I’ve noted as well that tracing the Kerrs who came from Augusta County, Virginia, to the Long Cane requires researchers to piece together both Virginia and South Carolina records. Documents like the 18 November 1760 Augusta County deed in which Samuel Kerr elder and wife Margaret sold their home tract of land there need to be placed side by side with documents like the 19 October 1762 survey of a 100-acre tract of land on the northwest fork of the Long Cane in Granville County, South Carolina, for Samuel Kerr.[1] Coupled with other pieces of information, when one juxtaposes these two documents, it becomes apparent — to me, at least — that when Samuel and Margaret Kerr sold their land in Virginia in November 1760, they did so with the intent of joining other family members (and neighbors from Augusta County) acquiring land in the Long Cane settlement in South Carolina.
Though I have not found specific information about when and where Samuel Kerr and wife Margaret died, the preponderance of evidence suggests to me that this couple did move from Virginia to South Carolina by 1762 and then likely died there, in the Long Cane settlement, at some point after they had made this move. The almost total loss of Abbeville County, South Carolina, records in the 1870s makes it very difficult to pin down many important pieces of information about early settlers of this area of South Carolina.
With this posting, I’m going to turn the focus back to Augusta County, Virginia. I’m going to survey the sparse information we find about Samuel Kerr with wife Margaret in Augusta County records, and to look closely at the question of Margaret’s maiden name. As I’ve stated repeatedly in my Kerr postings linked above, I’m strongly inclined to conclude that Margaret was a Pickens, a sibling of Lucy, William, and John Pickens who married siblings of Samuel Kerr. In this posting, I’ll explain in detail my reasons for being strongly inclined to this conclusion.
As a previous posting notes, Samuel Kerr appears less frequently in Augusta County, Virginia, records than do a number of other Kerr men who appear to be Samuel’s siblings. The posting I’ve just linked cites researcher Jim Veregge, who concludes that Samuel is a son of a James Kerr who’s the progenitor of the Kerr family of Augusta County.[2] Jim Veregge writes,[3]
[Samuel] is being placed as a son of James Kerr based upon his being in Augusta County at the same time as John Kerr, Andrew Kerr, and William Kerr, all listed as having children baptized in Tinkling Spring Church, near Staunton, Augusta County, Virginia between 1740-1749. John Kerr and William Kerr are mentioned in Augusta County records as being sons of James Kerr, John qualified as “eldest son” and therefore “co-administrator of the estate” of James Kerr’s, who died in Augusta County in 1770. Unfortunately, it appears that James Kerr died intestate (without a will), and other records in Augusta County do not mention Samuel as frequently as other Kerr ancestors. There were several OTHER Kerr families that moved into the Augusta County from 1749-1760, but Andrew Kerr, John Kerr, Samuel Kerr and William Kerr were the only ones listed in the earliest records, shortly after Augusta County was formed about 1739. James Kerr has been mentioned as one of the earliest settlers in the Orange (later Augusta) County area. He purchased 473 acres of land in the Beverly Patent, Orange County, Virginia on February 29, 1739 (source: “From Tinkling Spring”, pg. 418, and “Annals of Augusta County, Virginia”), almost right next door to John Pickens, brother of Lucy Pickens, who married John2 Kerr (James1). This area was to fall into the newly formed Augusta County a few years later. James Kerr is said to have built one of the first homes in the area (source: “Old Homes of Augusta County, The Pioneer Home of the Kerr Family”, Gladys B. Chen [sic]).
As Jim Veregge also states,
Samuel Kerr has not been ‘proven’ to be a son of James Kerr, but there is strong and compelling evidence to make the assumption. In addition to land records indicating ownership of land adjoining James Kerr and/or his other sons, he was in Tinkling Spring, Augusta County, Virginia about 1741-1747, when he had four children baptized ‘in the congregation’: (source: “From Tinkling Spring, Headwater of Freedom”)
Samuel, bapt. 11/29/1741
Agness, bapt. 3/20/1743
William, bapt. 5/5/1745
Lucia, bapt. 12/13/1747
I’ve discussed the register of baptisms that Reverend John Craig performed at Tinkling Spring Presbyterian church in Augusta County from 1740-9 in previous postings (here, here, here, and here).[4] As a previous posting notes, James Kerr, the founder of the Augusta County family of that surname, played a leading role in the Tinkling Spring church from its inception in 1740, and occupied “a place of leadership in the earliest records of church and county organizations.”[5] A monument outside Tinkling Spring church commemorates James Kerr’s leadership role in the church from its first organization.
