Revisiting Virginia Families

 

Google Maps. Spotsylvania, Virginia.

After reading a post from fellow family history blogger Jacqi Stevens as she revisits the Carter family of Virginia, the names seemed familiar. I checked my own tree, and sure enough, these names were also on my Mom's side of the tree through my 6th-great-grandmother Anne Carter, and her father John Carter.

On Tuesday 16 January, Jacqi posted that she was looking for a copy of John's 1778 will in the Spotsylvania County records. I had made a photocopy of this will when I visited the Spotsylvania County Court many years ago. The copies are also now available on Ancestry's Virginia Wills database, and I was able to find the same entries at image 316 (Spotsylvania County Will Book E, page 560).

I'll admit I have not documented this side of the tree very well in my own records and I've been sitting on these copies for over 8 years, maybe longer. But with our daughter looking at colleges nearby, this is as good a time as any to revisit the research and correct old errors. Some of the original works on the Carter family also have errors, and there's quite a bit of confusion about the wives of John Carter.

As we'll see when diving into the wills and chancery records on the Carter and related families, there's the ugly reality of slavery. I'll have quite a few posts to unpack these findings. My connection to the Carter family goes up from my 4th-great-grandmother Emily Ann Heslop Ballard, a daughter of Benjamin Ballard and Ann Graham Heslop. Ann was a daughter of William Heslop and Anne Carter. More to follow on the Heslop family as well.