USA > Virginia > City of Virginia Beach > City of Virginia Beach > Old houses in Princess Anne, Virginia > Part 3
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In the same volume we find among the Bur- gesses present from the various plantations, hun- dreds &c., Mr. Adam Thorowgood as one of the six Burgesses for "Elizabeth Citty." At the session of the Assembly convening at "James Citty" on March 24th, 1629/30, present for Lower Elizabeth City as Burgesses are, Capt. Thomas Purfury, Adam Thorowgood, Launcelot Barnes. Likewise in the session of September 4th, 1632, Mr. Thorowgood is one of the three Burgesses for Lower Elizabeth City. In 1636 Mr. Thorowgood was a member of the Governor's Council. This probably accounts for the fact that his name does not appear as a Bur- gess for the new county of Norfolk in 1637.
Capt. Adam Thorowgood, for so he is styled in the first record book of Norfolk County, married Sarah Offley, we are told, and left at his death in February 1639/40, surviving him beside the widow, a son Adam (2) and three daughters, Ann, Sarah and Elizabeth. The widow was not long inconsol- able, if ever. Soon she became the wife of John Gookin, shortly to be again bereaved, and in just as short order marrying Col. Francis Yardley. It was as the widow Gookin that Sarah kept the tavern at Lynnhaven.
In the next generation and so on, we find the Thorowgoods marrying into the most prominent families in the county, Lawson, Moseley, Keeling, Nimmo. So from their plantations along the Bay- side and Lynnhaven River have issued men and women who had no small share in the making of the history of Princess Anne County.
It is difficult to say which Thorowgood built
1
1
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the house now standing on Lynnhaven, and it is just as difficult to say when the building took place. Adam Thorowgood (1) made a will dated February 17th, 1639. It was admitted to probate at a quarter court held at James City the 27th of April, 1640. He bequeathes to the Parish Church at Lynnhaven one thousand pounds of tobacco in leaf to be disbursed for some necessary and decent ornament. He devised to his wife, beside certain domestic. animals, all the houses and the orchard with the plantation at Lynnhaven so far as it ex- tended: to-wit: from the pond to the further stile that parts it, and the grounds called by the name of the quarter, during her life time; all of which he gave her as a memorial of his love. To his son Adam he devised all the rest of the estate in Virginia or elsewhere, at the age of twenty-one. After the decease of the widow, son Adam is to enjoy and possess land, house, and orchard which had been given to wife Sarah during her life time.
In 1679 we find Adam (2) Thorowgood married to Frances Yardley, daughter of Argoll Yardley, and the father of the following sons and daughter, Argoll, John, Adam (3), Francis, Robert, Rose. At this time he is making his will, which was pro- bated in Lower Norfolk County, 1685/6. These are his bequests : To his wife Frances, for life, the plantation whereon he was living with six hundred acres most convenient to the house. This tract was laid out in 1686 by Anthony Lawson and Malachy Thurston in accordance with the will and in the record the pond in the yard is mentioned. The rest of the estate is to be divided by these gentlemen
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into five equal parts, one part for each son to have choice as he reaches twenty-one years. This Adam (2) expressly stipulates that his wife Frances have the house wherein he was then living (in the di- vision called the Grand Manor House), plantation, &c., during her life, and after her decease "to goe unto my son Argoll Thorowgood and his heires forever." And so by will this plantation is devised from father to eldest son until 1780 when William Thorowgood, son of Argoll Thorowgood and Eliza- beth Keeling, makes his will, leaving the plantation to his wife Elizabeth Nimmo Thorowgood (she was the daughter of James Nimmo of Shenstone Green) for life, and at her death to his nephew William Thorowgood Nimmo, son of his (William's) sister Elizabeth and James Nimmo (2) of Shenstone Green. You see brother and sister Thorowgood married sister and brother Nimmo.
In Norfolk County is to be found an inventory of the personal estate of Frances Thorowgood, widow of Adam (2). This inventory is made by her eldest son Argoll. The rooms listed in her home are: kitchen chamber, hall chamber, parlor cham- ber, passage, parlor, hall, cellar, kitchen. Mr. Philip Alexander Bruce in his Economic History of !'irginia refers to the house of Adam Thorow- good who died in 1686. He says that there were in this house three chambers, one hall and parlor, a kitchen and cellar. In the inventory of the Argoll Thorowgood, who was the son of Adam (2) and made the inventory of Frances above referred to, who likewise was the third in line, Adam (1), Adam (2), Argoll, each in turn to possess a certain
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Manor Plantation, the last two by will, after his death in 1699 when his inventory was made and recorded, the rooms in his home were: hall, parlor, parlor chamber, kitchen, porch chamber, passage room, kitchen chamber, hall chamber, milk house, "In ye sellar."