Jim Veregge points to the significance of the Kerr baptisms recorded at Tinkling Spring by Reverend Craig prior to 1750: as he indicates, “the several Kerr baptisms that occurred before 1750 were most likely all grandchildren of James Kerr and at least circumstantially piece together much of James Kerr’s family.”[6] These baptisms tell us that a number of Kerr families all related to James — in fact, directly descending from him — had gathered by the early 1740s in the vicinity in which this church was organized, after having come from Pennsylvania to Orange, the parent county of Augusta, in the 1730s. Adding the testimony of these baptismal records to other Augusta County records, we can form a snapshot of the likely family of James Kerr in the 1740s, when early county records begin to provide information about this family.
As a previous posting notes, James Kerr died intestate in Augusta County in 1770, and the lack of a will or an estate record listing his heirs makes it difficult to compile a complete list of his children. On 20 March 1770, Augusta County court minutes state that James’ son John, named here as his eldest son, had been appointed James’ administrator.[7] This record provides solid proof that John Kerr, who married Lucy, daughter of William and Margaret Pike Pickens, was a son of James Kerr. But the rest of James’ family has to be pieced together from various records that provide a plausible and trustworthy picture of his likely children.
Augusta County, Virginia, Records for Samuel Kerr
In addition to the baptismal records compiled by John Craig at Tinkling Spring church, I find the following sparse notices of Samuel Kerr in Augusta County records before he disappears from that county in the 1760s, with none of these records providing highly significant genealogical information about him:
• 29 July 1745: Samuel Carr is named as a neighbor in Hugh Ross’s entry of 100 acres on Walker’s Run.[8] Walker’s Run was a small creek on the west side of Cathey’s River, later called Middle River. We know from other records that Samuel lived on the west side of Middle River.
• 20 May 1747: in the suit of Andrew Pickens vs. James Carthey, Samuel Carr was called to testify in court and stated that he had none of Carthey’s estate in his hands except a note of £4 of which he had paid part and had assumed responsibility to pay the balance to George Carthey.[9] Andrew Pickens was a son of William and Margaret Pike Pickens, a brother of the several Pickens siblings who married Kerr siblings.
• 19 August 1747: in the suit of John Baumgardner vs. Samuel Carr, Samuel was summoned but failed to appear in court, with judgment then rendered to Baumgardner for £1 10s.[10]
• November 1749: the case of Saml. Carr vs. Davis Logan (for debt) is listed in suits that were not executed.[11]
• 30 November 1751: Samuel Carr was a juror in the case of David Sherwood vs. Samuel Wilkins.[12]
• 1755: Sam. Carr appears on a tax list submitted by Sheriff Robert Breckinridge charged twice for delinquency.[13] An Andrew Carr who is probably Samuel’s brother of that name is also listed as a delinquent taxpayer on this list.
• 1756: Samuel is on the militia list of Captain Allen’s company. In the same company are also Samuel’s brothers John and Andrew Kerr. Captain Allen is James Allen, who became a militia captain in Augusta on 23 March 1756.[14]
• 16 August 1756: the 19 November 1760 deed that Samuel and wife Margaret made to James Hughes and Andrew Greer says that their 224 acres on Big Meadow Run of Cathey’s River on the Beverley Manor line came to Samuel by patent dated 16 August 1756: see below on this deed. I have not been able to find this patent, and I do not find a survey record for this land in Augusta County surveyor record books.
• September 1757: a court martial record states that Samuel Kerr had been fined for missing both a general and private muster of the militia.[15]
• 19 November 1760: as previous postings have shown, Samuel Carr and wife Margaret sold to James Hughes and Andrew Greer 224 acres on Big Meadow Run of Cathey’s River on the Beverley Manor line, their home tract of land.[16] The deed spells the surname as both Car and Carr and shows Samuel signing as Samuel Kerr with wife Margaret signing by mark as Margaret Kerr.
• 17 October 1769: a power of attorney given by John Kerr, Samuel Kerr, and James Kerr to Robert Hamilton was proven in court.[17] I have not been able to find clear information about why these three Kerr men were giving Robert Hamilton this power of attorney to act on their behalf. My reading of the court record is that these were the sons of James Kerr named John, Samuel, and James. Court minutes say that the power of attorney was proven by its witnesses, who are not named.
