Thomas Skidmore

Thomas Skidmore BIRTH unknown DEATH 28 Sep 1807 Randolph County, West Virginia, USA BURIAL Burial Details Unknown
Refer to DAR#A204624 listed descendants are Thomas Skidmore and wife Eleanor Skidmore along with other descendants...descendancy proven
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/211011936/thomas-skidmore burial place from my understanding for Thomas and Eleanor were close to their Homestead in the Elkins Area...headstones were river rock but engraves on rock ...some where around the area where the Catholic School etc was is my understanding ...still unknown for certain...
Considered to be the first settler of Leadsville which would later become Elkins WV ...Wiki Randolph County Wv online
Listed in a book called Union and Confederate sympathizers of Barbour County Wv....it is listed he is the father of John Skidmore and The grandfather of Elihue /Elihu Skidmore.......

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listed in a book Union and Confederate Sympathizers of Barbour County Wv..he is listed as being the grandfather of Elihu Skidmore......and the father of John Skidmore THOMAS SKIDMORE, the son of Joseph and Agnes (Caldwell) Skidmore, was born probably in what is now Washington County, Maryland, and died in Randolph County, (West) Virginia, before 28 September 1807. He married Eleanor (Nelly), a daughter of Abraham and Rhoda (Collins) Ingram of the Crabbottom area of what is now Highland County, Virginia. Eleanor Skidmore was probably born in what became Wicomico County, Maryland (near the Sussex County, Delaware line) soon after 1750, and was living in Randolph County as late as the census of 1830 at the age of almost 80. She was named no doubt for her grandmother Eleanor, wife of Abraham Ingram I (1684-1747?) who was taxed in 1739 in the vast area then known as Nanticoke Hundred of old Somerset County, Maryland. It then included a part of what is now Sussex County, Delaware. [Emily C. Hawley in her Skidmore genealogy printed in 1911 gives Eleanor Skidmore's family name as Marteny on the authority of Emma M. Hutt, a great-granddaughter, but this is an error. Mrs. Hutt's maternal great-grandmother was Margaret Marteny.]

Her father Abraham Ingram II was born in 1721 and was still living at home (with a younger brother James Ingram) in 1739. Abrahm Ingram I, the head of the household, and his wife Eleanor also owned a slave couple named George and Priss who were enumerated in his household. Ingram and his wife Elinor sold a plantation of 200 acres called Strife on 8 November 1743, but their home in 1739 may have been Poorfields which their son Isaac Ingram sold (as eldest son and heir at law to his father) on 19 November 1747. This deed shows that Poorfields had had previously been patented on 11 April 1689 to Isaac's grandfather James Ingram. Abraham II, having no great prospects in Maryland, came out to Vanderpool in that part of Highland County, Virginia, that had been briefly a part of Pendleton County, West Virginia.

Abraham Ingram II deposed in 1759 that he was aged 38 and had spent all of his life in Worcester County, Maryland, near the Sussex County, Delaware, border. His removal to Virginia soon after may be taken as certain since Captain Job Ingram and Lanta (Lancelot) Slavins testified about the same matter in 1759. Abraham Ingram III (1750-1819) subequently married Elizabeth Slavins who born in 1755, no doubt in Maryland or Delaware. The Slavins probably came out to Virginia at the same time as the Ingrams, the Calloways, and doubtless several other families who settled on or about the Jackson River. In a case Gotherd vs. Ingram tried at Staunton in Augusta County, Virginia, a bill dated 1766 in Sussex County, Delaware, was introduced against Abraham Ingram II who was apparently indebted to the plaintiff.

His large, clear signature Ebram Ingram appears on a petition to the General Assembly at Williamsburg on 25 May 1779 from a part of the residents of Augusta County asking that a new county (to be named Bath) be formed to serve them. On 4 August 1788 he and his wife Rhody sold 68 acres on a small branch at Crab Apple Bottom to Michael Arbogast, recorded on page nine of the very first deed book in the new county of Pendleton. The Augusta County tax list of 1788 shows that Abram Ingram (who had owed a tax on 17 horses in the previous year, a sizable assessment in the period) and his son Uriah Ingram (4 horses) had already removed to Kentucky. Two years later on 23 September 1790 (called “late of Pendleton County”) Abraham Ingram, Senior, gave a power of attorney to John Skidmore (a brother to his son-in-law Thomas Skidmore) to sell an additional 19 acres to Arbogast. He and his wife then disappear from view in the Virginia records. His son Abraham Ingram III (who is himself called Senior after 1799) remained in Highland County and will be noticed later after he joined his sister Eleanor Skidmore and her family on Leading Creek in Randolph County. We will also return to the aging Abraham Ingram II and his son Uriah in their new home on Slate Creek in Bath County, Kentucky, when we turn to his grandson Joseph Skidmore who had joined the Ingrams there by 1797.

