Joseph Edward Skidmore

Joseph Skidmore, Jr BIRTH 11 Nov 1706 Kent County, Delaware, USA DEATH 17 Mar 1778 (aged 71) Ruddle, Pendleton County, West Virginia, USA BURIAL John Skidmore Cemetery #22 Ruddle, Pendleton County, West Virginia,

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/155183128/joseph-skidmore

Children

Sarah Skidmore Friend 1732–1808

Elizabeth Skidmore Friend 1734–1811

Elizabeth Skidmore Friend 1734–1817

John A Skidmore 1736–1809

Andrew Skidmore 1750–1827

Joseph Skidmore Biography by Dennis Skidmore on 5 Feb., 2008:

JOSEPH SKIDMORE was born about 1706 the son of Joseph and Rebecca (Miller) Skidmore at a place remembered as Litle York, Delaware, according to the recollection of his granddaughter Susannah (Skidmore) Harper. It was no doubt in Murderkill Hundred in Kent County. He had died shortly before 17 March 1778 at what is now South Elkins in Randolph County, West Virginia. He married Agnes (known often as Annes, and usually as Ann) Caldwell, a daughter of Andrew and Margaret (Train) Caldwell of Kent County, Delaware, about 1730. Agnes Skidmore was living, his widow, as late as 2 January 1792 in Pendleton County, West Virginia.

Nothing is known of his early years. His mother seems to have married Edward Williams after the death of his father. Along with other inconclusive evidence the levy list of 1726 gives the names of Joseph Skidmore and Edward Williams bracketed together, and it would appear that Williams (assessed on 25 pounds) had paid the rate for Joseph Skidmore (also assessed on 25 pounds). This is the first list that survives; in the list for 1727 they are assessed separately. It may also be significant that Joseph Skidmore had a son Edward, a name that had not been used previously in either the Skidmore or Caldwell families.

Joseph Skidmore, a rather poor orphan boy, married well. He and Agnes were probably married by 7 April 1730 when Andrew Caldwell, his father-in-law, and Benjamin Shurmer (Caldwell's partner in many land transactions) sold to Joseph Skidmore for 18 pounds an acre of land near the present town of Camden in Kent County, Delaware. It was part of a tract called Brecknock and must have had some improvements on it to be worth this price. Joseph seems to have second thoughts about the purchase for he obtained a release from the contract on August 12th of the same year.

Agnes Caldwell had been born on the Wicomico River in Somerset County, Maryland, and moved with her parents to Delaware in childhood. Andrew Caldwell lived on a plantation called The Exchange, and the town of Woodside below Dover now stands on this tract together with the old Caldwell Burying Ground. Her father was one of the most influential men in Kent County, and her brother Andrew Caldwell, Junior, represented the county in the General Assembly of Delaware for 12 years from 1745 to 1757. Her nephew, Captain Jonathan Caldwell, was the commander of the "Blue Hen's Chickens" in the Revolution. His company gave Delaware its state bird, and he gave his name to a young kinsman, Jonathan Caldwell Friend (1774-1856), who died in Braxton County, West Virginia.

On 18 June 1736 Joseph Skidmore, yeoman, sold Fisher's Delight (inherited from his father) for 70 pounds to Alexander Farquhar. According to Suannah (Skidmore) Harper her father, Captain John Skidmore, had been born eight days earlier in Delaware. Joseph Skidmore is missing from the next levy list for 1736 of Murderkill Hundred which was taken by Edward Williams, his presumptive stepfather. Presumably Joseph Skidmore left shortly after Agnes Skidmore's confinement for what is now Washington County, Maryland, although her son Edward is said on a muster roll to have been born in Delaware in 1737. (His age may very well have been understated there by a year or two.) We might know more of his movements if the proceedings survived for two cases tried before the court of Kent County, Delaware. John Webb sued Joseph Skidmore in 1736 and paid for seven summons (at 4sh each) to be issued to the defendant in 1737. Joseph Skidmore appointed Daniel Boyer as his attorney and Boyer eventually appeared before the court. However all we learn from the docket is that it was an attachment case. Joseph Skidmore also sued Thomas Brown in the same period and won a judgement against Brown at the February term of 1738 for what of a plea from the defendant.

The first docuentary evidence of him in Maryland is his signature as Joseph Skidmore on a petition in 1742 from the residents of Prince George's County (which then included both Frederick and Washington Counties) to the Maryland legislature asking that a new parish be formed to serve them. They complained that the present parish was 90 miles in length and the church at such a distance that they could not attend services. Also the present rector was "growing in years" and could not travel to them as he did in the past. The response was the formation of All Saints parish in Frederick, Maryland, in 1742 with Reverend Joseph Jennings as the first rector.

Joseph Skidmore appears as surety (with Richard Touchstone and Joseph Chapline) for William Hayward, a merchant, at the March 1746 court held for Prince George's County. All of these people lived near the town of Middletown in the Cotoctin Valley in Frederick County.

Joseph Skidmore seems to have made no effort to acquire land in Maryland until 11 June 1748 when he bought a tract of 50 acres called Monican from Corneius O'Neale. It is described as being at the head of the Little Antietam and he paid 50 pounds for it. It is presumably located near the Pleasant Valley Road south of State Route 491 about 10 miles due east of Hagerstown. The Skidmores lived there but briefly. About the year 1749, according to the recollection of a great-granddaughter Rachel (Skidmore) Scott, Joseph Skidmore took his family south into Virgnia passing through the gap at Harper's Ferry. At this place they were joined by Jonas Friend who subsequently married the eldest Skidmore daughter.

From here they ascended the Shenandoah o a point in what is now Rockingham County, Virginia, where they camped for a time while Joseph and his older sons crossed over the Alleghanies looking for land. Skidmore's Camp is mentioned in the records well into the last century but the location is never precisely defined. There are to this day two Skidmore Forks in Rockingham County. Joseph Skidmore probably camped on the one that enters the Dry River near Route 33 shortly before that road crosses the mountains into Pendleton County. The other Skidmore Fork is a tributary of the North River which it enters between Stokesville and the Augusta-Rockingham County line; it was probably named for Elijah Skidmore (of the Rickmansworth family) who lived here briefly before moving on to Surry County, North Carolina.

