BEGATS AND BEQUEATHALS

Or, Subtitled: “Thirty Lashes on her bare back well Laid on”

In this posting, I’d like to start winding down my discussion of my family line stemming from George Birdwell (bef. 1725 – 1781) by providing an outline of basic information about his children. As two previous postings have shown (here and here), George is found in records of Orange County, then Augusta and Botetourt Counties, Virginia, from 1745 to 1779, when he moved in late 1779 or early 1780 to Sullivan County, North Carolina — now Tennessee. He had two wives, the first of whose name is unknown, the second of whom was named Mary, but whose surname has not been proven. He had children by both wives who are named in his will and in the case of his second set of children, in a bible that passed down (and see here) in the family of George’s son John Birdwell (1770-1854).