WILLIAM PASCHALL,C1 by Clarence McDaniel October 2006 William was born about 1705, perhaps a little earlier. He apparently lived at home in Woodbridge, NJ, prior to his marriage about 1725/26. In 1729, at Woodbridge, a William signed as witness to the will of Thomas Pike. The original will exists and a photocopy of Williams signature has been obtained. The copy is faint but the signature shows 2 final L's and the name William is fully written out and no final florish is used. These differences compared to the signatures of Will'm Paschal, C1, lead us to conclude that this was the father, William Paschall, C. This same William wrote his signature twice in 1730 in the Bible of Jana Englis Parker also of Woodbridge. He then, that same year, bought 100 acres of land in Essex Co, NJ, from Joseph Al(lin). This is the same William as one of the deed witnesses, Nathaniel Paine, was later the 2nd husband of Jana. Samuel Dennis(the son of the more famous one) of Woodbridge, in his will of 1719, named an unmarried daughter as Reliance. William named his 7th son, Dennis, no doubt but to honor her line. Subsequent descendants used Reliance(relly) Dennis and Samuel Dennis as given names for their children. Reliance's father, Samuel Dennis or Dennes and his father before him (also named Samuel) were well-known personages of Woodbridge. The elder Samuel had served in several civil capacities in the town. Reliance's grandfather and his brothers, John and Jonathan along with their father, Robert Dennis, were pioneers in New Jersey. Records indicate that Robert came from Yarmouth, MA, about 1667. John and Samuel arrived on a ship in 1664, embarking from Cork, Ireland. They may have completed their schooling in Britain before leaving to join their father in Woodbridge. In 1739, records of the court of New York city indicate that a runaway servant, Richard Glover, was being held until William Paschall, of Woodbridge, should come to get him. During these critical ten years we can show William living in Woodbridge. Obviously neither him nor his father were the William (saddler) grandson of Thomas Paschall of Philadelphia. This old absurd claim still is found rooted in most of the listings found on the internet. There is no basis to the claim other than the name William. These claims are made solely because of the desirable known ancestry of Thomas Paschall. An examination of the town book, called Liber B, may show more evidence but this book(now dust?) can't be located. About the year 1744, William and likely his two older sons, went to North Carolina, perhaps in a group along the Quaker Trail that led from Philadelphia to Baltimore to Richmond to Petersburg, VA. It may be that the entire family went to Virginia and stayed there while the three men went on south. My own guess is that Reliance had died and William remarried. The names of the daughters, Rachel, Dianna, Sarah and Ruth are names used in the Woodbridge Pike family, especially Dianna and Ruth. Our particular thread can be picked up in the 1744 North Carolina petitions for land. A petitioner had to meet certain requirements. These were: he had to be a loyal subject of the Crown, not bound or criminal, and he had to pledge support to the Church of England. These were laws passed by the colonial government at New Bern, the capital. From about 1720 land in North Carolina had been given by the Lord Proprietor's in England at the rate of 50 acres for each person present in the family, including servants/slaves. Our petitioner asked for the modest sum of 150 acres which would indicate that only William and possibly two sons were present in 1744. This petition and a cattle mark registration of 1745 are our first records of William in North Carolina. The 1744 petitions were never granted due to policy changes in England. My thought is that he next brought the entire family to North Carolina by 1748 as the survey for his first grant was made that year. This survey most likely included the 150 acres he had previously claimed. In any event, William had a survey run on Mar 11, 1748, and received his first land grant on Mar 25, 1749, in the county of Granville for 625 acres. William's grant of 1749 is a beautiful document. Copies may be obtained from the North Carolina Archives and are expensive. The document is large and contains William's signature to attest his agreement to the terms of the grant. Those granting the land were the legally appointed commissioners of Lord Granville, sitting at New Bern. William's signature shows a fair hand and he signed his surname in the anglicized form with one L. He abbreviated his first name as "Willm" as he did on other documents and his will. Note: When another person writes his name they may use different spellings but in every case where William himself signed he used the above form. THE TERMS OF THE GRANT - The grantee was required, within a space of time, to make improvements in the property. He was to clear and cultivate the land at so many acres a year or he was to build a suitable house and graze so many head a year, etc. In all he was required to do exactly as you would expect he would want to do. A token sum, called quit rents, was due yearly, forever. Failure to meet the terms meant expulsion and forfeiture. It is uncertain why