From here they crossed the mountains and settled permanently in what later became (in 1788) Pendleton County, Virginia. In 1749 it was still primeval forest broken only by a few clearings made by the handful of families who had preceded them there. Despite the hadships of pioneer life they had decided to stay by 1 October 1753 for he and Agnes were back in Maryland to sell Monican. Their deed to William Bowells for the plantation was signed that day ad witnessed by Moses Chapline and William Griffith. The deed calls the Skidmores of Augusta County, Virginia (which then included what was to become Pendleton County) and confirms perfectly the recollections of Mrs. Scott.

The first of Joseph Skidmore's multitudinous land surveys in Virginia was entered in Augusta County on 7 October 1754. It defined the boundaries of 180 acres on Friend's Run near the present county seat of Franklin. It was clear what his motive was in leaving the relatively comfortable life of Delaware for an enormous number of entries, surveys, and patents followed either by his own name or in partnership with Daniel Harrison. Unlike the absentee proprietor his method was never to take up any large acreage in one block. Instead he entered smaller tracts but always the choicest bits of river bottoms or sites that promised some easy development. Patentees of several thousand acres usually found that most of their tract was not suitable for either agricultural or commerce. After the French and Indian War when settlers came flocking into what is now Pendleton County Joseph Skidmore had a fine selection of the very best land to sell them. Frequently he sold only the survey and the new freeholder obtained the patent in his own name from Williamsburg.

Daniel Harrison, his partner in many of these transactions, and Josph Skidmore were perhaps drawn together by the fact that they were both strong Church of England men. On 20 July 1747 on a motion made by John Smith the Augusta Vestry granted permission for a "chapel of ease" of the established church to be built in what is now Rockingham County on Harrison's plantation near the present town of Dayton, Virginia. The chapel (which once sttod in the North Section of the Dayton Cemetery) was in use by 1755 when the vestry of Augusta Parish ordered the Reverend John Jones to preach the gospel there. Robert Shanklin was allowed 3 pounds in 1763 to serve as the clerk, and to function as a lay reader when the Rector could not come. The log chapel was replaced by a frame sanctuary about 1774 at a cost of 50 pounds. The Anglican church was dissolved in 1785 by an act of the Virginia legislature after the Revolution and the chapel was abandoned.

Joseph Skidmore had scarcely gained a footing in Virginia before the whole of the frontier from Pennsylvania to Georgia was bathed in blood. At the time the Skidmores settled on the South Branch of the Potomac River no Indians lived in the immediate area and those who passed through on hunting expeditions were friendly. The French, however, soon after supplied them with arms and presents and induced them to attack the English. The defeat of Braddock's army left the border without protection. Two forts had been built to defend the 200 or so familes who lived in what is now Pendleton County. On 27 April 1758 a Shawnee raiding party with a chief named Killbuck descended on one of them; the tribe estimated at 40 braves captured Fort Upper Tract (about five miles from the Skidmore settlement at Ruddle) which they burned killing 22 people. The next day they attacked Fort Seybert where they killed 17 of the white settlers there and took 11 prisoners. Many of the surviving familes fled immediately back to the safety of the tidewater or the Carolinas.

In the summer of 1758 a number of wills, inventories, and sale bills were recorded at Staunton for those who had perished in the forts. The Skidmores figure in so many of these instruments settling up the estates of their former neighbors that we have ample evidence that they stayed despite the perils. On 14 September 1758 the Assembly at Williamsburg voted funds to pay for the public expense of the war and Joseph Skidmore is listed as being due 1 pound 7 sh. The accounts also listed his three eldest sons, Joseph, James and John Skidmore, who were entitled to payments for their services in the Augusta County Militia during the war. On 19 August 1761 when the final account of the estate of Jacob Sivers was recorded at Staunton his son Joseph and his son-in-law Gabriel Coil were paid for bringing in a steer and searching for horses belonging to Seybert.

Joseph Skidmore's home wa near the present crossroads at Ruddle where he built a mill on 54 acres on Lick Run. Lick Run became known soon after as Skidmore's Mill Run and today is called Hedrick Run. It originates in a large spring up in the mountains and it comes rushing down to the South Branch of the Potomac for much of the year. Ruddle was so-named in 1881 when a post office was opened there. (Before that it had been a stopping point for the stage and known as Wilsonville for Colonel Benjamin Wilson who had lived here before moving to the Tygart River Valley.) Joseph Skidmore added 14 acres adjoining his mill property by purchase. Both tracts were deeded to his son Samuel Skidmore on 26 August 1772 presumably after Joseph Skidmore had himself moved to the Tygart Valley. They descended soon after to Joseph's infant grandson Samuel Skidmore, Junior, of Georgia, who sold them after he attained his majority to his cousins Levi and Isaac Skidmore of Pendleton County. In 1823 the property was owned by their brother James Skidmore who wa then by far the largest landowner on the county. It appears in the tax list of that year as the Old Mill Place.

The mill was certainly operational by October 1763 when the House of Burgesses passed an act showing that Joseph Skidmore was entitled to 11 pounds for supplies furnished to the Virginia militia on their return from Pontiac's War. His house was much enlarged about 1840 and the original logs sided over. The old burr stone from his mill, no longer active, was used as a foundation for a chimney added to the house probably at the same time. Much of it can still be seen embedded in the sod. An ancient photograph taken after the reconstruction of the house will be found in Moments in Time; a Pictorial History of Pendleton County (1988) on page 128. The house was owned in 1977 by Fred Vandervanter, Junior, and his wife, and still earlier by Abel Hammer and Ona Ruddle. The only michief that Joseph Skidmore is known to have suffered at the hands of the Indians was related by Delilah (Skidmore) Cogar (1827-1919), a great-granddaughter. According to her the Skidmores lived on a small run. This was the Skidmore Mill Run, now known as Hammer Run for the present owners of the site. One day when Agnes was at home alone a party of Indians appeared and stole a hog which had just been dressed and was hanging up outside the house. Agnes (who Mrs. Cogar described as "a large spare-made" woman) sat down on the floor and cried while the Indians looked in through the cracks of the cabin and laughed at her.

