John Gorham II

(c1683 – 1769)

John Gorham II is almost certainly the son of John Gorham I.  Though the proof is circumstantial, it is quite sufficient to make the case.  Luckily the mostly lost records for Westmoreland County contain just enough references to him to provide the proof.

The first mention of him is a deed of gift of 60 acres dated 27 September 1693 from Thomas Moore to John Gorham, a minor, for which Thomas Walker was to be trustee.[1]   From a later deposition as to his age, we know that John Gorham was about 10 years old in 1693.   When John Gorham sold the gifted land 48 years later, he identified himself as the same person who had received the gift back in 1693.   Thus we know he was not the same person as John Gorham I, who was of age well before 1693 and whose will was proven in 1700. 

Since there was only one Gorham in the area -- indeed in the entire colony – he must have been a son of John Gorham I.   Furthermore, the land gifted by Thomas Moore adjoined a tract which had earlier been owned by Miles Gorham.  And Thomas Walker, whom Moore appointed trustee for the child’s land, was security for Miles Gorham’s wife’s administration of his estate in the same year.   It thus appears that John Gorham I had married a daughter of Thomas Moore and produced a son named John Gorham Jr.   It seems very likely that the wife was deceased in 1693, and that Thomas Moore was preserving an inheritance for his grandson.

John Gorham was apparently orphaned by 2 February 1699/1700 when his father’s will was proved in Westmoreland County.[2]  Though still a minor, and apparently old enough to choose his own guardian, there is no court record of guardianship that I’ve found.  He is next mentioned in 1709 when Thomas Moore sold land described as bordering two tracts he had previously gifted to (his son) William Moore and to John Gorham, with John Gorham himself as a witness.[3] 

John Gorham apparently became a carpenter, as the next record of him is the purchase of 60 acres nearby by John Gorham, carpenter, on 21 July 1716.[4]  He sold this land nearly seven years later on 22 February 1723/4, when he again was described as a carpenter.[5]  Though in his mid thirties by 1716, he was apparently unmarried, as the Westmoreland clerk, who scrupulously recorded dower releases, recorded none for the sale of the land.  Although he witnessed a few documents in Westmoreland County during this time, the only references that might apply to his trade are payments to him recorded in two estate accountings in neighboring Richmond County in 1729 and 1734, probably for carpentry work.[6]

[I might note that John Gorham used a distinctive mark for his signature, beginning with his witness to a deed for adjoining land in 1717.[7] In every reference that followed, he used the same distinctive mark (a Latin “J” with two horizontal slashes) which helps to verify that all of these references are to the same person.]

On 14 January 1740/1 he sold the land he had received in 1693 from Thomas Moore, describing it as 60 acres “being the land which Thomas Moore gave to said John Goreham by deed of gift bearing date the 27 September 1693”.[8]  He again used his distinctive mark.

He had apparently already arranged to move upriver into the part of Prince William County that eventually became Loudoun County.   On 1 October 1740, John “Gorum”, planter, of Prince William County, Virginia and Willoughby Newton of Westmoreland County signed a lease to confirm a “certain contract between them” dated a year earlier on 11 October 1739.[9]   This was a long-term “three lives” lease to “John Gorum and Mary, his wife, and Thomas Gorum his son” of 200 acres in Prince William County “whereon Paul Howell formerly built a small house... on a branch that makes out of Bull Run commonly called Little Rocky…”[10]   The rent was to be free for three years and thereafter 530 pounds of tobacco annually.   John Gorham signed the instrument with his distinctive mark.  It is clear that the Gorhams were already occupying the land – for although Willoughby Newton had claimed the land a few years earlier, the lease could not legally be executed until Newton received his patent, which event had occurred a mere twelve days before the indenture date.[11]  The patent was for 1,719 acres lying between Little Rocky Run and Big Rocky Run in what was then Prince William County, but which became Fairfax County in 1742 and Loudoun County in 1757.  (It was reattached to Fairfax County in 1798, and remained part of Fairfax where it can be found on modern maps.)

