Peter Light

GEDCOM Note

OCCUP: Surveyor

Not sure if the following belongs to the Peter Light, probably an ancester:

The Lick Run mansion is architecturally significant. Although it is a large and comfortable house, it is not fancy. As originally built, the two-story dwelling house measures 37 feet across and 31 feet deep. It is a very handsome house and retains its period charm. The old floors have beautiful wide boards and the house retains an abundance of very early hardware. The walls on the first floor are board walls of raised panel construction. One wall is hinged and bolted into place. It can be turned on the hinges to reallocate space. It is very unusual. The second-floor walls are of more common vertical board construction. It has plain mantels, paneled and board-and-batten doors. The kitchen was added by Peter Light in 1791. Three fireplaces are in the wing and the lower end room has the nicest lental arrangement. The mantel is early federal with a tall-paneled frieze and end blocks. The decorative metal firebox is still in use. Flanking is a two-tiered, double-door cupboard. On the second floor is a vernacular mental with beaded surround, backbanking on the edge and a shallow shelf. Four fireplaces are in the main section. Again, the second-story mantels are plain. The two on the ground floor have a beaded surround, quirked oval banding and a shelf of cyma fillet and cavetto molding. The early house was built in the 1730s for Morgan Bryan, one of the original first developers of Berkeley County. Also, a wonderful second generation grist or flour mill and an unusual large barn for its time period were built of native limestone. Morgan Bryan Morgan Bryan had come into the area in 1730, when he, along with Alexander Ross, went to Williamsburg and petitioned the lieutenant governor for 70,000 acres and for the Council of Virginia to allow him and his partner, Alexander Ross, to bring settlers into the area (at the time in Spotsylvania County, Va.). Orders were granted to Ross and Bryan to bring settlers onto the 70,000 acres on the west side of Opequon Creek and between North Mountain. Bryan settled here in 1732. In June of 1734, Bryan had 860 acres where he lived and where he had built a grist mill surveyed for his own use. Bryan of Orange County, Va., sold 360 acres of the plantation to his son, Joseph Bryan. Frederick County, Va., had just opened its courthouse a few months before this. The area of present Berkeley County was a part of Orange County from 1734 to 1743, when Frederick County was partitioned off of Orange County. Bryan sold the 260 acres of the plantation to Hugh Parker on June 30, 1773. William Frohook of Rown Province of North Carolina, heir of Hugh Parker who had accumulated 744 acres of the Lick Plantation, sold the property on June 30, 1773, to Peter and John Light, brothers and sons of Jacob Light, who died in Lancaster County, Pa., in 1762. Peter Light During the Revolutionary War, Peter Light, who had purchased his brother John's interest in the plantation, furnished supplies and made guns. He was a blacksmith. On Jan. 7, 1791, Peter Light leased his mills at the Lick Plantation to James Maxwell - "to wit the merchant and grist mills, saw mill and hemp mill, the privilege of the water course, also that part of his plantation lying on the north side of the mill race commencing at the mill dam and runway along the race to the mills, thence down the Lick stream to Opequon Creek supposed to contain 300 acres except the said Peter Light reserves the right to the Smith shop and Still house." Light also agreed to build an addition to the end of the stone house, which then was occupied by Samuel Myers, sufficiently large for a kitchen and bedding room above on the second story. They were to be done by May 1. Maxwell was to do other necessary work. He was to build a board fence on the said premises and a stone barn to be completed before the 1793 harvest. Maxwell agreed to pay Light 250 pounds on Jan. 17 each year rent for the next 10 years. Maxwell could give three months notice at the expiration of the first three or five years if he wished to cancel the lease. When Light wrote his will on Sept. 9, 1807, he bequeathed to his son, Samuel Light, the mills and mill tract of land and all of the personal property he had received of Peter Light in the past. Samuel was to pay to his brother, David Light, when he became 21 years old 500 pounds and to his sister, Polly, 500 pounds when she became of age. Daughters Susannah Myers, wife of Henry Myers, and Elizabeth Anderson, wife of James Anderson, were to have all the land and personal property that he had given to them. Peter Light was born Sept. 3, 1733, and died December 1810. He was laid to rest in the Light Cemetery on the plantation. His will was probated March 9, 1811. He had made no provision for his wife, Nancy Ann Light, who appeared in court and renounced his will. The court had the farm surveyed and allotted on March 10, 1812, to Ann, the widow, her dower rights. From Samuel Light's 306 acres, she received the stone house, one-third of the barn, two rows of apple trees in the orchard, 50 acres of farmland and 28 acres of woodland and one-third of the profits from the mill. Out of John Light's 365 acres, Ann got 133 acres and out of son Peter Light Jr.'s 292 acres, she received 81 acres. When Ann Light wrote her will, Dec. 6, 1828, she named daughters, Catherine Hoke, Ann Thornburg, Mary Deving and her sons, David and Samuel Light. The Light family was a very well-known family of Berkeley County. In 1816, Samuel Light sold the Peter Light mill, stone house and barn to Henry Bedinger and Stephen W. Foreman. A court suit in Chancery Court decreed that Foreman owned one-third interest in the mill tract of 306 acres and one-third in the Hock tract of land. They were put up at an auction on May 13, 1829. Bedinger had pulled down the old log mill and built the beautiful, native limestone mill building in 1816. The notice in the Martinsburg Gazette read as follows: "The Hoke tract has the largest limestone spring in Berkeley County. The 300 acre tract is improved with a merchant mill, dwelling house, kitchen and large barn, all built of stone. Also a miller house and sundry outbuildings." Bedinger purchased the one-third interest giving him full ownership. Major Bedinger did not live on the Lick Plantation but at his 1802 stone house, Protuma, south of Martinsburg. Later the area around the mill took the name of Bedington after Bedinger. After the death of Bedinger, Elizabeth Bedinger Davenport inherited the Bedington Lick Mill tract with 306 acres and the adjoining Hoke tract of 154 acres. At her death, the Bedington tract then went to Frances W. Gibson, wife of John Thomas Gibson, who sold the Lick Farm in 1865 to John and Emanuel Kennedy. A court case developed and the Lick Farm was sold for $16,250 to John Kennedy. After Kennedy's death his heirs sold to W.S. Porterfield, whose wife was a daughter of John Kennedy. By 1941, the mill was no longer operating and Wendell S. Porterfield and wife, Cora, sold the Lick Plantation then containing 320 acres and the stone building to Stephen and Helen Ailes. RIN: MH:N322