Massie, William, 1741-1862.

William Massie (1742-1862) owned two plantations in Nelson County, Virginia, "Pharsalia" and "Level Green." While being educated in Staunton he met and married Sarah Steptoe in 1815. His father, Major Thomas Massie, gave him the 1,500-acre Pharsalia Plantation prior to the marriage. William, widowed three times, married Maria Catherine Effinger in 1834 and they had ten children, including Bland Massie. After William's death, the older children had to sell their shares of the plantation to pay their debts. The widow and three younger children retained their inheritance but the plantation effectively ceased with Maria's death in 1889.

Bland Massie, born in 1854 to William and Maria Effinger, married Eliza Snead in 1877.

Further biographical information on the Massie family can be found in Oliver Morris Refsell, The Massies of Virginia: Documentary History of a Planter Family (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, 1959).