Sunday, June 23, 2019

Did William Witcher have two wives?

In May 2021 I am rethinking all that I have said below.  please do not spend time reading without getting in touch with me to see how I have updated my best guesses.  mosesm@earthlink.net 

Please mention blog post you are reading and why you have interest.  marsha

I have been working on my dna matches who claim Witcher ancestors.  So as part of this process, I have also been working on what I know about William Witcher who lived in Pittsylvania County, Virginia during the Revolutionary War.  There are more blog posts about this family on this site.  (use Witcher, Morrison, Goad as search terms to narrow the posts to those of interest on the main page)

In my data base, I have Lydia Atkinson as his wife.  However, many of the Ancestry trees have Ann Majors as his wife.  I am looking at the possibility that both women were wives to William.  Ann Major having been closer to William's age while Lydia was younger and is the mother of the last four children.

William leaves a very good will when he dies in which he names 8 children.  He leaves slaves to seven of these children:  Son, John, son William, Jr,  Son Daniel, Son, Ephraim, Son James, Son Caleb, and daughter Elizabeth Razor.

To daughter Rachel, he leaves no slaves.  He leaves land on which her husband, William Morrison, now lives.  I believe this land to be the land that William Witcher had bought from William Atkinson in 1758 for 5 shillings.

The trees on Ancestry give 1724 as the date of birth for William Witcher, Sr.  They give 1725 as date of birth of Anne Majors.  Many of them suggest a death date of 1766 for Ann Majors Witcher.  I believe that they most likely have no documentation for this date.  Instead they have chosen to have her death make the birth of all of the children make sense....They give the following dates of birth for the children:

John        1742
Daniel     1746
Ephraim  1749
James      1750
William   1758
Caleb       1762
Rachel     1764
Elizabeth 1765

They give the date of death for Ann Majors Witcher as 1776.  I do realize that often families lost children which would account for time periods of no children.  But I suggest that Anne Majors was the mother of the first 4 children.  Then there is a lull in the births for 8 years.   I have documentation for land that William Witcher buys for 5 Shillings from William Atkinson.  It is a 100 acres.  This is a gift.  It is nice land for 5 shillings.  It is land that is given in July1758.  I believe that William married William Atkinson's daughter, Lydia, in this time period and the two of them then are responsible for the births of the next four children.

I would like to have other Witcher researchers use their matches to Majors and Atkinson to try to prove or disprove my theory.  Any help you can give me is greatly appreciated.

marsha hawkins moses
mosesm@earthlink.net
.
I have filed a copy of the deed that I found on Family Search


It is a digital copy in genealogy documents/Witcher


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