Elizabeth Proctor (Norton) - Trouble

I'm not really clear on the difference between headrights and patents, but this link seems to say that the headright was the precursor to the patent: https://wiki.rootsweb.com/wiki/index.php/Virginia_Land_Records Bringing new heads into the colony gave a person the right to land, and the patent (basically the title) was issued after the land had been surveyed and mapped. There were some other requirements too about planting the land and paying a "quitrent". Later on when labor was less scarce, it became possible to acquire patents by paying money instead of bringing people in.

If that's right, then John Bishop must have acquired his patent by bringing in these six people (not necessarily all at the same time), presumably to work the land for him although he could have sold some indentures to raise cash if he needed to. But his patent was abandoned (possibly because of his death), so the claim had to be renewed on his son's behalf. It's possible that any indentures that he held at the time of his death were also sold, if his son's guardian didn't have time to manage the farming of the land or didn't trust the workers to keep on working without a supervisor.

William Marriott says he paid 2650 pounds of tobacco and casks for Jarrell's indenture. I don't really know what that means in terms of monetary value, but it sounds like a lot. So Jarrell's indenture apparently had a lot of time left to run, while Marriott's indenture was apparently over.

Land Patents were one thing, headrights another.

https://genfiles.com/articles/headrights/

“Genealogists are often confronted with the problem of interpreting the meaning of an ancestor’s appearance (or absence) among Virginia’s patent headrights. Assumptions are often made from these headright lists, which may not be valid. For example, it is often assumed that the patentee was the importer, or that the importation took place at approximately the same time as the issuance of the patent. It is further assumed that the headright was imported into the same county in which the land was located. But are these reasonable assumptions? Most, on inspection, prove not to be valid. ...”

“There were no restrictions on age or gender. Headrights could be, and often were, children. Indeed, many if not most imported indentured servants were teenagers.”

“Once obtained, headright certificates could be bought and sold like any other property, and the evidence is that they frequently changed hands prior to being turned into patent claims. Thus the person receiving the patent may have neither imported nor employed the headrights he claimed.”

“Genealogists also often assume that the importation of a headright occurred at about the same time as the patent date. In reality, the headrights had more than likely been imported at least a few years before the patent and perhaps several years earlier. ...

However, the lag time varied considerably from patent to patent. A few certificates were used within a year, but others not for a decade or more. As an extreme example, Nicholas Sessums of Surry County obtained a certificate in 1710 for importing himself 44 years earlier, and that certificate was used by a different person to obtain a patent in 1716 using Sessum’s headright – 50 years after Sessums actually arrived in Virginia. ..

So what we know is that in 1658 a headright list was compiled (let’s say by Francis Mason) to renew the patent issued for land to John Bishop Sr in 1641. What we really know about when Thomas Jarrell arrived, though, is that it was before 1656. If he thought his indenture might be up in 1658, with a frequent 7 year term, he was imported (by someone, somewhere) say 1651, at age say 16.

That hangs together.

I don’t think Marriott arrived as an indentured servant. He had too much property too soon, meaning he came with cash. Jarrell did fine for himself eventually, respected citizen, but the timeline seems to indicate a slow (normal) progression; and BTW much better than my Woolard arrivers as indentured servants to the Northern Neck, who hung on in obscurity to their 250 acres for some generations. I think he made himself a good reputation with all that errand running to Francis Mason’s house. :)

It looks to me though that Jarrell was in a different social class. Mason was from Ancient Planters, Marriott had the Colonel title (from where & what) and certainly behaved like a man of privilege. Don’t forget the Marriott daughter married into the highly respectable Thompson’s - her mother in law a daughter of a Colonial Governor. I’m sure Mary’s inheritance made her an attractive Marital prospect, & if her (mother?) was alive to have anything to do with this, she held her own; so obviously Proctor, who as far as we know “did” help raise Mary, must have been “of their kind” also.

That leaves the mysterious John Bishop Sr. I’d think of him as an adventurer of position but not cash who promptly died.

The real outstanding question is if Mathias Marriott was a son of William’s, a nephew, a name coincidence ... maybe for that, turn back to the Warrens.

