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Gentry and Randolph
Gentry and Randolph
The following information on the Gentry and Randolph families is from the book Witt Family of Old Pike County by my father, Roy Lee
Parsons, which he published originally in 1964. He hoped for many years to trace some connection back from James Randolph to the famous Randolph family of Virginia and their progenitor, Pocahontas, but he was never able to do so.
Sir William Berkeley was appointed colonial governor of Virginia in 1641, was compelled to resign in 1652, and was reappointed in 1672. His administrations were marked by unrest caused by unequal taxation of the colonists, the levying of unjust tobacco duties, and unfairness in the voting system.
Discontent with his management of colonial affairs broke into open rebellion in 1676, when the governor refused to take steps to put down Indian uprisings. After the plantation of Nathaniel Bacon, a member of the governor s council, was attacked by the Indians, Bacon asked permission to lead a company of troops against the Indians, which request was refused. In defiance of the governor, Bacon led out a band of troops. Some fighting took place, and Jamestown was burned. However, the sudden death of Bacon put an end to the rebellion, and Governor Berkeley executed a number of the leaders of the affair.
When news of these events reached England, even Charles II was displeased with the governor's actions. Additional troops were dispatched to the colony to deal with the situation, and Governor Berkeley was relieved of his office and recalled to England.
Among the soldiers sent from England to Virginia to cope with Bacon's Rebellion were two brothers, Nicholas and Samuel Gentry, who arrived at Jamestown in 1677. They were discharged and paid off in the fall of 1683 and elected to remain in Virginia.
The earliest record we find of Nicholas Gentry is in Old Land Book of Virginia, in a patent in favor of Samuel Gentry dated October, 21, 1684, to lands adjacent to lands of Nicholas Gentry and others, in New Kent County, Virginia.
The records of the baptism of Nicholas Gentry's children--Elizabeth on August 29, 1687, Nicholas on May 30, 1697, and Mabel on December 13, 1702--are found in St. Peter's Parish Register of New Kent County. Joseph Gentry is mentioned in 1709 as having land adjoining Nicholas. Nicholas Gentry is mentioned in St. Paul Parish Vestry Book as Road Overseer in 1709. He is also mentioned in 1711, 1723, 1734, 1735 and 1739. We also find him listed as being in Hanover County, Virginia, in 1720.
James Randolph, who had married Robert Gentry's daughter Sarah and moved from Virginia to what later became Jefferson County, Tennessee, with Robert Gentry and others in 1782 or 1783, received two separate grants of land in Tennessee. In addition to the lands at the mouth of Chucky Creek on the French Broad, where he made his home, he also received lands on Big Limestone and Little Limestone Creeks. Robert Gentry also received a grant on the Big and Little Limestone Creeks. Robert Gentry settled on the north side of the French Broad four miles east of present Dandridge, Tennessee, the county seat of Jefferson County.
The will of James Randolph is of record in Jefferson County, Tennessee, in Will Book 1794-1810, page 80. An abstract of this will reads as follows: Names wife. Children: Henry, Lucy, Robert (100 acres land on Tennessee River), John, Elizabeth, Sarah and Mary. Land I live on. Child wife is now with. 29 October 1794. Appoints wife Sarah and Robert Gentry and Bartlett Gentry as Executors. Susannah was evidently the child "wife is now with" and was born after her father's death.
On Page 150 of East Tennessee Historical Society Publications No. 28 (1956), Sarah Randolph is listed on the Tax List of Jefferson County, Tennessee (year not stated, but presumably after the death of James Randolph in 1795 and before her marriage to John McGirk). She owned "400 acres and two black polls."
NICHOLAS GENTRY
b. ca. 1655, Essex County, England (An English soldier dispatched to Virginia to help deal with Bacon s Rebellion, arrived at Jamestown in 1677.)
m. ---
d. ---
1. Joseph Gentry
b. ca. 1685, Virginia
(No further information)
2. Elizabeth Gentry
b. --- (baptized 29 Aug., 1687), Virginia
(No further information)
3. NICHOLAS GENTRY, JR.
b. --- (baptized 30 May, 1697), New Kent Co., Va.
m/1 Mary Brooks
m/2 JANE (or JEAN) ----
d. ca. 1779, Albemarle Co., Va.
