1. Nathaniel Bradford of Accomack County, Virginia - Lower ...

Settlement of Sussex – Lower Delmarva Community
It was not unusual for Nathaniel to have purchased land in what might seem at first to be an area rather far
from his home plantation. In fact, numerous of the first settlers of Sussex were from the eastern shore of
Virginia. When the area was still held by the Dutch, it was a popular destination for runaway servants and
slaves from farther south; and after the English took final control of the area in 1673, a good number of
those who began buying up large plots of land there were Accomack planters, or inhabitants of Somerset
County, Maryland, itself settled largely by families whose ultimate origins lay in Accomack. Even as early
as the late 1650s, in the first days of settlement in Somerset County, Maryland (just north of Accomack)
one finds these same recent immigrants to Somerset pressing in upon the Dutch settlement around
Rehobeth. However, it wasn’t until around 1677 that English settlement at Rehobeth really occurred in
significant numbers, and Nathaniel was a part of this movement, although in his case it was not an actual
movement but rather an expansion. Even though Nathaniel had a substantial plantation in Sussex, he never
settled there himself. His Sussex estate was always of secondary importance when compared with his
Accomack plantation.
This movement of people from Accomack and Somerset into Sussex in the 1670s and 1680s was just the
latest stage in a process of population movement that had been occurring since the earliest days of
settlement on the eastern shore, when there were just a few dozen people living in the south of the
peninsula along Old Plantation Creek. Since then, there had been a steady movement of people northwards
from the southern reaches of Northampton on up into what would become the new Accomack County, and
farther north across the border into Somerset County, Maryland, and then even farther north into Sussex.
It’s a fact that never fails to impress itself upon anyone who researches families in the lower Delmarva
peninsula, this tide of northward settlement. In a way, the five counties which make up the lower Delmarva
peninsula - Accomack and Northampton counties in Virginia, Somerset and Worcester counties in
Maryland, and Sussex in Delaware – should be viewed as a single community, in that a large number,
possibly even a majority, of the people who lived there shared a common heritage which ultimately had its
roots in the eastern shore of Virginia. Despite being spread out over the administrative jurisdictions of three
separate colonies, the inhabitants of lower Delmarva were often bound more closely to each other by ties of
community and kinship than they were to Virginians or Marylanders on the other side of the Chesapeake. 270
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More Land Dealings
In addition to his home plantation at Matchapungo and the 400 acres he patented in 1672, Nathaniel
purchased other tracts in Accomack County over the course of his life. In 1679, he took out a patent on a
644-acre tract which formerly belonged to Hugh Yeo, but which had been deserted after Yeo’s intestate
death. 271 Nathaniel soon lost his claim to this land: four years after his patent it came out that John
Washbourne had received a patent for the same tract, and as a result both his and Nathaniel’s patents were
voided. 272 In 1680, the year after patenting the former Yeo land, Nathaniel sold off two plots of land he had
purchased earlier. To Samuel Beech, Nathaniel sold the 400 acres he had patented in 1667 adjacent to his
home plantation, and to John Willis he sold the 400 acres he had patented in 1672. 273 Though the original
sales occurred in this year, neither sale was finalized until after Nathaniel’s death, when his son William
completed the sales and they were finally recorded in Accomack Court. In 1681, the year after he sold the
two plots to Beech and Willis, Nathaniel completed what would be his final land transaction when he
purchased from William Jette another 500 acres in Accomack, this tract being located on the bay side of the
peninsula on Pungoteague Creek. 274 These 500 acres along with the home plantation of 2400 acres and the
plantation in Sussex passed to his son William after Nathaniel’s death.
Page 48 of 74 Copyright 2008 Adam M. Bradford