terms were imposed; it was not to the advantage of the Crown to enforce them. THE PLACE OF THE GRANT - The grant bounds are perfectly definable. The grant may be easily located even at this date on a modern topographical map of the area. Embellishments made by William's descendants were still there in the 1920's according to Edward E Paschall. He wrote that a mill, "Paschall Mill", was still standing in 1925. As we follow the Roanoke upriver from the bay country, we encounter a northeasterly flowing creek named Smith's Creek. William located up this creek near a branch called Beetree. It was here William had survey chains dragged through densely forested hill and vale and made his homeplace, and it is here that he is buried. William improved and kept his 1749 grant; indeed he added three more grants of adjacent land to the original, making in all 2597 acres. These grants were dated the 11th and 13th of March, 1760 and 16 March, 1761. This constituted a parcel of land about 3 miles long, east to west, and a mile wide. On a road map, North Carolina routes 1217, 1206 and 1218 enclose most of the original grants. This achievement has caused William to be fondly known as: "William of the NC Land Grants". William's three oldest sons also received grants in their names, all in the same immediate area. Surviving records of the early period with individual names of settlers are few. Thankfully, we do have some. There are four published lists, three tax and a militia list, that give the names of individuals that are of interest. These are: 1750 Granville Tax list 1754 Granville Militia list 1755 Granville Tax list 1762 Granville Tax list These lists suffice to give us some idea of William, his sons and their neighbors. As would be expected many prominent names can be found on the these lists which became legends in later North Carolina history. 1750 - This list shows William with four additional polls. The state tax was levied on males at age 16 in these early years. 1754 - This is a military list, probably brought about by an Indian scare, resulting in a desire to know how many able-bodied men could fight. This list states some relationships. We have William and son, William. Other companies carry Samuel, John and Isaiah. Samuel is married and most likely so are John and Isaiah. John's name is either duplicated or the complier could not distinguish the difference in names. We note Elisha is missing from the list. We do not know of any certain age requirement imposed for this list. This list has, rather inanely in the past, been used to establish military service for patriotic societies. 1755 - This list gives us the names of the polls and we find six of William's sons listed with him. Only the youngest two sons are missing from this list. 1762 - Recently published, this list shows two sons living in the homes of relatives of their wives. We notice that Isaiah,F, is listed as overseer in the household of Julius Nichols, his brother-in-law. Likewise we see William,G, living in the household of Thomas Aspen. Thomas is likely his father-in-law. William,C1, has Elisha and Dennis at home and over 16. Samuel and James are listed separately so James has probably married by 1762. The first two tax lists give us a chance to make some rough age estimates for William's sons. We can show the following: 1750 1755 Samuel > 16 > 16 John > 16 > 16 > means "over" Isaiah > 16 > 16 < means "under" William > 16 > 16 Elisha < 16 > 16 James < 16 > 16 We can see this indicates the first four were born before 1734 and the last two were born between 1734 and 1739. We have a document regarding Isaiah which says he was "about 50" in 1779. Samuel's Bible has his year of birth as 1727. Using the traditional order as given by William's will then we have: Samuel b, 1727 John b, 1729 Isaiah b, 1731 William b, 1733 Elisha b, 1735 James b, 1739 We keep the two year separation between births as most authorities recommend. The traditional year of birth for James is 1740. We lower this to 1739 to be in agreement with the tax list. These 6 sons likely had Reliance as their mother. Other Early Records - The court records of early Granville list, in 1756, William's name in a trespass suit. A deed record of Thomas Aspen, in 1758, has as witness, William. This is most likely the son, William, G, as he was in the household in the 1762 tax list. There is in the 1760's a series of deeds, William to his sons and Isaiah to father, William. William deeded to seven of his sons all of the land in the three later grants. He retained only the northernmost part of the 1749 grant - the homeplace. William,G, did not receive land because he had left the county - he most likely got property of equal value. The year 1765 saw Granville County divided with William's original tracts split between two counties. The eastern portion of Granville with the homeplace became Bute County. Again in 1779 we see the Bute name discarded and the county divided into two new counties, Warren to the north and Franklin to the south. The records of Bute were given to the keeping of Warren County wherein the homeplace now lay. In 1773 there was an agreement between William and son, Thomas,K. The agreement was that Thomas should provide his father and wife with their keep for one year; Thomas