To return to Thomas Skidmore. He purchased two tracts of land in Pendleton County in 1772 about the time of his marriage, one from his brother Joseph and another from his father. The second of these was deeded to him by his father on 16 August 1772 for £10 (hardly a realistic price) for 97 acres on the North Fork of the South Branch at Mill Creek near Hinkle Gap called Little Walnut Bottom. His father had patented this tract, “adjoining Cunningham,” on 10 September 1767, but there is nothing to suggest that the young couple ever lived there.

Jacob Conrad, who had a blacksmith's shop at Ruddle adjoining the mill of Joseph Skidmore, died there on 1 December 1775 aged 70. Thomas Skidmore and Adam Lough were ordered to appraise Conrad's estate on the South Branch on 19 March 1776 when his will was probated at Staunton.

Thomas Skidmore left the South Branch later in 1776 to join the settlement in the Tygart River Valley at the present town of Elkins. He was in the Tygart Valley by 14 January 1777 when he was a witness to the will of Moses Thompson who lived on Leading Creek. When a vendue sale was held of Thompson's possessions on 10 July 1778 his brothers Edward and Andrew Skidmore were among the purchasers, as was James Rogers who seems to have gone to Kentucky soon after.

His removal could scarcely been more ill-timed for 1777 was long remembered on the frontier as “the bloody year of the three sevens.” His older brother Captain John Skidmore was sent out from Pendleton County with a company of rangers to try and protect the new community, but Thomas Skidmore retreated for a time back to the South Branch. Nevertheless he was determined to return and on 24 November 1777 he entered 300 acres on the west side of Tygart Valley below and adjoining the 400 acres that his brother Andrew entered on the same day. This was confirmed to him when the Land Comissioners met on Monday, 27 March 1780. He obtained a clear title to 400 acres of land by virtue of a settlement made before 1778 on the east side of the Tygart Valley River, adjoining the land of Robert Cunningham. It was surveyed by John Poage on 14 November 1780, who with his chain carriers set off the tract as 288 acres, and on 1 June 1782 a perfected title to the land was returned to him from the Land Office. It included the land that is now most of downtown Elkins, the park, the Wees Addition, both sides of the river from roughly the rear entrance of McDonald's Restaurant to Porter Avenue, South Elkins north of 11th Street, and all of Diamond and Wees Street. David Armstrong, who has made a careful study of the early land titles in Elkins, thinks that his cabin stood on the west side of Randolph Avenue at its intersection with Henry Avenue where St. Brendan's Catholic School was later located. He credits Thomas Skidmore with being the first white settler in central Elkins.

He does not seem to have made an immediate settlement at Elkins however, for he appears in 1784 on a tax list taken on the South Branch in Pendleton County where he headed a family of seven white souls. This count agrees perfectly with what we know of the ages of his children from later census records, and suggests that Robert Davis (the assessor) worked carefully at reporting the statistics of the early settlers.

Soon after Randolph County was formed it was ordered on 28 September 1789 “that Thomas Phillips, William Smith, Jacob Bickle, and Henry Petro be appointed viewers for a highway from Thomas Skidmore's plantation up Leading Creek to the foot of the mountain.” This would appear to be the approximate path of Route 219 in the county. On 23 November 1789 he was called to serve on the second Grand Jury in the new county.

He sold Little Walnut Bottom to Moses Hinkle on 5 May 1789 and the Pendleton County Court ordered that a dedimus be taken “to Randolph County for the private examination of the said Scidmore's wife.” The deposition of Eleanor Skidmore surrendering her dower was returned to the court on 2 November and duly recorded. His other land in Pendleton County was kept until 27 July 1801 when he sold the 43 1/2 acres which he had from his brother Joseph to their nephew Samuel Skidmore who was living with his mother in Greene County, Georgia.

On 25 March 1794 Thomas Skidmore filed a suit for damages against Mark Grimes. The case came to trial on 27 May 1794. Hearing the evidence took four days, the longest trial to date in the young county. In spite of this care the case ended in a hung jury. Thomas Skidmore was ordered to pay Ruth Vanscoy for four days attendance at court and Isaac and Abigail Newel each for two days. (Mark Grimes was ordered to pay Aaron Vanscoy for four days and Elizabeth Ball and John Donoho for two days each for their testimony.) The case was retried on 27 August 1794 which ended in a verdict for Grimes.

The court in Randolph County met on the fourth Monday of every month if there was business to transact. They went into special session on 15 February 1798 “for the purpose of considering what may be most prudent or necessary to be done relative to small pox now in Tygers Valley.” The course of action, if indeed any was taken, is not recorded. The Skidmores, so far as we know, escaped.

