Vandergrift, Fawcett, Sayre, Evans, Monongalia Co.
I believe that there is now enough evidence to pencil in a sketch of the Fawcett (Fossett, Faucet, Fausset, etc.) family of Monongalia County, (W.)Va., about 1800.Robert Fawcett appears to be the progenitor of this line, and an IGI record gives his marriage to Phoebe van der Grift (Vandergrift, Vandegrift, Vandergriff, etc.) on 21 July 1774.They were almost certainly married in Delaware, because their eldest child, Lydia Fawcett, reported having been born there in 1776, in her 1850 census entry (Meigs Co. Ohio).It is almost certain that Phoebe was born in New Castle Co. Delaware, for reasons best explained later in this message.While I am normally suspicious of IGI records, a record with an exact date must come from an original record somewhere.It is important to find the original marriage record, wherever it is, to verify Phoebe's surname and the place of marriage, but a deed from Robert to his son Charles Fawcett names Robert's wife as Phoebe.
From Marriage Records in Monongalia County, as well as circumstantial evidence in the forms of repeated family names, it is possible to reconstruct a picture of this family.Family names are shown in CAPITALS.Note how the names of Robert, Phoebe, the siblings, and in some cases the siblings' spouses, are repeated over and over again.
ROBERT Fawcett m. PHOEBE van der Grift, 1774.
I. LYDIA Fawcett, b. 1776, m. EPRHAIM Sayre.
PHOEBE Sayre
Moses E. Sayre (Moses was a Sayre name)
Hannah Sayre (Hannah was a Sayre name)
SARAH Sayre
ROBERT Sayre
JONATHAN Sayre
CHARLES Sayre
TAMAR Sayre
MARGARET Sayre
II. SARAH Fawcett, b. 1778, m. JONATHAN Evans, 1796.
Ellen Evans (Ellen appears to be an Evans name)
MARGARET Evans
Tabitha Evans
EPHRAIM S. (probably Sayre) Evans
SARAH Evans
PHOEBE ANN Evans
LYDIA Evans
ANN Evans
Samuel Evans
James Evans
ROBERT F. (probably Fawcett) Evans
Edward Evans
III. MARGARET Fawcett, b. 1781, m. William Miller, 1800 (no list of children).
IV. JACOB Fawcett, b. 1783, m. Catherine Huse (Hughes).
CHARLES Fawcett
Thomas Fawcett
James Fawcett
ROBERT Fawcett
Maria Fawcett
Mary Fawcett
Elizabeth Fawcett
Caroline Fawcett
V. ROBERT Fawcett, b. 1785, m. Anna Stewart, 1809
JACOB Fawcett
Samuel Stewart Fawcett
Lavina Fawcett
Virginia Fawcett
PHOEBE V. (probably Vandergrift) Fawcett
Elizabeth Fawcett
LYDIA Fawcett
John K. Fawcett
VI. CHARLES Fawcett, 1786-1878, m. Jemima Reed.
ROBERT S.S. (probably Samuel Stewart) Fawcett
Isaac Erchall Fawcett
BENJAMIN Fawcett
Rebecca Fawcett
Alpheus Fawcett
JACOB Fawcett
Oscar Fawcett
PHOEBE ANN Fawcett
VII. PHOEBE Fawcett, b. 1788, m. BENJAMIN Wilson (no list of children).
VIII. TAMAR Fawcett, b. 1790, m. John Geffs (or Jeffs).
Harrison Geffs
JACOB Geffs
PHOEBE Geffs
MARGARET Geffs
Thomas Geffs
James Geffs
LYDIA Geffs
ROBERT Geffs
Nancy Geffs
(infants, with names (if any) unknown, omitted)
VIII. ANNA Fawcett, m. David Charles Sayre
David Roush Sayre
Absalom Quincey Sayre
Delilah Sayre
Joshua Sayre
Daniel FAWCETT Sayre.
With respect to the families of Lydia Fawcett and Ephraim Sayre, and Sarah Fawcett and Jonathan Evans, the resemblance is even more striking, and follows into the second generation, at least.Both went to Meigs Co. Ohio before 1820.
