Person:John Dennison (16)

John Dennison was one of the Early Settlers of Augusta County, Virginia

Contents 1 Early Land Acquisition in Augusta County, VA 2 Estate Inventory 3 Records in Augusta County, VA		Welcome to Old Augusta Early Settlers Beverley Manor Borden's Grant Register Data Maps Places Library History Index
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Early Land Acquisition in Augusta County, VA

Early Land Surveys in Augusta County:

• 6 November 1767- Page 102 - John Deniston, 125 acres, Mill Creek. Adjoining Shanklins. Mentioned Scotts Run and North River. ["Abstract of Land Grant Surveys of Augusta and Rockingham Counties, Virginia", Peter Cline Kaylor, pg. 102].

• Page 479.--9th August, 1770. John Madison and Agatha to John Denniston, £25, 200 acres on north side Shanando River patented to William Downs, 5th March, 1747, and by him conveyed to John Madison, 18th February, 1758, mouth of Stover's Mill Creek; corner William Lamb and Robert Shanklin. Delivered: John Denniston, 3d August, 1772.

Disposition of Land from Chalkley's:

• Page 146.--16th December, 1772. John Dennison (Denniston) to Gabriel Jones, on Shanandore, whereon John now lives.

Estate Inventory

15 Nov 1775, administration on the estate of John Deniston was granted to John H. Henderson.

[Source: Botetourt Co VA Court Minutes].

Dennison, John, dec. Appraisal of estate returned, May 1776.

[Source: Early Marriages, Wills and some Revolutionary War Records, Botetourt County, Virginia, Compiled by Anne Lowry Worrell, pg. 54].

Records in Augusta County, VA

From Chalkley’s Augusta County Records:

• Vol. 1 - AUGUST 20, 1757. - (30) John Denniston, exempted from levy. Isaac South, exempted from levy. [Note: John Denniston was likely fairly old in 1757, as it was routine to exempt the elderly from levies].

• Vol. 1 - 1763-4, Pt. 1. - Petitioners to open a road that usually led from a ford of the South River above Joseph Hannah's over Cole's ford on the middle and from thence to Mathew Thompson's, which has been lately stopped by Henry Reaburn, notwithstanding it has been a bridle way for nearly twenty years. Robert Scott, Patrick Frazer, James Bruster, Robert Hook, Robert Hook, John Denniston, William Hook, J. Madison, John Stephenson, Archibald Huston, John Craig, John Davison, John Davison, Jr., Patrick Willson, Robert Shanklin.

• 6 December 1769 - Page 167 - Robert Shanklin, 1,000 acres, Between the North River of the Shenandoah and MiIll Creek, including 150 acres old patent granted to said Shanklin on the 12th of May 1759. Adjoining Deniston. ["Abstract of Land Grant Surveys of Augusta and Rockingham Counties, Virginia", Peter Cline Kaylor, pg. 102].

1.   .

   Other Dennis[t]ons of Southwestern Virginia
   by John B. Robb
   
   Besides the line of Dennistons which runs from Daniel¹ to Daniel² to John³ (and Daniel²’s other children), there is at least one other family of that name west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, whose members have evidently been conflated by RD with the children of Daniel². Sorting out this other family has required a close analysis of a complex tissue of evidence.
   
   John³ (Daniel²), as I have shown in his subject sketch (4, above), was born about 1751. Therefore, he cannot have been the John Denniston who was “exempted from levy” in Augusta Co on 20 Aug 1757.^[269] This entry in the county order books probably means that this John was being excused as a tithable from the county-levied personal property tax, and the most common reason for tax exemptions was old age.^[270] The name John Denniston next appears about 1763 as a signer of a petition to force open a road from South to Middle River which had been blocked by one of the owners of the land it traversed; other signers of this petition included Archibald Huston, and Robert Shanklin, both residents of the area of Augusta where Stover’s Mill Creek runs into South River just before it makes the transition to North River, which forks into Middle River.^[271] Again in 1766, John Deniston appears as a “supernumerary” on a tax adjustment list which also includes two Shanklins.^[272]
   
   None of these records can reasonably be associated with the John³ (Daniel², Daniel¹) Denniston who was born about 1751, nor is it at all likely that this early immigrant John was a son of Daniel¹, and a brother of his son Daniel².[273] This John was evidently a contemporary of Daniel¹, and probably a fellow immigrant. I shall call him, therefore, John¹. Yet there is DNA evidence that these two were closely related, which I shall examine in more detail in Appendix C.
   
   The next item pertaining to this other, older, John¹ Denniston, is a survey made for him 6 Nov 1767 of 125a on [Stover’s] Mill Creek, bordering other land owned by him, and following a line of his neighbor, Shanklin, crossing the creek.^[274] Then on 9 Aug 1770, John Denniston was a purchaser of 200a on the N side of the Shenando (Shenandoah) River, encompassing the mouth of Stover’s Mill Creek, corner Robert Shanklin;^[275] this land was evidently the actual mill tract. When plotted, this survey, and this deed, fit each other like hand and glove,^[276] and in fact the bounds of the 1767 survey, which refer to two corners in common with land already owned by John, make it clear that he was already in possession of the 200a tract for years before he actually acquired title to it, by deed. The final recorded item which we can be sure belongs to this same John¹ Denniston is a 16 Dec 1772 mortgage of his 200a home tract to Gabriel Jones, it “being the land John Deniston now lives on, and which was conveyed by John Madison”; the deed was acknowledged (by John Denniston, the mortgagor) on 16 Mar 1773.^[277]
   