in return was to get a sum of money. The agreement was witnessed by William who made a mark like a capital M. Whether this was Wm,D3, or Wm,G, remains to be determined though Wm,G is believed to have made a mark like a capital W and thought to have been in Orange county at this time. In May of the year 1774 William made his will. The will was probated in Bute court of November, 1774. Today we can view a microfilm copy of that original will. William named his seven oldest sons and devised a nominal sum to each. This signifies that he considered they had already gotten their fair share of his estate. The idea in naming each is to show that none had been accidentally forgotten. William named his then living wife, Tabitha; his underage daughter, Reliance; his married daughter, Dianna, and her husband and son; his three adult daughters and his youngest son, Thomas. The four adult daughters received land in Granville, Reliance got a sizeable bequest, Tabitha got the homeplace land for her lifetime. Thomas got the rest including Tabitha's after her death. Thomas was made the ward of his sister, Reliance, and posted bond. It has always been the custom that William named his sons in order of their birth and we know of no cause to believe otherwise at this date. An inventory of the estate shows a voucher for payment to the Rev. Henry Patrillo for the funeral sermon. He was a noted Presbyterian minister of the time. Anderson, J1, named a son, Zebulon Montgomery no doubt but for the famous Pike's peak explorer. My guess is that William married secondly into this Pike family, who were his neighbors, and embraced their religion about 1743 and Dennis, J, and Thomas, K, as well as two or three daughters were by this second wife. Enforcement to this idea is had by the fact that neither of the J or K lines ever named a daughter Reliance whereas the older ones did so. Of the five daughters we originally knew very little. No marriage records of this period have been located. Dianna had a record (banns) of intent to marry Richard King and this is confirmed by the will. No further record has been identified for the other three daughters. The daughters marriages may be traced using the land records. This requires a tedious search for the first recorded owner of the bequeathed land. William gave bequests to four daughters of land in Granville county below that of son, Elisha. The deed to Elisha was confused but it was for 845 acres. To understand this the searcher must know that the 700 acres of land given by son, Isaiah, to his father was to the west and south of the fourth grant of William. When this 700 acres is platted in and the boundaries of the 845 acres to Elisha used we see that Elisha got 685 acres (the entire 4th grant to William) and 160 acres of the west part of Isaiah's old grant. A careful reading of the deed to Elisha now shows that William gave Elisha the entire grant along with the liabilities thereof, i.e. the quit rents. This left 540 acres of Isaiah's old grant, all south of Elisha. The dimensions are given for this residual land. Following the amounts given in the will we can plat the land given to each daughter. This has been done. See site for map. The above lengthly explanation was necessary as this is the only clue to the marriages of the three daughters. The land records had to be searched for mention of Sarah,L's 150 acres south of Elisha being conveyed. The conveyor must have no prior deed for the land it being his wife's legacy. There was located, as predicted three such sales of the exact land. The story is found in each daughter's history. More work needs to be developed on these lines. Betty Jo Paschall of Puryear, TN, did this tedious searching of the land records. The daughter, Reliance, was alive, and not married until 1785, the year Thomas last renewed the bond. Reliance was not the child of William's first wife Reliance as so many searchers have presumed. We can show this by the following analysis: Eighteen was at the time the legal age for females. If Reliance was underage in 1785 (assuming the bond was for an underage ward) then she must have been born no earlier than 1767. If we presume Reliance was born no later than 1703 (she was a minor when her father died in 1719) then Reliance would have been, as a minimum, 65 years old when daughter Reliance was born. The incidence of live births to women over 50 is extremely small so good genealogy then denies the assumption that Reliance was the mother. In 1815 at Smith county, TN, James Burchett died and had an estate sale. He was allied by his sisters marriage to the E-line and went with them to that county earlier. At his sale was his widow, Reliance. I suspect she was either William's daughter or a daughter of James,I, or John,E. The latter seems more likely and is so indicated below. We have traced as accurately as possible the descendants of the eight sons. All eight sons married and had issue. William was blessed with no less than 63 grandchildren! The line-up as we apportion it today is: Line Son Grandsons D Samuel William, John, Samuel, Milton E John James, Silas, Samuel, John F Isaiah William, George, John, Isaiah, Dennis G William Thomas H Elisha Wm, Samuel, John, Elisha, Jesse, Isaiah,Ezekiel,Alexander I James Samuel, Robert, John, James, Joshua, Edmund