Beginning with John Thorowgood, brother of Argoll, both sons of Adam (2), the son of Adam (1), this John being the second son in the third generation (the eldest, Argoll, having inherited the home plantation) we are able by wills, chancery suits, and deeds of record in Princess Anne and Norfolk counties, to trace John's (3) property to John D., Grace M., and Rufus P. Keeler, who in 1906 purchased the part of the Church Point farm on which the old mansion house of the John Thorowgood family stood.
In the inventory of the first John Thorowgood, who married Margaret Lawson, daughter of Col. Anthony Lawson (first of the Anthony Lawsons in Princess Anne County), we find in 1701 the following rooms: parlor, parlor chamber, porch chamber, hall, milk house, kitchen, buttery. This John, who in his will styles himself the son of Col. Adam, deceased, was himself a colonel and a man of much importance in the county. He was one of the first justices of the new county of Princess Anne. With these facts as they relate to the earliest members of a family and the homes in which they lived, we pass to a more intimate view of the quaint home of the Thorowgoods now standing on a branch of Lynnhaven River in the county of Princess Anne.
As we see the Thorowgood home today it is
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oblong, 46' x 20' 7" above the water table. Entering by the front door, a hall runs through with a door at the back opposite the front door. The stairway of heart pine goes up on the right to a height of about seven feet, then turning at right angles to the left on a platform 10 feet wide, which is the width of the downstairs hall. After a series of sev-
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Thorowgood House
Courtesy Miss Keeler
North Room of Thorowgood House
Courtesy Miss Keeler
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eral steps again up at right angles and to the left we are in the upper hallway. Here there are two rooms, one on each side of the hall. The same arrangement is true downstairs, on the right the kitchen or dining room, on the left the parlor. There is no cellar, nor is there any evidence of there ever having been one. The water table presents an unbroken surface of perfect brickwork all the way round the four walls. This point must be explained away if this house be accepted as the original home of Adam Thorowgood the first or second, or Argoll (1).
By reference to the picture a very clear idea is gotten of the house proportions. The outside chim- ney will be discussed more at length later because it is a striking example of the type used at a very early period of building in Virginia.
The brick walls of the house, front and back, are 8'2" from the water table to eaves. The two gable ends are brick all the way up to a sharp point, making what the colored people term an "A" roof. In the end to the left of entrance, in the parlor, the chimney is built within the room. It is around this that is found the magnificent pine panelling seen in the interior view on page 46. This fireplace is 62" wide, 49" high, with two flues. However, the outside chimney, which, by the way, is on the south end of the building, is far more interesting. It is said that very early the thrifty New Eng- landers abandoned the method of building the chimney outside, building around the chimney instead, in order to conserve heat. We wonder if that is the reason that when we find one chimney
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in and one outside the building here in Tidewater, the inside chimney is nearly always on the northern exposure?
The measurements of this southern chimney taken just above the 24" water table are 10'5" across the breast, rising for 6'9" to the first weath- ered setoff, up again for 4'7" to the second weath- ered setoff, on up from the second setoff with a tall stack far above the roof ridge. The depth of the chimney breast is 48". In the dining room or kitchen, the fireplace measures 8'6" in width, 58" in height, 53" in depth. As has been said the brick- work is English bond on three sides, with the front wall of Flemish bond, the headers in these courses are often times very fine "blue headers," causing the pattern to stand out in an effective way.
South end of Courtesy Miss Keeler Thorowgood House
We fear that too much time has been given to a description of this house, but its beauty justifies every minute given to the study.
In conclusion may we recom- mend to you a visit to this spot, if you have not already had the pleasure. So far we have not
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seen an accurate architectural description of the Thorowgood house, Eberlein in his Architecture of Colonial America, published by Little, Brown & Co., in 1915, chapter 5 on Colonial Architecture in the South, says, that in the South the chimneys were built outside the house wall. Then he cites the Thorowgood house. Likewise an article by Delos H. Smith in the magazine House Beautiful, October issue, 1928, on page 456, in describing the house on Lynnhaven Farm, says, "The chimneys are built outside the gables." The same error has crept into each publication, for in reality, one chimney is within the wall, the other without.
