All that we have to say here about the origin of John Phares of Rockingham County must be taken with considerable caution. Family tradition can be supported in large part by record evidence, but his identification with the New Jersey family falls just short of smoking gun proof. His father is said by his Virginia posterity to have been a brickmaker in Philadelphia and to have had a wife Mary.¹ Tentatively he may be identified with the John Faris I (called a bricklayer) who died at Mansfield, Burlington County, New Jersey, probably a few days before 20 September 1736 when the administration on his estate was given to his widow Mary.² An inventory of the estate (totaling £40 3sh 6d) was taken four days later by Thomas Newbold and Richard Gibbs. No other document was put on record about the estate and we do not have a list of his children or heirs. Burlington County was formed in 1694, but deeds were not recorded until 1785 and church records are sparse.³

It has been assumed that John Phares (called John II here, rightly or wrongly) went as a young man by 1730 some 15 miles down the Delaware River from Mansfield settling for a time at Philadelphia. It is also assumed (on somewhat firmer ground) that it is he who turns up in what is now Rockingham (then Augusta) County, Virginia, by 1750 when he entered a tract on the headwaters of Cooks Creek at Dayton.⁴ His wife is said to have been Agnes Johnson, and if this is so they had two children christened earlier at the First Presbyterian Church on Market Street in downtown Philadelphia.⁵

The trade of John Phares II (if he had an occupation other than farming) is unknown. It has been suggested that he was a mason (like his presumptive father) and that he built a house of the local limestone for Daniel Harrison (1701-1770) by 1749.⁶ John Phares and his eldest son Samuel were clearly at Dayton by 1749 and perhaps much earlier. It was not unusual for men to live in a community sometimes for several years before making a final decision to stay, and only then to set about acquiring land.

On 29 August 1750 John Phareze entered 150 acres near the head of Cooks Creek (west and north of the present town of Dayton) between the surveys of Arthur Johnston and Samuel Wilkins.⁷ The origin of Arthur Johnson is unknown, but it is tempting to suggest (most tentatively!) that he and John Phares (who is said to have married Agnes Johnson) were brothers-in-law. Margaret, a daughter of John Phares II married (as her first husband) Arthur Johnson, and the young couple may already have been first cousins as well as neighbors. Samuel Wilkins, on the other boundary, was a large landowner who left for Anson County, North Carolina, in 1750.⁸ Wilkins had sold 190 acres at the head of Cook's Creek on 28 February 1749 to Daniel Harrison, who on the same day sold it with another 10 acres to Arthur Johnson. Harrison's stonehouse is first mentioned on this date in the boundaries of his deed to Johnson.⁹

John Pharis was clearly resolved to stay in Virginia by 25 April 1755 when John Poage, the busiest surveyor in the area, paced out the boundaries of Pharis' land with his chain carrier. It included 160 acres of land lying on the North River of Shenandoah "in the mountains joining Daniel Harrison's Land." Clearly this is the same as the 150 acres entered for him (as John Phareze) some five years earlier. A small drawing of the land is found with the survey showing that the tract was a long and narrow rhomboid with four sides of uneven lengths.¹⁰

He is listed as a Corporal in the French and Indian War on a schedule appended to an appropriation act passed by the Virginia House of Burgesses on 14 September 1758. It was introduced to pay the men of Augusta County for ranging and fighting the Indians "lately drawn out in actual service for the defense and protection of the frontiers of the colony."¹¹

From this time forward John Phares II or his boundaries are mentioned with some regularity in the Augusta County records. He bought a horse from George Anderson and gave a bond to Daniel Harrison on 12 May 1759 apparently to raise the money to pay for it. Anderson left Virginia soon after, and Edward McGarry forged an endorsement on the note to Harrison and then absconded. Later testimony mentions in passing that "Robert Harrison lay on his deathbed" when these difficulties were exposed, but we never get a verdict in the suit.¹² On 16 October 1765 John Phears and Isaac Johnson were paid from the estate of Robert Harrison by Captain Daniel Smith, an executor of his will.¹³ In the following year John Pharis appears on Colonel John Smith's tax list where he is noticed as a "poor man" with one tithable (himself).¹⁴

