Re: Origins of Cornelius Sale et al. of Robertson County, TN
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In reply to:
Re: Origins of Cornelius Sale et al. of Robertson County, TN
Rebecca Smith 3/05/04
I drafted a lengthy response to this the other day, but needed one piece of information to complete it.While I was off looking that up, Comcast knocked me offline, and I lost the whole thing.Very irritating.Don't have the time right now to recreate it all, so let me just note a few little things.
First, the available data about the immigrant William Sale is extremely sketchy.Some people feel that there were two of them; one a couple of decades before the other.It's not even clear that the Anthony Sale you refer to (also Seale in many documents) was the brother of Cornelius.
What I am fairly clear on is that Cornelius was the eldest son of the landowner William Sale who was living in Essex County at the time of its founding.(I don't want to say the "first" William Sale because that gets into the question of who was first.)The "rent" rolls at the dawn of the 18th century show the big acreage first in the name of "Widow Sale," and then in the name of Cornelius, presumably as the estate was settled.Under primogeniture, the oldest son got all the real estate of an intestate decedent, subject to the widow's life estate or dower in a third of it.To be precise, I would note that these are records of quitrents on deeded land rather than lease payments as we would normally conceive of those on a conventional tenancy, so we are really talking here about land that William Sale I owned at the time of his death.
Based on the above analysis, I would not concur with the birth years you posited for Anthony and Cornelius above -- at least not if they were really brothers.On the other hand, Anthony does make an appearance or two in the records before Cornelius, but as I say, if that means that Anthony was older, then based on the disposition of William's land I would conclude that they were not brothers.
I have a fair amount of information on the generations succeeding the first Anthony Sale (or Seale), but was not aware that his wife was Dorothy Hughes.Can I ask where you found that nugget?
Moving down Cornelius' line, I feel that the preponderance of the evidence favors placing our William Sale (of Halifax & Wilkes Counties, NC) as Cornelius' grandson, and I'll work with that for lack of any absolute definite proof mostly premised on the fact that our William named his son -- evidently his oldest son or close to it -- Cornelius Sale.
I guess you're aware, however, that there is another will of record in Essex County from the first half of the 18th century.This William Sale's wife was not named Hannah, and he had several more children than just a William Jr.I have never seen a satisfactory explanation for the parentage of this William Sale Sr., or any proof as to what happened to HIS son William.
I'm sure that you weren't trying to compile a complete record of the grandchildren of William and Nancy Sale, but just in case others might be confused when they see this post, I should note here that the grandchildren were numerous, including those of my line, through William's son Leonard Sale and his anonymous wife.
There are other things I could add, but in the interest of time I'll cut this off here.
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Re: Origins of Cornelius Sale et al. of Robertson County, TN
Rebecca Smith 3/14/04