Or, Subtitled, “I George Rice of the town of Winchester tavern keeper“
Regarding George Rice and Elizabeth Brooks’s two sons Edmund and George, I have limited information. As we have seen, Edmund died testate with a will dated 20 April 1796 in Frederick County, Virginia.[1] The will (a digital image is at the posting I just linked) was probated on 4 April 1797 in Frederick County, indicating that Edmund died between the 1796 date and the 1797 one, almost certainly in Frederick County.
The previous posting ended its chronicle of Joshua Wilson and Mary Rice’s lives on 13 January 1812 as they relinquished to John Postlethwaite the inn they had leased from him in Lexington, Kentucky, and had managed for eight years. The posting states that at this point, the Wilsons moved from Lexington to Louisville, Kentucky. Robert C. Jobson thinks that they had actually moved to Louisville by 1811, prior to the 13 January 1812 relinquishment of their lease on Postlethwaite’s inn.[1] In his 1983 Filson Club History Quarterly article chronicling the life of Joshua and Mary’s grandson John Clark Bayless, Jobson says that Joshua Wilson first appeared on the scene in Louisville in 1811 as a “wealthy entrepreneur.”[2] According to Jobson, the Wilsons’ soon-to-be son-in-law Abijah Bayless arrived in Louisville the same year when he began a dry-goods mercantile business there.
Or, Subtitled: “At the head of the table, laid out with great neatness, plenty and variety, sat our well-dressed hostess, who did the honors with ease and propriety“
This is the first of a two-part series that will document the life of George Rice and Elizabeth Brooks’s daughter Mary Rice and her husband Joshua Wilson. This posting focuses on the couple’s years in Virginia and then in Bardstown and Lexington, Kentucky. The next posting will focus on the final period of their lives in Louisville, Kentucky, and Corydon, Indiana. Several of the children of George and Elizabeth Brooks Rice shared an interest in inn- and tavern-keeping. As we saw in a previous posting, soon after they arrived in Kentucky from Virginia, Mary Rice Wilson’s sister Ruth and husband Micajah Roach purchased an inn in Bardstown from Joshua and Mary Wilson. And in a later posting, we’ll see that Mary and Ruth’s brother George also had a tavern in Winchester, Virginia. I call these establishments inns-cum-taverns because they were akin to the public houses of the British Isles in which locals could eat and drink, and also in which travelers could find lodging.
Or, Subtitled: From Virginia Farms to Kentucky Ironworks
I’ve listed Elizabeth as the second of George and Elizabeth Brooks Rice’s children, though it’s possible that her sister Mary was older, and that Elizabeth and not Ruth was even the oldest of George Rice and Elizabeth Brooks and George Rice’s children. The previously cited August 1802 list of George and Elizabeth’s children found in the case file of the Augusta County, Virginia, chancery court case filed by Province McCormick against George’s executors places Elizabeth first in the list of children.[1] But the 15 April 1808 complaint of Bartholomew Smith in his chancery suit against George Rice’s heirs and children, also previously discussed, which seems to me to have a more correct list of George and Elizabeth’s children by order of birth, lists Ruth first, followed by Mary and then Elizabeth.[2]
Or, Subtitled: At the “ſign of the Indian Queen” in Bairdſtown, Micajah Roach is “determined to exert himſelf to accommodate travelers in the beſt manner the country will afford, excellent ſtables, clover lotts, &c“
When I promised in my last posting a follow-up piece about the children of George Rice and Elizabeth Brooks, I thought I’d have that article done in no time at all — and that the task would be simple. I thought wrong.
Or, Subtitled: “I give and devise all my estate in Lands lying on the Western Waters to my six Children“
George Rice died testate in Woodford County, Kentucky, with a will dated 4 August 1792 and proved at October court 1792 in Woodford County.[1] The will reads as follows:
Or, Subtitled: A Revolutionary Officer Who Rubbed Shoulders with Washington and Jefferson
My last posting in this series about Elizabeth Brooks (1747/1750 – 1816) and husband George Rice ended with a brief discussion of the first record I’ve found in Frederick County, Virginia, showing George as an adult living a life independent of his father. This record is a Northern Neck grant of 300 acres in Frederick County that he received on 7 March 1763.[1] As I noted in the posting linked at the start of this paragraph, the grant shows that the land (which George Washington surveyed) lay along the line of the land of George’s father Patrick Rice. The posting linked above has a digital image of the land grant.
Or, Subtitled: “Your Orator Further Sheweth” — Valuable Inheritances and Predictable Litigation
With this posting, I’m climbing back up the Brooks family tree and starting to track lines stemming from another daughter of Mary Brooks, the earliest Brooks ancestor I’ve been able to prove. As I’ve indicated previously, Mary died testate in Frederick County, Virginia, with a will dated 9 July 1786.[1] In her will, Mary named children Mary (Hollingsworth), Elizabeth (Rice), Thomas, Sarah (Asdril [i.e., Ashdale]), Susanna (Haynes), and James. As the posting I’ve just linked says, I have not been able to discover the name of Mary’s husband, or her maiden surname, or where this family lived before I first catch sight of them in Frederick County, Virginia, records in March 1767.
Begats and Bequeathals 