On 19 May 1767 John Faris purchased 400 acres on the southernmost fork of the North River of the Shenandoah for £47 from Henry Cresswell and his wife Rebecca. It is described as being on Stony Lick Branch, commencing from an oak near Stony Lick. There are several Stony Branches in old Augusta County; this one is just north of Grindstone Mountain in what is now the northwestern part of the county. It is about eight miles southwest of his old home at Dayton in adjoining Rockingham County. The deed was witnessed by Elijah McClenahan and John Buchanan.¹⁵ Presumably he moved his family to Stony Lick in the same year. What happened to their house and land at Dayton does not appear.

He and his wife Nance (alias Agnes) sold 100 acres of the new tract by lease and release on the 15th and 16 March 1767 to Robert Edgar for £20, with John Poage (no doubt the surveyor), James Hogshead, and Edward Erwin as witnesses.¹⁶ This would appear to have been a bit of sharp dealing (if the tract was level and the acres of more or less even value), for he sold one quarter of his new homestead for almost half the price of the whole. The given name Agnes is frequently written as Annes or Ann. and Nance (Nancy) is the usual familiar form of all these names. On the 5th and 7th July 1777 he and his wife Agnes conveyed 162 acres of this same tract adjoining "two hiccorys on Waddles line" by lease and release to Barnabas Johnson for an unstated sum of money. This deed was recorded and delivered to William Johnson in July 1779 at the courthouse in Staunton.¹⁷

His will was dated 4 September 1785 "being now in Sickness." It is clear that he was then living on his Stony Lick property in Augusta County. It remembers his wife Agnes (who was to have a third of his 140 acres), and his two sons-in-law William Faris (who was to have the remaining two-thirds of his land) and Job Reynolds who was left only 10 shillings out of his estate. After the death of the widow her third was to revert to William Faris who would then have the whole of the tract. The executors were his wife Agnes and his son-in-law William Faris. The witnesses were Joseph Waddell, who probably wrote the will, and Edward Wealden. It was proved on 16 October 1787 and recorded at Staunton.¹⁸ The executors qualified on 17 June 1788, but the appraisal was not taken until 27 September 1794 by Joseph and James Waddell and William King.

John Feris was still living and taxed in Augusta County on 1 June 1787, but died a few months later. His will was proved promptly in mid-October of 1787.¹⁹ William Farris, his son-in-law, lived nearby and was taxed four days after his father-in-law.²⁰ William Pharis had enlisted earlier on 29 August 1774 at Glade Hollow Fort in the company commanded by Captain Daniel Smith, and was at the battle of Point pleasant on October 10th. He was not one of those who enlisted immediately afterwards in the Revolutionary Army, but was discharged on 25 October 1774.²¹ He does seem to have enlisted later in the Revolutionary army at Big Crab Orchard.²²

William Pharis acquired land soon after (in partnership with Edward Welden) in Rockingham County from John Cesner (Kesner) and his wife Mary. The deed was proved by three of the witnesses and ordered to be recorded on 22 March 1779. On 25 November 1782 William Farris and his wife (she is unfortunately not named) conveyed their interest in the property about which nothing else is known to his partner Edward Weldon (Welding).²³ William Faris was the principal heir of John Phares (after the death of the widow), but he disappears soon after from record in Virginia. Presumably he conveyed the 140 acres inherited from his father-in-law by a deed not found on record in Augusta County.²⁴ He might possibly be the William Faris taxed in 1795 in Franklin County, Kentucky.²⁵

