As the posting linked at the head of the previous paragraph notes, various published family trees for the family of James Whitlock and Agnes Christmas have given their son Nathaniel a birthdate of 28 November 1749. That birthdate cannot be correct, since, when he made his will on 7 March 1749, James Whitlock stated that he and wife Agnes had six children, and those six children are then named in the September 1757 settlement of James’s estate and in the December 1768 will of their grandfather Thomas Christmas. The list of six children ends in both documents with Nathaniel. This proves that Nathaniel was born prior to 7 March 1749 when James made his will. Nathaniel was of age by 25 October 1766, when he witnessed a deed in Albemarle County, Virginia, a document I’ll discuss in a moment.

Albemarle County, Virginia, Records, 1766-1770

The September 1757 Louisa County settlement of the estate of Nathaniel’s father James Whitlock shows his son Nathaniel inheriting from his father’s estate an enslaved woman named Sarah and ￡35 3s 11½. If I’m correct in estimating that Nathaniel was born around 1747, note that he’d have been about ten years old when he received this inheritance. As I explain in a previous posting, Nathaniel’s appearance in a 1766 deed record in Albemarle County, which adjoins Louisa and where Nathaniel’s oldest brother Charles was living by 1759 or 1760, suggests to me that Charles and wife Esther took Charles’s brother Nathaniel and perhaps Nathaniel’s brother Thomas, both minors when their father’s estate was settled, to live with them in Albemarle County and raised them there.

As I’ve just stated, Nathaniel was of age by 25 October 1766 when he witnessed an Albemarle County deed of Jacob Sneed of Fredericksville Parish in Albemarle County to Alexander Mackey Jr. of the same place (see the digital images at the head of the posting). The witnesses to this deed along with Nathaniel Whitlock were William Terrell Lewis (Alexander’s brother-in-law), Joel Terrell (Alexander’s uncle-in-law), and Sarah Lewis (William Terrell Lewis’ wife).[3] The posting I linked in the preceding paragraph provides information on Alexander Mackey Jr. and the Terrell family members, and explains how their appearance in this deed helps us know that the Nathaniel Whitlock witnessing the deed is a brother of Charles and Thomas Whitlock. William Terrell Lewis and wife Sarah Martin Lewis, two of the witnesses to this deed along with Nathaniel Whitlock, left Albemarle County for Surry County, North Carolina, by 1776, the same time frame in which Nathaniel Whitlock moved from Albemarle County to Surry County.[4]

On 8 March 1770 in Albemarle, Nathaniel Whitlock again witnessed a deed, this one a deed of John Burrows to William Gooch Jr., both of Albemarle, for 290 acres in Albemarle on branches of Moores Creek.[5] As when he witnessed Jacob Sneed’s sale to Alexander Mackey Jr. in 1766, Nathaniel signed his witness to this 1770 deed by mark. The other witnesses to the deed were John Henderson Jr. and Charles Wingfield. As a previous posting notes, there were multiple interactions between members of this Whitlock family and the Gooch family of Hanover-Louisa Counties, Virginia, including Charles and Esther Whitlock’s sale of their Albemarle land in March 1778 to William Gooch as Charles and Esther moved to Surry County, North Carolina, and William Jones and Mary Whitlock’s sale of their Caswell County, North Carolina, land to David Gooch in September 1793 as the Jones family moved to Greenville County, South Carolina. As the previous posting states, David Gooch (1763-1831) was the son of William Gooch (abt. 1714 – 1802) and Frances Rice, who William Gooch lived in St. Martin’s parish in Hanover County up to the latter part of the 1760s, when this family moved to the part of Orange County, North Carolina, that would later become Caswell County.

Surry County, North Carolina, Records, 1770s

At some point not long after Nathaniel Whitlock witnessed this March 1770 deed in Albemarle, he moved to Surry County, North Carolina, where he appears on tax lists in 1771-2.[6] I think it’s likely that Nathaniel had married in Albemarle before making this move, but have no proof of a marriage or no information about a wife. Numerous published charts state that he married Ann Gathright and had two daughters who married in Henrico County. The Nathaniel Whitlock who was son of James Whitlock and Agnes Christmas never had any connection to Henrico County: he moved as a minor, I’m fairly confident, from Louisa to Albemarle, and from there to Surry County, North Carolina, not long after 1770, and finally to Greenville County, South Carolina.

Greenville County, South Carolina, Census Listing, 1800

I’ve found little other solid information about James and Agnes Whitlock Christian’s son Nathaniel. He is perhaps a Nathn Whitlock enumerated on the 1790 federal census in Burke County, North Carolina, with a household comprised of two males over 16, two males under 17, and three females (p. 93). By 1800, he appears to have been in Greenville County, South Carolina, where he was enumerated on the federal census in 1800.[7] Nathaniel’s household contains two males under 10, one male 10-15, two males 16-25, one male 45+, two females under 10, one female 10-15, two females 16-25, and one female 26-44.

In a March 2006 issue of his Whitlock Family Newsletter, Peter Whitlock, who heads the international Whitlock One-Name Study, reports the following:[8]

Anna Popejoy has zeroed in on the Nathaniel Whitlock who shows on the 1800 census for Greenville, South Carolina. In 1800 he is shown with what are likely five sons and three daughters. Nathaniel is more than 45 in 1800 so is born before 1755. Anna speculates he is the Nathaniel Whitlock who shows in the 1771-1774 records for Surry Co., North Carolina with a possible wife Elizabeth and possible children Charles, William, Mary, James, Thomas and John.