4. Mabel Gentry
b. --- (baptized 13 Dec., 1702), Virginia
(No further information)
5. Samuel Gentry
b. ca. 1704
(No further information)
6. James Gentry
b. ca. 1706
(No further information)
7. David Gentry
b. ca. 1708
(No further information)
NICHOLAS GENTRY, JR.
b. ca. 1697 (baptized 30 May, 1697), New Kent Co., Va.
m/1 Mary Brooks
m/2 JANE (or JEAN)
d. ca. 1779, Albemarle Co., Va.
1. Moses Gentry
b. 1722, Hanover Co., Va.
m. Lucy Sims
d. ca. 1808
2. David Gentry
b. ca. 1724, Hanover Co., Va.
m/1 ---
m/2 Mary Estes
d. 1812, Madison Co., Ky.
3. Nicholas Gentry III
b. ca. 1726
m/1 ---
m/2 Sarah Dickens
4. Mary Gentry
m. ---- Hinson
(No further information)
5. ROBERT GENTRY
b. 1730, Hanover Co., Va.
m/1 JUDITH JOYNER, in Virginia
m/2 Rachel West, 13 Nov., 1804, Jefferson Co., Tenn.
d. ----, Jefferson Co., Tenn.
6. Elizabeth Gentry
b. 14 Oct., 1731
m. Nathaniel Haggard
(No further information)
7. Benajah Gentry
b. 1733
m/1 ---- Austin
m/2 ---- Jones
d. 1831
8. Nathan Gentry
b. ca. 1741
m. Marianna Black
d. 1784
9. Martin Gentry
b. 11 Sept. 1747
m. Mary Timberlake
d. 22 April 1781
The will of Nicholas Gentry (Jr.) mentions granddaughters Jane Timberlake and Ann Jenkins, indicating second marriages for his daughters Mary and Elizabeth, or that he had other daughters, one of whom married a Timberlake, another a Jenkins.
Nicholas Gentry (Jr.) at one time owned the lands on which the University of Virginia is now located.
ROBERT GENTRY
b. 1730, Hanover Co., Va.
m/1 JUDITH JOYNER (Dau. of Phillip Joyner)
m/2 Rachel West, 13 Nov. 1804, Jefferson Co., Tenn.
(No issue)
d. ---, Jefferson Co., Tenn.
1. Charles Gentry
b. ca. 1755, Albemarle Co., Va.
(No further information)
2. Jesse Gentry
b. ca. 1757, Albemarle Co., Va.
(No further information)
3. SARAH GENTRY
b. ca. 1760, Virginia
m/1 JAMES RANDOLPH, in Virginia
m/2 John McGirk, in Tennessee
4. Bartlett Gentry
b. ca. 1761, Albemarle Co., Va.
(No further information)
5. Martin Gentry
b. Albemarle Co., Va.
6. Elizabeth Gentry
m. ---- Murror (or Morrow)
(No further information)
7. Mary Gentry
m. ---- Drake
(No further information)
There may have been another daughter of Robert Gentry, as his will, probated sometime between 1811 and 1826, mentions a granddaughter Molly Shelton.
SARAH GENTRY
b. ca. 1760, in Virginia
m/1 JAMES RANDOLPH, ca. 1776, Virginia
b. probably ca. 1750-55, Chesterfield Co., Va.
(James Randolph was a sergeant in a Virginia Infantry company during the Revolutionary War and for his service received a land grant from the State of North Carolina at the mouth of Chucky Creek on the French Broad in what later became Jefferson County, Tennessee. He was named as one of the first settlers in Jefferson County, moving there in 1782.)
d. 1795, Jefferson County, Tenn.
m/2 John McGirk
(Issue of Sarah Gentry and John McGirk not given.)</FONT>
1. Henry Randolph
b. 4 July 1778, Virginia
m. Susanah Moyers
d. 1848
2. Lucy Randolph
m. Henry Haggard
(No further information)
3. Robert Randolph
(No further information)
4. John Randolph
(No further information)
5. Elizabeth Randolph
m. William Jones
(No further information)
6. Sarah Randolph
m. Noah Haggard
(No further information)
7. Mary Randolph
m. Isaac Kimbro
(No further information)
8. SUSANNAH RANDOLPH
b. 22 May 1795, Jefferson Co., Tenn.
m. SILAS WITT, 12 July 1812, Jefferson Co., Tenn.
d. 15 June 1880, near Moody, McLennan Co., Texas
AGNEW and GWIN
AGNEW and GWIN
The following paragraphs on the Agnews and the Gwins are from the book Limbs, Branches, and Twigs: A Tree of Hamiltons, Atkinsons, and Barrs (Pampa, Texas, 1994) by my mother, Leora Atkinson Parsons, and are used with thanks to her.
