"A couple of different versions I've heard call him an 'East Virginian man' (Eastern West Virginia?)" - NicoleCastle

No. East Virginia is what we now call Virginia. Before the Civil War Virginia included what we now call West Virginia, but there was tension between the western mountain region and the eastern lowlanders. The latter made laws to suit their own interests and not those of the mountaineers. This came to a head during the Civil War, when many mountaineers were opposed to secession. West Virginia was formed, as a state, during the Civil War. For some time thereafter, the residue, which we now call Virginia, was spoken of as East Virginia, to distinguish it from West Virginia.

John Henry Dabney was a Mississippi man. John Henry Martin is said, by a man who claimed to have been his grandnephew, to have been from (East) Virginia.