Note that in the six known groups of children, the name Robert appears in four, Phoebe in five, Lydia in three, Jacob in three.There are others, but except for Robert, the other names, while common at this time, would not be expected to recur with such frequency.As to doubts about whether any of these families in fact belongs to the siblings, I do not think that there is any room for doubt as to Lydia, Sarah, Robert, Charles, Phoebe, or Tamar.Margaret Fawcett and William Miller appear to have lived nearby, as William appears in some court records with some of the others (pertaining to residents of certain areas).Jacob is probably a van der Grift family name, and he has children named Robert and Charles, which would be his brothers' names.Anna is the one I would suspect, if any, as none of her five known children is named after any Fawcett relative.However, children of Sarah and Charles may have been named for her.Only two other Fawcetts appear in the court records of Monongalia County, a Richard and a William Fawcett.Neither of these seems to be connected with any of the others, although they may well have been related (perhaps nephews of Robert?)
As for Phoebe van der Grift, two other van der Grifts appear in early Monongalia County records, Ebenezer and Jacob.Others appear later, in the 1820s and 1830s, some of whom are not clearly related.I believe that Ebenezer and Jacob are brothers of Phoebe, who came with her and Robert to Monongalia County in the 1790s (possibly through Pennsylvania).
The van der Grift family (this is the Dutch spelling, but there are many variants in the records) came to New Amsterdam in the mid-17th Century, and later cadet branches went to Delaware, mainly to New Castle County, together with many other Dutch settlers, including, apparently, families named King and Staats, who also wound up in West Virginia, effectively taking over what had been a Swedish colony, not long before New Amsterdam was surrendered to the English.
Leonard van der Grift, apparently the son of Jacob and Sarah van der Grift, was baptized in 1718, either in Delaware or possibly Bucks County Pennsylvania, where the family lived briefly.At any rate, Leonard appears to have lived in Delaware.When he died in 1769, his will named his wife, Lydia, and his children, Jacob, Lydia, Susanna, Phoebe, Jesse, and Ebenezer.Notes on this family state that Ebenezer, and perhaps Jacob, went to Monongalia County, (W.)Va.
In fact, both Ebenezer and Jacob appear to have lived out the rest of their lives in Monongalia County (perhaps in parts now in other counties).Although there is a tradition that Jacob went to Tennessee with his children, the estate records of Monongalia County indicate strongly that he was living there at the time of his death in 1830.It appears that he maintained a more or less continuous presence in Monongalia County, although it is certainly possible that he made a trip or two to Tennessee, or that his children went there.However, the tradition that names his children (John, Jacob, Ann, Gilbert, Sarah, Rebecca, Leonard, Hannah, and Garrett), also names his wife as Sarah.None of this matches information from Monongalia County (although nobody clearly identifiable with his children appears in Monongalia County records).A deed from Jacob names his wife as Tamar (spelt Tamer in the deed).This is particularly significant because of Tamar Fawcett, who may have been named after her uncle's wife.In fact, there is a deed from Charles Fawcett to Tamar van der Grift, to land that Robert Fawcett originally bought from a Shuttlesworth or Shuttleworth.The Shuttlesworth family appears several times in a list of vendees at the sale of Jacob van der Grift's estate in 1830, as do John and Harrison Geffs, Tamar Fawcett's husband and son, respectively.It appears that the Fawcett family had moved on by this time, and only Tamar was still living near the old homestead (I'm not sure about some of the other daughters).Certainly, Robert Jr., Jacob, and Charles were long gone, Charles to Indiana, and Lydia and Sarah had gone to Meigs County, Ohio (Sarah seems to have died in the early 1820s).The inventory of Jacob van der Grift's estate is so substantial that it is fairly certain he was still in Monongalia County when he died.Also, if his widow was willing to purchase part of the Fawcett farm (among women, only widows were likely to make land transactions in their own names), then she must have been here in the 1830s.It is of course possible that the Jacob of Tennessee and the Jacob of Monongalia County are two different people, but the Jacob of Monongalia County was almost certainly the brother of Ebenezer van der Grift and Phoebe Fawcett.