The years following Pontiac's War was a time of peace on the South Branch. The younger children were sent off to a school kept by William McGinty, a Scotsman, who in November 1768 secured a judgement of 5 pounds against Joseph Skidmore for school bills dating back to 1966. Schoolmasters generally earned 2sh per month per child; this would have paid for 50 months of instruction no doubt shared by several children. The Skidmores did most of their trading at a store kept by Felix Gilbert about five miles southeast of Harrisonburg at Peale's Crossroads (presently routes 276 and 33 in Rockinham County). He was in business there by 1765, but his trade was in a small way until he went off to London and returned to Virginia with a fine stock of goods to tempt the local planters. An entry in an account book for 1769 from Gilbert's emporium (now seemingly lost) shows that Mrs. Ann Skidmore purchased a quantity of ginger, and was credited with her surplus of the root of the ginseng plant which she had dug up near her home. Ginseng was highly prized in China (where it did not grow) and it is possible that her stock of the rrot was eventually exported there. It is clear that she was a medical practitioner in a small way, and that her services extended beyond midwifery and childhhod complaints. Ginger was then the best remedy for indigestion, and ginseng had a reputation for restoring vigor. A later account books survived until recently for the years 1774 to 1777. From it we learned that things that could not be made at home and were purchased by the Skidmoes included hemp, blankets, salt, beeswax, kegs, girths, shears, pots, kettles, wire, hammers, thimbles, hats, shoes, and quantities of rum imported from the West Indies. Mrs. Ann Skidmore or "granny" Skidmore (her charges are entered in both names) bought a large number of shoes, probably intended as gifts for her grandchildren.

Joseph Skidmore and his son Andrew were among the earliest settlers in the Tygarts River Valley. If we are to believe Andrew Skidmore's statement that he went there at the age of 18 it would put their removal back as far as 1768. What is certain is the quality of the land they selected, which suggests that they may have been among the first to stake out their claims. In May 1779 the General Assembly of Virginia passed an act for settling the titles of the claimants to land in several western counties of the Commonwealth. A committee of Land Commissioners was appointed and given sweeping powers to issue summons, take depositions, hear testimony, and then to make decisions when there was a conflict among the settlers. The commissioners sat for several days in the Tygart River Valley. On Saturday, 25 March 1780, they met at the house of Jacob Westfall, Senior. Andrew Skidmore was in attendance and had his title confirmed to two tracts of 400 acres each in the valley. The first of these had ben settled by his father: "Andrew Skidmore is intitled to 400 acres of land by right of settlement before 1778 as assignee of Joseph Skidmore, deceased, lying in Augusta County on both sides of Tygers Valley River adjoining the land on which the said Andrew now lives and ordered certified." This and another tract assigned by Joseph Skidmore to Conrad Good were appraised at 40 pounds when his estate was probated in 1778.

It seems certain that Joseph Skidmore was in what is now Randolph County (and determined to stay) before 26 August 1772 when he deeded his mill at Ruddle to his so Samuel who remained in Pendleton County. On 10 September 1777 he appears on a list of tithables taken in Augusta County by Captains Robert Davis, John Skidmore and Paul Teter.

Andrew Skidmore is given credit for attempting to build a mill here at what is now South Elkins, but it was probably his father who expected to repeat (and perhaps even exceed) the success of his mill at Ruddle in Pendleton County. The mill in Randolph County never became operational, presumably as the Skidmores found that the drop in the level of Tygart River at this point would not provide enough power for a mill race.

On the same day Abraham Kittle proved his right to another 400 acres which had been assigned to him by Conrad Good who in turn had an assignment from Joseph Skidmore before his death. Andrew Skidmore also obtaied a clear title to the 400 acres where his home was on the east side of the Tygart River.

Joseph Skidmore died in the late winter of 1778. On 20 May 1778 the Augusta Count Order Books show that a suit brought by Catherine White against Joseph Skidmore was abated due to the death of the defendant. Catherine was a daughter of Jacob Everman, nd the widow of David White (an Indian spy who had been killed at the battle of Point Pleasant). Her father appeared at court a day earlier to prove the will of Joseph Skidmore.

His will was dated some three years earlier on 15 March 1775 "being overtaken with the infirmities of age and weak of body." He left most of his property to his youngest son Andrew Skidmore (who was still unmarried) having provided for his older children in his lifetime. To Andrew he left his negro Chark, all the working tools on the plantation, and all his stock and household furniture. The will is vague about what was to happen to the residue of his estate and it made no provision for the welfare of his widow, who had apparently refused to move to the Tygart Valley. Andrew Skidmore was also named the sole executor, but the will was not proved by Robert Minnes in Augusta County until 17 March 1778. Jacob Everman appeared on 19 May 1778, and an inventory was taken a month later on 19 June 1778 by Benjamin Wilson, Jonas Friend, William White, and William Cleaver, four of his neighbors in the Tygart Valley.

The original will, despite his infirmities, was written entirely in his own hand. It still survives among the loose papers in the courthouse at Staunton with what may be the only surviving signature of Joseph Skidmore. The names of the witnesses are given in the hand of Elias Barker who signed the will, then wrote the names of Minnes and Everman and added their marks.

A vendue sale was held later in the year. An unnamed clerk was paid 1 pound 4sh for two days' attendance, but this was money largely wasted. It was then customary to record the successful bidders' names and the prices realized at the vendue sale but the county clerk at Staunton noted that the sale bill of Joseph Skidmore was "so poorly stated that we could not enter them." This is a great pity since it would have given us another valuable list of some of the earliest settlers in the Tygart Valley.

A final account entered by Andrew Skidmore on 10 March 1779 shows that the sale of his personal property together with the debts due the estate totaled 548 pounds 10d. Excluded from the inventory (and the sale) was the property willed directly to Andrew Skidmore; the slave Chark, the working tools, his livestock, and the household furniture which would probably have doubled the value of the estate. What happened to the money realized at the sale does not appear. Andrew Skidmore had 80 pounds 8sh as his 15% "executor's commission," and presumably the whole of the remainder. Joseph Skidmore, Junior, was the eldest son and heir at law and by British custom would have had the whole of it in the absence of a will. He put his status as the eldest son on record, but did benefit from his father's estate. Thomas Jefferson later had the law reformed in Virginia so that the widow and all of his children had an interest when a man died intestate.

