Armistead, Elizabeth

Elizabeth Armistead was the daughter of Robert Armistead and Lucy Margaret Ellzey. She was born in 1800 and had one sister named Mary. Elizabeth and Mary were the only children from the marriage of Armistead and Ellzey.  

The Armistead sisters owned enslaved people, as recorded in the Mason family manuscript account book. On 22 December 1813, their trustee Armistead Mason paid cash on the sisters’ behalf to a man named “Hunt for apprehending their negro man John Tebbs.” In March 1814, Mason also paid “the prison fees for their man John” from Elizabeth’s and Mary’s joint account. The Armisteads also hired out their enslaved people, including Joe, Duanna, Phill, and Scylla. 

Transactions in the account book related to Elizabeth and Mary ended in 1819, likely when they moved south from Virginia. In 1824, Armistead married John McKinley; he was forty-four years old, and she was twenty-four years old. Their marriage took place in Madison County, Alabama. Armistead’s sister Mary also married a man from Madison County, Alabama—Willis Pope—in 1827. Their marriages to men who lived in Alabama meant that the two sisters had likely moved to Alabama together; Pope was born in Virginia, like McKinley, who had been born in Culpeper County.  

The house where John and Elizabeth McKinley lived in Huntsville, Alabama, still stands; this house later became the Weeden House Museum, named for poet Maria Howard Weeden. Armistead had no children with McKinley, but helped raise his three children from a previous marriage. McKinley’s career brought their family to Florence, Alabama, in 1831 and then Louisville, Kentucky around 1838. McKinley served on the U.S. Supreme Court for the next fourteen years before dying on 19 July 1852.  

In his will, John McKinley left Elizabeth his home in Louisville as well as several plots of land, house furnishings, his carriage, and enslaved people. He also told her stepson, Andrew, to purchase real estate that would provide her with an income of $300. Elizabeth McKinley survived her husband by thirty-nine years, dying in 1891. They were both buried in Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky. 

By Caroline Greer