Interestingly, the plat for this patent actually shows the location of “John Gorum’s house”, drawn in the plat on the west bank of Little Rocky Run.  Willoughby Newton leased adjoining portions of this patent to Richard Omahundro, Jacob Remey, Thomas Brown, and others whose houses are also shown on the plat.  John Gorham appears to have lived here for the remainder of his life, as shown by his deposition of 1762 and the absence of further land transactions.  John Gorham appears on the only surviving tithables list for Fairfax County, the 1749 Truro Parish list, as a single tithable (indicating that he had no sons who had yet reached the age of 16).  In 1757, Loudon County was formed with Little Rocky Run as the county line, and Gorham’s land lay on the Loudoun County side of the creek.  By 1760, the first available complete tithables list for Loudon County, John Gorham was listed with John Gorham Jr. in his household, and Thomas Gorham located nearby.[12]  

Another part of Willoughby Newton’s patent was deeded in 1745 to build a church known as the Little Rocky Church.  John Gorham probably attended this church, and if he were still a carpenter, may even have helped to build it.  Unfortunately, virtually no records of it survive.  Interestingly, its first sexton was the same William Grove who had witnessed John Gorham’s sale of his Westmoreland land and who, with Gorham, witnessed the will of John Lamkin.

John Gorham also appears in the tithables lists of 1761 and 1762, as taxpayer for John Gorham Jr. and Sanford Gorham in both years.  In all three years 1760-1762 he is himself not charged with a tithe, presumably being exempted for old age, although there is no record of an exemption in the court records.[13]  [The tithables law amendment of 1748 required all males over 16 be taxed “excepting such only as the county court, for charitable reasons appearing to them, shall think fit to excuse.”]   

We have only one record of his age.  On 15 December 1762, "John Goram age 79 or thereabouts” made a deposition in Loudoun County stating that he had long been a neighbor to Thomas Brown.[14]  As noted above, Brown had lived on the Willoughby Newton patent adjoining Gorham since 1741.[15]   John Gorham again used his distinctive mark to sign this deposition, showing that he was the same person.  Note also that John Gorham, Thomas Brown, and the two other deponents in the case appear on the same tithables list for 1760.

The Loudon County tithables for 1763 are lost, and some of the lists are missing for subsequent years.  Although the tithables lists for the area in which he lived are mostly complete for the years 1765-1769, John Gorham does not appear in them.  All three sons, however, appear as heads of their own households.[16]  It may be that John Gorham Sr. was no longer a head of household, and perhaps living with one of the sons as an exempt tithable.  He was probably still alive as late as 1 June 1767, since his son was still styling himself John Gorham “Junior” on that date.[17] 

John Gorham apparently died intestate in Loudoun County in 1769, with Sanford Gorham his administrator.  The court ordered an inventory and appraisal on 10 October 1769 but they weren’t recorded until 13 May 1771, when an estate sale and accounting marked “1769” were also recorded.[18]  The modest estate of “John Gorham Senr” was valued at just over 40 pounds, and consisted mostly of household goods.  Although he apparently could not sign his name, the estate included a “parcel of old books”. The estate sale showed purchases by Mrs. Mary Gorham, Thomas Gorham, and Sanford Gorham, among others.[19]  [Since none of the sons were married to women named Mary, she was probably the widow.]  The accounting returned at the same court showed that the estate paid debts to both Sanford Gorham and Thomas Gorham, as well as to local merchants and others.  Nearly all the buyers at the estate sale were neighbors on Little Rocky Creek. 

The identity of his wife Mary is unknown.  They were apparently married sometime after 1716, and probably not until the early 1730s.  This is mildly bothersome, as it requires us to accept that he did not marry until his late forties.  However marriages relatively late in life were not particularly uncommon at that time.[20]  Her name appears only twice – in the 1740 lease and as a buyer at the estate sale.  It seems likely that she may have been a Sanford, but I am unable to determine a likely candidate.  Interestingly, though, Willoughby Newton leased another 200 acres of the same patent to Richard Omahundro, who had married Ann Sanford, the widow of Jacob Remy, as her second husband.[21]  I have seen another genealogist’s claim that Mary Gorham’s name was Mary Kirkham or Kirkland, but there appears to be no evidence for that claim.  (Nor can I find any Kirkhams or Kirklands in Westmoreland, Prince William, or Fairfax who might have had such a daughter.)

Since there are no other Gorhams in Loudoun or the surrounding counties, it seems a safe assumption that Thomas, Sanford, and John Jr. were his sons.  One daughter is surmised, but it seems likely there were more daughters.  It is tempting to speculate that he named his oldest son after Thomas Moore, the second son after himself and his father, and the third son perhaps after his wife’s surname.

1.      Thomas Gorham (c1735 – 1814)   (See separate page for more detail.)  Presumably the eldest son, he was named in the lease of 1739/40.   He appears in the tithables of Loudoun County beginning in 1760, married Margaret Cotton about 1761 and by 1787 moved to Kentucky where he died leaving numerous children.  

2.      John Gorham Jr.  (c1742 – 1797)  He appears as a tithable in his father’s household in 1760, 1761, and 1762, indicating that he was at least 16 by 1760 and older than Sanford.    He was 21 by 1765 when he appears as a taxpayer on the 1765 tithable list, as John Gorham Jr., but not again until 1779.[22]  He witnessed a deed in Fairfax County in 1767, but which side of the Loudoun-Fairfax county line he lived on is unclear.[23]  He is not mentioned in John Gorham Sr.’s estate records, and he does not appear in any Loudoun record after 1779, the same year he first appears in Wilkes County, Georgia.[24]  Circumstantial evidence points to his having moved to Georgia, probably during the Revolution.  Georgia had a tiny population and desperately needed soldiers to prevent the British from rolling up the southern colonies.  About three-quarters of the Georgia Revolutionary troops were recruited from Virginia and North Carolina.  One of them appears to be John Gorham, who filed several bounty land warrants in 1784 in Franklin County either as a Revolutionary veteran or as an assignee.[25]  This John Gorham was a surveyor for Franklin County from its formation in 1784 through at least 1787, and appears on its tax lists which substitute for early censuses.  He may have been the “lawyer with one arm” referred to in the 1880 letter, as he is mentioned several times as a county justice beginning in 1786.  He owned considerable land and executed numerous deeds in Franklin, Wilkes and Elbert Counties for lands lying just west of the South Carolina state line.  It is intriguing that George Vandiver was also apparently in the same area.

The theory that this person is John Gorham Jr. rests largely on the fact that this John Gorham died in 1797 leaving three minor children named Sanford, Thomas, and Mary. [26] [27]  Perhaps a fourth child was a son named John.   His wife and widow was Jennett Williamson.  Her name is variously recorded by different clerks as “Jinney”, “Jean” and “Jane”.[28]  She remarried to Edmund Henley by 1798.[29]  She was the daughter of Peter Williamson, whose 1798 will names his daughter Jennett Henley and mentions Thomas Gorham as a legatee.[30]  The three children were apparently minors at John Goreham’s death, as Henley filed several accountings for their support, but all had probably reached majority by 1809 when real property from the estate was distributed.[31]   There was perhaps a fourth son, John Gorham, who was an adult at his father’s death, as a John Gorham appears on tax lists after 1802 and apparently a different John Gorham died after 1809[32] leaving a minor son named Thomas for whom a guardian named John Tabor returned accounts as late as 1816[33] and apparently another minor son named John Clark Gorham, born ca1808, for whom Sanford Gorham was guardian in 1822.[34]

3.      Sanford Gorham.  (c1745 – 1772/3)  I found no reference to him prior to his appearance in the 1761 and 1762 tithable lists, when he was taxed to his father.  He was not tithable in 1760, thus had evidently reached the age of 16 by 1761.   That implies he would have reached 21 in 1766, but the tithables for that year are lost.  But he does appear as a taxpayer in the tithables of 1767, 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, and 1772 tithables as head of his own household, paying the tax for Edward Vandiver from 1768 onward.  He is listed as a county slave patroller in the period 1770-1772, exempted from tax.  He does not appear in any other records, except for witnessing a neighbor’s deed for land in Prince William County.[35]