A few items singled out of the inventory include a large Bible (appraised at 1 pound, it was purchased by Captain John Skidmore), his Book of Common Prayer, and old rifle and bullet molds, a pair of "specttacles," a razor and a hone, and among other slaves a young negro wench worth 200 pounds. Two tracts of land in Randolph County, not specified, were worth 40 pounds as noticed above.

His family Bible descended to his granddaughter Susannah (Skidmore) Harper who wrote in 1860 that "it is old fashioned, but a good one if old." It was printed in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1756. It is interesting to see the amount of goods that had apparently been brought by wagon to his plantation in Randolph County before the Revolution rom his old home on the South Branch.

Agnes Skidmore survived her husband by many years. She put in a claim at a court held for Augusta County on 18 January 1775 for supplies furnished o the militia a few months earlier on their way to the Battle of Point Pleasant. Mrs. Ann Skidmore and the accounts for Dunmore's War show that she was paid "By Sundry p(er) Aud(it) 1 pound.17.2 Ex." The list is not itemized, but it may have been for grain ground at her husband's mill after Joseph Skidmore had settled at what is now South Elkins or for diets served to the militia before they left for Point Pleasant. She was not mentioned in her husband's will and she seems to have stayed at the mill at Ruddle for its relatively greater comforts and safety. She was probably happy to be there in 1777, a particularly bloody year on the Virginia frontier, when her son Captain John Skidmore was sent out at the head of a company of men to protect the early settlers in the Tygart Valley. Presumably the deed, now lost, for the mill that Joseph Skidmore gave to his son Samuel Skidmore stated 9or implied) that he as to support his mother in her old age at her home on Skidmore Mill Run.

Alas, Samuel Skidmore died untimely in 1780. Agnes Skidmore made a determined effort after his death to have her dower set off in the Mill Run property by the executors. Presumably this action was successful as she died and was buried there. There are two old graves here; one can still be traced several yards south of the house with a small field headstone ( a footstone has disappeared in recent times). The other grave, some distance from this, has been plowed over. One is remembered as the grave of a Skidmore woman (Agnes beyond doubt) and the other was the grave of Mary Elizabeth Hartman, the firs wife of John George Dahmer. (Reverend Dahmer married Nancy, the daughter of Captain John Skidmore, as his second wife, and they are buried elsewhere.) Agnes Skidmore was living as late as 2 January 1792 at the age of approximately 80 when the Pendleton County Court ordered that a deposition be taken from her.

Joseph Skidmore was probably buried in 1778 on the site of his other mill property in a horseshoe of the Tygart Valley River below Elkins in the beginnings of afamily cemetery, one of the oldest in Randolph County. This particular tract was sold by Andrew Skidmore after his father's death to Jacob Helmick, Senior. The only other burial that we know of there was Margaret (Johnson) Skidmore, his dauhter-in-law. She was buried here on what was now Helmick land in 1808. Her grave was marked with a fieldstone, but a more imposing monument has since been put up to her memory. Helmick died on the tract in 1815 and may have been buried in the Skidmore Cemetery along with some part of his family and other neighbors whose names are now lost.

From the book titled "Thomas Skidmore (Scudamore), 1605-1684, OF WESTERLEIGH, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, AND FAIRFIELD, CONNECTICUT; his anestors, and descendants to the ninth generation." by Warren Skidmore fifith edition, 2006, Akron, OHio

http://genforum.genealogy.com/cgi-bin/pageload.cgi?rebecca::skidmor.... html

The extract:

22. JOSEPH4 SKIDMORE was born about 1706 the son of Joseph (no. 10) and Rebecca (Miller) Skidmore at a place remembered as Little York, Delaware, according to the recollection of his granddaughter Susannah (Skidmore) Harper. It was no doubt in Murderkill Hundred in Kent County. He had died shortly before 17 March 1778 at what is now South Elkins in Randolph County, West Virginia. He married Agnes (known often as Annes, and usually as Ann) Caldwell, a daughter of Andrew and Margaret (Train) Caldwell of Kent County, Delaware, about 1730. Agnes Skidmore was living, his widow, as late as 2 January 1792 in Pendleton County, West Virginia.

Nothing is known of his early years. His mother seems to have married Edward Williams after the death of his father. Along with other inconclusive evidence the levy list of 1726 gives the names of Joseph Skidmore and Edward Williams bracketed together, and it would appear that Williams (assessed on £25) had paid the rate for Joseph Skidmore (also assessed on £25). This is the first list that survives; in the list for 1727 they are assessed separately. It may also be significant that Joseph Skidmore had a son Edward, a name that had not been used previously in either the Skidmore or Caldwell families.

Joseph Skidmore, a rather poor orphan boy, married well. He and Agnes were probably married by 7 April 1730 when Andrew Caldwell, his father-in-law, and Benjamin Shurmer (Caldwell’s partner in many land transactions) sold to Joseph Skidmore for £18 an acre of land near the present town of Camden in Kent County, Delaware. It was part of a tract called Brecknock and must have had some improvements on it to be worth this price. Joseph seems to have second thoughts about the purchase for he obtained a release from the contract on August 12th of the same year.

Agnes Caldwell had been born on the Wicomico River in Somerset County, Maryland, and moved with her parents to Delaware in childhood. Andrew Caldwell lived on a plantation called The Exchange, and the town of Woodside below Dover now stands on this tract together with the old Caldwell Burying Ground. Her father was one of the most influential men in Kent County, and her brother Andrew Caldwell, Junior, represented the county in the General Assembly of Delaware for 12 years from 1745 to 1757. Her nephew, Captain Jonathan Caldwell, was the commander of the “Blue Hen’s Chickens” in the Revolution. His company gave Delaware its state bird, and he gave his name to a young kinsman, Jonathan Caldwell Friend (1774-1856), who died in Braxton County, West Virginia.

On 18 June 1736 Joseph Skidmore, yeoman, sold Fisher’s Delight (inherited from his father) for £70 to Alexander Farquhar. According to Susannah (Skidmore) Harper her father, Captain John Skidmore, had been born eight days earlier in Delaware. Joseph Skidmore is missing from the next levy list for 1736 of Murderkill Hundred which was taken by Edward Williams, his presumptive stepfather. Presumably Joseph Skidmore left shortly after Agnes Skidmore’s confinement for what is now Washington County, Maryland, although her son Edward is said on a muster roll to have been born in Delaware in 1737. [His age may very well have been understated there by a year or two.]