Dr. Robert Agnew
Robert Agnew
b. 31 Jan. 1734, County Down, Ireland
m1. Euphemia Shaw, 1763
d. Oct. 1776
m2. Jean or Jane ——, before 1779 (before Robert Agnew, Jr., was three years old).
Robert's second wife signed a deed with Robert as Jean on 19 Feb. 1782 and as Jane on 18 Nov 1789 in Guilford Co., N.C. Probate dated 1793 shows Jean Agnew, widow, as administratrix.
There were five children by Euphemia Shaw. Names of only four are known at this time, and the order of birth is not known.
I. Euphemia Agnew
b. ca. 1764, Scotland
m. Joseph Hodge, 1782
b. ca. 1755, N.C.
d. 28 Feb. 1822
d. 1843 or 1844, Tenn.
A. Euphemia Hodge
b. Nov. 1801
d. 10 June 1807 (age 5 yrs., 8 mos.)
B. Sarah Wells Hodge
b. 1807
m. Josiah Walker Baldridge, Tenn.
Joseph Hodge served in the Revolutionary War as a captain under General Green and was wounded at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse.
Euphemia Agnew remembered her father holding her up, when she was four years old, to see King George III as he passed through the English village where her father practiced medicine before emigrating to the United States. He finally settled at Guilford Courthouse. (From a biography, Dr. William Dennis Kelley, 1825-1888: Texas Physician and Surgeon, by his grandson, William Wallace McCullough, Jr., privately printed in Galveston in 1961.)
II. Unknown
III. Sarah (Sally) Agnew
b. 1769 in Ireland
m. Robert Hamilton, 31 July 1787, Guilford Co., N.C.
d. 29 Nov. 1827, Humphreys Co., Tenn.
Children—see under Robert Hamilton in the Hamilton pages.
IV. John Agnew
m. Elizabeth Turner, 20 Mar. 1794, Guilford Co., N.C. (Daughter of Robert and Mary Turner. Robert Turner d. 1800, Orange Co., N.C.; will recorded in Vol. D., p. 6)
V. Robert Agnew, Jr.
b. 6 May 1776, Duilford Co., N.C., on Rock Creek
m. Elizabeth White Hardin, 1 June 1797 (of Robertson Co., Tenn.)
d. Henderson Co., Ky. (Will Book C., p. 62, 12 June 1845)
Moved to Henderson Co., Ky., arriving there 21 Nov. 1797.
Sources of information on Robert Agnew and his descendants are Mary W. Houston, 4817 Old Mansfield Road, Fort Worth, Texas 76119, and Charline Morris, P.O. Box 507, Linden, Texas 75563.
Gwin
Gwin is a name that appears several times in our early American history. It first appears when Thomas Hamilton, Jr., married Elizabeth Gwin. Then his brother James married Jane Gwin. Their son, Thomas Hamilton, in a sketch of his life in E. B. Crisman's Biographical Sketches of Living Old Men of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church (Saint Louis: Perrin and Smith, 1877), states: "My grandfather Gwin came from Ireland, but I never saw him, and don't remember his given name. My grandmother Gwin was born on the Ocean, but I do not now remember the name of the country whence her parents hailed. She lived and died at father's. Her given name was Elizabeth. They had
four sons and four daughters: most of them lived to be old."
In the 1880 census for Comanche County, Texas, we find Nancy Gwin Hamilton living with her son William H. Hamilton. She stated that her father was born in Baden; her mother's birthplace is illegible. Could it be Switzerland or Scotland or shipboard?
In a small book of pictures from my great-grandmother Julia Ann Hamilton (in my possession) are two pictures of Gwin men. One is Malcom Gwin and the other James Gwin. They are with pictures of Julia Ann and William Harrison Hamilton and must be related.
James Gwin
Malcolm Gwin
In the Smith County census of 1850 we find a Malcolm Gwin family with a Fredonia Hamilton. Near that family is Nancy Hamilton, widow of William McGee Hamilton, who was also a Gwin. She had a daughter named Fredonia. I believe Malcom Gwin to be Nancy's brother and Fredonia to be her daughter.
In the 1880 census of Fayette Co., Texas, Malcolm Gwin is found again. The age is right to be the above Malcolm Gwin, but the wife's name is different. In the intervening years it is quite possible and very probable that his first wife died and he had married again.
I have never done research on the Gwin family, and now it is impossible for me to do so. Perhaps this will give some clues for a younger, enthusiastic person to go back and search this line. Happy hunting!
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