   The next recorded transactions involving these two tracts are neither in the name of John Denniston, nor of Gabriel Jones. Instead we find Robert Denniston, on 16 Feb 1771, granted the patent for the 125a tract which John¹ Denniston had surveyed in 1767,^[278] and, on 23 Aug 1778, it was Robert and his wife Margaret Denniston who sold land on Stover’s Mill Creek (acreage unspecified) to James Denniston,^[279] who six months later, on 1 Feb 1779, sold the 200a he had purchased from Robert to a neighbor, Lewis Sircle.^[280] James’s deed clearly identifies the land he was selling as the same 200a mill tract originally purchased by John¹ Denniston, but it provides, in the recital, only a sketchy history of the tract’s ownership history: the land “being first granted to William Dower by paten . . . [5 Mar 1747] and from him conveyed to John Madison by deed of lease and release and conveyed from Rob[er]t Deniston to James Denison”. Fortunately, some of the missing detail here can be filled in from the recital in John & Agatha’s deed to John Denniston, which tells us that the land was originally patented 5 May 1747 by Henry Downs,^[281] sold by him to John Madison on 18 Feb 1758, and sold by John & Agatha Madison to John Denniston on 9 Aug 1770.
   
   Putting all this together, it appears that John¹ Denniston occupied the mill tract on Stover’s Mill Creek even before his survey of adjacent land in 1767, and as late as 16 Mar 1773 when he acknowledged his mortgage of this 200a mill tract. Meanwhile, it is Robert Denniston who converted John’s survey into a patent in 1771, while John¹ was still in the picture, and Robert who sold the mill tract in 1778—to one James Denniston. There appear to be no documents showing how, or when, Robert himself acquired the rights to these two tracts: the natural supposition would be that he acquired the survey from John privately, perhaps as a gift, and that he came into John’s 200a home tract, either by an unrecorded deed, or more likely, by intestate inheritance as John’s oldest son. I shall therefore hypothetically call him Robert² (John¹). And if Robert² was the oldest son of John¹, then the James Denniston to whom he sold the mill tract was probably his younger brother. RD has proposed Robert as a son of Daniel², but there are other reasons to doubt this. For one thing, there is a militia court martial record for one Robert Denneston who was returned for failing to appear on 15 Apr 1768 for a required militia muster of Capt. Thomas Madison’s company.^[282] According to the law at the time, Robert would have had to have been at least 18 years of age, or born before 15 Apr 1750, in order to be subject to legal penalties for failing to appear.^[283] But Daniel² had a regular succession of daughters in the 1740's born too close together to leave room for a son Robert, culminating with daughter Mary baptized Feb 1749, and a son John born, presumably, before Aug 1751. Although there is just enough room to insert Robert between Mary and John if we stipulate that John was born as late as possible, even so, the preceding and following birth intervals come up a bit short (just 15 months), compared to the 18-30 month average for the other children. More conclusively, Robert belonged to a different militia company than Daniel2. As we have seen, Robert’s captain was Thomas Madison, while Daniel’s, just the year before, was William Crow. Furthermore, at least one of the other five absentees from Madison’s militia muster, Joseph Rutherford, was, like Robert, a denizen of the Stover’s Creek area[284], and another, David Nelson, was on Silas Hart’s 1777 Augusta Co tithables list for the northern part of the county^[285]—an area which was relegated to the new RockinghamCo the next year—which begs the question: why would an 18 year old son of Daniel² Denniston of Beverley Manor, belong, in 1768, to a different neighborhood militia company than his father?
   
   It is true that on 20 Mar 1770, Daniel² sold his land in Beverley Manor, and on 20 Aug 1771, purchased new land on Dry River (in future Rockingham Co), while on 18 Aug 1772, his son John³ purchased his own land adjacent to that of his father.^[286] If Robert were also a son of Daniel, and of nearly the same age as John³, why didn’t he participate in this new family settlement, rather than take up land owned (coincidentally?) by John¹ Denniston, some 20 miles away? And when Daniel², and son John³, sold their land on Dry River, John to move south to Naked Creek, and Daniel², or at least his sons, to remove to KY, why didn’t Robert go with them? Instead, Robert was settled in Washington Co VA, down in the SW VA panhandle, by 1787,^[287] and he apparently lived there for the rest of his life.^[288]
   
   If Robert in fact inherited the land on Stover’s Mill Creek from his father, John, sometime between Mar 1773 and Aug 1778, there ought to be probate records for a John Denniston in Augusta, or one of its early child counties, and there is, in fact, just such a probate record in Botetourt Co (created in 1770 from the southern part of Augusta): on 15 Nov 1775, administration on the estate of John Deniston was granted to John H. Henderson, ^[289] and on 7 May 1776, the inventory was presented showing a personal property estate of £18/15/9 (about $1500 in 2008 US$), half of that in cash, and the rest consisting of a number of books, and some minor gentlemanly paraphernalia.^[290] Although the name and the time are right, this is all rather odd. What, one wonders, was father John doing in Botetourt—apparently at loose ends? Was he, perhaps, living with a child or in-law who had settled there (perhaps John H. Henderson), leaving his land in Augusta Co in the hands of his sons, Robert and James? It is also odd, that if this John Deniston who died in Botetourt was actually their father, that they did not come forward to claim, and administer, his estate.
   
   I think, despite these anomalies, that John¹ Denniston had an eldest son Robert, and (probably) a second son, James, although the latter pretty much disappears from the records of northeastern Augusta/Rockingham Counties after selling the Stover’s Creek land to Lewis Sircle. On 18 Oct 1814, though, one Abraham Deal filed a bond in Rockingham Co as guardian for Elizabeth Dennison, daughter of James;^[291] meanwhile, the other James—James³ (Daniel²)—had long since migrated to KY (he was there already in 1787), and he was still alive in 1825 when he was a co-plaintiff in a suit involving his deceased brother Daniel.
   
   http://www.johnbrobb.com/Content/DennisonReport.pdf