Archive for October 2025
Wm Jones 1701, rabbit holes, and messin’ round with Momma…
This is a problem, fuzzy patent. More to the point, I have on occasion stated I am loathe to change Mother Nature’s handiwork, but this is a case where someone has to. The necessary details for me to accomplish my task are just not available… so I am left offering that tired old “educated guess”.
So to let off some steam after fighting with this conundrum for a few hours, here is William Jones, Indian Trader, from 1701.
…click the blue filename under the graphic for a better view
…the area is some miles south of Petersburg, VA… on Nottoway River
Four historic USGS base maps from 1894 t0 1919 converge just to the East of this patent…so there is a bit of a mismatch in my patchwork… all of this early work was accomplished with drafting tools on drafting tables and was hand draw… I would not be surprised if much of the text was hand lettered.. (and very well done). This is beautiful work, if I may offer a Nerd’s opinion. Further, since these are multiple colored maps, each color had to be drawn separately and overlayed (registered/aligned)… very tedious work.
I work strictly from computers today… but I have fond memories of the past and buggy whips, I suppose. And yes, in the early 80’s I did a gig for about a year working at a county level mapping department… not as a mapper, per say, but as a graphics guy… but I peeked over shoulders and noticed things…
Southside Virginia…
Occasionally I run across a patent that just amazes me, such is the case here. I’m investing myself in a new map, calling it Southside Virginia (I’ll drag it out later when I get further along). My regular readers and occasional commenters know I am intrigued by Indian Traders, I put these guys as precursors to what Hollywood would latch onto and term the “Wild West” and “Cowboys and Indians”… the stuff that as a kid, I reveled in. I think that actors such as John Wayne, directors such as John Ford and Sam Peckinpah would have read of and studied the characters I am running across in my research… but that is my personal interest.
I stand in awe at the accuracy of the surveyors in 1722 who accomplished this patent. Note that the County Line is not only where it “should” be… it is precisely where it should be. This base map is from 1910 or so and I give a hat tip to the good folks at USGS for maintaining and making available these old historic maps. This is the reason for my motto of this blog” “meant what they said, said what they meant”… as I was putting the pieces together to create this graphic, I kept scratching my head and thinking this makes no sense and cannot possibly work. But I just let it play out and it did work… I have learned not to doubt the old boys.
…the nitty gritty details below…click on the blue filename under the graphic for a better view
a Needham Bryan Study…
This son William has always been a difficult nut for me to crack… but this is beginning to make sense. This is only one of the sons of the Immigrant, others are documented on my site… try the “search box”.
Grandson Needham is emerging out of the shadows nicely…
…as usual, click the blue filename under the graphic for a zoomable page
Hot Links for above…
https://www.virtualjamestown.org/indentures/search_indentures.html
https://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/01ddd/id/464321/rec/5