I'm thinking that John Bishop's land might not all have been patented at the same time, and the court just wrote down the date of the earliest patent (1641) instead of wasting time on all the details. There's no mention of any head rights for bringing himself over and maybe a wife, just 300 acres for bringing over 6 other people. There are actually 8 people on the list ( Wm. Marriott, Georg Duell, Wm. Roberts, Joane Hill, Thomas Jarrell, Abigall Adcockes, Martin Johnson, Margery Longnan), so I'm not sure how they're counting. If the list is chronological, Thomas Jarrell is at about the halfway point.

Bishop must have brought some people over by 1641 to get a patent by that date, and if William Marriott was in the first batch his indenture would be long over in 1658. John Bishop could have expanded his acreage later by bringing over more people.

Bringing in Thomas Jarrell around 1651 does hang together pretty well. Thomas was old enough to do serious farm work, John Bishop Sr was apparently still alive, and 1658 was a good time for people to start wondering when the indenture would end. But we still don't have any proof that this is the same Thomas Jarrell who was transported by John Bishop. For all we know, he could have brought in all eight of his 6 people in 1641.

It does seem that the death of Bishop shouldn't make him lose the patent for all his land, just the recently acquired stuff that he hadn't started farming yet. The clerk who wrote the entry may not have understood the situation completely, or there may be rules that I haven't seen yet.

But if William Marriott was a man of property when he arrived, why didn't he pay for his own transportation? Maybe there's more than one William Marriott, the big guy with lots of cash and a poor relation who had to sell his services because his rich cousin wouldn't pay for his ticket on the ship. The name Marriott isn't particularly common either, so if there were two of them in the colony at the same time it seems likely that they were related.

Answering my own question: maybe two of the names on the list weren't people transported by John Bishop? I don't know why the clerk wrote them down, maybe it's some kind of court shorthand that we don't understand. Witnesses or something. If you ignore the first two names on the list (William Marriott and George Duell), we have the right number of people (6) and the transportees are boy girl boy girl boy girl, nice and tidy.

Did you see that headrights were bought and sold like any other piece of paper?

What you have is a list of 8 people to account for 300 acres (which should here been 400 acres). No one was necessarily indentured; they just traded the right to land for passage. In other words, Marriott agreed to: bring me into the Colony & claim 50 acres, that’s your transport cost. Hey, bring my servants also, you’ll get 50 acres per head: good deal for you & I’ll save my cash for that 1250 acres of good land I have my eye on. Or - bring me across in 1641, and there are a couple of maid servants for my wife who came in 1648, claim all three of us. Etc. you have to match the land patent to the person. Marriott has his own patent, he wasn’t a servant. And remember, it looked like the 300 acres wasn’t improved, it was waste, between 1641 & 1658.

As to rules. People like Francis Mason’s family at the Virginia House of Burgesses told the clerks what to write down, not the other way around. :) :) That’s a powerful original family in the center of this.

Now, Thomas Jarrell “was” indentured, but we don’t know who originally held that indenture & arranged his passage. He had at least 3 masters and there’s no particular reason to think John Bishop was one also to make 4!

Important people got outright land grants, too. The original docs (very hard to read) are digitized at the Library of Virginia at http://image.lva.virginia.gov/LONN/LO-1/001/1-100.html.

Important people getting outright land grants would be a good explanation for William Marriott giving his headright away to somebody else. He had no use for his own headright if he was getting all the land he wanted for free, and he'd be ahead of the game if he bartered the headright for something else. He wouldn't be ahead of the game if trading his headright meant that he'd have to pay cash for the land.

https://wiki.rootsweb.com/wiki/index.php/Virginia_Land_Records indicates that buying land for cash didn't become an option until the end of the 17th century. But buying somebody else's headright amounted to basically the same thing. You were paying cash and getting land, even though technically the land itself isn't what you were buying.

From https://www.geni.com/discussions/191646?msg=1304762

"Once the patent was issued, the patentee had three years to seat and plant the land. 'Seating' required payment of the quitrent (see Virginia Tax Records), an annual payment to the crown of one shilling for every fifty acres. 'Planting' required either cultivating one acre or building a house and keeping livestock. Orphans had three years after their majority to take possession and plant land. Widows could get extensions of the three years by petitioning the county court. "

It didn't make sense for John Bishop to take out a patent in the first place unless he planned to improve the land within three years, because the patent would expire if he did nothing. But his patent did expire, so his plans weren't carried out. The rules for orphans may give us a clue about when John Junior came of age. Maybe the timeline is a bit different than we thought?

Quite possible. I had played with the idea there had been 3 John Bishop’s. Don’t forget there’s a 1641 Dorothy Bishop headright also.

