Wednesday, December 28, 2022

When did Jacob Castle move to Southwest Virginia and did he take his Indian wife with him or meet her there?

 I was cruising the internet with no particular place to go when I found an Ancestry hint about Jacob Castle.  It iis a list of possible 

I have wondered more than once about the fact that Jacob married a native American woman before he moved to Southwest Virginia.  So I decided to look at the above fact a bit more closely.  A google search shows that there is no Pellissippi River in Pennsylvania.  It is the Indian name for the Clinch River.  This would seem a bit more likely for my understanding of the story.  

I also would like to add into this post the fact that an Ancestry researcher wrote a short post that I dded to my Ancestry tree about the fact that it has been said that Jacob was Albino.  This researcher interpreted that folklore to be attributed to the fact that Jacob had German blood and was probably blond and fair and had blue eyes.  He would have seemed very white to the Indians he befriended.  I like this thought quite well.

So the question is about when did Jacob leave Pennsylvania and about when did he show up in Southwest Virginia.  There is the added idea that he was in Orange County Virginia c. 1740 when there is a land transaction and/or a transaction in which her bought a Negro woman from Jacob Stover.  Others say he was born about 1717 in the Palatinate.  He would have  been about 23 at this time if these facts are true.  By 1746 documentation is found tying him to southwest Virginia.

It is clear that he is friendly with the Indians by 1749 when Adam Harman charges him with treason.

My own gut feeling is that Jacob travelled south from PA on his own with no wife and that he took a wife from the Clinch River area of N.C., Va, TN, Ky.  Jacob was probably familiar with the entire area.  Jacob came from a Mennonite background and had lived among Quakers in PA.  His nature was to have no quarrel with any man and to be a peace loving person.  Perhaps the quarrel between Jacob and Adam Harmon caused him to spend much time away from the civilization in which Harmon lived.  And Jacob would not have looked down on the native American tribes and the people who made up those tribes.  He would have accepted them as equals and friends.

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