Job Reynolds, the other son-in-law cut off with a token 10 shillings, is somewhat more interesting. He had 200 acres at the head of the Cowpasture surveyed for him on 27 April 1775.²⁶ On 23 March 1779 he and Philip Akert were presented to the Rockingham court "being accused of complotting and conspiring with several other enemies of the state and some witnesses examined, the court ordered that Akert and Reynolds be bound to their good behavior for a year and a day themselves for £500 and their securities in the sum of £250 each." Reynolds named Henry Stone and John Sheltman as his securities and they made bond.²⁷ This area was seemingly one of the most concentrated hotbeds of Toryism on the Virginia frontier. The full story has yet to be told, but it may be taken as certain that it divided families and neighbors the way that the Civil War did in the next century. Most of the citizens loyal to George III probably kept their opinions to themselves, but those who did speak out were frequently called to account for their statements. It is likely that many of the dissatisfied were upset not so much by politics but by the rampant inflation that the war produced. Everything cost more, and many a competancy had evaporated away to nothingness. As for Job Reynolds, he seems to have suffered his rebuke by the local court by fleeing and nothing more is heard of him in Virginia.²⁸

John Phares would have been an old man (perhaps 75) at the time his will was written. Presumably he had provided for his older children at the time of their marriages, but his two remaining sons-in-law (and their wives) seem to have been born in the 1740s. William Faris appears to have been truly his son-in-law, and must have been a nephew as well.

No complete list of the children of John Phares II has been found in the public records. From a variety of sources it appears that the following (presumably by his wife Agnes Johnson) belong to him. The order of their birth is uncertain:

1. Margaret, perhaps the eldest child. She married firstly Arthur Johnson (died 1759), and secondly William Gragg (died 1794) on 26 November 1760 at the Cooks Creek Presbyterian Church at Dayton.²⁹ The Graggs lived on the North Fork in Pendleton County. William Gragg had a disagreement with John Faris, his brother-in-law, in 1784 (noticed elsewhere) which was presumably settled by a determination made by the Rockingham County Court.

2. Samuel, born 4 April 1730 and christened the following day at the First Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia. Noticed above, he is presumably the man of this name living in 1787 in Shenandoah County, Virginia, the head of a household that included 3 horses and 9 cattle in taxable property.³⁰

3. Jane, born 12 May 1733. She is perhaps the young lady of her name who married Robert Ferguson by virtue of a licence granted on 13 April 1749 in Pennsylvania by Governor James Hamilton.³¹ Nothing is known of Robert Ferguson, but a Jane Ferguson (with no visible father or husband) was the sexton of Daniel Harrison's chapel of ease at Dayton in 1765.³²

4. JOHN III, perhaps born in 1735. He is noticed further.

5. Elizabeth. She married Joseph Skidmore, Junior (died 18 10). They lived near Ruddle on the South Branch of the Potomac. She survived her husband.³³

6. .......... She married William Faris, presumably a cousin, and may possibly have been living with him in 1795 in Franklin County, Kentucky, as noticed above.³⁴

7. ......... She married Job Reynolds, and apparently removed.

John Phares III is said to have been born in 1735. Nothing is known of him before his first marriage to Elizabeth. a daughter of Johnson and Naomi Hill, at the Cooks Creek Presbyterian Church on 19 September 1759. It would be interesting to know if Johnson Hill was kin to Phares' mother Agnes Johnson, and if this was still another instance of intermarriage between cousins.³⁵

Johnson Hill, a weaver, had died before 23 February 1761 when the records note that his death had abated a suit. His widow qualified as administratix on 22 May 1761.³⁶ Hill's only son Robert, then aged 16, chose Daniel Smith as his guardian on 20 August 1761, and the widow had married Adam Thompson by a license paid for by her new husband on 13 March 1762.³⁷ Elizabeth Phares did not profit from her father's death; under Virginia law of the day all of Hill's estate went to his son Robert as the heir at law. Robert Hill survived to his majority and sold his father's lands on 25 November 1772 to Abraham Smith.³⁸

John III had taken his family to the North Fork of the South Branch in what is now Pendleton or Highland County by 1777. John Phearis is listed there in that year in Captain Paul Teter's company with one tithable and no land.³⁹ On 16 August 1780 John Feris was a purchaser at the vendue sale of the estate of Peter Hohl alias Hull.⁴⁰ Hull had come down to the Calfpasture from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. and settled about 1763 at the Crabbottom in what is now Highland County.⁴¹ Hull had prospered in Virginia, and the vendue of a fine lot of his household goods and farming implements drew a big crowd from the Highland-Pendleton border.

