I have said several times that the William Collins who died in 1767/1768
was our known ancestor, and that therefore he is the link between our ancestry
and the Collinses of Kingsale Swamp. So far, however, I have not demonstrated
the connection. It is time to do so.
William Collins was my 6th great-grandfather, and it seems certain that
he is the man referred to in the 1744 deed as living on the land of his
late father James Collins, which gives us the name of my 7th great-grandfather.
How that James connects with the earlier Collinses of Kingsale is still
uncertain, though it is likely one of the possibilities shown in the last
chapter.
We cannot profile William Collins with the detail available for his
son or grandson, but it is possible to say some things about him. However,
to do so we must proceed backwards, beginning with the document which tells
us the most, his will. Then we will see what we can learn from the surviving
land and vestry records.
As the earlier chapters have shown and as this one will make clear,
the spelling "Collings" sometimes appeared for the early Collinses. However,
for every occasion in which "Collings" occurred, there is at least one
or more instances of "Collins", and as all these men seem to have signed
with a mark, there was presumably no accepted spelling. I have used "Collins"
throughout for consistency (since that always appears at least as common
as "Collings"), but must confess that understanding the Kingsale connection
was delayed by some years because the will of this William Collins appears
under Collings.
I had known of this William "Collings" will for some time, but until
it was possible to identify the land as being in the Kingsale Swamp region
and the probability that our ancestors came from that area, the fact that
William Collings of 1767/68 had a son James did not seem sufficient to
make him the father of the James Collins who moved to North Carolina, despite
the coincidence of names. Besides the name difference, I was not yet certain
of the Kingsale connection in those days. Now, however, we can show that
the sons named in the will divided William's land and that the eldest,
James, sold his jointly along with his wife Esther, the same wife with
whom he moved to North Carolina. Between the will and the land records,
there is no real doubt that a) William Collings of the will is the William
Collins, son of James, mentioned in 1644; b) James Collings of the will
is the same James Collings and his wife Esther who sold the land to a member
of the Carr family, and then turn up as James Collins and his wife Esther,
living near a Carr family in North Carolina, where they became the parents
of our Revolutionary ancestor James Collins II. (And that Carr can be shown
to have come from Kingsale, too!) Along the way, I will present what evidence
we have about William Collins (Collings) and his land.
As for "Collings", we should not make too much of the spelling since,
as we have seen, both were used interchangeably as far back as the 1600s
for the Kingsale Collinses. In an illiterate society in which most men
signed with their mark, spellings shifted a lot, and the southern tendency
to drop the terminal "g" worked both ways: just as someone might write
"giving" as "givin", he might overcompensate and write "Collins" as "Collings".
The spelling itself is not a major concern. The other evidence outweighs
it.
Though I have not yet seen the actual will itself, it has been abstracted
several times. The basic information is this:
William "Collings" made his will on August 14, 1767. He mentioned his
legal wife Sarah, his son James, his son Jesse, his daughter Elizabeth
Keen, his daughter Mary Keen, and Jethro Collings. His wife Sarah was named
executrix. The witnesses were Thomas Lankford, Junior, Jonathan Robertson,
and Archelaus Robertson. The will was filed for probate on February 4,
1768, so he died sometime between August of 1767 and February of 1768.
On March 3, 1768, the estate of "William Collings" was appraised by John
Daughtrey, Jonathan Robinson, and Joshua Council.(1)
Now, the will itself -- before we adduce any further evidence -- gives
us some important clues. It shows that William "Collings" had sons named
James and Jesse. The daughters raise a question. Since both are surnamed
Keen, they could be stepdaughters by Sarah's first marriage to a Keen.
But they are called "daughters" without reservation, so it may be likelier
that they married brothers, or cousins, named Keen. We will meet the Keens
in a few moments. Meanwhile, the will gives us some other evidence. The
last land transaction cited before we paused to evaluate our progress was
a 1745 sale by William Wooten to John "Daughtry" for 200 acres on "the
branch of Kingsale Swamp"; (See Above, Page 41), said land adjoining "John
Daughtery, Council, James Bryan and Collins". The appraisal of this William
"Collings"' property was by three men including John Daughtery and Joshua
Council, suggesting that he is the "Collins" of the aforementioned reference,
and thus one of the Collinses of Kingsale, not some other Isle of Wight
Collins. We have also, of course, met the Councils and Daughterys (Daughtreys,
Daughtrees) before, well back into the 1600s, and we've also heard of Bryan.
