BEGATS AND BEQUEATHALS

Or, Subtitled: “A parcel of Land Containing one hundred & forty acres by Patent bearing Date the third day of November MDCC & Lying and being in the county of Augusta in a Bent of James River”

Now that I’ve completed a series of postings about Moses Birdwell (1769-1849), which I finished with a final posting about the last set of Moses’ twenty children by two wives, I’m going to move back a generation to Moses’ father George Birdwell (bef. 1725 – 1781), the earliest ancestor anyone has yet proven (to my knowledge) in this Birdwell family line. In a previous posting, I noted that a family bible published in Edinburgh in 1767, which appears to have belonged to George Birdwell’s son John (1770-1854), records the names and birthdates of George’s children by his last wife Mary. The bible has George Birdwell’s name written in it, though there is no statement written in the bible register which says that the bible actually belonged to George Birdwell. As the posting I’ve just linked notes, the handwriting of the entries of names and birthdates in this bible register does not match George Birdwell’s handwriting in several documents including his will, and I’ve concluded that it was George’s son John who probably wrote these entries in this bible, possibly copying a register of a bible that belonged to his father George.