As I’ve written a number of times (e.g., here), it’s clear to me that by this point, James’ son Samuel had moved from Virginia to the Long Cane settlement in South Carolina. Samuel’s older brother John sold three tracts of land in Augusta County on 19-20 May 1761, with wife Lucy Pickens Kerr relinquishing her dower rights to the property, an indicator that John and Lucy were preparing to move away at this point — though when John’s father James died by March 1770, John was made estate administrator as James’ oldest son.[18] John Kerr may have already established a residence in Rowan County, North Carolina, by 17 August 1759 when he sold James Hamilton land on Middle River at the mouth of Christian’s Creek between Long Meadow Run and Christian’s Creek, with the deed stating that John Kerr lived in Rowan County, North Carolina.[19]
John, Samuel, and James Kerr wouldn’t have given Robert Hamilton a power of attorney in Augusta County in October 1769 if the three Kerr men were living in that county, I think. What the power of attorney concerned, however, I have been unable to learn.
The Kerr and Hamilton families of Augusta County had multiple connections. When John Kerr gave bond for administration of his father James’ estate in Augusta County on 23 March 1770, Archibald Hamilton was John’s bondsman.[20] Unless I’m mistaken, this was the Archibald Hamilton (1704-1794) who was brother of Robert Hamilton (abt. 1710-1786), who lived on Kerr’s Creek.[21] James Kerr’s son Andrew married a Mary Hamilton who appears to fit into this Hamilton kinship network, though exactly how is not clear to me. Mary left a will on 28 July 1801 in Rowan County, North Carolina, naming her Kerr step-children and a brother Archibald Hamilton of South Carolina. Archibald’s will in Abbeville County, South Carolina, dated 10 November 1795, names his sister Mary Kars.[22]
Note, too, that the elder Archibald Hamilton (1704-1794) who gave bond with John Kerr for John’s administration of his father’s estate in Augusta County in 1770 married Frances Calhoun of the same Calhoun family into which Samuel Kerr’s son Samuel married. The Calhouns were yet another Augusta County Ulster Scots family that had gone to the Long Cane settlement from Virginia. In fact, the Calhouns played a formative role in establishing that settlement.
A 16 August 1749 land entry provides further evidence of the close connections of the Hamilton and Kerr (and Pickens) families in Augusta County from early on: this record shows John Pickins entering 400 acres on that date between Kerr’s land and Hamilton’s old place, and another 400 acres between John Keer’s land and John Carr.[23] It should be noted that John Pickens’s wife was Eleanor, daughter of James Kerr.
Note that this October 1769 record appears to indicate that Samuel, son of James Kerr, was still living at that date — if this record refers to James’ son Samuel, as I think it does.
• 23 March 1773: as indicated previously, noting a case of debt filed against him by John Graham & Co., Augusta court minutes state that Samuel Kerr was no longer an inhabitant of the county.[24]
Samuel Kerr’s Wife Margaret: My Case for Her as a Daughter of William and Margaret Pike Pickens
I’d like now to tackle the subject of the maiden name of Samuel Kerr’s wife Margaret. I have found no documents stating Margaret’s maiden name. However, as I’ve stated repeatedly in my postings about the Kerr family into which she married, I’m strongly persuaded that Samuel Kerr’s wife Margaret was the daughter of William Pickens and Margaret Pike, who had three children known to have married children of James Kerr: Lucy married John Kerr; William married Elizabeth Kerr; and John married Eleanor Kerr.
The longstanding ties of the Pickens and Kerr families began prior to their arrival in Augusta County. Members of both families migrated to western Virginia in the 1730s from Paxtang township in Lancaster (now Dauphin) County, Pennsylvania. As a previous posting notes, in a 28 August 1811 letter to Henry Lee, Andrew Pickens, who married Rebecca Calhoun, daughter of Ezekiel Calhoun and Jane/Jean Ewing in the Long Cane settlement, states that he was born in Paxton [sic] township in Pennsylvania on 19 September 1739.[25] On 21 May 1735 in that township, Andrew Pickens’s father Andrew and grandfather William Pickens signed a petition for a road from John Harris’s ferry to Edward Kennison’s plantation.[26] Signing this same petition were also John, David, and James Kerr.