The fact that the will was filed in Isle of Wight rather than Nansemond
is interesting -- and fortunate, since Nansemond wills don't survive --
but coincidental. The 1745 reference was also in Isle of Wight County,
but as we will see shortly, there are relevant Nansemond records too. Clearly
we are still dealing with land along the county line.
So already, without any more evidence at all, we can say that this William
"Collings" is almost certainly the same as the unnamed "Collins" of 1745,
because his neighbors match exactly. More importantly, this also points
to his being the William "Collins" (spelled our way) of the 1744 deed which
mentions him as the son of James Collins. For that land deed marked the
sale of land adjoining the land "formerly belonging to James Collins and
now in the possession of his son, William Collins", said neighboring land
being sold by Joshua Lee and his wife to James "Roberson", while the will
was witnessed by Jonathan and Archelaus "Robertson".(2)
The difference between "Roberson" and "Robertson" is even less than between
Collins and Collings, and as we have seen, spellings varied widely for
many of these families. Clearly enough, in the 33 years between the deed
and the will, the neighboring land had passed to the next generation. As
for the other witness, Thomas Lankford, Junior, we will hear more of the
Lankfords momentarily.
The will shows too that William "Collings" had a (presumably elder,
named first in the will) son named James as well as a son named Jesse.
His daughters were named Keen, perhaps because they married Keens or because
they were stepdaughters. As we shall see, the Keens were living close by
both the Collinses and Daughterys, as well as the Hollands and others we
have met before.. And he mentions a Jethro Collings as well, without specifying
relationship.
Now the other records which exist for this period along the Isle of
Wight/Nansemond county line are the Isle of Wight deeds and other land
records, and the vestry book of the Upper Parish of Nansemond County, a
useful substitute because of the destruction of the county records. From
these sources we can find several Collins references in the Kingsale region
in this period, and all of them before the Revolution (with one
possible exception) refer to four men: William Collins, James Collins,
Jesse Collins and Jethro Collins. The very same men mentioned in the will
of William Collins.
First, let us look at the surviving land records of Isle of Wight County,
where the county records were more fortunate than in Nansemond.
We have already provided evidence that the William Collins who died
in 1767/68 was the same man who was mentioned in deeds in 1744 and 1745.
In a deed of 1757, we find Susannah Councill (another of the Council
family we have frequently met), now of Northampton County in North Carolina,
selling land to James Collins of Nansemond County (though the record is
in Isle of Wight!), this described as 300 acres "adjoining John Brittain,
the Beaver Dam Swamp, Samuel Bryan and John Keen". The witnesses are William
Collins, John Daughtry (both signing with a mark) and Jesse Collins.(3)
This is a gem of a deed, since it shows a) that residents of the area
were beginning to move to North Carolina; b) that land on the Nansemond
side of the line was sold by an Isle of Wight resident (Susannah Councill
is called "of Newport Parish" in Isle of Wight) and recorded in Isle of
Wight; c) that the land was near Beaverdam Swamp, where Collinses have
lived since the 1660s; d) William Collins of the later will is a witness,
James Collins his son is the buyer, and Jesse Collins his other son is
another witness; e) and we also find a Keen, a Bryan and a Daughtry to
round things out. It is yet more proof that William Collins and his sons
James and Jesse were the heirs of the earlier Collinses of the Kingsale/Beaverdam
area.
In terms of chronology, the next Isle of Wight record does not name
William but does name his son James, our ancestor. On 1 September 1763
Benjamin Baker petitioned to build a Water Grist Mill at "Kingsail" and
asked an acre of land from James Tallow. The jury named included James
Collins, but also a Carr, a Council, two Hollands, a Butler, and three
Daughtrys (so spelled), all people we have seen living in the area in our
earlier records.(4)
What appears to be the last mention of William Collins in Isle of Wight
records, other than his will, is a deed of 7 March 1765 between Thomas
Lankford, Junior and his wife Margaret Lankford to Thomas Lankford, Senior,
for 540 acres "adjoining William Collins line at Kingsale Swamp" and bordering
Jacob Butler and John Daughtry. The witnesses are Hardy Lawrence, Solomon
Edmunds and George Lankford.(5) Now as we
noted in discussing the 1767 will, earlier, Thomas Lankford, Junior, was
one of the witnesses to William Collins' will.