Elizabeth (Hill) Phares died late in the year 1778. From the proceedings in a suit tried much later in Pendleton, County we find that her husband married Margaret (------) Wilmoth as his second wife; she was previously the widow of Thomas Wilmoth, Senior, of the Buffalo Hills. Wilmoth had died before 24 August 1778 when his will was produced in the Rockingham County Court and proved by the oaths of George and Mary Hammer who had witnessed it.⁴² Thomas Wilmoth (1734-1823) accepted execution on the will on 28 September 1778 and Jacob Conrad, Peter Vaneman, John Skidmore, and George Hammer (or any three of them) were ordered to appraise the estate. The younger Wilmouth and his wife Ann (Wait) sold his land on Skidmore's Mill Run near Ruddle on 18 November 1777 and moved soon after to Shavers Fork on the Cheat River in Randolph County.⁴³

Margaret Wilmouth married John Phares about April or May 1779 according to depositions filed later in Pendleton County. Phares, who had lived "in the Allegania" at the time of his first wife's death, moved to the widow Wilmoth's plantation in the Buffalo Hills at the time of his second marriage. Two years earlier in 1777 he had gone to the house of Peter Veneman and asked to borrow money. Veneman's wife Elizabeth opposed lending the money and pointed out to her husband how difficult it would be to recover the debt. Veneman still made the loan, and John Phares executed a bond promising to repay the money within one year.

Later Phares sold a gray horse to John Burns (or Byrnes) for £1000 in paper money in the inflated currency of the Revolutionary period. The horse had belonged to Margaret Wilmouth before her marriage to John Phares and the money realized was supposed to repay the sum due Veneman. However the debt was not repaid, and Veneman eventually filed a suit to recover his money. Elizabeth Skidmore (a sister of John Phares) testified verbally on 7 September 1789 in Pendleton County, as did Andrew Johnson (his nephew, a son of Margaret Phares). On 1 June 1789 Johnson Pharis (1760-1833) acknowledged himself as special bail for his father.⁴⁴ A number of written depositions were presented later to the court including one from Robert Pharis (1762-1823), of full age, dated 19 August 1790 who testified for his father. Phares' debt was judged to be worth $50 or $60 in the now deflated currency of 1790 and Veneman obtained a judgement against Phares for $30.⁴⁵

This area (now Pendleton) was still within Rockingham County on 26 May 1783 when it was "ordered that John Pharies feeding a horse two months 30 s[hillings] allowed by the Court." This (and a great many other claims) were services to the Revolutionary army and they were charged by the county to the Commonwealth of Virginia.⁴⁶

John Phares had other legal problems in 1784. His brother-in-law William Gragg (who had married Margaret Phares) brought a suit against him on 22 March 1784. Gragg apparently had enough clout with the Rockingham County Court to see a speedy resolution of the case. On 24 August 1784 the court ordered that Jacob Conrad and James Dyer arbitrate the dispute, but they seemingly either did not agree or failed to function. On 26 October 1784 it was left to arbitration between Benjamin Harrison, Seriah Stratton and Isaac Henkle.⁴⁷ Nothing more is heard of the matter.

In the tax list of 1784 John Faris is listed between Peter Vaniom (Veneman) and Thomas Collick (Collett) at the Buffalo Hills.⁴⁸ The tax was collected by Robert Davis who seemingly could figure better than he could spell the names of the householders. He lists John Faris with six white souls, and here as elsewhere his count seems to have been exact.

John Phares III was now coasting downhill to oblivion. He made it over Lawyer's Path through the mountains to court at Harrisonburg on 23 March and 25 May 1784 (presumably to defend himself in the suit brought by William Gragg) but does not appear to have ever gone again to Harrisonburg. Although Andrew Johnson was later to testify in 1789 and 1790 for his uncle in the Veneman suit, he would have been in a quandary in 1784. He had a choice of alienating either his stepfather Gragg or his uncle Phares. (So far as we know he did neither.) Alas, nothing is on record about the cause of Gragg's quarrel with his brother-in-law.