Two court records of Orange County, Virginia, in 1740 are very significant in tracking both the movement of the Pickens and Kerr families from Pennsylvania to western Virginia and the interconnection of these families. Orange County court minutes for 27 March 1740 state:[27]
John Carr made oath that he imported himself Lucy his wife his wifes Children Margaret Gilasby Mathew G[i]lasby Jane William Barbara Lucy & Martha Carr at his own Charge from Ireland to Philadelphia & from thence unto this Colony and that this is the first time of proving his & their rights in order to obtain Land.
Then on 24 July 1740, Orange court minutes say (see the image at the head of this posting),[28]
John Pickins made an oath that he imported himself Margaret Eleanor Margaret ye younger Gabriel Pickins Wm Baskins from Ireland into Philadelphia & from thence unto this Colony at his own Charge & that this is ye first time of proving his & their right in order to obtain Land.
These families were living by this point in Augusta County. Augusta was formed from Orange in 1738, but did not begin keeping court records until 1745. In the intervening period, court records continued to be maintained in Orange County. In or around 1736, Virginia began granting land headrights to adult males who paid for their own importation into the colony, or who paid for the importation of other males above the age of 16. To obtain these headrights, an oath had to be sworn in court that one had paid for the importation and not previously applied for these headrights.[29]
Prior to her marriage to John Kerr, Lucy Pickens had married Matthew Gillespie in Philadelphia on 2 September 1722.[30] Following his death in 1728, Lucy remarried to John Kerr in 1730. As the headright claim recorded in Orange County court minutes indicates, John Kerr then moved with wife Lucy, her children Margaret and Matthew Gillespie, and his and Lucy’s children Jane, William, Barbara, Lucy, and Martha Kerr from Pennsylvania to Virginia.
John Pickens’s headright claim shows him making a similar move with wife Eleanor (Kerr), and a Margaret Pickens elder and younger, along with Gabriel Pickens and William Baskins. The elder Margaret was John Pickens’s mother. Margaret and her husband William Pickens, John’s father, appear in the records of Neshaminy Dutch Reformed church in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, not long after their arrival in America, with church minutes stating on 4 November 1722 that “the new-comers from Eerlant (i.e., Ireland) who had been received on letters of attestation” (i.e., from their Presbyterian congregation in Ireland) included “Wellem pechens [William Pickens] and his wife.”[31] On 6 June 1724, Neshaminy church minutes state that Margaret Pickins had joined the Neshaminy church by profession.[32]
As the Orange County headright claims indicate, the Kerr and Pickens families came to Virginia from Pennsylvania together or in close connection to each other in a serial migration process. They were, in fact, among the earliest Ulster Scots families to arrive in the section of Augusta County in which they settled. As Howard McKnight Wilson states,[33]
A tradition of special interest to our study is that of the Kerr family. It is a strong family tradition that they were in Augusta ahead of John Lewis. The Kerrs were a part of the Donegal Presbyterian Society on the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania, under the ministry of Rev. James Anderson. They did move to Augusta very early….
Wilson says that a long tradition in the Kerr family is that they arrived in Orange County (later Augusta) in 1730.
Note, too, that John Pickens’s headright claim indicates that his mother Margaret came to Virginia with her son John and John’s wife Eleanor Kerr, and that a younger Margaret Pickens who was not yet married came along with these family members to Augusta County, Virginia. The Gabriel Pickens named in John Pickens’s headright claim is John’s brother. The younger Margaret has long been understood to be John Pickens’s sister. Family histories and published sources contain confused and unproven information about what became of her after her listing in the 1740 headright claim filed by her brother John in Orange County, Virginia.
A brief undated account of the Pickens family written by Loy Looper found in the Pickens folder of the Leonardo Andrea Collection says that William Pickens arrived in Pennsylvania with wife Margaret, sons Israel and Robert, and daughter Margaret.[34] But this source gives Margaret a husband George Davis.