We know, of course, already that William died between August of 1767
(when he wrote his will) and February of 1768 (when it was filed for probate).
It is not surprising that he disappears from the Isle of Wight records
after that. James Collins appears in later records, until he departs for
North Carolina, and Jethro Collins appears as a witness three times, but
these references will be dealt with later.
Of course, we have seen throughout the last chapter that the Collinses
owned land in both Isle of Wight and Nansemond, and we have told the story
of the loss of the Nansemond records. Can we learn anything about the land
in Nansemond in the mid-1700s? Fortunately, we can.
The "Processionings"
of the Upper Nansemond Vestry
The land grants and patents quoted in the last chapter mostly came from
the series of abstracts published by the Virginia State Library and known
as Cavaliers and Pioneers, which covers patents up to 1732. After
that there was little new land to grant in the area, but we had the Isle
of Wight deed books to give us some continuity. But Nansemond County deeds
do not generally survive. We do have, however, yet another source for land
ownership which, while it does not give us exact locations for the land,
does give us the names of neighbors.
In Colonial Virginia, the Church of England was the Established Church.
While this may have been a rather remote fact for the Presbyterians and
Mennonites and other dissenters in the Shenandoah Valley, in the Tidewater
the Anglican Church had a profound presence from the early days. Nevertheless,
there were dissenters in the area we are talking about: Nansemond and Isle
of Wight were the home of both a major Puritan settlement and a small but
thriving Quaker meeting, and there is even a Francis or Frances Collins
in the Quaker records(6), though of no known
link to us. There is no proof the Collinses actually worshiped at the Established
Church, since they may have been Scots Presbyterians, but certainly it
had some jurisdiction over them.
For the Anglican Church parish was more than the unit of worship for
the Established Church. While Massachusetts had towns which were more important
than counties, Virginia had no official legal political subdivision smaller
than the county (no townships, or precincts) with one exception: the parish.
And the parish was exactly that, an Anglican parish. Nansemond County was
divided, for many years, into two, Isle of Wight into two and then three
until Southampton County was split off. In Nansemond County, the Upper
Parish lay to the south, the Lower Parish to the North (oddly, in Isle
of Wight this was reversed for a while.)(7)
The vestry of the parish -- the non-clerical body -- had a number of
civil duties. I quote the historian of the parish to which our Collinses
belonged:
A very important duty of the vestry of each parish was the processioning
of the bounds of every person's land which determined the record of land
titles. Every fourth year, upon the order of the county court, the vestry,
having divided its parish into precincts of convenient size, appointed
two freeholders of each precinct to conduct the processioning and report
in writing to the vestry, which reports, or returns, were required "to
be registred [sic] in particular books to be kept for that purpose,
by the clerk of the vestry" and to be certified by the churchwardens. The
law declared that processioning "at three several times" should be considered
sufficient to fix boundaries unalterably.(8)
Luckily, in the absence of Nansemond County records and the fact that
our deeds and land grant evidence trailed off by 1744-45, we suddenly have
the Nansemond Upper Parish Vestry Book records of "processionings" from
1743 onward. So our ability to trace Collinses is enhanced just as it was
fading.
Except for one reference to a "Frans Collins" for whom one
Thomas Williams was paid for keeping for two months in 1744, (9)
and who is otherwise not mentioned, all the references to the name Collins
prior to the 1770s relate to one man: William Collins. In the 1770s, there
is mention of only one Collins in these Nansemond records: Jesse Collins.
And the "processionings" give us a clue to the neighboring families, if
they do not tell us precisely where the land lay.
The most productive way to make the point I want to make here is to
list each reference to William Collins and the neighbor with whom the land
was being "processioned", or those neighbors for whom he was one of the
two freeholders "present" for the processioning. Here is a summary and
abstract:
Date not specified but pursuant to an order of 31 August 1747:
processoning of lines between William "Collings" and each of the following
whose land adjoined his: Robert Archer, Phillip Alesbury, John Barkley.