We might know more of his movements if the proceedings survived for two cases tried before the court of Kent County, Delaware. John Webb sued Joseph Skidmore in 1736 and paid for seven summons (at 4sh each) to be issued to the defendant in 1737. Joseph Skidmore appointed Daniel Boyer as his attorney and Boyer eventually appeared before the court. However all we learn from the docket is that it was an attachment case. Joseph Skidmore also sued Thomas Brown in the same period and won a judgment against Brown at the February term of 1738 for want of a plea from the defendant.

The first documentary evidence of him in Maryland is his signature as Joseph Scidmore on a petition in 1742 from the residents of Prince George’s County (which then included both Frederick and Washington Counties) to the Maryland legislature asking that a new parish be formed to serve them. They complained that the present parish was 90 miles in length and the church at such a distance that they could not attend services. Also the present rector was “growing in years” and could not travel to them as he did in the past. The response was the formation of All Saints parish in Frederick, Maryland, in 1742 with Reverend Joseph Jennings as the first rector.

Joseph Skidmore appears as surety (with Richard Touchstone and Joseph Chapline) for William Hayward, a merchant, at the March 1746 court held for Prince George’s County. All of these people lived near the town of Middletown in the Cotoctin Valley in Frederick County.

Joseph Skidmore seems to have made no effort to acquire land in Maryland until 11 June 1748 when he bought a tract of 50 acres called Monican from Cornelius O’Neale. It is described as being at the head of the Little Antietam and he paid £50 for it. It is presently located near the Pleasant Valley Road south of State Route 491 about 10 miles due east of Hagerstown. The Skidmores lived here but briefly. About the year 1749, according to the recollection of a great-granddaughter Rachel (Skidmore) Scott, Joseph Skidmore took his family south into Virginia passing through the gap at Harper’s Ferry. At this place they were joined by Jonas Friend who subsequently married the eldest Skidmore daughter.

From here they ascended the Shenandoah to a point in what is now Rockingham County, Virginia, where they camped for a time while Joseph and his older sons crossed over the Alleghanies looking for land. Skidmore’s Camp is mentioned in the records well into the last century (1800's) but the location is never precisely defined. There are to this day two Skidmore Forks in Rockingham County. Joseph Skidmore probably camped on the one that enters the Dry River near Route 33 shortly before that road crosses the mountains into Pendleton County. The other Skidmore Fork is a tributary of the North River which it enters between Stokesville and the Augusta-Rockingham County line; it was probably named for Elijah Skidmore (of the Rickmansworth family) who lived here briefly before moving on to Surry County, North Carolina.

From here they crossed the mountains and settled permanently in what later became (in 1788) Pendleton County, Virginia. In 1749 it was still primeval forest broken only by a few clearings made by the handful of families who had preceded them there. Despite the hardships of pioneer life they had decided to stay by 1 October 1753 for he and Agnes were back in Maryland to sell Monican. Their deed to William Bowells for the plantation was signed that day and witnessed by Moses Chapline and William Griffith. The deed calls the Skidmores of Augusta County, Virginia (which then included what was to become Pendleton County) and confirms perfectly the recollections of Mrs. Scott.

The first of Joseph Skidmore’s multitudinous land surveys in Virginia was entered in Augusta County on 7 October 1754. It defined the boundaries of 180 acres on Friend’s Run near the present county seat of Franklin. It was clear what his motive was in leaving the relatively comfortable life of Delaware for an enormous number of entries, surveys, and patents followed either by his own name or in partnership with Daniel Harrison. Unlike the absentee proprietor his method was never to take up any large acreage in one block. Instead he entered smaller tracts but always the choicest bits of river bottoms or sites that promised some easy development. Patentees of several thousand acres usually found that most of their tract was not suitable for either agriculture or commerce. After the French and Indian War when settlers came flocking into what is now Pendleton County Joseph Skidmore had a fine selection of the very best land to sell them. Frequently he sold only the survey and the new freeholder obtained the patent in his own name from Williamsburg.

Daniel Harrison, his partner in many of these transactions, and Joseph Skidmore were perhaps drawn together by the fact that they were both strong Church of England men. On 20 July 1747 on a motion made by John Smith the Augusta Vestry granted permission for a “chapel of ease” of the established church to be built in what is now Rockingham County on Harrison’s plantation near the present town of Dayton, Virginia. The chapel (which once stood in the North Section of the Dayton Cemetery) was in use by 1755 when the vestry of Augusta Parish ordered the Reverend John Jones to preach the gospel there. Robert Shanklin was allowed £3 in 1763 to serve as the clerk, and to function as a lay reader when the Rector could not come. The log chapel was replaced by a frame sanctuary about 1774 at a cost of £50. The Anglican church was dissolved in 1785 by an act of the Virginia legislature after the Revolution and the chapel was abandoned.

Joseph Skidmore had scarcely gained a footing in Virginia before the whole of the frontier from Pennsylvania to Georgia was bathed in blood. At the time the Skidmores settled on the South Branch of the Potomac River no Indians lived in the immediate area and those who passed through on hunting expeditions were friendly. The French, however, soon after supplied them with arms and presents and induced them to attack the English. The defeat of Braddock’s army left the border without protection. Two forts had been built to defend the 200 or so families who lived in what is now Pendleton County. On 27 April 1758 a Shawnee raiding party with a chief named Killbuck descended on one of them; the tribe estimated at 40 braves captured Fort Upper Tract (about five miles from the Skidmore settlement at Ruddle) which they burned killing 22 people. The next day they attacked Fort Seybert where they killed 17 of the white settlers there and took 11 prisoners.

