Billy Bob: Relative to the Duke Family History (p. 340) you showed me at the Louisa, Virginia, Library in September which cited a Susannah Pettus marrying ---- Davenport, date not given, and having an older sister married in January 1775, and another sister married in Louisa County on 15Dec1803, the father of all three ladies having been William Pettus, who was a Militia Captain in November 1772 and afterwards a Colonel in the Revolution: The quality of the claim, if you gave it precisely, is rather uneven, but most elements are corroborated by other Louisa and Spotsylvania, Virginia, and Abbeville, South Carolina, record extracts. All of the Louisa corroboratives occurred within St. Martin's Parish, i.e., approximately the lower two and a half miles of the county--in fact, virtually next door to the Old Martin Davenport plantation. Our working paper "The Pamunkey Davenports of Colonial Virginia," gives the wife of John Davenport (A4f), son of Richard of Albemarle (a4), son of Martin of Hanover (A, d. 1735), as Susannah Pettus. This identification, admittedly a circumstantial one, is based on John's LW&T probated in Abbeville District, South Carolina, in 1798--wherein he identified his wife as Susannah, and his children as Charles, Richard, Peggy, and Patsy. Two of the witnesses to the Will were John Arnold and John Pettus Arnold. John Arnold obtained a marriage bond to wed Barbara Pettus in Louisa County on 9Jan1775, with Garret Minor, Thomas Minor, and William Arnold , Jr., his securities. (By your Duke book that would have been the older sister who got married in 1775.) This John Arnold (there are at least three contemporaries to keep separate) was the son of William Arnold, Sr., and wife Mary Davenport, eldest daughter of William Davenport of Spotsylvania. In 1778-79, William Arnold, Sr., and his brother-in-law John Davenport of William went to Uwharrie Waters, Guilford County, North Carolina, to look at land in the same neighborhood where Augustine Davenport, another son of William, had settled in 1768-69. The Rowan-Guilford Line divided the neighborhood, with Augustine being on the Rowan side. Shortly after Arnold's and John's arrival in North Carolina, Randolph County was created from the south of Guilford, and took in the land of Arnold's and John's interest. Having decided to settle permanently in North Carolina, the Arnolds returned to Virginia, and divested themselves of their property there, to wit: 9Dec1779 - Deed: William Arnold, wife Mary, of Randolph County, North Carolina, to John Arnold, of Louisa County, Virginia, for 5 shillings and the love and good will they bear the said John Arnold, 230 acres in Spotsylvania County [description not abstracted].../s/ John Arnold, Mary "X" Arnold. Wit: William Graves, William Pettus, William Pettus, Jr., John Z. Lewis, Robert Lewis. (Crozier's Spotsylvania Deeds, 372) Another piece of the picture you need is the fact that William Pettus [Sr.], father of Susanna, was married to Susannah Graves, daughter of Thomas Graves, Sr., and Ann Davenport, daughter of Davis Davenport. Graves, Sr., had two plantations, one in Spotsylvania, one in Louisa, across the North Anna River from each other. When Thomas Graves, Sr., died in Spotsylvania in 1768, son-in-law William Pettus was one of the executors. Hence, the marriage of John Arnold and Barbara Pettus was a marriage of Davenport cousins beyond the first degree. Richard Davenport of Albemarle apparently had obtained land from his father Martin's original 400-acre patent of 1727 (Martin retained only 150 acres on the time of his death). Richard did not sell the land, which either straddled the Louisa-Hanover line or abutted it, but rented or sharecropped it for twenty years or more (Martin Davenport? John Davenport, Sr.?). In the late 1770s, he apparently put his son John, who had married or would soon marry Susannah Pettus (her father's plantation was virtually next door to the Davenport place) on the place. Based on the approximated ages of John's children, an estimated date of marriage of 1778 is not unreasonable. One custom of the time that you've overlooked, Billy Bob: Obtaining a Marriage Bond was not the only way to legitimatize a marriage in Colonial Virginia. You could have the Bans read--which consisted of having the Parish Vicar announce the intentions of a couple to marry at three successive Church services, each time asking for those knowing of any impediments to such a union to come forward. After the third reading and no impediments existing, the Vicar would then leisurely marry the couple at a fashionable affair. No marriage bond or license required. Dissenters to the Anglican Church, of which there were many in the Davenport neighborhood where Hanover-Spotsylvania-Louisa came together, predominantly Baptists but there were Quakers and Presbyterians also, invariably obtained Marriage Bonds, wanted nothing to do with the Established Church--even though they were forced to support it by Sheriff-enforced tithing. To the contrary, devoted Anglicans, which included the family of Richard Davenport of Albemarle (he was a Vestryman, one of those