Getting Side Tracked…
Happens to me all the time… you run down a rabbit hole and emerge to find yourself confused as to where you had started. In this case, I was researching some BRYANS of IOW and Nansemond. I was looking them up in an IOW Deed abstract book. I find a James Bryan (and I’m now beginning to realize he has a son named Thomas Bryan who is selling his land by a Power of Attorney… I “think” the old man has moved to NC around the Meherrin River.
So that is pretty much the background of what I was doing… so I reference the Richard Williams who is selling some land… the BRYANS are mentioned in the sale and then WHAMMO! there is a Philip Brantley mentioned! Brantley is MY line now that I have figured out I am a bastard of that line. So I track down the deed to figure out where and why… and what was going on…
All of this was “duplicate” work… I had been down that rabbit hole before…
I t just so happened that all these guys “just happened to be in Court that day”…. 28 Dec 1719. I can see Philip Brantley whisked over to a table and asked to “put your mark right here”. Brantley lived maybe ten miles south of there… but Court Day! was a big deal… it got them out and amongst friends, neighbors and likker.
That deed was a bear to unscramble… I’ve done it twice now.
Andersons of Colonial N. Carolina 
That’s interesting. As mentioned, I keep pulling up Bryan, Busby, Harrington, Whitmell, etc., when looking at DNA matches on my Williams line. I have no idea how they connect, but perhaps my ancestor Jonathan Williams (1746-1816) of Gates County was a son of one of the Bertie Williams. Many of them held land around a site called “Village” in the Roquist Swamp area, beside someone named James Blunt/Blount, whom I feel is the same person as the headman of the Tuscarora. All of these names though are familiar. I also descend from Pittman, Battle, Riddick, Howell, you name it.
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justinpetrone
January 6, 2023 at 1:11 am