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

More documents

Recommendations

Info

landowning residents, about whom less is known since they showed up sporadically in court and left less record of their activity. At the bottom of the social scale were those in servitude. There was at all times in colonial Virginia a fairly large population of white indentured servants. Those immigrants to Virginia who could not pay the cost of the voyage sold themselves as servants to those who could. Upon arrival they could be kept by the shipper, if he was a resident, or sold to the highest bidder. After a term of anywhere from 3 to 7 years, as stipulated by contract, they were given “corn and clothes” by their masters and were free to make their way as best they could. In the 17 th century, due to the abundance and cheapness of land and the high wages a laborer could demand from the needs of a growing colony, it was not unusual for former servants to flourish even after years spent as the legal property of another. However, some had little hope of escaping from such a condition. On the eastern shore, as elsewhere in Virginia, one finds in the court records the presence of slaves, shipped into the colony from Africa or from Barbados, bargained and sold in deeds of gift and deeds of sale, and bequeathed to descendants along with their future children. Throughout the course of this story of Nathaniel Bradford’s life will appear men and women from all of these various grades of society. Page 6 of 74 Copyright 2008 Adam M. Bradford
Nathaniel’s Early Years to Settlement at Occahannock: 1654-1661 Nathaniel’s First Land Acquisition On 29 May 1661, Nathaniel Bradford received a grant of 400 acres in Northampton County between Ockahannock and Nuswattocks creeks on the Chesapeake Bay. This grant was the fulfillment of a patent issued to Nathaniel on 10 October 1658 for transporting 8 individuals into the colony under the headright system, which throughout much of the 17 th century constituted the sole means for individuals to obtain land in Virginia. 21 Sidebar: The Headright System The headright system for granting lands was established by the Virginia Company in 1618 as part of a series of reforms intended to revitalize its colony, which after 11 years of existence was still suffering from a lack of profit and a lack of population. To encourage immigration and stimulate agricultural enterprise, the Company set in place a system whereby an individual received 50 acres of land for every person he or she was responsible for transporting into the colony. The process of obtaining land under the headright system consisted of several steps. First one proved one’s importation of individuals before a granting authority, either one of the county courts or the General Court in James City. One thereby obtained a certificate which was presented to the secretary of the colony for validation. Once validated, this certificate served as a warrant for the specified amount of acreage wherever it could be found vacant in the colony. After one located the vacant land one wished to seat, one then had it surveyed in order to know its boundaries and applied for a patent, or grant, from the Crown for the specified land. In the meantime, the purchaser was free to settle on the land in anticipation of the forthcoming grant. If one did not seat the land (usually entailing the planting of a crop and the building of a house) within three years of the patent’s issue, the land was considered deserted and could be claimed by another. This customary three year maturation period probably explains why the actual grant for Nathaniel’s land came in 1661, three years after the original patent was issued. Since no record of Nathaniel’s 1658 patent or certificate of importation exists, there is no way of knowing whom he transported. For that matter, since a headright certificate could be sold or granted by the holder to others, and since headrights themselves could be sold or granted, that means that even if the certificate or patent did survive it would not necessarily be the case that Nathaniel actually transported the 8 individuals mentioned on them. If he did transport the 8 headrights, that would mean that by 1655 he was probably already well off enough to pay for the transportation of others into the colony, since a headright could not be claimed until the individual transported had either died or remained in the colony for a period of 3 years; though it is unclear how strictly this residency stipulation was enforced. The conclusion that Nathaniel was not without means when he first appears in Accomack is bolstered by the fact that he was able to enter a bond of 500 lbs tobacco in 1658. It’s natural to wonder whether Nathaniel himself might have been listed as a headright on his 1658 patent, since there is no record of his immigration. It should be stressed that even if he had been listed as a headright, it wouldn’t necessarily mean he had been transported precisely three years previous to its issue, since there was no time limit to when a headright could be claimed. Examples are known of headrights being claimed decades after their actual importation. Furthermore, one of the more common abuses of the headright system was to claim as a headright one who was simply returning to the colony from abroad, so that the presence of an individual as a headright is not incontrovertible evidence that one was an immigrant rather than native-born. Nevertheless, it is notable that Nathaniel’s first patent came 4 years after his first appearance in the records. If Nathaniel arrived in Virginia in 1654, one would expect someone to apply for a certificate of importation with him listed as a headright on it around the year 1657 and to receive a patent around that year from the certificate. Thus the time frame from Nathaniel’s first appearance in the court records to the issue of his first patent is about what one would expect to see had he transported himself to Virginia around the time he first turns up in the records. Page 7 of 74 Copyright 2008 Adam M. Bradford
Page 1 and 2: 1. Nathaniel 1 Bradford of Accomack
Page 3 and 4: Sketch of Nathaniel Bradford Nathan
Page 5: in London that “no question . . .
Page 9 and 10: to tender our Cause; that (if ye sd
Page 11 and 12: Nathaniel as Constable & Birth of N
Page 13 and 14: Alice sold the Occahannock plantati
Page 15 and 16: The occupation of currier no longer
Page 17 and 18: approve the appointment of the King
Page 19 and 20: The fundamental division within the
Page 21 and 22: ecompense for their services. The m
Page 23 and 24: Nathaniel in the Late 1660’s: 166
Page 25 and 26: practice that another of Nathaniel
Page 27 and 28: man were the father of Nathaniel Jr
Page 29 and 30: Nathaniel as Grand Juror and Repres
Page 31 and 32: court’s reputation. Since the acc
Page 33 and 34: Nathaniel Bradford During the 1670s
Page 35 and 36: 2800 acres. In that same year Natha
Page 37 and 38: household. A Thomas Williams was a
Page 39 and 40: In 17 th century Virginia slavery w
Page 41 and 42: Mathews’ lack of payment for cert
Page 43 and 44: Governor Berkeley used the eastern
Page 45 and 46: Though tobacco was the staple of Vi
Page 47 and 48: himself was probably not in Sussex
Page 49 and 50: Now that all of Nathaniel’s land
Page 51 and 52: * * * * * Nathaniel as Attorney On
Page 53 and 54: Nathaniel’s tithables remained co
Page 55 and 56: towels, a small chest, a small brok
Page 57 and 58:
Citations Introduction 1.Nathaniel
Page 59 and 60:
early 1640s, Richard Smith Jr. is a
Page 61 and 62:
122.McKey, 7: 232. For knowingly co
Page 63 and 64:
219.Wesley Frank Craven, The Coloni
Page 65 and 66:
298.McKey, 7: 73. 299.McKey, 8: 49.
Page 67 and 68:
Appendix A: Timeline of Events in N
Page 69 and 70:
Apr 20 verbal bargain with Mathew S
Page 71 and 72:
1692 Feb 19 Robert Watson’s estat
Page 73 and 74:
3) Henry Bradford of the Muster Per
show all

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

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?