Collings was also "present" for the processioning of the line between Robert
Archer and Thomas Godwin. The same general area includes people named Holland
and Eley.(10) The processioners, John Best
and William Bateman, had been authorized to do the land in "bounds number
6",(11) which in an earlier processioning
had included "all the Bounds of Land In the Uper Side the Road from Jernagans
Bridge to Poorters Bridge to the Extent of the County"(12),
that is, the County Line. The two bridges are not yet clearly identified
by me, though I hope that these landmarks can eventually be located. Jernagan's
Bridge may have been over Cohoon Creek.
March 1752 (response to order of 3 March 1752): Processed a line between John Barkley and William "Collans"; between Thomas Godwin and William Collins; Robert Archer and William Collins. Other names in the same precinct include John and James Holland, and several Eleys.(13) The processioners were John Barkley and Henry Wright, and they had been authorized to survey the land, again, "on the Upper Side of the Road from Jarnagans Bridge to Poorters Bridge to the Extent of the County".(14)
March 4, 1752 (same order?): lines between John Winborne and William
Collins. Winborne also had lines with William Holland.(15)
Response to an order of 13 September 1755: a line between William
"Colins" and Robert Brewer; a line between John Rawls and "Wim" Collins.(16)
George Keen is in the same area. Numerous Hollands appear nearby. We have
seen the Brewers before, in the early land grants. The Rawls will turn
up again, some of them in North Carolina near the Collinses. The processioners
were John Faulk and John Winbourn.
17 September 1759: A line of Jno Winbourns with Wim Collins.
Line of John Rawls and "Wim" Collins"; another of same. Others in the immediate
area are George Keen, James Keen, John and James and Robert and Daniel
and Henry Holland.(17)
The next time we encounter a Collins in the Vestry Book it is no longer
William:
In obedience to an order of Vestry of December 30 1767 but actually
processioned in 1768, and probably after March of that year (based on another
dated processioning in the book just before it): line between "John faulk
and John Winbourn & Jesse Collins & John daughtery & James
Harris Josiah Winbourn & John faulk and Daghtery all in the presence
of of [sic] Jacob Hollan Benjamin Harris & Jesse Collins between
Jesse Collins and John Winbourn thence between . . . al in the presence
of Jacob Holland & Jesse Collins & Given under our Hands in the
Year 1768(18).
This further confirms what we already know, that William Collins had
died by early 1768. His Nansemond land, it would appear, is in the hands
of his son Jesse Collins, and this helps prove that the William Collins
of these Nansemond "processionings", is the man in the 1767 Isle of Wight
will. Of course the nearby Keens and other evidence should be enough proof,
but this appearance of Jesse makes it certain. Later references to Jesse
Collins in Nansemond will be discussed in the biography of his brother
James.
Unfortunately, none of the documents we possess
gives us much clue about the age of William Collins, especially because
of the uncertainty about exactly which William is he in the earlier
records. There do not seem to be any mentions of a William Collins in
the documents found so far between about 1717 and 1744, suggesting
the earlier William is of an earlier generation and those from 1744 onwards
are our immediate ancestor, but this is just guesswork. If we assume --
as will be argued in the next chapter -- that his sons James and Jesse
were both over 18 by 1757, when James bought land and Jesse witnessed the
deed, then they must have been born before 1739, and we know William's
father James had died by 1744. But William himself could easily have been
born as early as the 1690s or as late as 1720, though a date of around
1700 would seem to be a reasonable one.
William's
Family: What Do We Know?
The very limited information about William's family
provided by his will can be slightly expanded by a look at other records,
but still remains very limited.
The only clue to his wife is the reference in
his 1767 will to his "legal wife Sarah". Because so many women died
in childbirth in colonial times, it is never absolutely safe to assume
that a man's widow was the mother of his children, or at any rate of all
of them. Still, Sarah is the only name we have for a wife of William Collins.
We also have no clue as to her maiden name, though it certainly is possible
that one explanation for two daughters named Keen is that Sarah had previously
been married to a Keen and they were actually stepdaughters of William.
But it is just as possible that the two daughters of William married brothers
named Keen; as we have seen, quite a few Keens lived in the immediate area.
