Andersons of Colonial N. Carolina

This is a problem, fuzzy patent. More to the point, I have on occasion stated I am loathe to change Mother Nature’s handiwork, but this is a case where someone has to. The necessary details for me to accomplish my task are just not available… so I am left offering that tired old “educated guess”.

So to let off some steam after fighting with this conundrum for a few hours, here is William Jones, Indian Trader, from 1701.

…click the blue filename under the graphic for a better view

…the area is some miles south of Petersburg, VA… on Nottoway River

Four historic USGS base maps from 1894 t0 1919 converge just to the East of this patent…so there is a bit of a mismatch in my patchwork… all of this early work was accomplished with drafting tools on drafting tables and was hand draw… I would not be surprised if much of the text was hand lettered.. (and very well done). This is beautiful work, if I may offer a Nerd’s opinion. Further, since these are multiple colored maps, each color had to be drawn separately and overlayed (registered/aligned)… very tedious work.

I work strictly from computers today… but I have fond memories of the past and buggy whips, I suppose. And yes, in the early 80’s I did a gig for about a year working at a county level mapping department… not as a mapper, per say, but as a graphics guy… but I peeked over shoulders and noticed things…

Occasionally I run across a patent that just amazes me, such is the case here. I’m investing myself in a new map, calling it Southside Virginia (I’ll drag it out later when I get further along). My regular readers and occasional commenters know I am intrigued by Indian Traders, I put these guys as precursors to what Hollywood would latch onto and term the “Wild West” and “Cowboys and Indians”… the stuff that as a kid, I reveled in. I think that actors such as John Wayne, directors such as John Ford and Sam Peckinpah would have read of and studied the characters I am running across in my research… but that is my personal interest.

https://www.wfaa.com/video/entertainment/movies/mel-gibson-talks-about-taking-on-the-role-of-benjamin-martin-in-the-patriot-2000/287-87339356-74f2-45e3-bf1f-310658bd3f28

I stand in awe at the accuracy of the surveyors in 1722 who accomplished this patent. Note that the County Line is not only where it “should” be… it is precisely where it should be. This base map is from 1910 or so and I give a hat tip to the good folks at USGS for maintaining and making available these old historic maps. This is the reason for my motto of this blog” “meant what they said, said what they meant”… as I was putting the pieces together to create this graphic, I kept scratching my head and thinking this makes no sense and cannot possibly work. But I just let it play out and it did work… I have learned not to doubt the old boys.

…the nitty gritty details below…click on the blue filename under the graphic for a better view

This son William has always been a difficult nut for me to crack… but this is beginning to make sense. This is only one of the sons of the Immigrant, others are documented on my site… try the “search box”.

Grandson Needham is emerging out of the shadows nicely…

…as usual, click the blue filename under the graphic for a zoomable page

Hot Links for above…

https://www.virtualjamestown.org/indentures/search_indentures.html

https://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/01ddd/id/464321/rec/5

My cohorts and I have been researching early patents near Lewiston/Woodville. The area is close to what is known as Indian Woods, which I have referred to previously as Tuscarora Town. In any event, I have been baffled by numerous mentions of a “Pond”. Hence these observations…

as usual, click the blue filename below the graphic for a better view

Some of our arguments, debates, fretting, general misconceptions and finaglins’…

I was completely caught off guard when I drew up the patent and went to place it on my map… I then noticed the pond on my map and the pond on the modern USGS topo map… I thought “Naw… it can’t be”… yup.

He tells it like he sees it… how refreshing.

This account of history of the Indegenes has some interesting points to consider I have not heard before. He states there was possibly up to 150 million Indegenes across America (principally from Mississippi to the Atlantic). His account of the spread of disease was not pure evil and malice by horrid Europeans but something more akin to tragic happenstance. It was inevitable that vulnerable biologic systems would sooner or later be exposed to airborn pathologies. Ed Barnhart:

Perhaps it is just me but I have always had an uncanny fascination with the history of Japanese folks. And it is reciprocal, I think, with their fascination, in turn, with our Western, Cowboy tradition. They see reflections of their Samurai with our gunfights at high noon (both glamorized of course). I watched this video and could not help but think of our own Indegenes… not just hundreds of years, but likely thousands. The warrior culture was in their DNA. Compare their “keyhole” mounds with our “indian” mounds.

Back in the 60’s or thereabouts, the Supreme Court held session on a case involving Pornography…one of the Justices declared in his opinion: “I may not be able to define Pornography, but I know it when I see it”.

That is as good an analogy as I can come up with to demonstrate what to do when confronted by a patent that can’t be found but you know damn good and well it existed. In the two examples below I think you might agree…

…as usual, click the blue filename below the graphic to zoom in…

I am reminded of the expression: Close… as in horseshoes and hand grenades. Sometimes ‘close’ might be as good as you can get.

John Stewart sold 750 acres to Theo Pugh in 1727… go ahead… guess where it was? And where did Stewart get the 750 acres?

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…sidetracks from comments:

Bell abstract… Bertie Deed Books 1720-1757

David Dammon dug this dirt up…

This is my current project and map… an unexpected commenter has offered up some tantalizing clues and a bit of history which may put me on a more accurate path. I will no doubt update this as I work out new details… good fun

…as usual, click the blue filename under the graphic for a zoomable view

I am chasing a clue to find the original “survey” of a patent for William Gray in 1726 to get some nitty gritty insight on the Snowfield land… some of my notes

Oh… and there appears to be more than one plantation known as Snowfield… below is two divisions of the William Gray patent… we are trying to find the third (the remaining 220 acres of the 640 acres).

Who was Thomas Bond, mentioned in this deed?