gentlemen responsible for the religious and temporal affairs of the Parish), exercised the patience and discipline of having Bans read. The Vicar did not read Bans freely. He had to be paid and was likely more expensive than the cost of a bond, but it was the proper, genteel way of doing things. The likelihood was that John, son of Richard, had his and Susannah's Bans read. Hence it is unlikely that you will find a marriage bond or license for them in Louisa records--and all of the records of St. Martin's Parish, where a record would have been, no longer exist. The Pettus land, bought by Susanna's grandfather John Pettus of the Thomas Carr Estate in 1745, adjoined Martin Davenport's 1727 patent (hence was quite near Richard of Albemarle's tract), but by then one Garret owned that portion of Martin's tract. Martin's original ownership was cited in the Carr to Pettus deed. The Pettus land was totally within Louisa County, created from Upper Hanover in 1742. The original Davenport tract was divided roughly in half by the Hanover-Louisa County Line. John, son of Richard, lived on the Louisa tract until 1791, when he moved to Abbeville District, South Carolina, joining his older brother Charles there. Charles, surely the most successful of Richard's sons, had been a magistrate and Sheriff of Culpeper County during the Revolution, moved to the South Carolina backcountry in 1785--where he was immediately commissioned a Justice of the Peace and a member of the County Court. The Federal Census of 1790 was not done in South Carolina until the first six months of 1792, and by that time John Davenport had moved in from Virginia. Both he and brother Charles are enumerated in a cluster in Abbeville--Charles had 22 slaves, John had 5. They would soon be joined by Arnolds from Spotsylvania and Pettuses from Louisa. Concurrent or subsequent to John's decision to move to South Carolina, Richard Davenport contracted to sell his Louisa land to Tarleton Brown Luck, who had married a niece of Richard's, namely Crotia Cassity Kennedy (mother Crotia Davenport) in 1789. However, Richard died in early 1793 before he made a deed. By terms of his LW&T, five of his sons inherited the yet undeeded land. There are several powers of attorneys and deeds, recorded and unrecorded, in Albemarle and Louisa involving Richard's heirs passing title to Luck. Luck did not long survive Richard Davenport. He was dead by 1795, and his widow married the Rev. Hezekiah Arnold, to whom the Tarlton Brown Luck heirs sold the tract in 1798. Insofar as John Arnold and wife Barbara (nee Pettus) were concerned, they left Spotsylvania County in late 1791, likely going south with John of Richard and his family, to wit: 21Oct1791 - Deed: John Arnold, wife Barbara, to James Arnold, all of Spotsylvania County, for L40, 400 acres in Spotsylvania County, adjoining John Waller, Joel Trigg, Jonathan Clark, John Wiglesworth, Jr., and William Buchanan.../s/ John Arnold, Barbara Arnold. Wit: None. (Crozier's Abstracts of Spotsylvania County Deeds, 450) John Arnold and Barbara apparently first settled with his parents William Arnold, wife Mary (nee Davenport) in Laurens County, South Carolina, approximately twenty miles north on the north side of Saluda River, but by the time of John's death, they had joined John's family in Abbeville. After the death of his father-in-law Thomas Graves, Sr., and the death of the widow Ann Davenport Graves, William Pettus, Sr., bought the Graves plantation in Spotsylvania from his in-law heirs and moved thereon. He died there in 1798. His LW&T was made on 18Sep1795, probated on 4Sep1798, was witnessed by Sharp Smith, Peter Arnold, and Charles Dabney. His executors were sons William Pettus, Overton Hart Pettus, James Pettus, Joseph Pettus, and son-in-law William Graves. He left legacies to his wife [unnamed], sons Overton Hart Pettus; James Pettus; Joseph Pettus; nominated trustees: friends Jonathan Clarke, Edmund Clark, and Samuel Overton Pettus; and daughter Louisa. He identified his children as: Barbary Arnold, William Pettus, Nancy Graves, Susanna Davenport, Overton Hart Pettus, James Pettus, Joseph Pettus, and Louisa Pettus. (Spotsylvania County, VA, Wills, F:37) Louisa Pettus was apparently the sister of Susanna, wife of ---- Davenport, who got married in 1803 per the Duke tome. Susanna Pettus (nee Graves) was still alive in 1791 when she joined her husband in deeding Spotsylvania land. Witnesses then were Joseph Graves, Peter Arnold, Joseph Pettus, and Samuel O. Pettus. Gwathmey's Historical Register of Virginians in the Revolution (1938) cites William Pettus, Louisa Militia, Major in 1777, appointed Lt. Colonel 14Apr1778, reappointed 8Jun1778, referred to as Colonel in private life (1782). So the Duke book is corroborated in that regard also. All of this, I submit, makes a rather strong circumstantial case that Susanna Pettus was the wife of John of Richard. I have a dozen more Pettus, Arnold, Graves items for evidence, but they would only be beating a dead horse insofar as furthering the argument. Does that answer your question, Bill Bob? John Scott Davenport Holmdel, NJ