The presumed eldest son, James, is
our direct ancestor and is dealt with in full in the next chapter. The
next son, Jesse, appears in a number of other records. In the Isle
of Wight records, Jesse witnessed the 1757 deed from Susannah Council to
his brother James. There he, unlike his father, seems to have signed his
own name. (For the deed, see above, Page 52. On the issue of which Colllinses
could read and write, see below in the profile of James, Page 97.) After
William's death in 1767 or 1768, all the references to James seem to be
in Isle of Wight records, while the sole references to Jesse after that
date are those in the Nansemond County processionings. This suggests, but
does not prove, that James inherited the land on the Isle of Wight side,
while Jesse inherited that on the Nansemond side. This could also explain
a later development: James II's statement that after the Revolution he
lived in Nansemond for a year. As we will see in James I's profile, there
is evidence several of the North Carolina Collinses may have returned to
Virginia in the period around 1782, and possibly one reason might be that
Jesse had died or moved away from his land. (On the Collinses present in
1782 and 1783, See below, Page 79.)
In any event, the other records relating to Jesse
Collins are few. We have already cited one immediately after his father's
death, a processioning of the Nansemond vestry ordered in late 1767 but
conducted sometime after March of 1768. (See above, Page 56 and reference
in footnote 98.) The other references I have located so far to Jesse Collins
are an order for Jesse Collins and Soloman or Solomon Holland to procession
the lands in District Number 14 (the bounds are unclear: there were more
districts by this time than in the earlier orders), and their report of
completion of that survey. The date of the order was December 23, 1771,
and the survey was completed sometime in 1772.(19)
Jesse seems to have signed his own name to the report.
I have certainly not seen every surviving record
from this period, and it may well be that other evidence of Jesse will
be forthcoming in the future, but I have found no reference to him in the
Virginia records after 1772. What happened to him?
We may have a clue, though. A Jesse Collins is
found in Nash County, North Carolina, just east of Franklin County, who
might conceivably be the same man. This Jesse Collins appears there at
least as early as a 1782 tax list, was a man of over 45 years of age in
the 1800 census (he could have been much older, "over 45" being the oldest
age category in that year), and he apparently died in 1810, leaving a widow
named Janna. Most interestingly, after this Jesse's death, "Durry Williams,
David Winburn, John Winburn and Nelson Kent" were named by the county court
to provide the widow with the traditional widow's one-year provisions.(20)
Now, in Virginia in the 1768 processioning of Jesse Collins' land, a line
was processioned between Jesse Collins and John "Winbourn".(21)
This looks like more than coincidence, and makes it seem likely that Jesse
Collins moved to Nash County. I have not pursued the evidence of the Nash
County Jesse sufficiently to confirm it beyond doubt, however.
As for the sisters, Elizabeth Keen and
Mary Keen, I as yet have nothing to offer. If they were
married to Keens, I do not yet know which ones. If they were stepdaughters
whose father had been a Keen, I have no evidence of that either.
That leaves the question of who Jethro Collins
or Collings was. He is mentioned in the will after the daughters,
and apparently without being described as a son. (Again, I have only seen
the will in abstract form, so it is possible that the original contains
a clue, but abstractors are usually careful to include such information.)
He could, of course, be a younger son, perhaps not yet of legal age when
his father wrote his will: the only references I have found, other than
the will, are in 1771 and 1772, more than a decade later than the first
references to James and Jesse. Or he could have been a nephew, a brother
of William's, a cousin of some sort or even an illegitimate son. There
is just no evidence so far; perhaps I will clear up this mystery eventually.
Two of the three references to Jethro which have
turned up so far, outside the will itself, are from 1771: on January 5
of that year, Jacob Butler sold 200 acres "adjoining Beaverdam Swamp" to
James Butler. The land also adjoined Thomas Lankford, Fleming and Britain,
and the deed was witnessed by Jethro Collins (so spelled: it is "Collings"
only in the will), Epaphroditus Butler and Eleazar Butler. Jethro apparently
signed his own name, not with a mark.(22)
Lankford, of course, is either Thomas Lankford Junior, who witnessed William
Collins' will, or Thomas Senior. Jethro also appears as a witness in another
Butler family transaction later that year, when Jacob Butler sells 200
acres to Peter Butler, this land being on Beaverdam Swamp, adjoining the
Deep Branch and John Daughtery. Jethro Collins, Epaphro Butler (presumably
the same as Epaphroditus Butler above), Eliza Butler (the same as Eleazar?)
and Andrew Griffin are all witnesses. This deed was signed September 4
of 1771.(23) There is one more mention,
in a deed of October 26, 1772 in which James Collins' land is mentioned,
and Jethro is again a witness, perhaps suggesting that he is a brother.(24)
Some other relationship, however, could still explain his appearing as
a witness in this deed.