And who was Thomas Barker? And the 83 yr old deponent says that that the pond was not Village Swamp… and I believe him dammit!

Whoa! G Tyler of Bertie informs me he was a bona fide Big Shot… (I’ll just overlook the fact he hailed from Rhode Island…) Dude even has an oil portrait floating around somewhere… She also informs me that Thomas Bond was the overseer of his Bertie properties for a few years.

https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/barker-thomas

Apple Tree Plantation

Apple Tree Plantation was in Village Swamp about a mile south of Woodville. Thomas Barker, a very influential farmer who is buried at Hayes Plantation in Edenton, built a home at “Apple Tree” there [Apple Tree Swamp near Village Gate or Village Swamp near bridge over Hwy 11] in 1742, and married Pherebee Savage, ggrandaughter of Thomas Savage and formerly married to Francis Pugh III.

https://sites.rootsweb.com/~ncbertie/homes.htm

This is why I am having such a difficult time placing these patents on the map… I can’t find any damn Anchor Points. All the creeks have dried up or been plowed away. All the Mills closed down and the slaves ran away. The Indians got fed up and moved North. I’m left wondering how the bass fishing is?

The detective arrived at the crime scene and was confronted with a researcher in a white coat sprawled on the floor with blood splattered across his head. A newly minted Optimus humanoid robot was calmly sitting on a bar stool next to the dead genealogist with a bag filled with small stones in its cold robot hand. The detective asked the bartender what happened. “The damn robot whacked him in the head”, he said.

During the investigation, the detective learned from the robot that the dead man was a Genealogist and had just read Jonathan Swift’s Gullivers Travels, wherein in the book’s third voyage to the Island of Laputa he learned of “flappers” and had an epiphany… he would have the robot be his flapper.

The purpose of the flapper

• Waking thinkers: The people of Laputa are so consumed by theoretical pursuits in mathematics, music, and astronomy that they lose track of reality. Without constant intervention, they would become completely detached from their surroundings.
• Aiding conversation: The flapper would gently strike the mouth of the person who was supposed to speak and the ear of the person who was supposed to listen.
• Preventing accidents: In addition to helping with conversations, the flapper would also tap their master’s eyes when walking to prevent them from accidentally falling into a ditch or bumping into a post. 

The detective turned to the robot and stated, “I get it, you were to accompany the man and keep him from getting distracted and focused… is that correct?” “Yes”, stated the robot. “Then why did you hit him and knock his brains out?” asked the detective. “He did not say how hard”, answered the robot.

I’ve used Grok 4 for a couple months now…shortly after the roll out. I am obsessive compulsive to a fault (it gets expensive), as an example: I took up learning how to prepare sushi and can now sharpen japanese knives that I can easily shave with and have all of the cool stuff… I could probably get a job as a sushi chef. I can make an acceptable Mexican Mole…(my daughter ran it by a coworker who is Mexican and she loved it). I now own a non glazed ceramic Mexican cooking pot, and I got one for my daughter also. It is not big enough for a good pot roast but it is great for mole. I could go on. Its hell being OCD. I have lost interest in my garden and it has turned into a freaking jungle.

I just imagine my daughter looks at that clay pot every once in a while and shakes her head. She did like the mole however.

Meanwhile I have taken up with the Know it All, and now think it is best described as an Idiot Savant. I realize that term is taboo now but I don’t care …scold me if you want for being insensitive but it will fall on deaf ears. Call me insensitive and I will answer…”So?” The AI thingy is not worth a damn for accurate genealogy because it just steals info wherever it finds it and runs with it “as if” it is pure gospel truth. It brazenly lies in other words. (similar to Ancestry.com who seems to encourage raging lunatics to offer opinions… proofs be damned).

But here is the thing about Grok 4 (and why I pay the $40 a month and for God’s sake by me a lousy cup of coffee once in a while to help me pay for this hobby because I do not want to get a part time job sacking groceries at Publix)… the Know it All can pick up vast amounts of information at blazingly fast speeds and present it in coherent form. You just have to expect and realize that it may be packed with lies and half truths. And the creepy and eerie part is it will anticipate its errors and make silly excuses when it damn well knows, or at least suspects, it is lying… it ain’t paranoia if the creepy SOB (or son of Elon) is out to trick ya.

I have begun tossing in quotes from the Know it All in my “Studies” of folks. (these are my notes to myself to figure out how to place a patent where it was in Colonial times). In this case it is about the BLOUNT family who lived near modern Woodville/Lewiston area of Bertie County, NC. I have not formulated an idea of who these folks were that I can hang a hat on, in other words, I do not know much at all. So I started asking the Know it All what it thinks… and it is not at a loss for opinions… they flow like water from a faucet. I will add one of my “studies” for James Blount… and it will have some notes from Grok 4. Grok is hell bent to connect these West Bertie Blounts with the East Bertie Blounts near the Chowan River. I admit my ignorance of the history but Grok really attempts to make it’s case that all the Blounts are related. Needless to say, I am still skeptical and want some damn proof. (did I say dammit!) Feel free to comment, even if you tend to lunacy. I will add a snippit of my map for context:

Here is some details on these Blount guys… this is unfinished research… mainly I am just curious and looking for clues in the comments (‘course most of you peeps have zippered lips) but I try to coax it out anyway. Remember, I am pointing out the creepy Grok comments… Did I say I do not trust the Know it All?

…as usual, click on the blue filename below the graphic for a better view (to zoom in)…

Click the blue filename above to open in another page for a better view…

My friend Traci the Librarian threw me a bone when she visited the Archives at Raleigh… I had resigned my mind to the fate that Busby’s will was lost forever… gone. She had the hunch that a copy might exist and sho’nuff it did.