J Dennis Anderson, Nichols, Elisha K Thomas William, Thomas, John, Henry, Michael, Robert Line Son Granddaughters D Samuel Reliance, Mary, Rachel, Sarah, Susan, Nancy, Mildred, Betty, Phereba E John Jemina?, Reliance? F Isaiah Lucinda G William Hannah H Elisha Elizabeth, Reliance, Jerusha, Rachel I James Patience, Elizabeth, Eluena, Sarah J Dennis Mary, Sarah K Thomas Nancy, Elizabeth, Mary, Martha, Bushaba In this list there are some questions but it represents a minimum count - there was possibly two more grandsons. Of these 36 grandsons, nearly all had descendants. One can quickly see the numbers become astonishing in several generations. When I first became aware of these eight sons and their children and the confusion regarding them I determined to find where they went and when they died. Little did I know of the extent of such a task. The date and place of death for the sons were: Name Date County/State Samuel 1805 Abbeville, SC John 1776 Granville, NC Isaiah 1795 Franklin, NC William 1818+ Russell, VA Elisha 1810+ Caswell, NC James 1792 Warren, NC Dennis 1815 Warren, NC Thomas 1821 Warren, NC Those who made wills were: Samuel, Isaiah, James, Dennis Relationship information may be found in deed records for: John, Elisha, Thomas In other wills for: John, William Contrary to what might be expected the greatest problems occur when a great number of persons with the same surname are living in the same civil region. Such occurs in Warren in the period from about 1780-1810. After this time the number of remaining lines has diminished to the point where identification is not questionable. The only saving factor in Warren was the preservation of a great number of records. The tax lists divide the county into smaller geographical areas or districts. With a large number of descendants in a small area no scrap of paper or mention is insignificant. One John who could sign his name and another who couldn't was the break needed in one case. When William deeded his land to his sons, the land was all in one civil jurisdiction, Granville County. In 1765, the land given to James was partially divided between Granville and Bute. In the west John, Isaiah and Elisha were still in Granville, while to the east Samuel, Dennis and Thomas with their father were in Bute. Furthermore the new county line dividing Bute and Granville was artificial, that is, an imaginary line rather than the more familiar boundary of a river. The line ran fairly parallel to Deep Creek but the creek had been ignored as a boundary. Dissatisfaction with this line must have been great because in the year 1786 (after the tax list) Granville ceded this district, Nutbush, to Warren. Knowledge of this change is necessary to interpret the records of 1785-87 correctly. In 1787, Elisha suddenly appears to have moved from Granville to Warren. We are not so fortunate in the later Granville records as we are in those of Warren; fewer tax lists are available and the 1790 census is missing. We have tax lists for 1769, 1771 and various years and most of the state census of 1786. Source notes for William Paschall(may not be latest update); goto site http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~sandydog/ 1719 Midd/NJ WB Samuel Dennis names dau, Reliance, others; NJ state archives 1727 Bible of son, Samuel, names mother as Reliance; Bible at site 1729 Midd/NJ WB Thomas Pike; Wm was wit, signed; (the father?); NJ state archives 1730 Esse/NJ Wm bought 100a from Joseph Alin(allen) (the father?); ditto 1739 NewY/NY Ct Rec William Paschall, resident of Woodbridge, NJ; NC state archives 1744 Edge/NC Col Rec Vol 4, p703 petition for 150a, Nov 19; 50a/person; ditto 1745 Edge/NC Brands Bk A; Wm, a crop & a hole in each ear; Jul 18; ditto 1749 Gran/NC Ld grant #38, file #760, Bk 14 p19, 625a; Mar 25; signed; ditto 1750 Gran/NC TL William and sons, 6 polls 1754 Gran/NC Militia, William & son, William; Samuel, John, Isaiah 1755 Gran/NC TL William and 7 sons 1760 Gran/NC Ld grants, 640a; Mar 11 and 647a; Mar 13 1761 Gran/NC Ld grant, 685a; Mar 16 1761 Gran/NC DB D314 Ld to son, Samuel; May; this son called D-line 1766 Gran/NC DB I230 ditto 1761 Gran/NC DB D313 Ld to son, John; Jun; called E-line 1761 Gran/NC DB D327 Ld to son, Isaiah; Jun; called F-line 1762 Gran/NC TL Smith's Cr has Elisha, Dennis at home 1763 Gran/NC DB F170 Ld to son, James; Mar; called I-line 1765 Gran/NC DB G313 Ld to son, Elisha; Feb duplicated J4, p6; called H-line 1768 Bute/NC DB 2-45 Ld to son, Dennis; Feb; called J-line 1770 Bute/NC Ct Min Wm gdn to Parks, Mary & Tabitha King; p150 1773 Bute/NC Ct Min Wm & son, Thomas-agreement; Mar 27; p200; called K-line 1774 Bute/NC WB will; May, proved Nov; sons, Thomas/Dennis exec'rs 1777 Bute/NC Ct Min est acct; sermon by Rev Patillo, a noted Presbyterian minister 1779 Warr/NC Ct Min additional inventory; Aug 1779 Warr/NC Ct Min Tabitha, widow, died; her property sold by Thomas Note: King ch were ch of John King; Parks >18 by Nov 1771 when he was bound to Richard King until 21. Note: prob marr 2ndly; Sarah Anderson or Pike?, c1745 Note: prob marr 3rdly; Tabitha Englis? King, widow of John King; had her dau, Tabitha King as ward Note: son, William did not get land; called G-line Note: 5 dau's, per will order, are called L-P lines