In 1788 John Phereis and his son Robert (identified as such) were assessed on six horses in Captain Robert Harrison's company.⁴⁹ On 4 October 1790 James Patterson won a judgement against John and his son Johnson Pharis for £4 8sh plus interest and court costs.⁵⁰ Patterson was a Captain in the militia and a prominent merchant, and he probably had sued to collect an unpaid store bill. In the tax list of 1792 John, Senior, Johnson, Robert, and John, Junior (who would be John IV by our count were all assessed on one tithable.⁵¹ Robert Phares married Susanna Minnis in 1795 and moved to Randolph County in the year after.

He was assessed for the last time on 2 May 1797 on one tithable and one horse. In the year following he petitioned the Pendleton County Court on 6 March 1798 pleading his old age and infirmities, and the court excused him from the county and parish levy. The rest is silence. It comes as no surprise to find that there was no probate on his estate, and no stone marks his grave.⁵²

1 Pendleton County, West Virginia, Past and Present (1991), page 190. This traditional information was apparently set down by Roy Phares (1884-1958) of Circleville, West Virginia, a great-grandson of Robert Phares (1795-1871) of that place. A rather poorly typed account of this family, undated and unsigned, was circulated by his son Robert H. Phares of Circleville who did not answer queries about its origin. It is clearly the source of much of the account first published in 1991.

2 Calendar of New Jersey Wills, 1730-1750, 1I, 171. (Liber 4, page 73). His is the only probate in Burlington County recorded under the spelling Faris. There are 12 more under Phares between 1768 and 1900. There is no mention of the name in the Common Pleas Court Papers of Burlington County, 1730-1789.

3 Family Line Publications of Westminister, Maryland, has published three volumes in 1994-5 of early church records (largely from Quaker Monthly Meetings) of Burlington County collected by Charlotte D. Meldrum. Additions to the series should be noticed when published. The best history of the area is Major E. M. Woodward and John F. Hageman's History of Burlington and Mercer Counties, New Jersey (Philadelphia, 1882). There are a few recent references to the Phares family here (pages 443b, 445a, 445b) including a John Phares who was a tavern keeper at Juliustown and the postmaster there in 1882. There was an earlier John Phares, son of William and Mary (Whitehead) Phares, who is said to have been born in New Hanover Township in 1756. Nothing has been found to connect these families except proximity.

4 Lyman Chalkley, Chronicles of the Scotch-Irish Settlement in Virginia, II, 382.

5 Pennsylvania Vital Records From the Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine and the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (Baltimore, 1983). 92, 96, Samuel, the son of John Pheries, was born on the 4th and christened on 5 April 1730. He was apparently guilty of some youthful indiscretion in Augusta County in 1749 at about the age of 19. John Cunningham, the jailer, includes Samuel Farish on his account of the prisoners kept during the year (Chalkley, II, 432). When the county levy was collected in 1755 Samuel Farnish is reported as "Not found" and his father John Farnish as "Twice returned" (Chalkley, II, 415-6). Nothing more has been learned of Samuel Phares in Augusta County, but he can probably be identified with the man of the name living in 1787 in Shenandoah County. If this is so more might be learned about Samuel after 1749 in the records of Frederick County (which included Shenandoah until 1772). His sister Jane (born on the 12th and christened on 13 May 1733) and her possible husband Robert Ferguson will be noticed elsewhere. See also the recent Pennsylvania Births, Philadelphia County, 1644-1765, edited by John T. Humphrey (Washington, D.C., 1994), which covers much of the same ground, but does not add anything new.

6 This house is still standing on Main Street in Dayton (Business Route 42). It has been newly restored as a museum and called Fort Harrison. See J. Houston Harrison's Settlers by the Long Grey Trail (Dayton, 1935), 319. (A picture of the house will be found there opposite page 292.) It is said to have been once surrounded by a palisade for protection from the Indians, and that the local families retreated to Harrison's house when an alarm was raised. It was sold out of the family by Dr. Peachy Harrison early in the last century.

