To Angela, Elaine of Avery, and Any Others Interested: My apologies for taking so long to respond relative to the hypothesis that William Davenport, wife Comfort Fisher, who was in Surry County, NC, by 1782, was William Davenport, son of Richard Davenport of Albemarle County. To my mind, William of Surry, later of Casey County, KY, was a done deal insofar as identification was concerned more than twenty-five years ago. Before I could respond intelligently to Elaine's suggestion that I address the subject, I had to go through my files. I have fourteen long file drawers stuffed full. Since 1976 and my then move to Virginia, I have had a systematic filing system--can retrieve by surname and geographical cross reference. My search did not find a folder for William Davenport of Surry-Casey, and I know that I had one. But I may have loaned it out or given it away, having been convinced that it was not a Davenport line of my interest, and had, therefore, been a blind alley and of no further value. I did not become a family wide researcher until the late 1970s when I was on the faculty of Brigham Young University and was exposed to the Family History concept. I then had easy access to the BYU Library, which is second only to FHC at Salt Lake City in microfilm resources. Before becoming a Family History convert, I had occasionally given away data files that were no longer of interest. The William Davenport-Comfort Fisher was likely one of those. I had traced them from Accomack County, VA, to Surry County, NC, to Casey County, KY, to (one line) Sangamon County, Illinois, before it became obvious that they were not identifiable kin of mine. My recent search did not find their data in my North Carolina/Davenport files, but I found generic data in my Casey County, KY, file, and eldest or second son George and his full line in my Sangamon County, IL, file, all of which corroborates which I now relate. I can dispose of the hypothesis that William of Surry-Casey and William of Richard of Albemarle-Kentucky were one and the same person by pointing out that William of Surry-Casey was having children 10 to 20 years before either of the two Pamunkey William Davenports who were both in Kentucky by 1795. (William of Surry-Casey was not in Kentucky until after 1800.) George Davenport of Sangamon County, Illinois, either the first or second of William of Surry-Casey, was born in North Carolina in 1781. At that time, based on their known children, neither William of Fayette County, KY, nor William of Mercer County, KY, was married. William of Fayette was the son of William of Spotsylvania, son of Martin of Hanover (d. 1735). William of Mercer was allegedly, the identification is vigorously disputed but that's another discussion for another time, the son of Richard of Albemarle, son of Martin of Hanover. Whatever, William of Mercer was married in Kentucky in 1795, did not start a known family until after that date. William of Fayette, an officer in the Virginia Continental Line, apparently married in the mid-to-late 1780s, then took advantage of his generous Revolutionary War land bounty and went to Kentucky from Louisa County, VA. He was not on the Fayette tax list of 1787, but he was on the next extant list of 11Jan1790, and remained thereon until his death in 1828. Both William of Fayette and William of Mercer were on Kentucky Tax Lists in 1800. Both were enumerated in the Census of 1810, with households reflecting children much younger than those of William of Casey, who, in the same Census, had four sons with their own household living near him in Casey County. For those interested in pursuing the William Davenport-Comfort Fisher line, the records of Accomack County, Virginia, the northernmost county on Virginia's Eastern Shore, are remarkably complete back to Accomack's beginnings in the Seventeenth Century. I did not do Accomack, because I cut off my work on William and Comfort after identifying and discarding at the front end. You will also find the couple in the records of Eaton's Baptist Church, now Davie County, NC, then Rowan County, NC. I stumbled across William, Comfort and family while I was doing research on the Reverend Lazarus Whitehead, who was the pioneer Baptist minister of Wayne County, Indiana Territory, and the pastor of Pamunkey Jesse Davenport, son of Augustine, Sr., of Rowan County, NC. Jesse moved north of the Ohio River in 1801, was in Wayne County, IT, by 1806, where he built and operated the first mill on Elkhorn Creek. Whitehead came a few years later, established his church several miles downstream from Davenport's Mill. Whitehead was pastor at Eaton's Church twice--both times for a number of years, once in the late 1780s-early1790s and again in the first decade of the 1800s. Willard Heiss, the late Indiana Quaker historian-genealogist, had a marvelous collection of references and microfilm concerning North Carolina religion in the Eighteenth and early Nineteenth centuries, and loaned me a film which contained the entire minutes of Eaton's Church, from the time of the Revolution, if I recall correctly, until the time of the Civil War. There are a number of mentions of William Davenport, his wife Comfort, and their family therein. I'm going on recall, but William and Comfort were settled on Deep Creek in Surry County, just above the Rowan-Surry Line and at least twenty miles north of Eaton's Church (it was still going strong ESE of Mocksville, Davie County, twenty-five years ago--I attended a service and researched its graveyard). Why the Surry Davenports would affiliate with Eaton's when there were surely other organized Baptists nearer, I know not, but during that time there were Regular Baptists, Separate Baptists, Particular Baptists, and German Baptists (Hard Shells or Anti-Missionary came later), among others, in the North Carolina Piedmont. Eaton's apparently was in doctrinal and discipline agreement with the Davenports' beliefs. As I recall they were received by Letter from an Accomack County church, and along with several others were constituted as the Arm of Eaton's on Deep Creek. Over the years, the Deep Creek Arm increased in number by Letter (transfers from other Baptist churches) and Experience (baptized), and in the mid-to-late 1790s was set off as a daughter church of Eaton's. Rev. Whitehead was one of those constituting the new church. Whether Deep Creek Baptist still thrives, I know not, for I had no interest in its cemetery. The basic evidence, I suggest, isolates the William and Comfort Davenports, who I have categorized as EASTERN SHORE Davenports, from the PAMUNKEY Davenports, and, therefore, excludes the possibility that this William was the son of Pamunkey Richard Davenport of Albemarle. If someone wants to do the Southern Davenports a favor, a thorough culling of the records of Mercer County, Kentucky, would be immensely helpful, for there were more Davenport households there in the Census of 1810 than in any other County in the Commonwealth, and at least two of my correspondents, descendants of William of Mercer, have declared that none of the other households were children or kin of his. One of those households was Richard Davenport, son of John, grandson of John, Sr., great-grandson of Martin of Hanover. He was in Danville (now Boyle County), keeping a tavern, and subsequently was a regimental commander in the War of 1812 who was breveted a Brigadier General of Militia for his heroism in the Recapture of Detroit and the various battles in Upper Canada; then was dead by 1819, leaving a most distinguished family. Back in the early 1970s, I had a running disagreement with an elderly lady and her daughter in Southwest Missouri about the identifications of the early William Davenport's of Kentucky. They claimed that William of Fayette was the son of Richard of Albemarle. I had already placed William of Fayette in the Pamunkey file (which I then called "William of Spotsylvania"). After much wrangling, I finally made a trip to Lexington, county seat of Fayette, and searched the original records. I was frustrated on data prior to 1800 by a courthouse fire that had destroyed or badly damaged records prior thereto, but I found enough in extant records to make a case to my satisfaction--but I was unsuccessful in convincing the Missouri ladies, who were largely going on gut instinct, speculation, and a desire to get another star on their DAR ribbons. However, I have not encountered the claim again since. Failing to do Mercer County, Kentucky, records when I had the opportunity (I lived in Cincinnati for twenty-five years) is one of my lifetime regrets insofar as Davenport research is concerned. But there's always microfilm at an LDS Family History Center. If anyone has the motivation to take on the job and be the pathfinder in that area, enjoy. You could prove me wrong. John Scott Davenport Holmdel, NJ