We have a good timeline for John Jr, though. He’s an orphan in 1672, possibly of age in 1677, and dead by 1678.

Now, why am I so sure of that dead in 1678? He’s certainly dead in 1692.

I think we need to look more closely as this Bishop family.

John Bishop of Swan's Bay

I don't know about 1678, but there was a court filing in 1676 that sounded like he might have died then.

https://www.houseofproctor.org/genealogy/getperson.php?personID=I26...

"Sept. 4, 1672 Court proceedings show that the wife of George Proctor was formerly the wife of Major William Marriott, and before that the wife of John Bishop. Francis Mason was guardian of John Bishop, orphan."

"John Bishop Estate. Admin granted to Francis Mason. Signed at James City by the Governor, 14 June 1676."

Francis Mason was already the guardian of Junior in 1672, and Senior had apparently died quite a few years before that. I don't see why Francis Mason would be granted the estate administration in 1676 unless there were two Francis Masons and one was succeeding the other, or if the second John Bishop had died and they're talking about his estate. It's possible that Junior never actually made it to the age of majority.

But then there's this last bit: "George PROCTOR was again ordered to pay out of the [Marriott] estate to John BISHOP in 1677." Does this mean that John Junior is still alive in 1677, or is the payment being paid from Marriott's estate to Junior's estate and they just didn't bother writing down all the words?

The new John Bishop is interesting, but I don't think it's the same guy unless they're wrong about him having six kids: John Bishop of Swan's Bay But his birthdate and death date fit pretty well, and his wife's name is Elizabeth. They don't say what kind of captain he was, but if he had a ship he had an easy way to transport people. "Our" John Bishop apparently had only one child, and there's no indication that John Junior ever married or had children.

Good point about the 1677 could be paid to the Bishop Estate.

There’s only one possible Francis Mason, thank goodness.

From https://www.colonial-settlers-md-va.us/getperson.php?personID=I0605...

Wills & Administrations of Surry County, VA 1671-1750 by ELizabeth Timberlake Davis, Published by Genealogical Publishing Co, Balitmore 1980,. p 93 -

MASON, Francis: Leg. - To son, James mason one-half of 300 acres of Land formerly belonging to John Bushup, late of this county, deceased ...

——

This is his Surry patent, was it the 300 acres?

===
http://lvaimage.lib.va.us/cgi-bin/GetLONN.pl?first=653&last=&am... tion=LO Patent
Title Mason, Francis.
Publication 26 September 1678.
Other Format Available on microfilm. Virginia State Land Office. Patents 1-42, reels 1-41.
Note Location: Surry County.
Description: 300 acres near the head of Tappahanock or Crouches Creek.
Source: Land Office Patents No. 6, 1666-1679 (pt.1 & 2 p.1-692), p. 653 (Reel 6).

John Bishop, Jr. Is deceased in 1678 & agree, could have been deceased in 1677. But it seems more likely to me he died that year.

https://media.geni.com/p13/28/9c/34/8f/5344484c84951662/76847e70-ee...

Following Kathie’s link, LVA explains about these patents (which I wish were indexed ...)

https://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/guides/opac/lonnabout.htm#origi...

Colonial Land Office Patents, 1623–1774

With the abolition of the charter of the Virginia Company of London in 1624, the administration of the colony was placed directly under the crown. As this included the disposal of land, it fell to the governor to use his broad powers to issue land patents. In 1634 the Privy Council authorized the patenting of lands under the principle of granting patents to any person who qualified as a planter. In practice, the acreage was awarded to the person who paid the transportation cost of the emigrant and not to the settler himself. This method, called the headright system, was employed as the major means of distributing virgin lands in the 17th century. ...

... This collection consists of the patents as recorded by the office of the Secretary of the Colony. These copies were hung on strings in the office and, as time was available, they were recorded in bound volumes. A random method of selection of documents to be entered accounts for the haphazard dating in the early volumes, and the method of hanging the patent on string accounts for loss of documents. ...

——-

Hanging on strings ???? :)

"Hanging on strings ???? :)"

Maybe the paperwork dangling in their faces gave the clerks more of an incentive to work on it than storing the documents in a trunk would have done.