Many of the surviving families fled immediately back to the safety of the tidewater or the Carolinas. In the summer of 1758 a number of wills, inventories, and sale bills were recorded at Staunton for those who had perished in the forts. The Skidmores figure in so many of these instruments settling up the estates of their former neighbors that we have ample evidence that they stayed despite the perils. On 14 September 1758 the Assembly at Williamsburg voted funds to pay for the public expense of the war and Joseph Skidmore is listed as being due £1 7sh. The accounts also listed his three eldest sons, Joseph, James and John Skidmore, who were entitled to payments for their services in the Augusta County Militia during the war. On 19 August 1761 when the final account of the estate of Jacob Sivers was recorded at Staunton his son Joseph and his son-in-law Gabriel Coil were paid for bringing in a steer and searching for horses belonging to Seybert.

Joseph Skidmore’s home was near the present crossroads at Ruddle where he built a mill on 54 acres on Lick Run. Lick Run became known soon after as Skidmore’s Mill Run and today is called Hedrick Run. It originates in a large spring up in the mountains and it comes rushing down to the South Branch of the Potomac for much of the year. Ruddle was so-named in 1881 when a post office was opened there. (Before that it had been a stopping point for the stage and known as Wilsonville for Colonel Benjamin Wilson who had lived here before moving to the Tygart River Valley.) Joseph Skidmore added 14 acres adjoining his mill property by purchase. Both tracts were deeded to his son Samuel Skidmore on 26 August 1772 presumably after Joseph Skidmore had himself moved to the Tygart Valley. They descended soon after to Joseph’s infant grandson Samuel Skidmore, Junior, of Georgia, who sold them after he attained his majority to his cousins Levi and Isaac Skidmore of Pendleton County. It 1823 the property was owned by their brother James Skidmore who was then by far the largest landowner on the county. It appears in the tax list of that year as the Old Mill Place.

The mill was certainly operational by October 1763 when the House of Burgesses passed an act showing that Joseph Skidmore was entitled to £11 for supplies furnished to the Virginia militia on their return from Pontiac’s War. His house was much enlarged about 1840 and the original logs sided over. The old burr stone from his mill, no longer active, was used as a foundation for a chimney added to the house probably at the same time. Much of it can still be seen embedded in the sod. An ancient photograph taken after the reconstruction of the house will be found in Moments in Time; a Pictorial History of Pendleton County (1988) on page 128. The house was owned in 1977 by Fred Vandervanter, Junior, and his wife, and still earlier by Abel Hammer and Ona Ruddle.

The only mischief that Joseph Skidmore is known to have suffered at the hands of the Indians was related by Delilah (Skidmore) Cogar (1827-1919), a great-granddaughter. According to her the Skidmores lived on a small run. This was the Skidmore Mill Run, now known as Hammer Run for the present owners of the site. One day when Agnes was at home alone a party of Indians appeared and stole a hog which had just been dressed and was hanging up outside the house. Agnes (who Mrs. Cogar described as “a large spare-made” woman) sat down on the floor and cried while the Indians looked in through the cracks of the cabin and laughed at her.

The years following Pontiac’s War was a time of peace on the South Branch. The younger children were sent off to a school kept by William McGinty, a Scotsman, who in November 1768 secured a judgment of £5 against Joseph Skidmore for school bills dating back to 1766. Schoolmasters generally earned 2sh per month per child; this would have paid for 50 months of instruction no doubt shared by several children.

The Skidmores did most of their trading at a store kept by Felix Gilbert about five miles southeast of Harrisonburg at Peale’s Crossroads (presently routes 276 and 33 in Rockingham County). He was in business there by 1765, but his trade was in a small way until he went off to London and returned to Virginia with a fine stock of goods to tempt the local planters. An entry in an account book for 1769 from Gilbert’s emporium (now seemingly lost) shows that Mrs. Ann Skidmore purchased a quantity of ginger, and was credited with her surplus of the root of the ginseng plant which she had dug up near her home. Ginseng was highly prized in China (where it did not grow) and it is possible that her stock of the root was eventually exported there. It is clear that she was a medical practitioner in a small way, and that her services extended beyond midwifery and childhood complaints. Ginger was then the best remedy for indigestion, and ginseng had a reputation for restoring vigor. A later account books survived until recently for the years 1774 to 1777. From it we learned that things that could not be made at home and were purchased by the Skidmores included hemp, blankets, salt, beeswax, kegs, girths, shears, pots, kettles, wire, hammers, thimbles, hats, shoes, and quantities of rum imported from the West Indies. Mrs. Ann Skidmore or “Granny” Skidmore (her charges are entered in both names) bought a large number of shoes, probably intended as gifts for her grandchildren.

Joseph Skidmore and his son Andrew were among the earliest settlers in the Tygarts River Valley. If we are to believe Andrew Skidmore’s statement that he went there at the age of 18 it would put their removal back as far as 1768. What is certain is the quality of the land they selected, which suggests that they may have been among the first to stake out their claims. In May 1779 the General Assembly of Virginia passed an act for settling the titles of the claimants to land in several western counties of the Commonwealth. A committee of Land Commisioners was appointed and given sweeping powers to issue summons, take depositions, hear testimony, and then to make decisions when there was a conflict among the settlers. The commissioners sat for several days in the Tygart River Valley. On Saturday, 25 March 1780, they met at the house of Jacob Westfall, Senior. Andrew Skidmore was in attendance and had his title confirmed to two tracts of 400 acres each in the valley. The first of these had been settled by his father: “Andrew Skidmore is intitled to 400 acres of land by right of settlement before 1778 as assignee of Joseph Skidmore, deceased, lying in Augusta County on both sides of Tygers Valey River adjoining the land on which the said Andrew now lives and ordered certified.” This and another tract assigned by Joseph Skidmore to Conrad Good were appraised at £40 when his estate was probated in 1778.

htIt seems certain that Joseph Skidmore was in what is now Randolph County (and determined to stay) before 26 August 1772 when he deeded his mill at Ruddle to his son Samuel who remained in Pendleton County. On 10 September 1777 he appears on a list of tithables taken in Augusta County by Captains Robert Davis, John Skidmore and Paul Teter.

Andrew Skidmore is given credit for attempting to build a mill here at what is now South Elkins, but it was probably his father who expected to repeat (and perhaps even exceed) the success of his mill at Ruddle in Pendleton County. The mill in Randolph County never became operational, presumably as the Skidmores found that the drop in the level of Tygart River at this point would not provide enough power for a mill race.