But there is a house in Princess Anne oblong in ground plan, with a huge outside chimney in each of its two gable ends, with two weathered setoffs in each of these chimneys, with brickwork show- ing the English bonding throughout. This house is very generally known as the "Boush House." It is now the property of Mr. William W. Oliver of the county. As a matter of fact, the house did not come into the Boush family until 1795 when William, son of Frederick Boush, purchased the property for 1,000£ specie from Thomas Wishart and Porcia, his wife. It is described as lying in Little Creek, about 300 acres with house, "the same which Thomas Wishart the elder, late of Princess Anne County willed to his son William, who in his will devised to Thomas." The whole story is this.
In 1653 Adam (2) Thorowgood, son of Adam (1), sold to William Richerson, shipwright of "London Citty," a parcel of land shooting off a mile into the woods. In 1673 Richerson causes to
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be recorded this bill of sale, as it is called, because he is selling the same "parcel of land" to James Wishart. James Wishart dies in 1679/80 and leaves his plantation in Little Creek, which he bought of William Richerson, to his son William Wishart; to his son James "the plantation whereon I now live ;" he mentions a son Thomas, a son John, and two daughters, Joyce and Frances. By a deed of gift recorded in 1700 in Princess Anne William Wishart gives half of his plantation to his brother Thomas. He says ". .. left me by my father James Wishart, lying in Little Creek, the same Thomas to have the southeast part divided by a line running . .. from a pine at the head of a cove neare the old house." In 1736 William devises the plantation he now lives on to cousin Thomas, and certain slaves to cousin Francis. Now it would seem that William is a little mixed here on his relationships. His brother James had a son Francis, his brother Thomas, to whom he had already given half of his property, had a son Thomas. These therefore were his nephews, and not cousins. This Thomas in 1772 wills to son William, who in turn devises to brother Thomas in 1783, after the death of his wife Mary, the plantation in Little Creek. And Thomas, brother of William, both sons of Thomas the elder, makes the deed to Boush. It is interesting to note that William in 1700 speaks of "the old house" on this tract. Very evidently it was a landmark at this time as he uses it as a designation in reciting the bounds of the property he is giving to his brother. Just who built this house we can not say, but William Richerson was a London shipwright, own-
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ing this property prior to the London fire. It seems the accepted theory that the Flemish method of bonding did not generally come into use among the English until the influx of Flemish brick- masons after the London fire, in 1666. This house is English bond throughout in its bricklaying, the roof until very recently was sharp, there are gable ends with outside chimneys in each gable, the in- terior very modest and unpretentious.
Wishart House before roof was changed
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Wishart House, opposite end
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One enters the main room on opening the front door. From this room a blind stairway goes to the two rooms above under the roof. There is one other room and that is to the left downstairs. The house on the outside measures 32'6" by 21'2", the height to the eaves is 10'5".
At the back there is a door reached by several steps opening into the other downstairs room. Near this door is an opening and by stooping slightly entrance is made to the cellar. This cellar is about the height of a tall man. It is interesting to specu- late on the use to which the cellar was put. From this point of vantage the foundation brickwork is easily studied, also the sills, most of the original one still doing service after these many years, are in clear sight. The sills are hewn from oak and are 8"x6". The joists supporting the roof and upper floor project beyond the outside walls, secured by wooden pegs. These joists measure 24" from center to center and are 18" apart. The interior measure- ments of the downstairs rooms are very nearly coincident with the same measurements in the Thorowgood house. Viewing the house from the outside there is one other feature that is different. At the eaves on each end of the front wall there is a graded projection of bricks, probably put there to support a porch across the front. Also on the back near the cellar entrance and by the back door is a projection of single bricks at intervals in a vertical line. What for, to support or tie a shed to?
On the right of the house nearby under cedar trees lie buried several of the Boushes whose home this had been. The tombs are going rapidly to
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decay. Here is the tomb of William Boush, 1759/1854, and by his side Mary, his wife, 1764- 1822. Here also is the gravestone of Wm. F. M. Boush who died in 1816 at the age of twenty-five years. There is an elaborate inscription on this marble, all of which, for the most part is illegible. From a word decipherable here and there the impression is gotten that he was a most dis- tinguished person. Here also lies buried Eliza J. S. Walke, widow of David Walke, daughter of Wil- liam and Mary Boush. She died in 1884 at the age of eighty-two years. There is one other brick vault. The slab is gone, a large tree is growing out.
