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From: "Rees Chapman" <>
Subject: Isaac Chapman, Sarah Cole
Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2005 01:38:00 -0800


In the 1970s, I worked for an office machines company in Charlottesville,
and I would travel up and down the Shenandoah Valley servicing computer
systems. Having been told, as a child, that my ancestor Isaac Chapman had
died in Orange County VA, I would occasionally drop by the courthouse there
and browse for any record of him; other than an inventory of his property at
the time of his death in 1747, I found little.

One day in the spring of 1979, I was returning from Front Royal by way of
Sperryville, and near what I recall to be Flint Hil, had a sudden sense of.
. . "home." I stopped at a crossroads by a little bridge, and gazed at a
mountain ridge that seemed familiar to me - not as if I had actually seen it
before, but as if I had always known it was there. Knowing that my
ancestors had been in Orange, not Rappahannock, county, I dismissed my
experience as but a pleasant dissociation, and drove home.

Later, in the 1990s, I learned that Culpeper county had its origins in
Orange county, and I wondered if I had not actually been in some part of
Culpeper when I had my sensation of home. But I couldn't find where I
recalled I'd been on any Culpeper map.

Returning to my research recently, I've been curious about a reference to
Isaac Chapman's son in law, Moredock McKensey. A History of The Middle New
River Settlements and Contiguous Territory
by David E. Johnston (1906) describes "a record of deeds in the clerk's
office of the County Court of Culpeper County, finding a deed made by Mr.
McKensey and wife in November, 1768, conveying a tract of land on Burgess's
River, to which deed the name of McKensey is spelled "Moredock O. McKensey."
Burgess's River has disappeared from all the maps, if it ever had a place
thereon, and diligent inquiry of the Culpeper people failed to disclose its
locality; it is believed however, that the name has been changed to Hedges'
River."

But, I went looking for Burgess River (online) and found it! It is now
known as Bolton Branch, and is in Rappahannock county, near Flint Hill! So,
had Isaac lived near Moredock on the Burgess River in what is now
Rappahannock county, it would have been part of Culpeper county prior to
1833, part of Orange county prior to 1749. And Orange was part of
Spottsylvania county prior to 1734.

Could Isaac Chapman have owned property in part of Spotsylvania county that
ultimately became Rappahannock county? Are there records of him or his
wife, Sarah Cole?

Rees Chapman



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