Laidley, W. S. (William Sydney), 1839-1917

John Osborne Laidley was born in Morgantown, Virginia (now West Virginia) in 1791, the fourth child of Thomas Laidley and Sarah Osborne. John served as a volunteer in the Virginia Artillery during the War of 1812. He returned to Cabell County, Virginia, in the winter of 1814 to practice law. He was appointed the prosecuting attorney of the county and continued in that position for the rest of his life. In 1816 he married Mary Scales Hite (1801-1876), the daughter of Jacob Hite and Sarah Scales, with whom he had fourteen children. He was a member of the Virginia Convention in 1829 and 1830, where he opposed secession from the Union. John Osborne Laidley died in 1863 of pneumonia.

Amacetta Laidley was the first child of John Osborne Laidley. She was born in Cabell County, Virginia in March 1818. In 1833 she married Judge George W. Summers (b.1804) and moved to Charleston, Virginia (now West Virginia). George was a congressman from Virginia from 1841-1844. He campaigned to be governor of Virginia in 1851, but was defeated after running on an anti-secessionist platform. He continued to be a judge in Virginia after his election defeat. Amacetta and George had six children, but only two of them survived infancy. Amacetta died in 1867 after many incidents of poor health, and George died in 1868.

Theodore Thaddeus Sobieski Laidley was born April 14, 1822, the third child of John Osborne Laidley and Mary Scales Hite. Theodore entered the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1838, graduating four years later ranked sixth in his class. He joined the Ordnance Department as a second lieutenant, and served in the Mexican War and later at arsenals in New York, Virginia, and North Carolina. Theodore married Jane Webb Averill in 1848, and they had one daughter, Jane Laidley, born in 1849. Theodore served in the Union Army during the Civil War. After over 40 years in the military, he retired and travelled to Florida to improve his health, which had plagued him his entire life. He died April 4, 1886, in Palatka, Florida.

William Sydney Laidley, the eleventh child of John Osborne Laidley and Mary Scales Hite, was born in June 1839 at the family home, Lamartine, in Cabell County, Virginia. William studied law and moved to Charleston, West Virginia, in 1863 to begin practicing as an attorney. He married Virginia Brown in 1869, and they had nine children together. William was Kanawha County’s delegate to the West Virginia State House from 1872-1873. William died in 1917 after a long career as an attorney, genealogist, and writer.

From the guide to the Laidley family papers, 1838-1886, 1838-1861, (William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan)