BACKGROUND of this post.
This post is for all John Sexton / Saxton researchers, even though it is to help clarify a earlier discussion I had on here with Peggy Sexton. So I decided this should be in its own thread.
I had commented that given the land records and Revolutionary War records I have studied, I was beginning to believe the Sextons of Charlotte County in the Rev War period were not close kin [e.g. sons, or even nephews] of the Saxtons of 1750's Brunswick County.
Peggy provided a lot of valuable family data, including the reflections of Willis Sexton. I had the pleasure of corresponding with Willis a time or twof quite some years back. I provided him with the reference that showed that -- of the RevWar soldiers in Virginia Regiments -- only John and Archibald were of the same family, i.e. William was of another father. John Saxton was proven to be the only living heir to Archibald Sexton. Archibald, who died of wounds received in action. This occurred while fighting with the Va regiment tasked as the rear guard when Washington fell back from the Battle of Brandywine. The regiment suffered many casualties, both men and officers, in this action.
[Note: I don't know who was father of William Sexton (of later Grayson County), but he did not have a common father with Archibald and John. John and William lived cheek by jowl on Rock Creek in now Grayson Co, for a time after the War.]
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LAND, Ho ...
A picture is worth a 1000 words. So thought I would work up a map showing the distance between the lands of the Brunswick Saxton/Sexton men, and the location of the deeds of Robert and John Saxton hard by Cub Creek, in now Campbell Co.
The map shows all the contiguous land grants I have mapped for a number of Counties that were set off from the original Brunswick Co. This map shows the Brunswick grants were in fact, in what is now-Brunswick County. Whereas the other Cub Creek deeds are located over 70 miles away by the way the crow flies.
Given that there was no earth-moving equipment, we know the roads back then had to follow the topography of the land. And they had to be graded up and over hills at a shallow enough angle for wagons to be pulled without killing the draught animals.
So 70 miles as the crow flies was probably more like 100 miles overland. Based on accounts I have read, a man on horseback might do 15-20 miles a day. A wagon might be drawn at maybe 2-3 miles a day, the speed of oxen moving in General Braddock's expedition against the Indians earlier in Pennsylvania. So distance-wise and time-wise this should give a pretty good idea of just how far apart these families were.
Footnote:
To repeat something I mentioned in an earlier post, the Sexton families of Brunswick were in my view, comparatively wealthy. The Sextons of Cub Creek, had far less land and were not well established. When John died young, leaving many children, his apparently close kin neighbor Robert could not take them in. Nor were there any other relatives who could. Robert and John may have been brothers, but they apparently did not have any roots or relatives in the nearby areas. And they were a heck of a distance from the other Sextons, much too far to maintain regular contact by the measures of that time.
Peggy mentioned how John's children were thus bound out. I know that two of them were taken in by a near neighbor on Cub Creek. This neighbor was evidently a construction craftsman, as he was being paid by the County to build a new bridge over Cub Creek. He clearly saw value in having a couple of the older boys as cheap laborers. Not surprising several of them took off to enlist (for the duration) as early as 1776 in one of the VA regiments! Guess they were burning their bridges behind them ?
DW [descendant of Pryor Sexton, of as yet unknown relationship to John or William]
NOTE: If you experience difficulty looking at this map, it may be due to your graphics display card not having sufficient graphics memory. Try looking at it on a friend's computer, if they have a newer model. It probably will not be viewable on any hand-held device, but I have not been able to check this.