Thomas Skidmore left his cabin at Elkins in 1800. On 27 January 1800 Thomas and Eleanor sold 121 acres of their property at South Elkins (adjoining the downtown grant) to Jacob Helmick for £55. It is described as being on the west side of Tygart Valley adjoining and below the lands of Andrew Skidmore. On 27 October 1800 the court transferred Thomas Skidmore “and his sons Abraham, Jeremiah and Samuel” to the road district that included their new home. They were thereafter to aid and assist Daniel McLean who was the surveyor of the road from the Cheat River up to the foot of Laurel Hill to the bridge. After this date Thomas Skidmore's Old Place (then the forks of the road now the intersection of Buffalo Street and Randolph Avenue) is frequently found as a place-name in the Randolph County Minute Books. The property eventually was purchased by Robert Chenoweth (who had married Edith Skidmore) and on 22 July 1816 he moved that four men be ordered to view a road from the first big run below the Skidmore “old place” to intersect the Leading Creek Road at Salt Creek. Robert Chenoweth sold the property on 25 April 1835 to his brother-in-law Andrew Skidmore of Hardy County.

Job C. Weese (who married Louise Skidmore), who was still another brother-in-law of Robert Chenoweth, acquired Thomas Skidmore's old place in 1852 from Andrew Skidmore. Weese made some important subdivisions in the property. The river front between the two foot bridges and the land north of it was sold to Ananias Hinkle in 1853 after he had donated a small lot in Elkins (presently Barb’s Laundromat) to the Presbyterian Church. The Hinkle tract included most of the downtown, the park, and part of the campus of Davis and Elkins College. A portion of the land above the Hinkle tract was sold to George Ward; it includes the present day Hardee's Restaurant, Diamond and Wees Streets, Graham and and Center Streets, and Delaware Avenue. It was Ward who built the famous round barn on the site of Hardee's Restaurant.

Ananias Hinkle’s daughter Amanda married Archibald Harper in 1866 and they moved to the Skidmore old place in the year following after a fire at his first home. If the Harpers lived in the same house (no doubt enlarged and improved) as the Chenoweths and Skidmores did earlier, then Thomas Skidmore's original cabin stood on the site of the Catholic School noticed above. The evidence is inconclusive according to David Armstrong.

His brother-in-law Abraham Ingram (1750-1817), called Senior after the death of his father in the 1790s, married Elizabeth Slavins (born 1755) of Bath County. He and his three eldest sons Job, Thomas, and Abraham Ingram, Junior, were all four taxed as tithables in 1800 in Bath County. In a suit Messick vs. Ingram tried on 1 September 1801 Abraham and Elizabeth Ingram (still of Bath County) declared their intention to remove shortly from the state of Virginia. On the tax list of 1801 the same four men are all listed as “Removed.”

In point of fact the Ingrams remained in Virginia. On 31 August 1802 Joseph Friend (the eldest son of Sarah Skidmore Friend) entered a claim for Abraham Ingram for 200 acres on the waters of Leading Creek, an identical claim for Thomas Skidmore, and a similiar claim (but for only 60 acres) for Abraham Skidmore (Ingram's nephew). All three claims appear on the same Treasury Warrant sent up to the Land Office. Subsequent deeds show that the land was on the east side of Cherry Tree Run (Tree has been dropped from the name of the watercourse on the topographical map of the Montrose quadrangle). All three of these tracts adjoined. On 11 May 1803 Thomas Skidmore entered a claim for an additional 60 acres on the east side of the tract he lived on, adjoining the land belonging to Job and Thomas Ingram which had been deeded to them by their father. Still another deed recorded in 1809 shows that Benjamin Ingram had joined his brothers and the Skidmores for a time on Cherry Fork, and that Robert Armstrong was still another neighbor.

Abraham Ingram, the elder, purchased 147 acres on Hackers Creek a mile or two north of Philippi in what is now Barbour County (then Harrison) on 18 January 1806. He appears to have provided for all of his children during his lifetime. His will dated 19 August 1817 remembers only his widow Elizabeth and his two youngest children Jacob and Comfort. Job Ingram (1777-1852) removed in 1807 to McKean Township, Licking County, Ohio, and his brothers Thomas, Benjamin and Isaac had followed him there by 1810. Abraham Ingram III died after 1840 in what is now Roane County, West Virginia.