E.M. Sharp notes in his history of Pickens families of the South that John Pickens proved the importation of his sister Margaret, Margaret ye younger, in Orange County, Virginia, on 24 July 1740, but he states that according to one account, Margaret married a Ramsey.[35] The Ramsey tradition, which appears repeatedly in family trees for the family of William Pickens and Margaret Pike, seems to depend on a misidentification of William and Margaret Pickens’s daughter Margaret with a Margaret Pickens who married Charles Ramsey at First Presbyterian church in Philadelphia on 4 November 1740.[36] This couple lived and died in Philadelphia, where they are buried. Then, noting that a Robert Ramsey appears as father of a family with children baptized by Reverend John Craig at Tinkling Spring Presbyterian church in Augusta County in the 1740s, some family trees morph Charles into Robert and make the Robert Ramsey of the Tinkling Spring church the husband of Margaret Pickens — with no evidence offered to support this conclusion.
The 24 July 1740 headright claim of John Pickens indicates that his sister Margaret was unmarried at that date. John gives her no married surname. The Margaret, Eleanor, Margaret ye younger, and Gabriel are listed in the headright claim with the surname Pickins following the list: all had the surname Pickens, Eleanor Kerr by her marriage to John Pickens. Margaret and Gabriel were among the younger children of William Pickens and Margaret Pike, and this is why they were living unmarried with their mother Margaret and brother John Pickens in 1740.
Had Margaret arrived in Pennsylvania from Ireland by November 1722 married to George Davis as Loy Looper proposes, she would likely have been born around 1700 or not long after that year. The fact that John Pickens’s sister Margaret was still unmarried when he filed his headright claim in July 1740 suggests to me that she was likely born by 1720 or after that year. This probable birthdate places Margaret Pickens’s age in the range of Samuel, son of James Kerr, whom I think Margaret married. Samuel’s date of birth is estimated by a number of Kerr researchers as between 1715-1725.[37] This estimated birthdate perhaps depends in part on the evidence of Reverend John Craig’s Tinkling Spring baptismal register that Samuel Kerr began having children baptized in Augusta County in 1741. By that date, Samuel was of age and married. I’ve found no other records indicating that Samuel came of age prior to this date, or that, like his older siblings, some of whom also had children baptized at Tinkling Spring in the 1740s, he had children born prior to 1740. To me, it seems likely that he was a young and recently married man when he began having children baptized by Reverend Craig in 1741.
John Craig’s baptismal register does not name Samuel’s wife. We know from the sale of their land in Augusta County in November 1760 that by this date, Samuel had a wife Margaret. I’ve found no records suggesting to me that Samuel was married to anyone other than Margaret prior to 1760. I think we can safely assume that Samuel’s wife Margaret was the mother of his four children baptized at Tinkling Spring by John Craig — Samuel, Agnes, William, and Lucia. If Samuel Kerr’s wife was the Margaret Pickens of John Pickens’s July 1740 Orange County importation record — and I strongly suspect she was — then Samuel married Margaret not long after that date and they began to have children born to them by November 1741.
By this time, three of Samuel’s older siblings had married three of Margaret’s siblings: Elizabeth Kerr is thought to have married William Pickens about 1735; John Kerr married Lucy Pickens on 27 March 1730; and Eleanor Kerr married John Pickens about 1738. In Augusta County, Samuel Kerr and wife Margaret lived between his brother John Kerr and her brother John Pickens west of Middle River, just above the Beverly patent line in Augusta County, as a previous posting has shown. Jim Veregge states that Samuel Kerr lived “almost right next door to John Pickens, brother of Lucy Pickens, who married John2 Kerr (James1).”[38] Samuel and wife Margaret named a daughter Lucia/Lucy, a Pickens family name.
As the posting I’ve just linked also indicates, when one of the two Samuel Kerrs living on the northwest fork of the Long Cane in Granville (later Abbeville) County, South Carolina, had land surveyed on 6 March 1767, John Pickens surveyed the land.[39] Samuel and Margaret Kerr’s son Samuel married Mary Calhoun, whose sister Rebecca married Andrew Pickens, a son of Andrew Pickens, whose siblings William, Lucy, and John married brothers of Samuel Kerr elder (with wife Margaret).
In November 2003, Michael Taylor, a descendant of John Green and Jane Kerr, told me that John and Jane Kerr Green’s son George Sidney Green and wife Mary Ann Clardy named a son Francis Pickens Green because this branch of the John Green-Jane Kerr family, from which Michael Taylor descends, had long passed on a tradition that it descended from the Pickens family through John Green and Jane Kerr. Jane was a daughter of Mary Calhoun and Samuel Kerr, and a granddaughter of Samuel Kerr elder with wife Margaret. Margaret Pickens, I’m proposing….
