Adam Ivey, Il

http://www.freeafricanamericans.com/Ivey_Jasper.htm

1. Adam1 Ivey, born say 1675, was the son of Adam Ivey of Prince George County, Virginia. He was the executor of the 26 April 1718 Prince George County will of his mother Elizabeth Ivey [Deeds, Etc. 1713-28, part 2, 443].

Adam Ivie was perhaps the father of

• i. Elizabeth1, named in the Prince George County will of her grandmother Elizabeth Ivey.
• 2 ii. ?Adam2, born say 1710.
• 3 iii. ?Thomas1, born say 1715.
• 4 iv. ?Joseph1, born say 1717.

But only Elizabeth is certain.

Robert W. Baird, The Line of Adam Ivey of Charles City County (Revised February 2005) retrieved from http://www.genfiles.com/ivey-files/adam-ivey.pdf pp. 6-9

Adam Ivey II (c1670? – c1737?) Based on the prevalent naming patterns of the time [see footnote 15] the probability is fairly high that he was either the first or second son. I note (see above) that it is quite possible that it was he who was listed among the quit rents in 1704. Adam Ivey is mentioned several times in the surviving order book covering the period 1713- 1720, the first of which is on 12 July 1715.16 He was a defendant in several suits from 1716 through 1718, only one of which is of interest. He was accused of slander by John Wilkins[on], and at the court of 11 February 1717 a jury found him guilty of “false, feigned, scandalous words and lies”.17 He is not mentioned in the few remaining Prince George records after 1718, other than as executor of his mother’s will, which bequeathed the bulk of her small estate to Adam and his daughter Elizabeth.

Whether it was the father or the son who held 200 acres in the 1704 quit rents is not clear, though we suppose it was the father. Adam Ivey the younger had somehow acquired a 180 acre tract in Prince George County before 1710, for no deed appears in the first extant deed book. Later descriptions of this land tell us it was in the part of Prince George which is now northern Sussex County. He was evidently living on this land when, as a resident of Prince George County, he received two patents of 150 acres and 100 acres on 21 February 1720/1, the same day his brother Henry received his own patent for nearby land.18 He had entered these claims at least two years earlier, as an adjoining patent by William Batte, issued two years earlier, refers to the land as Adam Ivey’s.19 Both patents were for land on the south bank of the Meherrin River in what was then Isle of Wight County. [In 1734 the area was added to Brunswick. Today the land lies in eastern Greensville County, nearly on the Southampton County line.] The 100 acre tract adjoined patents by his brothers Henry and Gilbert Ivey, while the 150 acre tract was almost a mile away.

Seven months later, on 11 September 1721, Adam Ivey, of Martins Brandon parish, sold 50 acres in Prince George County to Peter Poythress.20 [The part of Weyanoke parish lying in Prince George had been merged into Martins Brandon in early 1721.] He evidently moved onto one of this patents shortly thereafter. Two years later, on 16 December 1723, Adam Ivey, now of Isle of Wight, sold the adjoining 130 acres to Edward Prince, thus disposing of his land in Prince George County.21 The latter deed was witnessed by Gilbert Hay, possibly his brother-in-law, and Hugh Ivey, his nephew. Neither deed mentions a wife. On 6 April 1725 he mortgaged the 100 acre patent in Isle of Wight, described as “whereon said Adam Ivy now dwelleth”, and a slave named Phillis to Nicholas Hatch for ₤30 with the note due the following Christmas.22 He apparently made good on the note because he later sold the land. Adam Ivey evidently moved to North Carolina about this time, for he made appearance at a General Court held at New Bern on 25 October 1726.23 His whereabouts for the next few years are unknown, largely due to the loss of early North Carolina records, but he was a landowner in Onslow Precinct, North Carolina by 2 April 1734 when he was assigned to a road jury.24 Nearly three years later, on 10 December 1736, as Adam Ivey of Onslow Precinct, he sold both of his 1721 grants, which were by now in Brunswick County, to Thomas Williams.25 Adam Ivey appears only once more in the records of Onslow Precinct, when he failed to appear to answer a suit a month later on 8 January 1736/7.26 There is no further record of him, although a mulatto Adam Ivey is mentioned in the court records a few years later in 1741.27 Unfortunately, essentially all early records of Onslow Precinct (later Onslow County) other than some court minutes are destroyed. Neither deed nor estate records survive. Although he surely owned land there, any record of it is now lost.

He was perhaps the Adam Ivey who filed a land entry in what is now Pitt County, North Carolina on 8 September 1737, though no patent was subsequently issued.28 By the time he disappears from the records he was surely in his 60s, if not older, so he may have died at about this time. I would note that the loss of records means there is no identification of his land in North Carolina, and thus no possibility of tracing land succession to potential heirs. All later references to an Adam Ivey are in or near Edgecombe County, and refer to a different person entirely, an apparent mixed-race Adam Ivey who died in Edgecombe County in 1762.29 [See separate paper on this person, who was surely related to Adam Ivey in some manner.]

Whether Adam Ivey had children other than his daughter Elizabeth is uncertain. No wife is mentioned in any record. It is possible that he left married daughters behind in Virginia, but it seems unlikely that he left sons behind. Since Adam had left Virginia by 1726 we would expect that any minor children would have accompanied him to North Carolina. If he had male children of age by 1726 who remained in Virginia, we would expect to find some sign of them in the records. But only a few third-generation Iveys appear to have reached majority that early – all of whom can be definitely or plausibly attributed to Adam’s brothers. However, Adam Ivey is a candidate to have been the ancestor of some of the mixed-race Iveys of southeastern North Carolina, who are treated in a separate paper.