None of this gives us much clue as to Jethro's
relationship, though it does point to a closer link to the Isle of Wight
side of the family property than to the Nansemond side, where only Jesse
seems to have left much trace.
But it should be noted that between the 1740s and the Revolution, the only Collins names turning up in these records are those of William, James, Jesse, and Jethro, all of whom are mentioned in William's will.
Many of the families already mentioned,
or to be seen in the next chapter, as living near the Collinses seem to
have eventually been connected in some way. We have seen the Keens were
clearly linked by marriage in some way, though the exact manner could be
read two different ways (two daughters married Keens, or William's wife
had previously been married to a Keen). Another family, prominent in the
area, with which there is some Collins connection is the Holland family.
In fact, the Holland connection originally helped me focus my research
on the Kingsale Collinses.
The name Holland has been used as a first or middle
name by Collinses for a very long time. James Collins (1758-1838) named
a son, born in 1788, Holland Collins. James' son Henry named a son, born
in 1830, Holland Collins. Henry's son John Collins named one of his sons,
born 1855, Thomas Holland Collins. So the name persevered for generations.
And the Hollands were among the earliest settlers in the Kingsale area:
we have already mentioned them in discussing the naming of Kingsale swamp.
Above we've seen several Hollands living around William and Jesse Collins, clearly in the Kingsale Swamp area. This was an old Virginia family, and remains a prominent one in southeastern Virginia while it has spread its tendrils westward and southward as well. Hollands lived in the area we are talking about around the Kingsale Swamp, and there is still at own named Holland in the area.(25) Besides the fact that there are Hollands living all around William and Jesse Collins in their processionings, there is the regular use of the name Holland in later generations of Collinses. The assumption is it must have been a name with which the Collinses intermarried, and if the Hollands were the largest landowners in the area (as they seem to have been), perhaps a name the Collinses were proud to perpetuate. But the Holland link provides yet another clue cementing our Collinses in North Carolina with the Collinses of Kingsale Swamp. The town of Holland, Virginia is still there, and at least until 1995 an Isle of Wight County senator in the state senate was named Holland.
We have also seen, over and over again, families
named Daughtrey, Saunders or Sanders, Baker, Carr, Eley, Bryan, Parker,
Griffin, Lankford, and so on; some of these will also go to North Carolina
with the Collinses. And these names, or many of them, are still found in
the Kingsale area, even though the Collinses themselves seem to have disappeared
from the area (as we shall see in our discussion of James Collins).
A further piece of evidence may be adduced, partly
a result of the author being a Civil War buff. A map in the Atlas to
Accompany the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion shows the
area around Kingsale Swamp during the time of the Suffolk (VA) campaign
in the Civil War. As slight vengeance for the further destruction of the
Nansemond County records, we have a partial listing of families living
in the area in the 1860s. In the first map(26)
we see the area around Carrsville, Kinsale (as it was then spelled) and
Holland's Corners, Virginia. The area shows the farms of numerous Hollands
and Daughtreys, and some Rawles (Rawls) and Butlers and Winbornes (Winbourns),
all names found adjacent to our Collinses in earlier references. There
are no Collinses for the simple reason that after 1782/1783 none appear
in the area:we know James had gone to North Carolina to stay. I suspect
Jesse had too, since the Jesse Collins/John Winburn connection in NashCounty
makes it look like that is he.
A second map from the same period is reconfirmation and also shows the names Ely (Eley) and Council, which we have encountered above. Thus the old names persisted in the area until theCivil War and after, except for Collins(27)(28)
1. . Blanche Adams Chapman, Wills and Administrations of Isle of Wight County, Virginia, 1647-1800, p. 218, citing pp. 500 and 502 of Isle of Wight Will Book 7. Other transcriptions match this one, though some list "Keen" as "Keem"; I have followed the spelling of the name in other records.
2. . Again, the Lee deed is dated November 16, 1744 and appears in Isle of Wight Deed Book 6 at p. 529.