The process described at your link agrees with https://wiki.rootsweb.com/wiki/index.php/Virginia_Land_Records They have a link to https://wiki.rootsweb.com/wiki/index.php/Virginia_Tax_Records which says "While there is no comprehensive list or collection of early tax lists, many fragments have been printed in Virginia genealogical literature. See also Virginia Tax Records: From the 'Virginia Magazine of History and Biography,' 'The William and Mary College Quarterly,' and 'Tyler's Quarterly' (1983; reprint, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2000). Tax lists frequently appear in Virginia periodicals (see Virginia Periodicals, Newspapers, and Manuscript Collections). Original lists and facsimiles are at the Library of Virginia, and the FHL has microfilmed copies of many lists. " So if you're really, really into this, it looks like there are some publications you can buy that would help out.

I don't know how much the patenting process cost, but at the very least the surveyor would have to be paid, and there may have been other fees too. So unless the patentee had money to burn, it was prudent to not get a patent unless you planned to make it stick.

I found the Bishop / Mason 300 acre land patent if anyone can read / interpret it. Good exercise.

*Land formerly belonging to John Bishop
*Title Mason, Francis.
*Publication 26 September 1678.
*Other Format Available on microfilm. Virginia State Land Office. Patents 1-42, reels 1-41.
*Note Location: Surry County.
*Description: 300 acres near the head of Tappahanock or Crouches Creek.
*Source: Land Office Patents No. 6, 1666-1679 (pt.1 & 2 p.1-692), p. 653 (Reel 6).
* http://image.lva.virginia.gov/LONN/LO-1/006/006_0654.tif

*Proctor deeds & wills described on page 130 here: “Virginia Council Journals, 1726-1753 (Continued).” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 38, no. 2, 1930, pp. 128–136. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4244320

Oh my goodness, that's amazing! Unfortunately I'm easily defeated by 17th century handwriting so I can't read much of it, especially at the top where there's a lot of "static" getting in the way of the words. I think I see the name Francis Mason starting at the end of line 4 and continuing on to line 5. I think the next few lines are the boundary lines determined by the survey. It might or might not say something about an ancient line of oaks (illegible) to a great hickory. The next line has something about a red oak., then a lot of illegible stuff ending in the word Station. "The said land being illegible Bishop decd illegible ye 4th day of July semi-illegible year but I think it's 1672. After his (illegible) by his sonn John Bishop (illegible) born of his (illegible). Said John being likewise decd ye said land (illegible) Francis Mason as being heir to ye said John Bishop to have and to hold. ( Illegible) ye 26th day of September (?) 1678."

I might be able to read more of it on a subsequent viewing. That happens sometimes.

This is confirmation that John Junior was dead by 9/26/1678. He could have died considerably earlier than that, since I doubt that Mason ran out and got the patent changed to his own name on the same afternoon as the funeral.

What I'm thinking about the 1677 court order telling George Proctor to pay money to John Bishop is that John Junior may have had a payout coming to him when he came of age but he died before his 21st birthday. Then Francis Mason might have tried to claim the money as Junior's heir, but George Proctor might have believed that the claim was invalid because the payout was due when Junior turned 21 and he was never going to have a 21st birthday. So they went to court and the judge took Mason's side. That would be a case of both men behaving honorably but needing a court to determine who the money belonged to.

Did you notice the mention of Elizabeth Burgess at the top of page 130 in the JSTOR article? It's about a hundred years too late to the the right Elizabeth Burgess, and the previous page says her father was a native of England who got married in 1721 in Lancaster county (Virginia, I assume). Since Burgess isn't a common name, I wonder if this woman has been turned into the wife of John Bishop, William Marriott and George Proctor through the magic of time travel, and the actual maiden name of their common wife was something else.

Midway down the page we have a confirmation that an Elias Sharpe married Margaret Proctor. And now I doubt more strongly than ever that this is the same guy who was transported for theft in 1725. The Proctor family deeded some land to him in 1727, and the felon would have to move awfully fast to marry into a prominent family within two years of his transportation.

And why is it that Francis Mason is John Bishop’s heir in 1677/78? I would have expected to see his mother or step sibling. Francis was his guardian and logically in the best position to improve the land, but if the mother was living, she was consulted at least I would think? Widow’s dower rights relinquished also.

I read the patent pretty much as you did. A survey with landmarks mostly.

Agree on both your points re Burgess & Sharpe, but not quite ready to “let go” of the Burgess Name. On Sharpe, do any disconnects if you can with a link back to probably not parent in profile if that’s needed.