In Conclusion
In summary:
1. Margaret is the proven given name of Samuel Kerr’s wife. Their 1760 land sale in Augusta County proves this given name.
2. No documents that I’ve seen suggests that Samuel had another wife prior to Margaret, or that anyone other than his wife Margaret was the mother of his children.
3. The baptisms of Samuel’s children at Tinkling Spring church in Augusta County indicate that he had married prior to November 1741, when his first child Samuel was born.
4. William Pickens and Margaret Pike, three of whose children married children of James Kerr, had a proven daughter Margaret about whom little is known, except that she is named as Margaret ye younger in the July 1740 headright claim of John Pickens (wife Eleanor Kerr) in Orange County, Virginia.
5. In July 1740, John Pickens claimed a headright in Orange, the parent county of Augusta, for importing among other family members his sister Margaret ye younger to Virginia.
6. Margaret ye younger was unmarried in July 1740.
7. Land records show Samuel Kerr and his family living next to John Pickens and to Samuel’s brother John Kerr with wife Lucy Pickens, a sister of John Pickens.
8. By 1740, three of Samuel’s older siblings had married three of Margaret Pickens’s siblings.
9. If, as a number of Kerr researchers propose, Samuel Kerr was born between 1715 and 1725, and if he had a first child born in November 1741, it seems likely he married around 1740.
10. Samuel would almost certainly have married a bride living near him, one who was a member of the same Tinkling Spring Presbyterian church to which Samuel belonged.
11. Margaret Pickens, sister of John Pickens, appears to have been living with her brother John in July 1740, in close proximity to her sister Lucy and husband John Kerr. Just south of these families was John and Samuel Kerr’s father James Kerr.
12. With the close connections of the Kerr and Pickens families that began in Pennsylvania (they may, in fact, have begun in Ireland?) and continued in Virginia, and with the marriage of three children of William Pickens to three children of James Kerr, I think a very strong case can be made that a fourth known child of William Pickens, his daughter Margaret, married yet another child of James Kerr, his son Samuel.
13. When Samuel and Margaret Kerr moved from Augusta County, Virginia, to the Long Cane settlement in South Carolina, their son Samuel married Mary, daughter of Ezekiel Calhoun and Jane/Jean Ewing, another family that had arrived in the Long Cane area from Augusta County, Virginia. Mary’s sister Rebecca then married Andrew Pickens, whose father Andrew was another child of William Pickens and wife Margaret Pike, a sibling of the Pickens siblings who married Kerr siblings.
[1] Augusta County, Virginia, Deed Bk 9, pp. 67-8; South Carolina Colonial Plats Bk. 7, p. 326.
[2] See Jim Veregge, “Descendants of James Kerr” at Rootsweb.
[3] Ibid., citing Howard McKnight Wilson, The Tinkling Spring, Headwater of Freedom: A Study of the Church and Her People, 1732-1952 (Fishersville, Virginia: Tinkling Spring and Hermitage Presbyterian Churches, 1954), p. 418; Joseph A. Waddell, Annals of Augusta County, Virginia, from 1726 to 1871 (Staunton, Virginia: Caldwell, 1902); and Gladys B. Clem, “Old Homes of Augusta County, The Pioneer Home of the Kerr Family,” Augusta Historical Bulletin 8,2 (fall 1972), pp. 53-6. See also “Samuel Kerr,” at the Early Settlers of Augusta project at WeRelate.
[4] See “Book containing baptisms, Oct. 1740-Sept. 1749,” in the collection of the personal papers of Reverend John Craig (held by Union Theological Seminary’s library in Richmond) filmed and digitized by the Family History Library in Salt Lake City and available digitally at FamilySearch. See also Wilson, The Tinkling Spring, Headwater of Freedom, p. 477, extracting the baptisms of Samuel and Margaret Kerr’s four children by Reverend Craig at Tinkling Spring, 1741-7.
[5] Wilson, The Tinkling Spring, Headwater of Freedom, p. 12. Augusta County court minutes state that when the first county court was organized on 1 October 1745, James Kerr, John Pickens, who married James Kerr’s daughter Eleanor, and John’s brother Andrew Pickens were among the first justices of the county: see Augusta County, Virginia, Court Order Bk. 1, p. 1 (minutes for the 9 December 1745 court session).
