>Colleagues: > > This continues my spot study reports on research targeted at >identifying the origin of Davis Davenport. Today, I would address the matter >of Parish records as they might include Davis. > > Our earliest glimpse of Davis (1696) placed him on the South side of >Mattaponi River, approximately seventeen miles above its confluence with the >Pamunkey River to form the York River, in then King & Queen County. At that >time, Davis was either responsible to St. Stephen's Parish (north of >Mattaponi) or to St. John's Parish (Pamunkey Neck below Jack's Creek). The >question as to which parish of the Established Church then claimed him as a >tithable is problematic, for Virginia historians disagree in their portrayals >of what was going on in Pamunkey Neck during the last thirty years of the >Seventeenth Century. > > Timewise, our quest for Davis Davenport's identity should be centered >on the last thirty years of Seventeenth Century also, for the John >Talbot-Elias Downes patent of 1667 cited only Edward Holmes as an adjoining >landowner. This being twenty-nine years before Davis's plantation and >landing were identified as adjoining the tract in 1696, Davis was likely >still a lad in either England or Virginia. When Phillip Ludwell, Tobias >Handford, and Richard Whitehead obtained their 2,000-acre patent adjoining >Talbot and Downes in 1673, no adjoining land owners were cited, but one side >of the survey description was contiguous to the upriver side of the >Talbot-Downes patent. As we have discussed earlier, this patent was >fraudulently raised to a 20,000-acre grant, which was traded for three >5,000-acre patents in 1699, with the 1673 tract of 2,000 acres being >abandoned. Davis Davenport, per Taylor's survey of 1696, was located >adjacent to the Talbot-Downes tract on the upriver side on that abandoned >tract. Analysis of subsequent (after 1699) patents suggests that a patent >including the land whereon Davis was located in 1696 was obtained in 1701 by >James Edwards, who before 1699 and in concert with Lewis Davis and Stephen >Terry, had obtained 1300 acres from Richard Yarbrough, who earlier (1677) had >leased an indeterminate amount of land from the Pamunkey Indians. A >surviving King William deed documents that James Edwards conveyed 330 acres >to Thomas Terry in 1703. On the King William Quit Rent List of 1704, James >Edwards was charged with 350 acres, Thomas Terry with 300 acres, and Davis >Davenport for 200 acres, a total of 850 acres. Edwards' 1703 patent was for >854 acres. The supposition is made that Davenport took title to his land >from Edwards. > > Timewise again, we are looking at the period 1673-1696. Davis was >not there in 1673, was there in 1696, a window of 23 years. We can tighten >up the spread by noting that all of the settlement on the South side of >Mattaponi above the Talbot-Downes patent occurred after 1677 (after Nathaniel >Bacon's army had decisively quelled the Indians) when Richard Yarbrough >obtained his lease of Indian land. Yarbrough, an Indian translator and >trader, apparently included the Ludwell-Handford-Whitehead tract within his >lease. > > There is no evidence that Ludwell et al either seated or seeded the >2,000 acres. Hence, the patent by grant stipulation should have lapsed after >two years. Yet because the land granted was not Crown land (the Indians >still held title in 1677), technically it could not be taken back by the >Crown and regranted. It was a tangled web, and Davis Davenport seemingly was >right square in the middle of it. (I'll deal with Philip Ludwell, Tobias >Handford, and Richard Whitehead in another study--there are some interesting >implications concerning Ludwell and Whitehead which might bear on Davis' >identity, but it will take us back towards the Ann Davenport-Thomas Davis >theory. Tobias Handford was a Gloucester County miller who possibly was one >of those hanged for participation in Bacon's Rebellion.) > > Given this state of affairs, what can we find in written history and >Established Church records that might help identify Davis? > > The least creditable authority is John H. Gwathmey's Twelve Virginia >Counties, Where the Western Migration Began (Richmond, 1937, reprinted by the >Genealogical Publishing Company, Baltimore, 1979). In his chapters on New >Kent and King William County, Gwathmey makes a number of statements which, >compared with other records and authorities, border on fiction. For example, >his claim that King William Court House served as the Court House for New >Kent County has no basis in fact, for prior to 1701, Pamunkey Neck, where >King William Court House was and is located, was by treaty an Indian >reservation where the Pamunkey Queen was supposedly the ultimate authority. >Englishmen began encroaching upon Pamunkey Neck in 1650, and after the Rebel >Nathaniel Bacon's army had decisively defeated and decimated the Indians at >West Point (the lower tip of Pamunkey Neck) in 1676, the Pamunkey Queen did >not have enough warriors left to protect Indian interests. By 1701 she was >forced to accept British citizenship, pledge allegiance and loyalty to the >Crown, and seek the protection of British law for herself and her tribes. >Gwathmey's portrayal of New Kent Court being held monthly in the middle of an >Indian reservation suggests that he had not done his homework, for had he >done so, he would have found that New Kent County had a Northside (above the >Mattaponi River) and a Southside (below the Pamunkey River) and that Courts >were held alternately from one side to the other. Above the Pamunkey River >and below the