The third house in this group is called the Beachy or Babcock place. It is now owned by Mr. H. C. Moore. Mrs. Moore appreciates this old home, located as it is far back from the Bayside Road. She has visions of a day in the near future when the house and garden will be restored as she believes it was in the days when it was the home of Robert Moseley, and immediately following, as the plantation Jacob Hunter purchased and devised in 1780 to his son Josiah Hunter. This Jacob Hunter was the third generation of the Hunter family in Princess Anne. Dr. William was practic- ing medicine in Lower Norfolk County in 1678. His three sons were Thomas, James and John. Jacob is the eldest son of John. Jacob married twice, first Susannah Moore, second Elizabeth Wilson Boush. Josiah Wilson Hunter was one of four sons by the second marriage. Jacob Hunter had six sons and in his will left a plantation to each. But this house seems to date back much
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farther than 1751 when Robert Moseley bought it from Daniel Hutchings, the house with 102 acres.
Between the meanders of Little Creek is a tract of land called Paggett's or Puggett's Neck, con- taining 750 acres, named for the man to whom it was first granted in 1643, when the adventurers first began taking up land hereabouts "south of the James River in Elizabeth City." The grantee was Cesar Puggett. As sometimes happened, this tract was later granted to Capt. Thomas Lambert in 1648. It is described in the grant as being 750 acres in Paggett's Neck in Linhaven Parish. The grantee is the same Thomas Lambert who in 1635 obtained a grant for the land the description thereof strongly indicating a subdivision of the present city of Norfolk generally known as "Lambert's Point." Norfolk County records disclose that in the year 1671 Lieut .- Col. Thomas Lambert is dead. Four daughters survive him, married to the following men : George Fowler, Henry Snaile, John Weblin, Richard Drout. A partition deed is spread upon Book "E" on page 14 wherein these sons-in-law, styling themselves as co-heirs of Mr. Lambert, divide the 750 acres in Puggett's Neck. John Weblin and Richard Drout got 350 acres between them, this being the northwest part of the tract. Of the 350 acres John Weblin's portion is "that part wherein he now lives, with one half of woodland . . . " to him and his heirs forever. John Weblin died in 1686/7 leaving his property to his two sons John and George.
In 1716 John sells his 75 acres to John Hutch- ings, who three years later sells to Nathaniel
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Hutchings 75 acres he describes as being the land which came to him (John Hutchings) from John Weblin, John Weblin having come by the same by his (John Weblin) father's last will. In 1728 Na- thaniel Hutchings buys of Thomas Lawson 27 acres. The deed says that Hutchings already has this enclosed in his pasture. And so we have accounted for the 102 acres that in 1751 we find Daniel Hutchings selling to Robert Moseley. In this deed Daniel describes the tract as the same land that Nathaniel Hutchings purchased of John Hutchings, mariner, and Thomas Lawson. Robert Moseley in his will in 1771 directs his executors, Capt. Daniel Hutchings of the Borough of Norfolk and Mr. William Woodhouse, to sell his plantation in Little Creek whereon he lived, there being 102 acres with house. The title continues with equal clarity through the next century down to the present owner.
In the first part of this chapter a sketch was given of the "Weblin" House. There is not much else to be added. A diagram of the interior is similar to the plans of the Wishart house. The houses measures 37'4" across the front. This front wall is Flemish bond of the blue header type very much like the front wall of the Thorowgood house. The chimney is built almost exactly as are the chimneys previously discussed, the breast measure- ing 10 feet across, with weathered setoffs appear- ing twice between the breast and stack. There may have been a cellar at one time.
In summarizing the three houses have we proved: In 1653 when William Richerson of
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"London Citty" bought 200 acres from Adam (2) Thorowgood there was no house on the tract, it is described as shooting off into the woods a mile; however, in 1700 the house is referred to as "the old house." The earliest date of this house could be late 1653. The plantation not far away in Puggett's Neck had a house on it in 1671 when the four sons-in-law of Col. Thomas Lambert made a partition deed, set- ting aside to each a part of a 750-acre tract. John Weblin, on whose acres the house stood, was dead in 1686, his sons not quite of age. This house was surely built prior to 1671. Just down the road on Lynnhaven River is the Thorowgood house. After the death of his father Adam (2) in 1686, when John Thorowgood came into the 600 acres com- prising the lot of his choice (he on account of his age, being second to choose) did he build this "Mansion House" for his bride, Margaret Lawson?
