Move to Virginia

Updated December 26, 2006

Somewhere in the 1760 to 1775 period, after thirty-plus years in New Jersey, William Allen moved his family to Virginia. This move is somewhat mysterious, both in terms of the motives behind it and the process by which it happened. The traditional story is that the family moved in the winter of 1762/63, and, in fact, William did purchased 900 acres in southeastern Loudoun County (on the North Fork of Broad Run) from a John Sasser on December 21, 1762. (He is also reported to have purchased 1150 acres in 1759 in partnership with a cousin, Joseph Allen, and a business partner, John Violett, but after looking at the records of that transaction, it is clear that this purchaser was a different William Allen. I have dubbed him "Bad Bill" because he appears in the Loudoun County Court records several times for various nefarious activities.)

The 1762 purchase date is not indicative of the move date--as much as previous biographers have wanted to use it for that purpose. Not only had William not sold his New Jersey farm in 1762, he continues to show up in other New Jersey records for several years. In addition, he does not consistently appear on the Virginia tithable (tax) rolls until the mid 1770s. Beyond that, it is clear from the total record that William did what many well-to-do "planters" did in the 18th century: he speculated in land. We need to rely on other evidence to determine when he actually made the permanent move to the south.

The situation is complicated, and I'm not going to review all the evidence here. Readers interested in slogging through it should download these two documents: "William Allen - Paper Trail" and "William Allen - Timeline." In the meantime, though, I can say a little about the property he purchased and what was happening to the family in these years.

The 900 acre parcel was part of the Northern Neck proprietary owned by Thomas, Lord Fairfax of England. The land in this region, which included everything between the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers (about six counties worth of land), was not sold outright to settlers, but rather leased in a somewhat feudal manner. The purchase price gave the holder the right to live on the land and dispose of the property through sale, but each year a quitrent was due to the proprietor--this in lieu of the personal and/or military service that were features of traditional Medieval tenancy. Failure to pay meant that the property reverted to Lord Fairfax. William's parcel came to him through a series of owners that included:

The manor house at Red Hill Farm as it looks today.

Settlers did not own their property outright until 1781, when Lord Fairfax died. At that point the new State of Virginia finally nullified the proprietorship and granted the lands to the occupying tenants. The property purchased by William (which came to be known as Red Hill Plantation (later Red Hill Farm) was held in the family until 1884.

(An interesting side note: Patrick Henry's plantation in Charlotte County, Virginia was also called Red Hill. He died there three days before William died at his own Red Hill.)

Virginia of the mid-eighteenth century was becoming something of a paradise, compared to many places in the colonies. The land was relatively fertile, the climate was far enough south to lessen the impact of northern winters and far enough north to attenuate the intense heat of southern summers. The hardships of early colonial life were pretty much behind it, especially in the Tidewater and Northern Neck areas (though in the Piedmont and Blue Ridge farther west things were still relatively undeveloped). Tobacco was a lucrative cash crop, and even without a major investment in land and slaves, one could lead a relatively prosperous life.

Loudoun County, to the northwest of what is now Washington DC, had been settled but not totally filled by mid century. It had been split off from Fairfax County in 1757 (home of such notables as George Washington) and was developing its own political and social character by the time the Allens arrived,. Many of the new settlers were "dissenters"--not conforming to the predominant Anglican Church. This put them in somewhat the same position dissenters held in Britain, Ireland and New Jersey, but their numbers were such that their political and social power was not insignificant. In addition, historians of Virginia have argued the Virginia elite did a better job of building trust with the non-Anglican members of their society. In general, the picture is more of benevolent paternalism than the legal and political squabbling that took place in New Jersey.

Another fact that helps us understand the move was that in those days groups of families would often move together. This was a practice especially followed by the Scots-Irish. In the Allen's case, it appears that several families joined them in the move to Virginia: four Fox brothers (Absalom, Ambrose, Amos, and Gabriel--William's brother-in-law), Ephraim Herriot (William's son-in-law), John and Abraham Warford (Jane's brother and nephew), and John and Catherine Skillman, though apparently they didn't all make the move in the same year.

In the middle of this transition, and with a new baby in the house (Joseph, b. April 1764), Jane Warford died (January 1765). There is some confusion about where Joseph was born and where Jane died. Some sources report that it was in New Jersey, some say in Virginia. Based on the amount of family activity in New Jersey during these years, my money is on the northern home for both events.

