Clover Family Research Compendium

Created, Edited, and Maintained By June Clover Byrne

Early Virginia and West Virginia Land and Court Records

This article was originally published in the Clover Family Chronicles issue 1, Spring 2002. It is copyrighted 2002 June Clover Byrne    

        There are continual questions about the surnames of the wives of Philip Clover of Berkeley County, Virginia.  Periodically, the old story appears again that his wife was a Shepherd. He was married twice and neither was a Shepherd. I dealt with this in detail in Clovers of Franklin County, Ohio: A Study of Henry Clover, His Ancestors and Descendants, pages 5-6, deed abstracts on pages 11-13, tax records 14-16. There is an odd sale of land on 20 June 1780, in Frederick County, Virginia.  Philip Clawver and Malachi Pope deeded two lots to William Morgan the 2nd.  At first glance, this was intriguing, but I shortly discovered a deed where each had purchased a lot on 27 June 1767. It is easy to miss the deed because it was for Philip Claver.  So far there is nothing to connect Elizabeth Clover and the surname Pope.  However, I do have some ideas about Philip Clover that I want to share.
    The following chart shows Philip Clover deeds and taxes which are extracted in Clovers of Franklin County, Ohio: A Study of Henry Clover, His Ancestors and Descendants, 11-17.
    1764 Bought lot 25 in Shepherdstown.      Sold 1773 (wife Elizabeth)
    1767 Bought one lot of 5 acres                  Sold 1780 (No wife)
    1768 Bought 15 acres                                Sold 1773 (wife Elizabeth)
    ?                                                                  Sold 40 acres 1781 (wife Susanna)
    ?                                                                  Sold 116 acres 1781 (wife Susanna)
    ?                                                                  Paid taxes on 160 acres 1782, 1785, etc.
    Note that at this point, there are no other records of Philip purchasing land in the Frederick County or the Berkeley County Deed Books. There is no record of his having a patent of land from the crown. The Northern Neck Patents are printed in Virginia Northern Neck Land Grants, Volume I, II, III, which go up to 1800. The only other way to get land is by gift or inheritance. However he got the land, he had over 300 acres by the 1780's between what he had sold and what he ended up paying land tax on when record keeping started in 1782.  The deeds which are currently being investigated are these: 
    Berkeley County, Virginia Deed Book 5: 651 dated 12 August 1781, Philip Clover and wife, Susannah Clover sold 40 acres for ,40 Pennsylvania currency, to George Creamer on Sleepy Creek, adjacent to Thomas Dent, patented to James and John Dougherty in 1766. Witness: Wm Smith, John Hoyle, Francis Waggoner. Lease and release. [No statement as to how Philip Clover acquired the land.] Signed by Philip Clover and Susannah (X) Clover. She signed with a mark.
        Berkeley County, Virginia Deed Book 5: 651-2 dated 12 August 1781, Philip Clover and wife, Susannah Clover, sold 116 acres for ,360 Pennsylvania Currency, to Francis Wagoner, on Sleepy Creek, adjacent to Thomas Dent, patented to James and John Dougherty in 1766. Witness: Wm. Smith, John Hoyel, George Creamer. Lease and release. [No statement as to how Philip Clover acquired the land.] Signed by Philip Clover and Susannah (X) Clover. She signed with a mark.
    I traced this tract of land from the date of patent in 1766 to Philip Clover in 1781. James and John Daugherty of Frederick County, Virginia patented lot number 16 which was 400 acres on Sleepy Creek adjacent Thomas Dent on 9 August 1766.  I searched the deed records for Frederick County, Virginia for sales of this land.
    Frederick County, Virginia Deed Book 12: 91-92: dated 1 March 1767: Lease and release between James Dougherty and John Dougherty of the County of Frederick to Peirce Butler of county aforesaid --in consideration of 5 shillings--tract of land lying and being on the south side of Sleepy Creek, containing 100 acres the same being part of four hundred acres granted to said James and John Dougherty by deeds from the proprietors office including the said 100 acres of land--rent of one pepper corn on Lady Day next. Signed James and John Dougherty, recorded 1 March 1768.  No witnesses. [Note the Dougherty’s still had 300 acres out of the original patent left. And this is the last mention of John Dougherty that I have so far found.]
    Frederick County, Virginia Book 12: 175: dated 3 March 1768: Lease and release between Charles Burcham of County of Frederick to Peirce Butler of county aforesaid--five  shillings--tract of land being on each side of Sleepy Creek containing 100 acres the same being granted to said Burcham by deed from the proprietors office 2 February 1761--”in the line of James Daugherty” is part of the description. Recorded 3 March 1768. [James Dougherty was still owner of the land in question in 1768.  However, what had happened to John Dougherty? This land was patented in 1761 to Charles Burcham and in that patent, the land is described as being adjacent James Dougherty so he may have been on this land a while before the patent actually was recorded. This was common.]
        I found no sale of the other 300 acres of this patent in the Frederick County deed books before 1772 when Berkeley County was formed. Amelia C. Gilreath has published a series of books of extracted Frederick County Deed Records which has a complete index. I have searched volumes one to six which go up to 1780 for mentions of Clover and variations and Dougherty and variations.  I searched Abstracts of Wills, Inventories, and Administration Accounts of Frederick County, Virginia, 1743-1800, by J. Estelle King. I am told that this may not be complete, so I searched Virginia Wills and Administrations, 1632-1800, by Clayton Torrence.  So far, I have found no record of a sale of the land or an estate for either John or James Dougherty in Frederick County, Virginia.  There is likewise no sale of the land in the Berkeley County deeds. I searched the Berkeley County, Virginia Grantor Index on FHL microfilm 0831168. I searched the Berkeley County, [West] Virginia, Deeds and Wills Abstracts, Deed Books 1-5, (1772-1781), Will Books 1-3 (1772-1805).  There is nothing in either place which would explain the transfer of land.  The book includes inventories as well as wills and includes every name in the entries and has a complete index.
    A Dougherty still owns land in Berkeley in 1772 per the rent rolls.  I do not yet have complete information about this.  This search is complicated by the two names, John and James Dougherty. The land may have passed from John to James without leaving probate records because of the law of primogeniture which was not repealed in Virginia until after 1781. However, this does not explain how Philip got the land.
    Philip and Susanna Clover sold 156 acres of land.  Philip owned an additional 160 acres that he paid land taxes on for some years. And, as it happens, which is no surprise to us, having seen the other records, there is no Dougherty paying land taxes in Berkeley County, Virginia in 1782 or 1785. In 1790, Philip Clover, Senior, stopped paying real estate taxes on this land at the same time that Henry Clover and Philip Clover, Junior, began paying taxes on 80 acres each.   This probably represents the division of the land between sons and the deeds are probably the deeds indicated in the index which were in Deed Book 14 which disappeared during the Civil War.  These 316 acres of land are basically unaccounted for.  It is not a negligible quantity of land.  It is unfortunate that the land tax records do not begin until 1782.