His will is dated 9 October 1772, recorded 25 January 1773.[36]  The will is a bit unusual in that it distributes no land, livestock, or money, but rather merely directs that the estate be sold and the proceeds be used for the support of “my wife & children”.   The will bequeaths the increase of a negro woman “belonging to my wife Ann Gorham” equally after her death to “my sons Lamken, William, and Harving”.  “My daughter Sarah Vandever” was given a bed and furniture, and one of the witnesses to the will was a Sarah Vandiver.  Ann Gorham and friend Simon Tripplet were named executors.  The sons were clearly minors at the time.  The inventory, recorded 13 September 1773, does not list the negro slave, but does list a servant, livestock, six books, and a “pray[er] book and testament”.  Interestingly, the will mentions a tobacco crop and the servant, and the inventory lists livestock, but Sanford clearly owned no land of his own.  Nor is there a lease recorded to him.   to have neither owned nor leased land.  The widow Ann appears in the tithables of 1773 and 1774, as the taxpayer for Edward Vandiver and the servant, and in 1775 paying the tax for the servant alone.  There is no further record of her.  The only earlier record of her is a 1765 debit to the estate of Christopher Neale to “Mrs. Ann Gorham for making breeches”.[37]

Sanford appears to have been born about 1744/5.  The tithables law in effect at the time required that each head of household (the responsible taxpayer) be listed separately.  That would lead us to conclude that Sanford did not yet have his own household in 1761 and 1762, when his father paid his tithe.  His absence from the household in 1760 would lead us to conclude that Sanford Gorham reached the age of 16 in late 1760 or early 1761, thus was born about 1744.  However, the question of his age seems to depend upon the identity of his wife Ann and the daughter Sarah Vandiver.  The Sarah Vandiver who witnessed the will must have been the daughter of George Vandiver (since a married daughter of Sanford could not legally be a witness to his will.)  The question is whether or not she is the same Sarah Vandiver named as a “daughter” in the will.  There are two reasonable possibilities:

Theory 1: The most likely possibility (in my view) is that Sanford Gorham married the widow of George Vandiver.  This theory neatly explains a variety of facts.  George Vandiver died in late 1764 leaving a pregnant widow Ann and four small children, Edward, Sarah, Tabitha, and Armentia.[38]   Surely she would have been motivated to remarry, and we know that Sanford was married within a year thereafter from the 1765 debit to Christopher Neale’s estate.  According to Vandiver researchers, Edward Vandiver was baptized on 21 January 1753, meaning he should begin to appear in the tihables in 1769.  A marriage of Sanford Gorham to the widow Ann Vandiver would neatly explain why Sanford Gorham would pay the tithe for Edward Vandiver for 1769-1772, and why Ann Gorham would pay his tax for 1773-1774 after Sanford’s death.   It would also explain why Sarah Vandiver could be referred to as a “daughter” yet also witness the will – a legitimate action for a stepdaughter who would have had no legal interest in the residual estate.    Further, it would explain Sanford Gorham’s lack of land transactions, since he would have been living on George Vandiver’s land.  (In fact, he appears in the tithables in the same district in which Vandiver’s land lay.)  I would also note that no Ann Vandiver appears in any Loudoun records subsequent to 1764, and Mrs. Ann Gorham first appears in 1765.  Ann Vandiver’s absence from the tithables lists means that she had no slaves and no sons over 16 available to work the land left by George Vandiver – or that she had remarried.  Although this theory appears to fit all the facts, there is one flaw.  Edward Vandiver and “Ann his mother” sold George Vandiver’s land in 1774, the year Edward Vandiver turned 21, but Ann’s surname recorded by the clerk beside her mark was “Vandiver”, not “Gorham”.[39]   Given the tithables evidence, that would seem to have been a clerk’s error in copying the deed, but it forces us to consider an alternate theory.