[6] Veregge, “Descendants of James Kerr.”
[7] Augusta County, Virginia, Court Order Bk. 14, p. 65.
[8] Augusta County, Virginia, Land Entry Bk. 1, abstracted by Lyman Chalkley, Chronicles of the Scotch-Irish Settlement in Virginia, Extracted from the Original Court Records of Augusta County, 1745-1800, vol. 2 (Rosslyn, Virginia: Commonwealth, 1912-3), p. 382.
[9] Augusta County, Virginia, Court Order Bk. 1, p. 232.
[10] Ibid., p. 348.
[11] Ibid., Bk. 3, p. 38.
[12] Ibid., Bk. 3, p. 224.
[13] Chalkley, Chronicles of the Scotch-Irish Settlement in Virginia, vol. 2, p. 417, abstracting the original 1755 tax list returned to court by Breckenridge. Chalkley says he’s abstracting only the names on this tax list and that the original list states why a taxpayer was delinquent.
[14] Augusta County, Virginia, Court Order Bk. 1, p. 63. See also Waddell, Annals of Augusta County, Virginia, p. 137.
[15] Augusta County, Virginia, Court Martial Records 1756-1796, p. 12.
[16] Augusta County, Virginia, Deed Bk. 9, pp. 67-71.
[17] Augusta County, Virginia, Court Order Bk. 14, p. 21.
[18] Augusta County, Virginia, Deed Bk. 9, pp. 267-273, 352-5.
[19] Ibid., Deed Bk. 8, pp. 202-4.
[20] Augusta County, Virginia, Will Bk. 4, p. 287.
[21] See “Archibald Hamilton” and “Robert Hamilton” in the Early Settlers of Old Augusta project at WeRelate.
[22] Abbeville County, South Carolina, Will Bk. 1, pp. 137-8; Abbeville County, South Carolina, loose-papers estates box 46, pkg. 1032.
[23] Augusta County, Virginia, Land Entry Bk. 1, abstracted by Chalkley, Chronicles of the Scotch-Irish Settlement in Virginia, vol. 2, p. 382.
[24] Augusta County, Virginia, Court Order Bk. 15, p. 56.
[25] The original letter is in the Thomas Sumter Papers, 1763-1885, of the Lyman Draper Manuscript Collection held by Wisconsin Historical Society—series VV, volume 1.
[26] See E.M. Sharp, Pickens Families of the South (priv. publ., 1963), p. 3.
[27] Orange County, Virginia, Court Order Bk. 2, p. 138.
[28] Ibid., p. 218.
[29] Published sources with partial transcriptions of Orange County importation records include the following: W.W. Scott, A History of Orange County, Virginia (Richmond: Waddey, 1907); Wilson, The Tinkling Spring, Headwater of Freed, pp. 424f; Oren Frederic Martin, A History of Rockbridge County, Virginia (Staunton, VA: McClure, 1920); and L.B. Hatke, List of Baptisms by Rev. John Craig, Augusta County, Virginia, 1740-1749 (Staunton, Virginia, 1979).
[30] See FamilySearch database Pennsylvania, Marriages, 1709-1940.
[31] A transcript of the original is in William J. Hinke, “Church Record of Neshaminy and Bensalem, Bucks County, 1710-1738,” Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society 1,1 (May 1901), p. 129.
[32] Ibid., p. 131. The Neshaminy church minutes show Lucy Pickens’s first husband Matthew Gillespie joining that church at the same time that William and Margaret Pickens first appear in Neshaminy records in November 1722.
[33] Wilson, The Tinkling Spring, Headwater of Freedom, pp. 12-13.
[34] Leonardo Andrea Collection, folder 704. The original documents of this collection are in the South Caroliniana Library in Columbia, South Carolina. The genealogical folders of the collection have been microfilmed and digitized by the Family History Library but the collection is locked.
[35] Sharp, Pickens Families of the South, pp. 2-3.
[36] Pennsylvania Marriages Prior to 1810, vol. 2 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1968), p. 55.
[37] See Veregge, “Descendants of James Kerr”; and Samuel Kerr,” at the Early Settlers of Augusta project at WeRelate.
[38] Veregge, “Descendants of James Kerr.”
[39] South Carolina Colonial Plats Bk. 17, p. 428.