At the time of Jane's death, William would have had several young children in the house: Joseph, at less than a year old, would have been a special challenge; daughters Ann and Elizabeth were not yet teenagers. Though the older siblings could have picked up some of the slack, and neighboring wives probably gave short term assistance, William was in need of a long-term partner. Accordingly, a year later he married Sarah Cox (b. 1726 in Middlesex, New Jersey). She was also recently widowed, having been married to Christopher Beekman and living in Griggstown, New Jersey. They had married in 1741 and had seven children, the youngest being just a baby when her father died of smallpox in 1764. The oldest were in their early twenties, with her daughter Catherine recently married to John Skillman, also of Middlesex County. Sarah reportedly brought her younger children with her when she married William, which would have dramatically changed the dynamics of the Allen household.

Though the Allen genealogical records haven't recorded the state of William's family at this time, Beekman family records give us the names of Sarah's children. With a little imagination we can reconstruct the state of things in 1766:

Sarah's older children by Christopher Beekman (Christopher Jr., Catherine, and James) and William's older sons by Jane Warford (William, John, David, and Thomas) were adults by this time. We have indications that they were still associated with their parents, though somewhat inconsistently. The picture is fuzzy in detail, but a general pattern emerges. What I see is a dramatic shift in family culture because of the merger. The older children, especially William's, drifted away from the new blended family and formed a social network of their own. This did not happen immediately, but over time. The best indication of this is the fact that those who survived the Revolutionary War ended up living in Hampshire County, Virginia rather than in Loudoun County with William and Sarah. The younger kids were raised in the new family constellation that centered on the two couples of William & Sarah and Catherine & John Skillman.

In short order, William and Sarah had three children of their own. One report says two daughters (who died in infancy) and a son, James (b. October 15, 1769). Another report lists Samuel, Hester, and James as the children of their first three years together, again with the first two dying young.

Adding it all up, it looks like William (late 50s) and Sarah (early 40s) would have had eight or nine children in tow in the late 1760s, ranging in age from infancy up to late teens. Only two or three would have been boys, and only one of these, William Beekman (13), would have been old enough to be significant help on the farm. Sarah, on the other hand, would have had a lot of help from the four adolescent girls in caring for the infants and toddlers.

It seems to me that the real impetus for the move to Virginia came after this blending of families. For William and Sarah, it would have been a wrenching transition. Both would have been dealing with the loss of longtime partners. The Amwell farm would have had little attraction for Sarah, and after the loss of Jane Warford, William might not have been too comfortable there either. A couple of events happened at the end of the decade that might have tipped the balance in favor of moving once and for all:

Whether Catherine and John Skillman led the effort to move (as the Skillman family history claims), or whether they followed Sarah and William's lead, the migration south seems to have gotten underway after these events. The actual move (my guess again) probably took place in 1771. The Skillman history claims it was 1769, but that was the year that little James was born (October)--an unlikely time for Sarah to want to relocate. There were several events in 1771 that suggest it was "the year:" the April auction of the Amwell farm, the sale in June of 300 acres of Red Hill to Abraham Warford (which wasn't recorded with the county clerk until August), a newspaper advertisement for a runaway slave from the Amwell farm in June, and the fact that John and Catherine Skillman didn't purchase their Virginia property until that year. Little James would have been just shy of two years of age that summer--a much better time to pack up the house and move.

However, the family still wasn't through with New Jersey for several more years. William starts showing up on the Virginia tax rolls consistently only in the early 1770s. He remortgaged the New Jersey property again in 1774 and purchased an additional farm in Hopewell Township that year with an Isaac Green (which wasn't disposed of until 1785).

Part of the capital to develop Red Hill came out of the land itself. During the thirty years after he bought it, William sold off pieces of it--mostly to relatives. The diagram below shows the whole of the Catesby Cocke patent, with the dates of purchase for the various sub-parcels marked.

On another topic: William's brother David, died in Pennsylvania in June 1776. His will had been written in 1774, the same year that he sold his farm near Mount Bethel. The inventory of his estate was completed June 29, 1776 and the whole was recorded at the Northampton County Court July 6, 1776. In the will he left Twenty Pounds to his "Brother William Allen now living in the Jerseys" and three of William's children also received money: John (£5), David (£30), and Janet (via her husband, Ephraim Herriott (£30). Why he didn't leave anything to William's other children is an open question.

There apparently was a problem in executing the instructions in David's will, which evolved into a legal dispute between William and David's executors. It still had not been resolved by the time William's wrote his own will in 1796, because he mentions it--leaving it to his son Joseph to pay the debt if the executors prevailed in their suit. The most probably explanation that I can come up with is that John Allen had died as a result of the War by the time his inheritance was delivered--or shortly thereafter. David's executors might have wanted to see the money returned. William might not have thought that was warranted-- might, indeed, have given the money to Joseph and some of the other children instead. The truth, unfortunately, is not available.

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