Thomas Skidmore died in Randolph County before 28 September 1807 when his widow and her son Thomas gave a bond to administer the estate. William Wamsley and James Ferguson were sureties for the administrators and the court ordered Robert Armstrong, Benjamin Ingram, George Tetrick, and Hibert Newel to appraise the estate. The first two appraisers were brothers-in-law; Benjamin Ingram (born about 1780) married Catherine Friel (the widow of William Armstrong, Junior) on 5 July 1800 in Bath (now Highland) County and Robert Armstrong had married her sister Jane Friel on 15 April 1794 in Bath County. We will meet Robert Armstrong again; his daughter Agnes J. Armstrong married another Thomas Skidmore much later.

The appraisal was taken on October 19th and it valued his personal property at £102 8sh. A vendue sale was held on the following day and it realized £114 almost £12 more than estimated. The sale bill is on file at Elkins and it shows that the widow was the heaviest purchaser; she bought (with other things) a mare, a black horse, a currycomb, oats, a pitch fork, and four yearling calves from the barn, together with eight pewter plates, a pewter dish and basin, six spoons, two spinning wheels, and a pair of cards from the house. She was living with her only daughter Sarah, a spinster, as late as 1830.

On the same day that the administrators were appointed (28 September 1807) Daniel Capito came to court and obtained a judgment against the estate naming Abraham Skidmore (as the eldest son of the deceased still resident in Randolph County) as the defendant in the sum of £7 17sh 3 1/2d. Capito was a storekeeper at Beverly, and the account was probably for general merchandise purchased by Thomas Skidmore there for his family. The debt was not paid, and Capito came back to court on 22 February 1809 asking for the same sum from the administrators (Abraham Skidmore was dropped from the bill) asking for both interest and his costs as well. The case came to a jury trial on 28 March 1809. The verdict went to the plaintiff and Eleanor and Thomas Skidmore were ordered to pay Capito £14 6sh 11 1/2d. In the same period the administrators filed several successful suits of their own to collect small debts owing to Thomas Skidmore, Senior, before his death.

Beginning in 1809 the children of Thomas Skidmore sold their individual 1/9 interests in two tracts owned by their father to their cousin Isaac Skidmore of Pendleton County. On 24 November 1817 Isaac Skidmore of Pendleton County sold 8/9s of two tracts granted to Thomas Skidmore to his brother-in-law Robert Chenoweth for $2000. The first was had by a patent dated 1 June 1782 of 167 acres and another tract adjoining of 125 acres was patented on 7 June 1801. Isaac Skidmore's conveyance notes that “Joseph Skidmore's ninth part which is hereby understood not to be conveyed by this deed.” The Chenoweths seem to occupied (and improved) the property as noticed above and in July 1818 the court minutes mention the forks in the road at this place, now Buffalo Street and Randolph Avenue.

John Woods did a survey of Randolph County in 1822 and prepared a crude map of the area. The house of Thomas Skidmore is shown, presumably since the widow was still living at home. There appears to have been a road that continued up Cherry Fork, over the mountains past the house of Adam Harper, and thence down Clover Run in Tucker County to Goff's Ferry (now St. George) on the Cheat River. The map is so poorly drawn, however, that this supposition must be taken with considerable caution.

After the death of Eleanor Skidmore her children (and the four daughters of her deceased son Joseph of Carter County, Kentucky) gave individual quitclaim deeds in the summer of 1847 to Elijah Skidmore (who was then occupying the premises) for their interest in the Cherry Tree Run land “where the said Thomas Skidmore resided until the time of his death.” John and Judith Skidmore, together with James and Elizabeth Skidmore, joined with Absalom and Rebecca (Bowman) Wilmoth on 1 September 1847 to sell a further 3/9s to Thomas Skidmore, Junior, for $500.00. This deed notes that they were conveying “the whole of the lands formerly owned by Thomas Skidmore, Decd.” The Wilmoths' interest came from Sarah Skidmore who had sold her share to them earlier for $48.00, seemingly a considerable bargain. Elijah Skidmore then transferred the whole of his interest to his brother Thomas in the same year and the title has not been traced further.

Children:

Joseph, born about 1772. Abraham, born about 1774. Jeremiah, born about 1776. Samuel, born about 1778. Sarah, born about 1782. On 2 February 1843 she sold her 1/9 interest in her father’s land to Absalom Wilmoth for $48.00, the deed noting that her brother Elijah was then living on the family homestead. She was living unmarried in 1850 with her brother James. Lieutenant Thomas, born 12 November 1785. Elijah, born 16 August 1787. John, born about 1789. James, born about 1793.[1] Sources

↑ "THOMAS SKIDMORE (SCUDAMORE), 1605-1684, OF WESTERLEIGH, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, AND FAIRFIELD, CONNECTICUT; his ancestors, and descendants to the ninth generation", Sixth Edition: Akron, Ohio, 4 August 2010, © Warren Skidmore, page 141, person listing #61