Ebenezer died in 1827, similarly leaving a substantial estate to be sold off.Both he and Jacob held notes payable to one another at the time of their deaths.Jacob sold him a large tract of land that he had purchased in the 1790s.Ebenezer certainly left a widow, who succeeded to her third of the estate after the debts were paid, and purchased a large number of the items to be sold.It appears that her name was Mary, also called Polly.Ebenezer appears to have served as constable for some time in his district, and to have been very active in the social and political life of early Monongalia County (Jacob was not mentioned much, except in tax lists).It is not clear that he had a will (none was recorded in Monongalia County), but he left legacies to his children: Mary (m. Abraham Vincent), Jesse, Phoebe, Joseph, Susanna, Lydia (m. Samuel Rutherford), and Leonard.The Leonard van der Grift who appears in the records would thus appear to be Ebenezer's son, not Jacob's.There is an interesting side note to Lydia, who in 1815, brought suit against Willis Lawler for fathering her illegitimate son.Ebenezer had given bond for Willis Lawler's marriage.Fortunately, Lydia eventually married, and Ebenezer did leave her the same legacy as his other children, so except for Lawler, who probably deserved a good thrashing, things turned out all right.
From the tax lists in 1812 and 1813, it appears that Ebenezer had no sons over the age of 16, so his children, who evidently married in the 1820s and 1830s, were born no earlier than the late 1790s.Although it was not uncommon for older men to marry younger women, it was less common for older men to marry for the first time.One suspects, therefore, that Ebenezer was born in the 1760s, maybe shortly before his father's death, in 1769 (but before Leonard's will was written).Since Jacob outlived him by three years, and his widow longer still (and was young enough to want to purchase land), one supposes that Jacob was not too much older than Ebenezer.He is apparently mentioned first in Leonard's will, while Ebenezer is mentioned last.Phoebe (mentioned fourth), must have been born between about 1750 and 1758, if she married Robert Fawcett in 1774.
There is a will of an Ebenezer Vandergrift in New Castle County, Delaware, naming his children as Mary, Abraham, Lydia, Jesse, and Susannah.This list does not conform with the list of legatees in Monongalia County, omitting Phoebe, Joseph, and Leonard; the addition of Abraham could be explained if it referred to Abraham Vincent, the husband of Mary.However, this will should be scrutinized to see if it is not the will of another Ebenezer van der Grift, and not the one of Monongalia County.I do not know the date that it was proved, but if it was substantially before or after 1827, it is probably a different Ebenezer.
There are a Stephen and Alexander Vandergrift in Monongalia County by the 1830s, but there is no evidence of how they were related to the others.Ebenezer's sons would not have had grown sons of their own by this time, although if the Jacob of Tennessee was not the one of Monongalia County, they could be the Monongalia Co. Jacob's sons.
Note the following occurrences of family names from the van der Grifts:
JACOB van der Grift, 1679-1753, m. SARAH.
LEONARD van der Grift, 1718-1769, m. LYDIA.
I. JACOB van der Grift, d. 1830, m. TAMAR.
II. LYDIA van der Grift.
III. SUSANNA van der Grift.
IV. PHOEBE van der Grift, m. ROBERT Fawcett.
LYDIA Fawcett
SARAH Fawcett
Margaret Fawcett
JACOB Fawcett
ROBERT Fawcett
Charles Fawcett
PHOEBE Fawcett
TAMAR Fawcett
Anna Fawcett
V. JESSE van der Grift.
VI. Ebenezer van der Grift, m. MARY.
MARY van der Grift
JESSE van der Grift
PHOEBE van der Grift
Joseph van der Grift
SUSANNA van der Grift
LYDIA van der Grift
LEONARD van der Grift
Note that Ebenezer has children named for both of his parents, and three of his siblings.Phoebe has children named for her mother (and sister), grandmother, grandfather (and brother), and sister-in-law.As we saw earlier, the names Lydia, Sarah, Jacob, Phoebe, and Tamar recur in following generations.I am personally descended from the fifth generation Lydia (Staats), who married Daniel Roush.She was named for her mother's sister, Lydia Evans, and aunt, Lydia Fawcett, who was named for her aunt (Lydia van der Grift), and grandmother (Lydia, wife of Leonard van der Grift [1718-1769]).
Has anybody any thoughts on this research, or these individuals?I believe that this information is fairly solid now, although the original sources should still be consulted, a thing which I have been unable to do beyond the Monongalia County records I have searched.Any assistance would be welcome.
More Replies:
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