I think that Anna Popejoy is correct about the fact that the Nathaniel Whitlock found on the 1800 federal census in Greenville County, South Carolina, is Nathaniel, son of James Whitlock and Agnes Christmas. As my posting on James and Agnes’s daughter Mary and her husband William Jones shows, in 1793, Mary and her husband William Jones moved from Caswell County, North Carolina, to Greenville County, North Carolina. Caswell is two counties east of Stokes County, in which Mary and Nathaniel’s brother Charles ended up. Next to Stokes on the west is Surry County, in which Nathaniel was living in the 1770s. All these counties are on the northern border of North Carolina.

The 1800 census for Greenville County shows Nathaniel Whitlock on the same page as the family of William Jones and Mary Whitlock’s son William Jones Jr. It seems apparent to me that Nathaniel had moved to Greenville County to join his sister Mary and possibly his sister Ann and her Austin husband: on the possibility that Ann married into an Austin family that moved from Louisa County, Virginia, to Greenville County, South Carolina, and which had land next to that of William Jones, see the posting linked in the preceding paragraph.

This is the last record I’ve been able to find of Nathaniel Whitlock. The Nathaniel Whitlock with wife Elizabeth (Hulsey) and children Charles, William, Mary, James, Thomas, and John appears on the 1820 federal census in Captain Buffington’s district of Hall County, Georgia.[9] According to Anna Popejoy’s notes about him, this Nathaniel was born in or around 1760 and died in Hall County in 1827.[10]

But note that if the Nathaniel Whitlock enumerated in Hall County, Georgia, on the 1820 federal census was born in 1760, he cannot be the man found on the 1800 federal census in Greenville County, South Carolina, since, as stated above, the 1800 census listing shows the Nathaniel Whitlock in Greenville County born prior to 1755. The 1820 federal census shows the Nathaniel listed in Hall County in that year aged 45+, an age category that would fit for both a man born in 1747 and one born in 1760.

I do think it’s very likely that, if the Nathaniel Whitlock of the 1820 census listing in Hall County was a man born in 1760 as Anna Popejoy’s research indicates and not the man found on the 1800 census in Greenville County, South Carolina, in 1800, he’s closely connected to the Nathaniel Whitlock who was son of James and Agnes Christmas Whitlock. If these are two different Nathaniels, then the older Nathaniel who was son of James Whitlock and Agnes Christmas may have died in Greenville County, South Carolina, after 1800. If these are the same man, then that Nathaniel moved to Hall County, Georgia, and died there in 1827. If the man in Hall County in 1820 was born in 1760, then I’d be inclined to think that he’s the son of Nathaniel Whitlock whose parents were James Whitlock and Agnes Christmas. The Nathaniel found in Hall County by 1820 is said to have named sons Charles, James, and Thomas, all names used repeatedly in the family of James Whitlock and Agnes Christmas.

Except that James and Agnes’s son Nathaniel would not likely have had a son borh in 1760, given his probable birthdate of around 1747…. I do wonder if the man on the Hall County, Georgia, census in 1820 is, in fact, Nathaniel, son of James and Agnes, who had moved there from Greenville County, South Carolina, between 1800-1820, and who is thought to have died in Hall County in 1827.

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[1] Louisa County, Virginia, Inventory Bk. 1743-1790, pp. 39-40; and Warren County, North Carolina, Will Bk. A, pp. 105-9. Though Thomas Christmas made his will in Hanover County, Virginia, stating that he lived in St. Martin’s parish in Hanover, and the will was likely filed in Hanover County, that county’s records almost all burned in 1865. However, the will was also recorded in Bute County, North Carolina, where Thomas Christmas owned property at the time of his death, and we have an extant copy of it for that reason in Warren County, North Carolina. Bute was divided in 1779 into Franklin and Warren Counties (Bute then ceasing to exist), and the will ended up in Warren County, North Carolina, records.

[2] Louisa County, Virginia, Will Bk. 1, p. 13.

[3] Albemarle County, Virginia, Deed Bk. 4, pp. 366-8.

[4] See Travis Davis’s biography of William Terrell Lewis at his Find a Grave memorial page, burial details unknown, created by Vonnie L. Cantrell, maintained by Cherie Lynn. See also the FGS for William Terrell Lewis and Sarah Martin at Marty and Karla Grant’s family history site.

[5] Albemarle County, Virginia, Deed Bk. 5, pp. 151-2.

[6] See “1771 Early Tax List for Surry County, NC, T through Z,” at the Surry County pages of the NCGenWeb site; and Clarence E. Ratcliff, North Carolina Taxpayers, 1679-1790, vol. 2 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1987).

See also Chris Crookston, “The James Whitlock Family of Rowan & Surry County, NC…Part 2,” at the Will The Real Isaac Jones Please Step Forward? blog site.

[7] 1800 federal census, Greenville County, South Carolina, p. 270.

[8] Whitlock Family Newsletter 25,1 (March 2006), p. 1.

[9] 1820 federal census, Capt. Buffington’s District, Hall County, Georgia, p. 129.

[10] See Find a Grave memorial page of Nathaniel Whitlock, Dewberry Baptist cemetery #1, Gainesville, Hall County, Georgia, created by Anna Popejoy, maintained by Karen Winters; and “Research into descendants of William & Elizabeth (Green) Whitlock (M1816) of Jackson Co. Ga & Franklin Co., Al from Anna Popejoy,” file X1907 in the miscellaneous records section of the Whitlock One-Name Study website.