Virginia Connections...

A casual bid at a book auction last October got me a first edition set of Douglas Southall Freeman's bio of George Washington, 7 vols. for $45.   5 of the 7 are first printings as well as being in excellent condition.  Not a bad buy as it turned out. 

Actually I was the only bidder, at the minimum bid,  and to confess I bid only to prime the pump.   It's happened before, my getting a phone call on Sunday notifying me that I had bought something I had forgotten about bidding on.   Not knocking my Norman Rockwell folios or the tiny print OED, but this was the best yet.   The best deal yet too.

Among other chapters, I've been reading about the Fairfax Proprietary.   Freeman wrote an appendix of over 100 pages on the Proprietary besides some information within the text itself.   Besides hundreds of pages on Virginia colony in the 1700s, its government, culture and history.   Great stuff, especially when you've just learned that you had ancestors in Virginia around that time, which brings it all to life:  what was it like then?

Well, early this week, I resumed genealogizing to the extent of googling a couple of names I had neglected before.   One name was Heinrich Bachmann and the other was Benjamin Borden. 

Heinrich Bachmann immigrated to the colonies about 1738 or '39 from Richterswil, Zurich Canton, Switzerland.   My first Swiss!   And that's not all.    After spending about 20 years in the Shanandoah Valley of Virginia, he shows up in the records as the buyer of 257 acres in the Shenandoah of Frederick County, VA, from the Fairfax Proprietary and he died there about 20 years later. 

Heinrich's mother had the name Dagan, which sources say is Hebraic.   His father's mother was a Goldschmidt.  Were they Jewish?   If so, not for long.

Another Fairfax nexus or near nexus came up with Ben Borden, Jr.   His grandfather was a Quaker and immigrated to the new colony of Rhode Island in the late 1630s, not as a founder but an early colonist.   His son Benjamin moved to New Jersey, where his son Benjamin Borden, Jr., was born.   All the Bordens had a knack for acquiring land, and that was a special calling for Ben Borden, Jr., who bought and sold thousands of acres in what is now New Jersey.   Then Ben Borden, Jr., went to Virginia, perhaps after a spot of trouble over opposition to the hanging of a suspected pirate.

Somehow through persuasion or wheeling and dealing Borden obtained a patent on 91,000 acres in Rockbridge County, Virginia, near present day Lexington.   Some say he was nicknamed "Fairfax Ben" because he was an agent of the Fairfax Proprietary.   I think it was because with his control over 91,000 acres he was set up as a sort of mini Lord Fairfax with 1/50th the land and minus the titles.

He didn't lose the land through poor judgment the way a number of prominent Virginia plantation owners did.   He left his daughters 5,000 acres each and his sons considerably more.   His estate was inventoried for probate at some 120,000 acres, and litigation over claims to it was said to have continued for 154 years!

His granddaughter, Margaret Borden, married Nichodemus Keith in Bedford County, Va, the county just to the south of the Borden landholdings.  After several children were born, Margaret and Nichodemus and it seems her father John Borden then migrated to Tennessee.  

Why did John Borden, who ought to have been prosperous thanks to Ben Borden's will, leave Virginia for greater hardship and risk out on the frontier?  That is one mystery.   The usual reasons to migrate to Tennessee were economic:  a quest for land or for more land away from the established economic hieratchy in the East.

Another mystery is where Nichodemus Keith came from.   On the internet one finds various nonsense about him, that he was born in Tennessee in 1755 or that he lived in Tennessee before his marriage to Margaret.  There are claims that he served in the Revolution: undocumented, plus his family grew so fast during the Revolution years that he surely stayed nearby.   There are claims he was the son of Sir William Keith of Scotland, but the dates don't quite jibe.   Others say he was the son of a William Butler Keith of Ireland.

Tennessee was a wild and wooly place before 1790.   The British established a settlement at Ft. Loudon in 1757.   It was under continual Indian attack and was abandoned three years later.    Finally a group of settlers acted outside the law and treaties and established a community complete with its own constitution--the Wautaga Association.  To be followed by efforts to create the new State of Franklin.  Following the close of the Revolutionary War,  there was significant immigration to Tennessee, which grew explosively in the1790s; after 1800, Tennessee was becoming settled and civilized.  There is no way Nichodemus would have been born in Tennessee in 1755 or 1760, and no way he would have been married in Tennessee in 1776 as some would have it.

One might wish to connect Nichodemus Keith with the famous line of Keiths in Scotland, a 500+ year old  line of marischals and earl-marischals of Scotland extending over 500 years from the late 1100s until 1716, when the clan head and marischal was outlawed and his titles and lands were confiscated by the Crown for supporting a Stuart claimant to the throne,  some Keiths being descended from the Stuart king James I, king of Scotland 1406-1437, and some associated with the affairs of later Stuarts including Mary, Queen of Scots, and her son James I, king of England, Scotland, and Wales for whom the "King James Bible" was named.   [Or Queen James, which I call him to offend Christian fundamentalist homophobes who claim divine inspiration for the KJV.]

Most likely, Nichodemus Keith was Scots-Irish, meaning that he was descended from those impoverished Scots who were settled for a time in Ireland as colonists/buffers for the British Crown who then moved from Ireland to the colonies, and was not part of that famous line, at least not for some generations back.    But it is not known.

Statements are made about Margaret Borden, that she was a poet and a Baptist preacher.   Where did that come from?  There was a book written about Nichodemus & Margaret Keith and their descendants that I have not seen;  are these stories contained in that book?   Were there female Baptist preachers in the 1700s?   Seems a little early to me.