        A year after I published the preceeding article, I started doing court records where I found the solution to this problem.  The following article was originally published in the Clover Family Chronicles Issue 4 Fall 2003, page 115. 

    Quite possibly the most fascinating entry is dated February 1798.  On the court record for that date, there is a note: Clover set levy free.  This would mean that Philip Clover was not liable to pay taxes. And, in fact, if you look at the tax records that I quoted in Clovers of Franklin County, Ohio, page 17, you will see that Philip Clover disappears from the tax lists at this point. I have spent quite a bit of time trying to ascertain the exact law pertaining to this.  Henning’s Statues are indexed in Swem’s Historical Index and I have spent hours pouring over these volumes.  Obviously, if a court exempts a man from paying taxes, there was a reason.  There are a number of similar entries in the court records, but no reason was ever given for a man to be set levy free.  My reading of Henning’s Statutes has led me to conclude that the county court had jurisdiction over this subject.  Exclusions could be based upon disability or age. The age mentioned was 65.  If Philip turned 65 in 1797, this would mean that he was born in 1732.  This would fit quite well with my previous thoughts.  However, I am still working on this.  If anyone has any knowledge of Virginia law, I would be most interested. This would be the first actual evidence of his date of birth.  I consider this to be most suggestive, but not conclusive.

        Now I also have to confess that I have found evidence to shoot down one of my pet theories.  One of the reasons that I started through the court records is that I wanted to find out about the missing purchase of land which I have previously written about. I had theorized that Philip might have inherited the land from his second wife.  However, I was wrong about this.  On 20 June 1775, there is the following note in the court records: Indenture of lease and release [a type of sale] from James Dougherty and Susannah, his wife, and John Dougherty, to Philip Clover was proved by the oath of Morgan Morgan, a witness thereto and [the sale] ordered to lie for further proof. 
    When a sale took place, the sellers went to court and acknowledged the sale and the court ordered the deed to be recorded.  In this case, the Dougherty’s were not available and there was some difficulty over proving the sale.  Title must have been proved later because Philip did sell the land later. So I have to admit that my pet theory did not hold up. Philip did apparently purchase the land from them at some date previous to the above so there is no reason to think that he acquired the land through marriage or inheritance. 

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Last Updated 4 September 2011