7 Chalkley, II, 382. (Land Entry Book I.) Chalkley says of this entry, "c.g.e.p." but the import of these initials are unknown. (The land entries of Augusta County have unfortunately not been filmed.) We have tried to suggest in direct quotations the variations that the early clerks used to set down his surname. Later, with familiarity, the spellings settled down to either Phares or Faris (or near variants). Phares seems to be the preferred spelling in use today in Virginia.

8 See C. E. May, Life under 4 flags in the North River Basin of Virginia (Verona, 1976), 74. May includes brief biographies of many of the men prominent in the area (pages 65-81), but neglected both Phares and Johnson. John Skidmore is noticed with some other local worthies on page 222.

9 Chalkley, III, 282.

10 Augusta County, Virginia, Surveys, I, 84. "This is available on microfilm at the Virginia State Library.

11 William Waller Hening, The Statutes at Large of Virginia, VII, 104.

12 Chalkley, I, 343, 350. Robert Harrison died unmarried on 25 May 1761.

13 Chalkley, III, 92. There is nothing here to suggest that Isaac Johnson was a kinsman.

14 Chalkley, II, 419.

15 Chalkley, III, 452.

16 Augusta County Deeds, book 14, pages 137-140. This deed notes that the 400 acres had been patented earlier to John Brownlee on 8 November 1762 on Lick Run, a branch of the North River of the Shanandoah. This Stony Branch appears on the Stokesville quadrant of the modem topographical maps, but is too short and small to appear on any other map of the area. The deed was acknowledged on 15 March 1768, but Agnes is called Margaret in the acknowledgement (in error) when the deed to Edgar was recorded and delivered to him on 15 November 1784. There are also at least two other careless errors in the recorded deed from Edgar who sold the land on 10 November 1784 for £42 to Adam Stevenson (Augusta County Deeds, book 24, pages 378-383). Robert Edgar took both deeds into Staunton five days later to have them recorded. He is called Robert Eager in his deed as grantor, and Fares' title was derived "I believe from Henry Crosswill." The witnesses to Edgar's deed of 10 November I784 was Joseph Waddall, James Waddall, and John Stevenson. I have typed transcripts of all of his Augusta deeds through the kindness of Paula Underwood Spencer of San Anselmo, California.

17 Augusta County Deeds, 21,548-551. Barnaby Johnson and an unnamed wife [Jane?] sold their land in 1782 to Joseph Dunlap (producing the deed, now lost, at the Rockingham County Court on 25 March 1782) and then removed (Levinson, 102). He went with the Kindlers and others from Linville Creek to Madison County, Kentucky, where he died in 1798. His will dated 18 May 1798 mentions his wife Jane, his sons Barnabas, Junior, Robert and William, a daughter Jane wife of George Kinder, and a granddaughter. It was probated on 3 July 1798. His sons Barnabas and William and his son-in-law George Kinder were taxed in Madison County in 1800. [Again, it would be interesting to know if Barnabas Johnson, Senior, and Agnes Phares were related.]

18 Chalkley, III, 179. I am indebted to Kenneth L. Rowan of North Canton, Ohio, for a copy of this will. Thorny Branch is just below Sangerville in Augusta County and merges into the North River near the Rockingham Line. It and Stony Branch are only about two miles apart and the Waddells were among the closest neighbors of Agnes and John Phares. (Note that the mathematics is not quite perfect- John Phares had sold 100 and 162 acres of his land which would have left he and his heirs with 138 [not 140] of his 400 original acres.)

19 The 1787 Census of Virginia, edited by Netti Schreiner-Yantis and Florence Speakman Love (1987), 121. (List B of Augusta County). The editors have also published a thin booklet of Augusta County which includes the list rearranged by date as the collector made his rounds. From his neighbors in the summer of 1787 (Waddles, Currys, Erwins, Percys, Malcoms) is may be taken as certain that he was then living in that part of Augusta County about the Stony and Thorny Branches.