CHAPTER V
FAVING Little Creek Precinct of Lynn- haven Parish where Adam Thorowgood was the largest landowner, as one drives down the Great Neck road from London Bridge toward Long Creek one is in the Upper Eastern Shore Precinct of Lynnhaven Parish, where the Cornicks, Keelings and Woodhouses were large landowners. Henry Woodhouse and Thomas Keel- ing patented land in Lower Norfolk County very shortly after Adam Thorowgood did. Wm. Cor- nick's first grant was in the year 1657.
One of the hundred and five persons with whom Adam Thorowgood is credited as having brought into the colony is Thomas Keeling. By the side of this record in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography is the bracket "(Brother of Adam Keel- ing)." It would seem that this is a mistake and that Adam is the son of Thomas Keeling. We know that Adam Keeling was the godson of Adam Thorow- good, for Mr. Thorowgood remembers him in his will ... "to godson Adam Keeling, one breeding goat." This was 1640.
In 1635 Thomas Keeling obtained a grant for one hundred acres on Back River. Ensign Thomas Keeling was a vestryman of the Lower Norfolk County Church in 1640. Adam Keeling makes a will in 1683. In this will he mentions a brother Alexander. Elizabeth Keeling making a will in 1670 names as her brothers Alexander and Thorow-
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good and her father-in-law Bray. However, she means father-by-law or step-father, for Thorow- good Keeling in his will (1679) speaks of his "father Bray." In 1682 Anne Bray makes a deed to her son Alexander Keeling and Anne Keeling, daughter of Adam Keeling. Anne Bray makes another deed in which she says her sons Edward and Thomas are deceased, leaving Alexander as surviving son of her husband Thomas Keeling.
Therefore we are sure that the Adam Keeling who made his will in 1683 was the son of Anne and Thomas Keeling. He had a sister Elizabeth, brothers Edward, Thomas, Alexander and Thorow- good. At the time of the making of his will Capt. Adam's mother lived on his property at London Bridge. His bequests are : to daughter Anne twelve hundred acres lately bought of Anthony Lawson, called Black Walnutt Ridge, and joining Rudee; to daughter Elizabeth, three or four hundred acres near Machipungo; to son John, fourteen hundred acres that formerly belonged to "my father-in-law, John Martin," provided John makes a deed to son Adam for two thousand acres lately patented in the name of John Keeling. This is the London Bridge tract. To son Thomas he devised the home planta- tion after the death of wife Ann. Son Thomas also received a parcel of land "commonly known by ye name of Dudlies . . . beinge neare four hundred acres." In the inventory of this Adam Keeling we find he had the following rooms in his house: hall, hall shed, parlor shed, parlor, hall chamber, porch chamber, kitchen, and little buttery.
There are many interesting relationships here
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that may be worked out, but the subject matter of this book is houses, not genealogy, so let us take up our thread at "Dudlies" which Adam Keeling left to his son Thomas. This is the only plantation of the Keelings on which today we find standing an original home.
It has been our general observation while read- ing old records that where there is a house on the property the donor, devisor, or grantor, as the case may be, usually describes the land as a plantation, or as "seated," or as the tract whereon "So-and-So" now lives. If there is no building the term used in the description is most frequently "parcel of land," sometimes divident or patent. If this conclusion be true, then in 1683, Dudlies had no house on it. However, in 1714 this son Thomas Keeling in mak- ing his will devises "all the land I now live on, which my father Adam left me," to his son Adam.
In the meantime Thomas Keeling had married Mary Lovett, daughter of Lancaster and Mary Lovett. The sons of Thomas and Mary Lovett Keeling were Adam, John and William. The Lovett and Keeling wills of this time are quite interesting and dovetail entirely.
In 1771 Adam Keeling makes a will leaving to his grandson Adam "the plantation whereon I now live, together with the land whereon my son Thomas' widow lives, the marsh adjoining the plantation" and ... "Hog Pen Neck." There may seem a long time unaccounted for between the will of Thomas in 1714 and his son Adam in 1771, especially when one counts thirty years to a gen- eration, but in this last Adam's will he makes be-
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