3. . Isle of Wight County Deed Book 9, p. 539, 19 October 1757, recorded 2 March 1758, abstracted in William Lindsay Hopkins, Isle of Wight County, Virginia Deeds 1750-1782, Iberian Publishing Co., Athens, GA 1995, p. 161.
4. . Isle of Wight Deed Book 11, p. 199, for 1 September 1763, recorded 1 December 1763, abstracted in Hopkins, Isle of Wight ...Deeds 1750-1782, p. 83.
5. . Isle of Wight Deed Book 11, p. 298, abstracted in Hopkins, Isle of Wight ...Deeds 1750-1782, p. 88.
6. . Evelyn Hurff Cross, Nansemond Chronicles 1606-1800 Virginia Colony, 1973, typescript.in DAR Library. p. 131.
7. . Charles Francis Cocke, Parish Lines, Diocese of Southern Virginia, Virginia State Library reprint, 1964, pp. 143-144 and maps in back.
8. . Wilmer L. Hall, Editor, The Vestry Book of the Upper Parish, Nansemond County, Virginia 1743-1793, Virginia State Library, 1969 (Second Edition), pp. xxi-xxii, citing for the requirements Hewing's Statutes at Large, v. 5, 426-428, v. 3, 529-531, and the Vestry Book itself. Hereafter cited as Vestry Book. On the role of the vestry politically, also see David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed, New York and Oxford 1989, p. 406.
9. . Vestry Book, p. 12 (original page 9). The name Francis or Frances Collins also reportedly occurs among the Quaker records of Nansemond County. See Evelyn Hurff Cross, Nansemond Chronicles 1606-1800 Virginia Colony, 1973, typescript.in DAR Library. p. 131.
10. . Vestry Book, p. 35 (original page 31).
11. . Vestry Book, p. 24 (original page 19).
12. . Vestry Book, p. 3 (original page 2).
13. . Vestry Book, pp. 72-73 (original pp. 66-68).
14. . Vestry Book, p. 59 (original page 55).
15. . Vestry Book, p. 76 (original p. 71).
16. . Vestry Book, p. 106 (original p. 109).
17. . Vestry Book, pp. 140-141 (original p. 151).
18. . Vestry Book, p. 193-194 (original p. 211). The date is merely given as 1768, but the previous entry (p. 193, original p. 210) carried the date of 1 March 1768. This is after the 1752 changeover to "New Style" so dates in March are not a problem.
19. . Vestry Book, the order itself (and spelling "Soloman") on p. 208 (original page 227), and the report on page 210-211 (original page 230).
20. . 1782 Tax List, Nash County, North Carolina, Compiled by Jason Edward Brantley, Haily, NC, p. 12; 1800 Census, Nash County, North Carolina, same compiler, p. 5; Nash County, North Carolina, Court Minutes, Volume VI, 1807-1811, Abstracted by Timothy W. Rackley, p. 100 (p. 203 of original, August Court 1810), and lower on same page, p. 205 of original, the mention of the Winburns. There are several other references in later volumes to the settlement of this estate.
22. . Isle of Wight Deed Book 12, p. 386, dated 5 January 1771, recorded 7 March 1771, abstracted in Hopkins, Isle of Wight ... Deeds 1750-1782, p. 120.
23. . Isle of Wight Deed Book 12, p. 443, for 4 September 1771, recorded 7 November 1771, abstracted in Hopkins, Isle of Wight ... Deeds 1750-1782, p. 124.
24. . Isle of Wight Deed Book 13, p. 19, for 26 October 1772, recorded 5 November 1772, abstracted in Hopkins, Isle of Wight ... Deeds 1750-1782, p. 131.
25. . See Kirk Davis Holland, Holland: To Those Who Care; a History of the Virginia Holland Families from 1620 to 1963, 1963. Also see "Holland of Nansemond" genealogy in John Bennett Boddie, Historical Southern Families, Volume I, 1957 reprint, especially pp. 269-301.
26. . First map is from Atlas to Accompany the Official Records (republished frequently as Official Military Atlas of the Civil War, Plate XXVI, "Mlitary map of Suffolk and Vicinity".
27. . The second map is Plate XCIII, Preliminary Map of a Part of the South Side of the James River, 1864.
28. . The second map is Plate XCIII, Preliminary Map of a Part of the South Side of the James River, 1864.