Frances Asbury Addington

Addington Family Lot
Cedar Grove Cemetery
2nd Alley West, Lot 47
1st Alley West, Lot 48

Frances Asbury Addington was born in Norfolk, Virginia in 1855.  As a child, Frank lived close enough to the scene of the Battle of the Monitor and the Merrimac in Norfolk Harbor to fire a pop-gun at the Yankee Ship Monitor.  He remembered the flight of his family from the city ahead of the Yankee Army.  He remembered the cry, “the Yankees are coming!” when the refugees mistook an explosion from the family fire, built on a rock hearth, for enemy artillery. 

Frank grew up to become a lumberman operating mills in various places in North Carolina, moving with his family to wherever his business was.  He and his wife, Margaret “Molly” Johnson, a Norfolk County girl, had five children – Frank, Virginia, Joseph, Mary and Dorothy, who died in her early 20s. 

Joseph, the middle child, was born in 1896 in Wharton, North Carolina near Washington, North Carolina where Frank was operating a saw mill.  By the time Joseph was four or five years old, the loading of southern pine on barges in Wharton for northern destinations had become a familiar sight. 

In 1900, Frank Addington sold his business and bought property in the Edgewater section of Norfolk fronting 1,000 feet along the Lafayette River.  There he built a large home and settled down until he decided to go back into the lumber business. 

Frank bought out the Etheridge Lumber Company in North Carolina.  Unfortunately, Mrs. Addington died in 1906 and his young son, Joseph C. Addington, Sr., moved to Norfolk.  Frank sold the Edgewater house in 1913 due to poor economic conditions.  In 1904 Frank had a mill in Fayetteville, North Carolina but he lost most of his fortune as failures plagued him.  He continued in and out of the sawmill business.  In 1915 he married Margaret Cromartie of Elizabethtown, North Carolina.

Frank Asbury Addington died in his sleep in 1936.

All printed information and photographs courtesy of the Sargeant Memorial Room, Norfolk Public Library.

Biographical information provided by Norfolk Bureau of Cemeteries.

Visitor Information

Visitor Hours: Sunrise to Sunset

Office hours: Monday to Friday 9:00 AM to 4:30 PM
Saturday 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM

Free parking inside cemetery.

Admission Cost: Free

Address: 238 E. Princess Anne Road, Norfolk, VA 23510

Official web site for more information: www.norfolk.gov/cemeteries

Norfolk Society for Cemetery Conservation Web Site: www.norfolksocietyforcemeteryconservation.org