20 Such information as we have suggests that William Faris was both his nephew and his son-in-law (i.e., his daughter had presumably married her first cousin). It is possible that he was the William Pharish, an orphan child, who was bound by the churchwardens of Augusta Parish to Jane, the widow of Patrick Cook, on 29 November 1749 in what is now Rockbridge County. The record notes that he was seven years old last March, hence born in March 1742. Nothing is said at this time directly about his parentage (Chalkley, II, 427.) However, it may be taken as next to certain that he was a son of the William Faris, Senior, who left another younger son Edward who five years later chose Francis McCown as his guardian on 21 August 1754 (Chalkley, III, 35). This Faris family seems to have lived below Lexington on Buffalo Creek, a tributary of the James River, then in Augusta but now Rockbridge County (Chalkley, III, 415-6.) There is nothing to connect these families at the moment. Sandra K. McIntire of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who publishes a Phares family newsletter, believes that this William Faris, [Junior?], came from southwest Virginia to Lincoln County, Kentucky, and lived later in Giles County, Tennessee (Personal letter, 8 August 1994).

21 Reuban Gold Thwaites and Louise Phelps Kellogg, Documentary History of Dunmore's War (Madison, Wisconsin, 1905), 402.

22 Lloyd Dewitt Bockstruck, Virginia's Colonial Soldiers, Baltimore (1988), 154.

23 Rockingham County, Virginia, Minute Book, 1778-1792, abstracted and complied by Constance A. Levinson and Louise C. Levinson (Harrisonburg, n.d.), 25, 152, 177. The complete loss of the deed books of Rockingham County during the Civil War makes it most unlikely that anything more will be known about this property.

24 It is also possible that the land was abandoned and sold eventually by the sheriff for back taxes.

25 The 1795 Census of Kentucky, (Miami Beach, T.L.C. Genealogy, 1991), 58. The name is common enough in Kentucky, however, to make this a only a guess. There is also a John Farris in Franklin County in 1795 (who also owned land in Lincoln County); Sandra Mclntire identifies him, perhaps in error, with a John Esom Farris (her ancestor) of whom more is known. Both of these men might be related to a Johnson Farris who was also taxed in Lincoln County in 1795. He had married Jenny Lankford there on 18 April 1788 and was still living in Lincoln County in 1801.

26 Augusta County Surveys, II 269. It was at the corner of Anthony Johnson's land, and once again it would be interesting to know if Anthony was a kinsman of his wife.

27 Levinson, 28.

28 He may be the Job Runnells living in Greene County, Tennessee, in 1783. See Byron and Barbara Sistler, Index to the Early Tennessee Tax Lists (Evanston, Illinois, 1977), 174.

29 I have listed the children in the order given in the traditional pedigree which must have been based largely on guesswork. Since Margaret Johnson's first-born son John was born in 1745 she may very well have been the eldest daughter and perhaps born in New Jersey.

30 The 1787 Census of Virginia, 613. (List B of Shenandoah County). A John Phares who married Catherine, a daughter of Ruth Whitson, on 4 September 1790 in Shenandoah County may very well have been his son.

31 Pennsylvania Vital Records, 499. Happily the marriages survive for the four years (1748-52) of his office.

32 Chalkley, II, 451. The chapel was located in the north section of the Dayton Cemetery, but like everything else relating to the established church it ceased to function during the Revolution.

33 Warren Skidmore, Thomas Skidmore (Scudamore), 1605-1684, of Westerleigh, Gloucestershire. and Fairfield, Connecticut (2nd edition, 1980) 82-4. A revised and enlarged third edition is in preparation.

34 Her Christian name is sometimes said to have been Rebecca, but no certain evidence can be found to confirm this statement. The land records of Franklin County, Kentucky, have not been checked. It is possible that her given name might be recovered there. There are no Faris/Phares marriages on record in that county.

35 It would also be interesting to know if Johnson Phares (1760-1833), the first born son of John and Elizabeth (Hill) Phares, owed his given name to his paternal grandmother or his maternal grandfather.

36 Chalkley, I, 89, 90.

37 Chalkley, I, 92,97. The final settlement of Hill's estate on 20 March 1767 records a payment to John Pheris (III, 98). I am indebted to Glenn Huffman of Bridgewater, Virginia, for a correction of Chalkley's reading of the name Pheris.