Mattaponi was Pamunkey Neck, and that was Indian >territory--even though the English there outnumbered the Indians by 1680, and >twice petitioned Jamestown before 1696 for county status. No county was >established until the Indian title to the Neck was surrendered in 1701. >Then, and only then, was King William County erected from Pamunkey Neck and a >court house established. > > Inasmuch as political units (counties) and established church units >(parishes) in Seventeenth Century Virginia tended to be one and the same, >their records supposedly included the same people. Hence, where county >records have been destroyed, parish records provide a backup resource, and >vice versa. Where both county and parish records have been lost, as is the >case for King William County and its three historical parishes, namely St. >John's (1680?), St. Margaret's (1721), and St. David's (1742), we have to >fall back to the incomplete records of the colonial government and to private >archives. > > In the mid-1850s Bishop William Meade, head of the Episcopal Church >in Virginia, wrote the two-volume Old Churches, Ministers, and Families of >Virginia (Philadelphia, 1857, reprinted by Genealogical Publishing Company, >Baltimore, 1966). Working from original documents in the Episcopal Archives, >Meade wrote a comprehensive history of the Established Church in Virginia, >parish by parish, which was more of an identification and glorification of >colonial aristocracy than a scholarly development of how the church >functioned (or did not function). While Bishop Meade did not gloss over the >manifest failings and worldliness of the majority of the Anglican vicars >before the Revolution, he paid little attention to the importance of >consistency in chronology and geography. He had mother parishes being >created after daughter parishes, could not find some of the early parishes, >either in the records or on a map, misidentified church sites, etc. Meade >should be read to savor the aristocratic flavor of Colonial Virginia, which >continued in the Episcopal Church after it had been disestablished. For >those families which were gentry before and after the Revolution, the Bishop >wrote a seminal history. Others should expect little, for there were few, if >any, commoners among the vestries enumerated in the two volumes. The >Pamunkey Davenports were low land commoners, are not mentioned. But in the >Piedmont and after 1760, the Thomas Davenports (Sr. and Jr.) of Cumberland >and Halifax (III and IV), Richard Davenport of Albemarle, and Charles >Davenport of Culpeper, all Pamunkeys, were Anglican vestrymen, and were so >noted by Meade. But there is no Davenport genealogy recounted in the >Bishop's chronicles of aristocratic families. (Burket Davenport, a Tidewater >Davenport, the highest profile of the surname in Colonial and Revolutionary >Virginia, was identified as Bisket Davenport.) > > The most comprehensive analysis of the Church in Pamunkey Neck >appears strangely in the "Introduction" to The Vestry Book of Blisland >(Blissland) Parish, New Kent and James City Counties, Virginia, 1721-1786 >(Richmond: Library of Virginia, 1935) by Dr. Churchill Gibson Chamberlayne. >Chamberlayne was convinced that Blissland Parish was the Mother Parish of the >York River Basin, and searched all the early records studiously to find the >evidence to prove his contention. While he was not so rude as to contradict >or indict Bishop Meade, he wondered how the Bishop could have come to some of >the conclusions he did when he had used the same records that Chamberlayne >did. > > In essence, Chamberlayne makes a strong case for Blissland Parish >having originally included all of New Kent County when it was erected in >1654. He argues with evidence and from a void that prior to 1680 Pamunkey >Neck was included in whole or in part in five parishes: Blissland (c1652, >entire York River Basin), Stratton Major (c1655, north side of York and >Mattaponi, north of the dividing ridge in Pamunkey Neck), St. Stephens >(c1673, all of Stratton Major above Harquake Creek, Northside New Kent), St, >Peter's (1678-79, Southside New Kent, south side of the dividing ridge in >Pamunkey Neck above John's Creek), and St. John's (c1780, all of Pamunkey >Neck below John's Creek). > > Based on Davis's 1696 location, his land after 1650 was successively >in Blissland Parish, then Stratton Major Parish, then St. Stephen's Parish, >and finally St. John's. The records of St. Stephen's and St. John's are long >lost. The records of Blissland and Stratton Major exist in part, but for >later years when the parishes had shrunk away from Pamunkey Neck. Blissland >ended its existence after the Revolution split between New Kent and James >City counties. Stratton Major ended as the parish for Lower King & Queen >County. St. Stephen's at the end included Upper King & Queen. St. Peter's >was New Kent. St. John's was exclusively Pamunkey Neck and spawned St. >George's (1721, Spotsylvania), St. Margaret's (1721, King William and >Caroline, later solely Caroline), and St. David's (1742, Upper King William). > > There is no help for identifying Davis found thus far in searching >Anglican parish records. The circulated report that there are Davenport >mentions in the Petsworth Parish (Upper Gloucester County) records is false. >There are no Davenport mentions in those records. Nor are there any mentions >of Davenports in the relatively complete St. Peter's records. > > This possibly comes under the classification of "Much Ado About >Nothing," but it was a job that had to be done. > > Comment? > > John Scott Davenport > >