January 3, 2011 Happy New Year Robert Adams

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First I would like to say Happy New Year to everyone.  It has certainly been a busy time for my family as I as sure it has been for yours.

I begin this New Year with the new generation Robert Adams Family.  Robert Adams of Goochland County that died in 1740  and his wife Mourning Adams of Goochland/Albemarle County are now in the past and we move to the new future with a new country developing.  As settlers move further out into the New World, their dependence on the Mother Country lessens and their self sustaining lifestyle encourages them to new freedoms.  Robert and Mourning Adams had many children.  All of their first born children were girls and their last two children to be born were Robert Adams on or about 1725 and James Adams born on or about 1730.  Mourning's husband Robert died in 1740 leaving her with the responsibility of raising his children that were still left at home.  Some of the girls were not married at the time of his death, but they were at a marriageable age and then the two boys who were not quite old enough to marry, but they probably were expected to help in the day to day chores of the plantation.  In the colonial days a young boy could start working around the home as early as three years old.  Their father Robert would have taught them how to ride at a very early age, the farming of the land for tobacco and maybe even hemp or other self sustaining crops.  There possibly was a mill on the property, pigs, cows, chickens and all of which a young plantation owner's son would be expected to learn how to maintain.  And this was still a volatile age for the settlers because of the danger from Indians and soon there would be a conflict called the French and Indian War and always the deaths from sickness that ravaged young babies and the old.   Through all of this Mourning Adams helped maintain the home and take care of the children.  With the women of that age it is sometimes difficult to find any information because their rights were limited.   In our search we may find deeds that mention a wife or letters, but for the majority of the women there is no documented evidence of their parentage or lives.  We are lucky in our present life because our foremothers  fought, survived and finally received the same rights as our forefathers. Mourning was still in Albemarle County when her son Robert married Penelope Lynch on October 5, 1748.  As we have discovered in past blogs Penelope was the daughter of Charles Lynch and Sarah Clark.  This would begin a long relationship with these two families.  Robert and Penelope would migrate further into what was then Bedford County and later Campbell County and raise a family there.  Robert was approximately 23 years old at the time of this marriage and Penelope was a very young 14.  Penelope's mother was a staunch Quaker and would help establish a Quaker Church in what is now Lynchburg, Virginia.  But even though she was a Quaker, this would not stop her from marrying John Ward in her later years.  John Ward was not a member of the Quaker religion and she would  be disowned for marrying him.   John Ward and Ann Chiles Ward's family and the Christopher Lynch and Sarah Clark Lynch family and the Adams family would intermarry for many years to come and would fight together in the revolution.

And now as many historians say A New Age Begins.

Bound Away: Virginia and the Westward Movement
Genealogical Records: Colonial Virginia Source Records, 1600s-1700s CD#510Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia
Colonial Virginia: Shmoop US History Guide