On the same day Abraham Kittle proved his right to another 400 acres which had been assigned to him by Conrad Good who in turn had had an assignment from Joseph Skidmore before his death. Andew Skidmore also obtained a clear title to the 400 acres where his home was on the east side of the Tygart River.

Joseph Skidmore died in the late winter of 1778. On 20 May 1778 the Augusta County Order Books show that a suit brought by Catherine White against Joseph Skidmore was abated due to the death of the defendant. Catherine was a daughter of Jacob Everman, and the widow of David White (an Indian spy who had been killed at the battle of Point Pleasant). Her father appeared at court a day earlier to prove the will of Joseph Skidmore.

His will was dated some three years earlier on 15 March 1775 “being overtaken with the infirmities of age and weak of body.” He left most of his property to his youngest son Andrew Skidmore (who was still unmarried) having provided for his older children in his lifetime. To Andrew he left his negro Chark, all the working tools on the plantation, and all his stock and household furniture. The will is vague about what was to happen to the residue of his estate and it made no provision for the welfare of his widow, who had apparently refused to move to the Tygart Valley. Andrew Skidmore was also named the sole executor, but the will was not proved by Robert Minnes in Augusta County until 17 March 1778. Jacob Everman appeared on 19 May 1778, and an inventory was taken a month later on 19 June 1778 by Benjamin Wilson, Jonas Friend, William White, and William Cleaver, four of his neighbors in the Tygart Valley.

The original will, despite his infirmities, was written entirely in his own hand. It still survives among the loose papers in the courthouse at Staunton with what may be the only surviving signature of Joseph Skidmore. The names of the witnesses are given in the hand of Elias Barker who signed the will, then wrote the names of Minnes and Everman and added their marks.

A vendue sale was held later in the year. An unnamed clerk was paid £1 4sh for two days’ attendance, but this was money largely wasted. It was then customary to record the successful bidders’ names and the prices realized at the vendue sale but the county clerk at Staunton noted that the sale bill of Joseph Skidmore was “so poorly stated that we could not enter them.” This is a great pity since it would have given us another valuable list of some of the earliest settlers in the Tygart Valley.

A final account entered by Andrew Skidmore on 10 March 1779 shows that the sale of his personal property together with the debts due the estate totaled £548 10d. Excluded from the inventory (and the sale) was the property willed directly to Andrew Skidmore; the slave Chark, the working tools, his livestock, and the household furniture which would probably have doubled the value of the estate. What happened to the money realized at the sale does not appear. Andrew Skidmore had £80 8sh as his 15% “executor’s commission,” and presumably the whole of the remainder. Joseph Skidmore, Junior, was the eldest son and heir at law and by British custom would have had the whole of it in the absence of a will. He put his status as the eldest son on record, but did benefit from his father’s estate. Thomas Jefferson later had the law reformed in Virginia so that the widow and all of his children had an interest when a man died intestate.

A few items singled out of the inventory include a large Bible (appraised at £1, it was purchased by Captain John Skidmore), his Book of Common Prayer, an old rifle and bullet molds, a pair of “specttacles,” a razor and a hone, and among other slaves a young negro wench worth £200. Two tracts of land in Randolph County, not specified, were worth £40 as noticed above.

His family Bible descended to his granddaughter Susannah (Skidmore) Harper who wrote in 1860 that “it is old fashioned, but a good one if old.” It was printed in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1756. It is interesting to see the amount of goods that had apparently been brought by wagon to his plantation in Randolph County before the Revolution from his old home on the South Branch.

Agnes Skidmore survived her husband by many years. She put in a claim at a court held for Augusta County on 18 January 1775 for supplies furnished to the militia a few months earlier on their way to the Battle of Point Pleasant. Mrs. Ann Skidmore and the accounts for Dunmore’s War show that she was paid “By Sundry p[er] Aud[it] £1.17.2 Ex.” The list is not itemized, but it may have been for grain ground at her husband's mill after Joseph Skidmore had settled at what is now South Elkins or for diets served to the militia before they left for Point Pleasant. S he was not mentioned in her husband’s will and she seems to have stayed at the mill at Ruddle for its relatively greater comforts and safety. She was probably happy to be there in 1777, a particularly bloody year on the Virginia frontier, when her son Captain John Skidmore was sent out at the head of a company of men to protect the early settlers in the Tygart Valley. Presumably the deed, now lost, for the mill that Joseph Skidmore gave to his son Samuel Skidmore stated (or implied) that he was to support his mother in her old age at her home on SkidmoreMill Run.

Alas, Samuel Skidmore died untimely in 1780. Agnes Skidmore made a determined effort after his death to have her dower set off in the Mill Run property by his executors. Presumably this action was successful as she died and was buried there. There are two old graves here; one can still be traced several yards south of the house with a small field headstone (a footstone has disappeared in recent times). The other grave, some distance from this, has been plowed over. One is remembered as the grave of a Skidmore woman (Agnes beyond doubt) and the other was the grave of Mary Elizabeth Hartman, the first wife of John George Dahmer. [Reverend Dahmer married Nancy, the daughter of Captain John Skidmore, as his second wife, and they are buried elsewhere.] Agnes Skidmore was living as late as 2 January 1792 at the age of approximately 80 when the Pendleton County Court ordered that a deposition be taken from her.

Joseph Skidmore was probably buried in 1778 on the site of his other mill property in a horseshoe of the Tygart Valley River below Elkins in the beginnings of a family cemetery, one of the oldest in Randolph County. This particular tract was sold by Andrew Skidmore after his father’s death to Jacob Helmick, Senior. The only other burial that we know of there was Margaret (Johnson) Skidmore, his daughter-in-law. She was buried here on what was now Helmick land in 1808. Her grave was marked with a fieldstone, but a more imposing monument has since been put up to her memory. Helmick died on the tract in 1815 and may have been buried in the Skidmore Cemetery along with some part of his family and other neighbors whose names are now lost.

Children:

52. i. Joseph.

53. ii. James.

iii. Sarah. She married Captain Jonas Friend who was living (presumably) as late as 28 September 1801 when he was named as a defendant in a suit in Randolph County. Sarah has long been said to have been buried in 1808 at Friend’s Fort, but the dates of death given for this couple are now known to have been erroneous. Sarah was living on 25 May 1795 when she joined her husband in a deed.

