John Rowzee Peyton of Montgomery County

HISTORY OF BECKLEY AND RALEIGH COUNTY - Early Settlers of Raleigh County, West Virginia: The following by Judge W. A. Riffe appeared in the Beckley Post-Herald Centennial Edition on August 26, 1950.

PEYTON, John Rowzee - A native of Montgomery County, Va., he settled in the Marshes in 1845. He was related to the Madison, Preston, Breckinridge, and Floyd families. A large man weighing over 300 pounds, he was well educated and an original and entertaining conversationalist of humorous temperament. He owned fine farms in Trap Hill District and engaged in farming, stock raising and trading. He entered the Confederate service in 1861 and was attached to a regiment of the Stonewall Brigade. He participated in the Battle of First Manassas and later was detailed for recruiting service in Southwest Virginia. Peyton was murdered from ambush in 1862 by some Confederate deserters on Bent Mountain in Roanoke County, Va. while on his way to Floyd County.

According to Reverend Horace Edwin Hayden's 1891 genealogy, "PEYTON, of England and Virginia," on pages 552, 553, John Rowzee PEYTON was born 6 December 1806, in Montgomery County, Virginia. John Rowzee PEYTON appears with his parents on page 122, of "Peytons Along the Aquia", where his descent from the PEYTONs of early Colonial Virginia and England is documented. Reverend Hayden described his war service and his death and reported that, although married, he left no descendants.