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.
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: A Court File for a Divorce as a Source for Important Genealogical Information
In my last posting, which focused on Ruth Rice (1769-1852) and her husband Micajah Roach (1761-1805) and their family, I shared such information as I had when I wrote this posting about Micajah and Ruth’s son Griffin T. Roach. As that posting notes, Griffin was born in 1797-8 in Frederick County, Virginia, and is said to have died 25 March 1875 at Rinard, Wayne County, Illinois. On 18 September 1818 in Knox County, Indiana, he married Mary Wingate and by 1840, the couple can be found on the federal census in Greenup County, Kentucky, where a number of members of Ruth and Micajah’s family also lived at this time, and where Ruth died 27 March 1852.
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.
Or, Subtitled: “I will and bequeath to my beloved son Thomas Brooks, whom I likewise constitute make and ordain my whole and sole Executor”
I’ve now finished telling you what I know of Thomas Brooks (1775-1838), who moved with his parents from Frederick County, Virginia, where he was born in 1775, to Wythe County, Virginia, in 1793, and from there to Wayne County, Kentucky, in 1798. As I’ve also shown you, at the very end of his and his wife Sarah’s lives, the couple moved their family from Kentucky to Morgan County, Alabama, in November 1836, and in 1837, Sarah died at the home of their daughter Jane Brooks Lindsey in Lawrence County, Alabama, with Thomas dying under Jane’s care in 1838.
Begats and Bequeathals 