroe militia. His
political creed was Democratic and he was repeatedly honored with office. In
1807 he was a member of the Virginia Assembly. He was afterward a state
senator, a member of the constitutional convention of 1829, and in 1836 a
Presidential elector. He was also sent to Congress.
Colonel Beirne was not only a great financier but was of pleasing man-ners
and high education. He took great interest in the affairs of his state and
county. He died in 1845, aged 74, while on a visit to Huntsville. Ala. His
possessions were then worth about $l.000.000. Beirne was of kindly impulses
and much usefulness. Yet it must be added that this fortune, amassed while
America was still a poor country, was not built up without recourse to
grinding business methods. Such practices as his tended to deepen the
inequality of wealth and to reduce the mass of the people to a condition
little better than vassalage.
Of the ten children of Colonel and Mrs. Beirne the following attained
maturity: Christopher (s)-Edward (s)-Mary D. (Bide Steenberger)-Susan
(Charles H. Patton, 1833)-Nancy (William McFarland)-Oliver (1811-1888)
(Margaret M. Caperton)-Ellen ( Turner)-George T. (Eliza Gray)-Andrew (d.
1872) (Mary A. Alexander, Ellen Gray). Steenberger was once the owner of the
celebrated Mirnin's Bottoms in Shenandoah county. He was a financier after
the order of Jay Gould and others of New York fame. On one occasion he
borrowed $600,000 from the United States Bank with Col. Beirne and others as
security. He failed but his indorsers won in a suit for relief from their
obligation. He cornered the beef market in St. Louis and the flour market in
San Francisco, where he sold flour at $50 a barrel. And yet he died at St
Louis a poor man. Patton was a distinguished physician of Alabama, and
McFarland an eminent lawyer of Richmond. Turner was of Connecticut. George T.
became a brilliant attorney of Huntsville, Ala. Oliver and Andrew were the
only married sons who remained in Monroe.
The latter, known as "young colonel," lived on the Lewis place, where he was
very successful as a grower of blooded livestock. He was not only a large
slaveholder but an extensive employer of hired labor. But the war of 1861 was
disastrous to him in a financial way. Andrew J. Beirne was over six feet
tall, dressed like a planter, with brown slouch hat, highly polished boots,
and large flaps to the pockets of his riding coat. He was known as the most
superb horseback rider in the county. Mounted on "Honest John," he would lope
in a single hour the eight miles between his house and Union, and to the
schoolboys who envied his equestrianship it seemed as though horse and rider
were one. His colored attendant, "Black Joe," riding "Peacock," could with
difficulty keep up with him. His children were Mary G., Rosalie, Ellen, and
Andrew. The one son died in a Federal prison in 1865. The first daughter
married Thomas J. Mid-dleton, of South Carolins, the second married Col.
Garrett Andrews, an eminent lawyer of Mississippi, and the third married
Adolphus Blair of Richmond, whose son, Andrew B., is a prominent business man
of that city.
Oliver had a college education and was a graduate in medicine, although he
never practiced. On one of his return trips from school he met John Burnside
at Fincastle, and this casual acquaintance led to the em-ployment of the
latter by the colonel. At length Oliver Beirne formed a partnership with
Burnside for buying and selling sugar, Burnside taking the New Orleans end of
the business and Oliver the New York end. After making a great deal of money
they closed Out in 1847, Burnside then becoming a sugar planter. Oliver
enlarged the "White House" and lived there until the war, when he moved to
Sweet Springs, where he was the owner of the hotel. To this property he gave
the great benefit of his ca-pacity for business organization. Oliver Beirne
was at length not only the proprietor of the family homestead and of Sweet
Springs, but also of the Lewis place, the Burnside estate, and large holdings
in Texas, the whole being worth some $6,000,000, and making him at that time
the wealthiest man in the Virginias. All this property except Sweet Springs
still belongs to his heirs. Mr. Beirne was a person of warm attachments as
well as strong prejudices. He was large-hearted toward his friends, but could
tolerate no petty meanness. In his later years he was known as an erect,
well-groomed gentleman of somewhat more than average size and he wore a long,
white, patriarchal beard. His children were John, Jane E., Bettie, Andrew,
Susan, Nancy, and Alice. Bettie married William P. Miles, of South Carolina,
a scholarly gentleman and a great book lover. He served in Congress and was
one of the organizers of the Confederate government at Montgomery. He was one
of the near counselors of Jefferson Davis. Susan married Major Henry
Robinson, and Nancy married Samuel B. Parkman, who was killed at Antietam In
1869 she married Emil von Ahlefeldt, a German, and spent thirteen years in
Europe. The only living grandchildren are those of Mrs. Miles, two of whom
spend their summers at the White House.
George Beirne (1780-1832) married Polly Johnson in 1805. His children were
Andrew P., Jackson, Christopher, George, Susan, and Mary R-Andrew P.
(1808-1842) married a Miss Smith, of the Shenandoah Valley. Jackson, a
surgeon in the Confederate army, settled in St. Louis. George, who died at an
early age, married Delilah Alexander in 1827. Christopher, a bachelor, and
the owner for a while of a fine estate immediately south of Union, moved to
St. Louis. Susan and Mary R. married respectively Manilius and Augustus A.
Chapman. Andrew P. had a son and a daughter, the latter marrying a Kinney, of
Staunton. The former, who married Elizabeth Caperton, was born in 1842, was
educated at the United States Military Academy, and served in the Confederate
navy. In the year of his marriage-1867-he came to Monroe as a farmer and
attorney, but at length moved to Ronceverte. The children of George were
Michael A. J., Oliver F., and Christopher J.
Oliver (1785-1845), a brother to Colonel Beirne, lived unmarried.
None of the Beirnes in the male line are now residents of Monroe.
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