Was Nichodemus Keith descended from a settler on a tract of Ben Borden's land?  Was he a neighbor of the Bordens?   Don't know.   Was he a grandson of wandering Baptist preacher Cornelius Keith who roamed the Virginia and North Carolina mountains in a wagon around 1715?  A relative of George Keith, who was a Quaker associated with William Penn but who split with Penn and formed his own Quakerish sect called Keithians?  Unknown, captain.

Why did a grandaughter of a major landowner marry Nichodemus?   Don't know.

Why was Nichodemus referred to as "Judge" Nichodemus Keith in one record?   Don't know.

Why did they all pull up stakes and go to Tennessee, including John Borden Margaret's father?   Unknown.

So here is the state of my ancestors in Virginia:

(1) Bullock.  William Bullock settled near Jamestown/Williamsburg about 1624 and died at Warwick, VA in 1650.  His father Hugh, "master and owner of the Endeavor" and other ships, was a sometime resident of Virginia from the 1620s but primarily lived in London though he was a member of the House of Burgesses in 1631 by virtue of owning 2600 acres of Virginia land.    Nevertheless, descent from Hugh qualfies one for membership in the Jamestown Society.   In the late 1700s, Agnes Bullock born in North Carolina would marry into the Pool family of North Carolina and their daughter would be born in Georgia in 1800 and would marry a Smith and later die at the Smith enclave in Lafayette County, Mississippi.

(2)  Mayes.   The Mayes were in Virginia before moving to Kentucky in the 1800s.   They lived  in Halifax and Pittsylvania, Virginia in the 1700s and earlier.   By some genealogies they trace back to Rev. William Mease who arrived in Virginia in 1610.  In terms of early colonial ancestry Rev. Mease is paydirt.   However, one must be cautious because some facts about Rev. Mease and his descendants are not certain.   Descent appears to trace as follows:  Rev, William Mease (1584-1636?) --> John Mays (1611-1673) -->  William Mayes + ___ Newcombe --> William Mayes + Mary Mattox --> William Mayes (d. 1752) + Eliz. Gardiner --> William Mays (1724-1794) + Sarah Latham --> Drury Mays (1773-1820)    --> Thomas David Mayes (1799-1852)  +  --> David N. Mayes (1831 TN-1886) + Martha Cloyes [who brings in Massachusetts Puritan ancestry]  --> Ida Emma Eudora Frances Mayes (1858-1926) who married John Bachman Downing, my great-grandfather.  12 generations in all, some in Virginia.

(3)  Brumbelow.  Edward Brumbelow was born in Warsaw, Virginia, about 1675 and was the carpenter who built the Richmond County courthouse around 1706.  A son or grandson was a local judge in Virginia.  A descendant, Lewis Brumbelow, would migrate from Virginia to Tennessee, and his daughter, Elizabeth Brumbelow, would marry a later Nichodemus Keith and die in Texas in 1895; her mother was reputed to be Cherokee but this is unproven.

(4)  Borden.    Quaker and real estate wheeler-dealer Benjamin Borden, Jr., moved to Virginia from New Jersey about 1734 and then settled on his 91,000 acre tract in Rockbridge County where he died in 1743 near Winchester right after being appointed to a judgeship.  It is told that Borden was wandering in the wilderness in western Virginia trying to find his land specified in the patent when he stopped for the night at a little cabin;  John McDowell, the son of the family living there just happened to be trained as a surveyor, and Borden offered him a thousand acres to survey and stake out Borden's land and begin settling it;  it was quickly surveyed though McDowell had to sue Borden to get his choice of land, which preserved the incident and the contract between te men.    Here is more information and a transcription of the written agreement between Borden and McDowell dated 1737:  http://leomcdowell.tripod.com/id28.htm

(5)  Starnes.  Frederick Starnes, Jr., migrated from New York to Pennsylvania and settled on the South Fork of the Holston River near present day Abington, Virginia, possibly before 1750, the Holston being a jump-off point for explorations of the Tennessee and Kentucky wilderness and an epicenter for "the longhunters" who were the first white explorers of Tennessee and Kentucky;  Frederick was a constable and former militiaman, and while on a scouting expedition past Boonesborough, Kentucky, that Frederick and relatives undertook in 1779, was killed along with his brother and son-in-law by Shawnee stirred up by the British.  It was reported that the son-in-law was a big man, and that his heart was missing when the bodies were found.   A son and nephew were among settlers of Boonesborough and another son, "Capt. John,"  was killed in the Revolutionary War.   His father, Frederick Starnes, Sr., also had  moved to Virginia and was wounded by Indians while working in his field. 

(6)  Bachmann.   In 1762 Heinrich Bachmann bought 257 acres of Fairfax Proprietary land in the Shanandoah Valley and some of his descendants lived on that tract in Virginia at least until the 1850s.  At some point, a Bachmann -- or Bachman or Baughman -- would move on to Tennessee, where a daughter would marry a James Downing and give birth to a son, John Bachman Downing, who as a teenager out on his own would seek work in North Carolina, marry Ida Mayes, and move on to Dallas, Texas, in the 1870s. 

(7)  Keith.   Margaret Borden and Nichodemus Keith married in Bedford County, Virginia, in 1776 and lived there for a few years as some of  their children were born before moving to Tennessee by the 1790s along with John Borden.  One of their daughters would marry Samuel Cowan in Tennessee where Cowan was a commissioner of Knox County, and then some descendants, Cowans and Keiths both, would migrate to Texas in the late 1830s.