54. iv. Captain John, born 10 June 1736.

55. v. Edward.

vi. Elizabeth. She married Jacob Friend who died in 1819 on his plantation of 229 acres on Friend's Run just north of Franklin. She was living there as late as 10 December 1817 when her husband's will was signed.

vii. Rebecca. She married Gabriel Coil (later Kile) who came to Philadelphia as a boy with his parents probably from Merschbach in the Rhineland-Palantinate. They arrived on the Edinburgh in 1749, and both he and his father were subsequently naturalized in Augusta County. Gabriel Coil and a part of his brothers were paid £2 6sh each as soldiers in the French and Indian War. They lived about three miles down the South Branch from Ruddle, but had moved by 2 September 1806 to what is now Jasper Township, Fayette County, Ohio. Preparatory to moving they had deeded four tracts (including their old home on the South Branch) to George Coil. Gabriel Coil had a claim of 2000 acres in the Virginia Military District of Ohio due him as a Revolutionary soldier. On 11 December 1807 they both gave a deed for these 2000 acres to their sons John, Jacob, Thomas and James Coil who agreed to provide in exchange a comfortable living for their parents in their old age. The were presumably buried on this tract in Ohio, but no stones mark their graves.

56. viii. Thomas.

57. ix. Samuel.

x. Margaret. She married Lieutenant Colonel Gavin Hamilton on 1 November 1773. He died in 1808 in Rockingham County, Virginia. She was living on 4 June 1811, his widow, with her daughter Ann (wife of Dr. Zachariah Field) in Clark County, Kentucky.

58. xi. Andrew, born 8 November 1750.

http://genforum.genealogy.com/cgi-bin/pageload.cgi?rebecca::skidmor.... html

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Notes for Joseph Skidmore , Jr.:

Joseph Skidmore settled in Pendleton Co., VA (WV) in or soon after 1749. He married Agnes Caldwell (by 1730) the daughter of Andrew & Margaret ( Train) Caldwell, who survived him by many years and was living in Pendleton Co as late as 1792. Joseph Skidmore sold Fisher's Delight a plantation he inherited from his father in Delaware, in 1736 and moved his family to what is now Washington County, MD. In 1749 he moved from there through the gap at Harpers Ferry to what is now Rockingham County where the family camped for a time on Skidmore Fork while Joseph and his sons went over the mountains looking for a promising site for their new home. He decided on a fine tract at Ruddle, (now Pendleton Co., WV), where he built a log house and mill soon after. In 1753 he and his wife made a trip back to Maryland to sell, Monican, their plantation there, having decided to stay in Virginia. There is good evidence that Joseph and his family stayed in Pendleton Co during the bloody years of the French and Indian War. When new settlers flooded into the county after the war he had accumulated a fine selection of the very best land in the county to sell them. He never acquired any large tracts of several thousand acres, but instead patented the very best of small parcels of river bottom land that could be easily cleared and developed. His mill ground grain for the troops in the French and Indian war, Lord dunmores War and the american Revolution as the accounts paid by the House of Delegates sitting in Williamsburg show. In 1775 Mrs Agnes Skidmore was paid for "diets" (meals) served to the militia as they passed up the South Branch Valley on their way to Point Pleasant. He and his partner Daniel Harrison were devout members of the established church and Harrison built a chapel of ease on his plantation near Dayton, Va. Joseph and his family worshipped there whenever a traveling anglican clergyman stopped on his rounds of the Virginia frontier. Joseph Skidmores bible (printed in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1756) and his book of Common Prayer are included in the inventory of his estate made on 19 june 1778. Also included were his "specttales" a number of slaves, household goods, and plantation tools.

Children of Joseph Skidmore and Agnes Caldwell are:

+ 28 i. Andrew9 Skidmore, born November 11, 1750 in Pendleton Co., VA (WV); died November 15, 1827 in Braxton Co., VA. (WV).

29 ii. Joseph Skidmore, born Abt. 1730; died Bef. February 06, 1810. He married Elizabeth Everman.

30 iii. Rebecca Skidmore, born Abt. 1731; died Aft. September 02, 1806 in Jasper Township, Fayette Co., OH.. She married Gabriel Kile or Coil.

31 iv. James Skidmore, born Abt. 1732; died Bef. December 1807. He married Sarah McDonald.

32 v. Thomas Skidmore, born Abt. 1733; died Bef. September 28, 1807 in R

Will:

In the name of God Amen the fifteenth day of March 1775 I Joseph Skidmore Snr of Augusta County and Colony of Virginia former being over taken with the infirmities of age and weak in body but of perfect mind and memory thanks be given unto God therefore calling unto mind the mortality of body and knowing that it is appointed for all men once to dye Do make and ordain this my last Will and Testament that is to say principally and first of all I give and recommend to the Earth to be buried in Decent Christian Burial at the descretion of my Executers nothing doubting but at the General Reserection I shall receive the same again by the Mighty Power of god and as touching such worldy Estate whearwith it has pleased God and to bless me in this Life I give Demise and Dispose of the same in the following manner and form I give and bequeath to my beloved son Andrew after my Decease my Negro man named Chark and my best Bed with the furniture belong thereto and five Cows and calfs and four Sows with pig and all the working tools Belonging to he Plantation whom I likewise Constitute make and ordain my Sole Executor of this my last will and Testament and I hereby [ ] desalow Revoke and Deanull all and every other former Testaments will [ ] Bequeaths and executions by me in any wise before named willed and bequeathed Ratifying and Confirming this and no other to be my last will and Testament whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal the day and year above written

Delivered in presence of us

Robert Minnes

Jacob Eberman

Elias Barker Joseph Skidmore Sr

   At Court held for Augusta County March 11th 1778 this last Will and Testament of Joseph skidmore Deced was proved by the oaths of Robert Minnes one of the Witnesses thereto and ordered to be Certified at a Court held for Augusta County May 9th 1778 This last Will and Testament of Joseph Skidmore being formerly proved by the Oath of Robert Minnes one of the Witnesses thereto ordered to be recorded on the motion of Andrew Skidmore the Executer therein named Certificate for obtaining a probate thereof in due form is Granted him he having with Securitys entered into and acknowledged their bond according to Law

Teste