"Uncle" Billy Peyton
May 3, 1996
MARIETTA TIMES
"Window to the Past"
 by Henry Robert Burke
 
The story of  William "Uncle Billy" Peyton, has been written up by several

different people over the years, notably Mr. James Dennis, a teacher in

Parkersburg, and was also well covered by the press during the early 1900s.

The true story about Uncle Billy's life span was so incredible that I feel

it is worth writing again for anyone who missed it.

 	Think about these reported facts. William Peyton was born a slave

in Prince William County, Virginia in 1792 while George Washington was still

President of the United States and he died in 1919 while Woodrow Wilson was

President of the United States; a fantastic life span of 128 years! (The oldest
 
recorded age of a human being that I am aware of was that of Khfaf Lausuria 

in Abkhanzia, Georgia, in the former Soviet Union. She lived slightly over

130 years.)

 	Uncle Billy was "bought" for $333.00 when he was a child by George
> Creel, who
> owned a first rate plantation in Prince William County, Virginia. He was
> never sold again,
> but rather was handed down from generation to generation in the Creel
> family and ended
> the slavery portion of his life at the Creel Plantation at Davisville,
> Virginia when West
> Virginia was formed as a "free" state in 1863. Uncle Billy continued to
> live and work at
> the Creel Plantation until 1868, then he moved to Decatur Township in
> Washington
> County, Ohio and bought a small farm, which he cleared by himself.
> 	Uncle Billy was not a temperate man. He liquor and tobacco all his
> life, and his
> passion was walking. Each year he walked to Marietta to attend the
> Emancipation Day
> celebration and  each year he made a pilgrimage back to Creel Plantation
> to visit the family
> of his former master. Throughout his life he held the Creel family in high
> regard, and often
> bragged that his back had never felt the lash.
> 	Just think about it, Uncle Billy Peyton lived the events of  the
> first one and one
> quarter century of America's history, beginning with President George
> Washington, then
> Presidents John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John
> Quincy
> Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, William H. Harrison, James K.
> Polk,
> Zachary Taylor, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew
> Johnson,
> U.S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hays, James A. Garfield, Grover Cleveland (1st
> term),
> Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland (2nd term), William McKinley, Theodore
> Roosevelt, William H. Taft, and Uncle Billy died while Woodrow Wilson was
> serving his
> second term as President of the United States!
> 	Uncle Billy was described as a huge man who could out work any two
> men most
> of his life. On his eightieth birthday Uncle Billy set a record by
> splitting 320 fence rails in
> one day! He was 40 years older than his wife and out lived her by 28
> years. When he was
> 119 years old he walked fifteen miles to catch the train to Davisville,
> West Virginia to visit
> the great great grandson of his original master for the last time . He
> stated that he just
> wanted to tend the Creel's horses one more time.
> 	The Creel family had a record of  Mr. Billy Peyton's birth date,
> which was verified
> in 1912 by Judge L.N. Tavenner of Parkersburg, at which time Uncle Billy,
> at the age of
> 120 years old, was proclaimed  the oldest living person in the entire
> United States of
> America!
> 	Uncle Billy was survived by one son, J.E.C. Peyton and lived out
> his last few years
> with his granddaughter, Mrs. Eva Dalton of Torch, Ohio.