38 Chalkley. III. 528. Abraham Smith sold the two tracts on the Dry River and Muddy Creek west of Dayton soon after to Colonel Gawin Hamilton for £100.

39 See William H. Rice, An Early Tithable List, found in the Allegheny Regional Ancestors, I,51 (Winter 1992).

40 Chalkley, I, 158.

41 Oren F. Morton, A History of Highland County (Monterey, 1911), 303.

42 Levinson. 17. The widow's name on this occasion is given in error as Mary Wilmoth. This is probably a slip of the clerk's pen who confused her with Mary Hammer, a witness to her late husband's will. (Mary Hammer's name is that given as Margaret, but is later corrected to Mary.) Margaret Wilmoth's family name is unknown. She was present at the vendue of John Wingord (Vinegard) on 8 February 1759 when she purchased a potreck (pot hook), a pillow and a sheet, and a brass basin. There may be a clue to her parentage among the names of the other purchasers at this sale (Chalkley, III, 57).

43 Thomas Wilmouth, Junior, married Agnes (or Ann), a sister of James Wait, on 16 January 1762 at the Cooks Creek Presbyterian Church. She is called Nancy (1738-1828) on her tombstone in the Isner Cemetery in Randolph County. They had lived briefly in Greene (then Orange) County, Virginia, on 100 acres of land at the mouth of Entry Run on the South Branch of the Rapidan River. He purchased this tract in 1764 and sold it in 1769.

44 Pendleton County Order Book I (1788-1800), 34. Johnson Phares had married Sarah Negley before 13 October 1789 when they (and 18 others) were confirmed by the Reverend Pad Henkle in Benilton (Pendleton) County. Their Church near Riverton on the North Fork was burnt by foragers during the Civil War, and the congregation was disbanded. Johnson Phares was a Lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion of the 46th Regiment under Major Roger Dyer in 1793. Glenn Huffman of Bridgewater, Virginia, has put together a fine account of their 12 children (with posterity in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois) using Sarah (Negley) Phares' will of 16 May 1840 as a basis.

45 These depositions are found in Envelope 3 of the loose papers donated by H. M. Calhoun, Jr., to the West Virginia and Regional History Collection in Colson Hall at Morgantown. Calhoun had apparently recovered them at the time of the courthouse fire at Franklin.

46 Levinson, 81.

47 Levinson, 229, 251,259.

48 Heads of Families at the First Census [of 1790]... Virginia (1908), 77, Collett (or Colic) Mountain is still a placename on the modern maps of the Buffalo Hills. Peters Mountain, hard by, may have been named for Peter Veneman.

49 John W. Wayland, Virginia Valley Records (1930), 104. He paid the tax on himself, one male aged 16-21, and eight horses. In 1789 he and his son John were taxed on seven horses.

50 Order Book I, 87.

51 Henckel Genealogical Bulletin, VIII, 2 (Fall, 1977) 315. John Pharos IV is said to have married Mary Kee and to have died at Circleville in 1835 and we would be happy to find some proof of this. There is no shortage of men of the name. A John Phares, not identified, was taxed in 1795 in Clark County, Kentucky; he can not be the man who married Catherine Whitson in 1790 in Shenandoah County, Virginia. There was also a John Faris of Fleming County. Kentucky, who had married Eleanor Belt in Berkeley County, Virginia, about 1798; he died testate in Fleming County in 1829 according to the Kentucky Genealogist, XVII, 128.

52 In the 1800 tax list of Pendleton County only his sons Johnson and Robert (presumably an absentee landowner) Pharis are found. To the account of the daughters of John is found in the Allegheny Regional Ancestors, III, 77-8 (Fall, 1994), Jeffrey Carr of Charlottesville, Virginia, adds the name of Naomi who married Philip Harper III. Harper died in August 1828 in Wayne Township, Fayette County, Ohio, and his widow Naomi was living two years later in Concord Township, Ross County, Ohio. (They had, doubtless with others, a son Solomon Harper born in 1806, who moved to Kosciusko County, Indiana, and was living in 1850 in Perry Township, Noble County, in that state.)