1.1. Elizabeth Ivey (c1700? – by1758?) The 1718 will of her grandmother bequeaths to “my son Adam Ivie and his daughter Elizabeth Ivie all the remaining part of my household goods, to be equally divided between them as he shall see fitt.” It is intriguing that she is the only grandchild mentioned, since we know Adam’s mother was a grandmother several times over by 1718. The will implies that Elizabeth was unmarried but old enough to have a use for the household goods, although neither is absolutely certain. Some Prince family researchers think she married Edward Prince, and that she was probably already married by the time her grandmother wrote her will.30 Indeed, Prince’s wife was named Elizabeth in a 1720 record.31 And Edward and Elizabeth Prince witnessed the will of Martha Sledge in 1727.32 Whether his wife was Elizabeth Ivey, however, is uncertain. In part, this theory was originally based on the erroneous assumption that the 1723 deed from Adam Ivey to Edward Prince was a gift, it having been misreported by an early Prince researcher.33 Absent that erroneous evidence, there is no record that suggests he married Elizabeth Ivey. It should be noted that Edward Prince was a close neighbor at the time and that both Edward Prince and his descendants seem to have been associated with members of the Ivey family for the next fifty years. Of course, the proximity of their respective lands is sufficient explain this association, so that a familial relationship is not necessarily implied. If Elizabeth Ivey were Prince’s wife, she was either considerably older than we would otherwise surmise or was his second wife, for Edward Prince was about 38 in 1718 and had children of his own by the time Elizabeth Ivey’s will was written.34 Prince had bought land in 1720 with George Ivey as a witness 35 which seems to be land that George Ivey himself owned in 1737 (see below) though I can find no record of a sale to him by Prince. Edward Prince lived in the Plowman’s Swamp area of Sussex County, where he deeded land to his son Edward Jr. in 1755.36 Though Prince researchers give his death about 1758, his son was still styled “Jr.” when he sold that land in 1761.37 And Edward Prince the Elder was mentioned as an adjoining landowner to the same land in a deed of 19 November 1767 by his son Joseph Prince.38 There seem to be no estate records for him in Sussex County.

15 There have been only a few studies of naming patterns in colonial Virginia, which generally conclude that the eldest sons tended to be named after either their father or paternal grandfather. A study of Middlesex County, Virginia from 1650-1750 found that 44% of first-born sons were named after their paternal grandfather, 11% after their father, and 16% for both – that is, that in 70% of cases the eldest son was named after either his father or his father’s father. However, this summary disguises an interesting pattern. For the years before 1700, this naming practice was nearly reversed – first born sons were named for their fathers far more often than for their grandfathers. (A study of Prince Georges County, Maryland 1680-1700 found the same pattern.) After 1700, the majority of firstborns were named for their paternal grandfathers. In other words, immigrants in the 1600s tended to name their eldest son after themselves. The children of these immigrants tended to name them after their own fathers. (There are several logical sociological factors that explain this, but they are too wordy to include here.) Henry Ivey seems almost certainly to have been the eldest son, which would lead us to theorize that Adam Ivey’s father may have been named Henry. By extension, we would theorize that Adam Ivey Jr. was likely the second son. This also might help us construct theories about the relative order of birth of the third generation. I should point out, though, that there may well have been elder sons in the family who did not survive to be mentioned in their mother’s will.

16 Virginia Genealogical Society Quarterly, in a multipart article transcribing the Prince George Order Book 1713-1720. The 1715 reference is in Volume 19, No. 3, p85.

17 VGSQ, Volume 24, No. 1, p26.

18 Virginia Patent Book 11, p56 (both patents on p56, consecutively entered.).

19 Virginia Patent Book 10, p425. (A second patent to Batte was filed in 1723 which also mentioned “Adam Ivy’s land”.) 20 Prince George County Deeds, etc. Book 1713-1728, part 2, p487.

21 Prince George County Wills & Deeds 1713-28, part 2, p675.

22 Isle of Wight Deeds & Wills, Etc. 1715-1726, p704. Incidentally, Nicholas Hatch was the son of John Hatch who had sued Adam a few years earlier.

23 Colonial Records of North Carolina, Vol. VI, 327.

24 Onslow Precinct Court Minute Book 1732-43, p28.

25 Brunswick County Deeds & Wills Book 1, p303.

26 Onslow Precinct Court Minute Book 1732-43, p35.

27 See the paper on Iveys in Southeastern North Carolina for more. The mulatto Adam Ivey who appears in Onslow County in 1741is likely the same person who died in Edgecombe County in 1762.

28 North Carolina Land Entries 1735-1752, A. B. Pruitt, p24.

29 This was surely a different person. The Adam Ivey of Edgecombe County had young children, four of them minors, in 1762 and thus appears to be of a different generation. He signed his will with his mark, while Adam Ivey II signed his name to his deeds. He had an unmarried daughter named Elizabeth who can’t be the same daughter named in the 1718 will. Finally, the Adam Ivey of Edgecombe was almost certainly mixed-race, probably the same one who is called a mulatto by the Onslow court several years earlier, while Adam Ivey II was clearly not. The name is unique enough to believe the two Adams were surely related in some way, but the nature of that relationship seems impossible to determine.

30 See Historical Southern Families, Volume IV, p34 and also p69.

31 The earliest reference to her is in 1720: Prince George County, Virginia Wills & Deeds 1713-1728, Benjamin B. Weisiger III, (1973)., p459. In addition, Surry County Wills & Deeds Book 7, p826 shows Edward and Elizabeth Prince witnessing the will of Mary Sledge (q.v.), Henry Ivey’s mother-in-law.

32 Surry County Wills & Deeds Book 7, p826.