Theory 2: An alternate possibility is that the “Sarah Vandiver” named in the will was Sanford’s natural daughter and the wife of a Vandiver, with Edward Vandiver being the only candidate.  This might explain Edward Vandiver’s presence in Sanford’s household.   It does not, however, explain why Sanford would have paid his tithe or why Edward’s mother-in-law, a widow with few assets, would have been responsible for his tithe subsequent to Sanford’s death.  Nor does it meet the test of “reasonability”, since it implies that Edward Vandiver had married by the age of 16.  [Not to mention that it implies a 27-year old Sanford had a daughter old enough to marry.]  Furthermore, this theory implies two persons named Sarah Vandiver.  A natural daughter could not legally have been the witness to Sanford’s will, meaning that the Sarah Vandiver who witnessed the will must have been the unmarried daughter of George Vandiver named in Vandiver’s will.  This possibility, requiring Sanford to have a married daughter by 1772, would lead us to conclude that Sanford was born much earlier than the mid-1740s.[40]  One problem with this theory is that it forces us to explain Sanford’s absence from the tithables in 1749 and 1760, as well as why he is not a taxpayer himself in 1761-2.  I will also note that there is no other evidence that Edward Vandiver was married at the time, nor that his wife’s name was Sarah.  The first indication that Edward Vandiver was married is a 19 March 1776 “three lives” lease to Edward, his wife Helena, and daughter Sarah.   On balance, I think this second theory offers an inferior explanation of the evidence and has greater flaws, thus the first theory is the more likely one. 

Whichever was the case, there was clearly some connection between Sanford Gorham and the Vandivers.  Tabitha Vandiver (another daughter of George Vandiver) married Joseph Frost.  The Frosts executed a “three lives” lease in 1777 with the third person being “Harvin Goreham, orphan of Sanford Goreham”.[41]   Whether Harvin Gorham was a step-brother of Tabitha Frost (Theory 1) or her brother’s brother-in-law (Theory 2) is uncertain, but it seems highly likely that he was living with the Frosts at the time.   Harvin Gorham was clearly under 16 at the time, for while Joseph Frost was tithable Harvin Gorham was not.

The three sons named in Sanford Gorham’s will – Lamken, William, and Harving – do not appear in any Loudoun tithables lists through 1781, after which the tax lists exist only in fragments.  (Assuming they were in the county, this implies that none of the three were born by 1765.)   I have no clear idea what happened to the three sons, but some descendants think that Harvin and William accompanied the Vandiver children to South Carolina.  Harvin Gorham appears on the 1800 census of Chester County but by 1830 is in Monroe County, Alabama and in Butler County, Alabama by 1840.  His children seem to be the Gorhams listed in Covington County, Alabama in the 1850 census. These censuses place his birth sometime in the late 1760s or early 1770s.

The 1880 letter (see elsewhere) by a granddaughter of Thomas Gorham says that Thomas had two brothers “one of them a lawyer with one arm, the other a farmer”.   The writer could not have known these people, so the accuracy of this statement has to be suspect.  However, if this is accurate then Sanford was probably the farmer.

4.      Elizabeth Gorham   (c1745 - ?)  It seems likely she was a daughter, as she named one son John and another Miles Gorham Barden.  She married Thomas Barden then, after his death in 1776, John Wells.  Thomas Barden was listed consecutively with Thomas Gorham in the tithables of 1768 and 1770.  He died by November 1776 when his appraisal and inventory were recorded.[42]  The Bardens had four minor children to whom the estate was eventually distributed:  Miles, John, James, and Mary.[43]  The eldest son, Miles, was born 1 January 1767 according to a family Bible.  On 13 March 1782, Miles G. Barden chose Thomas Gorham as his guardian.[44]  Thomas Gorham almost immediately requested that John and Elizabeth Wells, the administrators of Thomas Barden, settle the estate, though the final settlement wasn’t recorded until 1813.[45]  A settlement account recorded in 1786 and the 1786 tithables both give the full name of this son as “Miles Gorham Barden”.[46]