William Elam
William Elam was born in Virginia about 1798 and lived in Scott County, in the valley of the Clinch River, all of his recorded life. He and his wife Judy were the parents of Wesley Elam, born about 1825, and of Martha J. Elam, born about 1828.
Martha died of consumption on 4 April 1864, aged 36. The commissioner of the revenue for the North District of Scott County entered her parents as William and Judy Elam, and the person who reported the death was her brother, Wesley Elam. The same year's page records the deaths of Scott County men at Camp Douglas, at Gettysburg, at Winchester and at the hands of bushwhackers.
In 1850 the census taker found William Elam, 52, in Scott County with Rebecca, 52, and the children Martha, 21, William, 19, Walter, 17, Esther J. and Nancy A., 14, Elizabeth, 10, and Eliza A. and Lucy M., 8, with John Stapleton, 22. Wesley, by then married, had his own household. William was still in Scott County in 1860, aged 62. The marriages of Esther J., Eliza A., Lucy M. and Elizabeth in the 1850s and 1860s name their mother as Rebecca, and Eliza A. Cox's death certificate gives her mother's maiden name as Ramey. Whether Rebecca was also the mother of Wesley and Martha, or a second wife after Judy, the records do not say. Wesley named his first daughter Rebecca and a son Walter.
A William Elam bought land in Scott County from Griffith Dickinson and his wife Rebecah for five hundred dollars in March 1828, and bought more from Joseph Hagan within the old Hagan and Culbertson survey. In 1842 he was one of the settlers named as defendants when the Warders sued in the Circuit Superior Court of Law and Chancery for Scott County to recover land inside the boundaries of their own earlier grant, and he gave a deposition in the case.
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Cite: Heirology, "William Elam (b. 1798)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/william-elam-1798-96ebec.