Rappahannock County has no large towns within its boundaries, but its well-kept attractive villages can each one tell a story worth listening to back to Colonial days. Crossing the Rappahannock River, with our faces turned towards the mountain, we soon come to Amissville on the Lee Highway. The early settlers around here were both French Huguenots and the English. In 1763 a royal grant was issued by Lord Fairfax for a tract of land to Joseph Bayse, and a similar grant was issued to Joseph Amiss. Joseph Amiss distributed his grant among his four sons – William, John, Phillip Newport and Thomas. Col. Phillip Newport Amiss served with Gen. Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812. He married two of the Bayse sisters, Hannah and Polly, and was the father of seven sons. His daughter Edna married Dr. Benjamin Pendleton Ferguson. Dr. Ferguson rode a mule out to the Ohio country and was a medical missionary to the Indians. Later he returned and carried his family out in covered wagons.

When an application was made to the govenment at Washington for a postoffice at this place, there was great contention as to the name it should bear – Bayse or Amiss. They decided to hold an election and leave it to the land owners to decide, those voting within a radius of three miles. The Amisses won by one vote, and so we have Amissville named to honor Col. Phillip Newport Amiss. William, brother of Col. Amiss, was the first postmaster. The mail route was from Warrenton to Thornton's Gap on top of the mountain, with James Fletcher the first mail carrier. He would travel on horseback the distance of thirty miles up to the mountain one day, and back to Warrenton the next.

In the War Between the States General Custer, famous Indian fighter, had his headquarters at Amissville. He was in command of the Union forces. The first company of Confederates was drilled by Rev. George S. Vanderslieve and he was made captain of the Company. He had charge of the Methodist Church in Amissville at that time. The land was given by the Bayse family in 1829 for a Methodist church to be built here.

The above information is taken from an old sketch by James J. Silvey. He also tells of the Alexandria Pike to Luray, built before the war with tollgates "over twelve miles apart." John Waters was the first gate keeper in Amissville. He remembered as a boy driving "old man Water's" cow up every evening, for which he recieved "one piece of copper."

In the old Pullen graveyard, one mile from Amissville, an epitath on an old stone reads:

Col. Phillip Newport Amiss and his two wives, Hannah and Polly Bayse, are buried on the old Amiss plantation, now owned by the Silvey family.

In the Amissville neighborhood lived the Anderson family. Peyton Anderson was the first to shed blood for the Confederate cause. A monument to the memory of him was erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy at Fairfax Court House. Honorable Walton Moore, standing beside the widow and grandchild at the unveiling, made the address.

Peyton Anderson married Louemma, daughter of Jesse Miller of "Poplar Shade". At this time Mrs. Anderson lives with her daughter, Mrs. Clifford Latham. She is one hundred years young.

Peyton Anderson's brother William married Ida, daughter of J.Y. Menefee. He was known as the "handsome man" and she as the "charming woman". They bought "Hawthorn" sometime in the Seventies, and how they loved their beautiful old home with its traditions! There were five daughters and one son: Mary, Bessie, Josie, Dora, William and Ida, the last two were born at "Hawthorn".

Eliza, sister of Peyton and William Anderson, married Col. Thomas Massie. Their sons were Hon. Wade Massie and Joseph Massie, prominent lawyers of Eastern Virginia.

This family for whom the village of Amissville was named produced some prominent physicians.

Capt. Elijah Amiss was married three times, two of his wives were Roystons of Fredericksburg, and the third was Louise Leavell. Albert Menefee married Sarah, daughter of Louise Leavell Amiss. Their granddaughters are Mrs. Ogden of New York, Mrs. Bathhurst Bagby of Virginia, and Mrs. Luther Rudasill of "Llisadur", Rappahannock, Virginia. Their son Albert is a successful businessman of New York City.

A society, consisting of Amiss descendants, meets each year for their reunion.

For the story of the medical men of this family I am giving a contrbution by Miss Virginia Amiss Martin, great-granddaughter of Capt. Elijah Amiss of Amissville:

"Dr. Thomas Benjamin Amiss was the son of Elijah Amiss, a Rappahannock County Planter, and was born at the home "Melville" in Amissville on July 4, 1839. He was educated at the V.M.I. at Lexington and subsequently took a medical course at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in March 1861. The important events of that period prevented his embarking in the practice at once and in the following months he was busily engaged in putting in practice instead the lessons he had learned in Lexington, drilling the volunteer companies of Rappahannock and Culpeper Counties. He enlisted as a private in Company B, Sixth Virginia Cavalry, and served with that command until after the first battle of Manassas, when in September, 1861 he was commissioned assistant surgeon and assigned to duty in Bailey's Factory hospital at Richmond. He served at that post of duty until after the Peninsular Campaign, when he was assigned as surgeon to the Thirty-First Regiment, Georgia Infantry, Col. Clement A. Evans, then encamped near Gordonsville. He served in the field with this command through the Cedar Mountain, Manassas and Sharpsburg campaigns, Fredericksburg and Chancellorville, and then in the spring of 1863 on account of impaired health he was assigned to hospital duty and ordered to report to Dr. Curry at Salisbury, N.C. When that garrison was transferred to Andersonville, Ga., he was ordered to report to Major Webb at Weldon, N.C., where he remained until the surrender of Johnston's army, when he was paroled. Returning to Virginia he practiced medicine at Slate Mills in Rappahannock County until 1874, when he located at Alma in Page County.

The Confederate Military History from which the preceding paragraph was adapted, refers to Dr. Amiss as "recognized" as one of the faithful and skilled among Confederate surgeons.

"During his military experiences, Dr. Amiss and his brother Dr. William Amiss performed a successful operation on a wounded soldier that was deemed a remarkable triumph of surgery and suggested new ideas as to the antiseptic treatment of wounds. On the night after Cedar Mountain the two brothers, who were surgeons of different Georgia regiments serving under Stonewall Jackson, were riding on the battlefield when they heard a groan near the roadside. Always ready to minister to the suffering men they at once investigated and found Major Snowden Andrews of Baltimore, lying on the ground disembowelled by a shell and his vital parts covered with dust from the road raised by thousands of marching men. The surgeons pronounced the case hopeless, but they admired the grit and stoical endurance of the wounded officer who averred that he had himself saved the life of a favorite hound accidentally disembowelled, and that too after she had dragged herself for a distance through the dust and grass. They took the man to a farmhouse nearby and after cleaning with water the best they could replaced the viscera and closed the wound with stitches. The Major recovered, served through the war and rose to the rank of Colonel and died at a ripe old age in Baltimore where Dr. Amiss visited him years after the war. The successful issue following conditions that were apparently most unfavorable made this a remarkable case and it was extensively discussed in the medical journals of this country and Europe and is referred to in standard medical works."

Dr. Thomas Amiss was married July 16, 1861 to Mary Elizabeth Miller of his native county. The children of this marriage were Thomas Amiss of Alabama, Frederick Amiss for many years treasurer of Page County, and Mrs. Jesse B. Martin. They were born at Slate Mills, Rappahannock County.

Two of the sons of Frederick T. Amiss are physicians.

Dr. Byrd Stuart Leavell of the University of Virginia Hospital is an Amiss descendant.

[SOURCE:
pp. 206-9; My Rappahannock (VA) Storybook by Mary Elizabeth Hite; Dietz Press, Richmond; 1950. Copy found in the Sutro Library, San Francisco.]

Also see p. 143: picture of house with the following caption:
"Dr. William Amiss was best known as "Stonewall" Jackson's surgeon. An old house with a porch that extends out to the street is still pointed out as "Dr. Amiss' house".