Person:John Key (1)

Advisory on Key Family of Virginia

Warning: there are several conflicting versions of the early Virginia Key families, it is highly recomended that primary sources be consulted in determining dates or relationships of this family. Clearly, much of the information on the family of John Key has serious flaws.

Information on John Key, Jr.

Served as Captain in the Revolutionary War from Washington County, North Carolina.

From "The Virginia Genealogist", Vol. 8:

John Key, Jr., is said to have married Susannah Watts and had John Key III (who married Agnes Witt), George, Price, Judith, Joseph, Barbara Ann, Mildred, William Waller, Martin and Elizabeth Key.(32) This seems to be partially supported by an Amherst County deed poll of 1768 in which a John Key, Sr., deeded all his personal estate to his "present wife Susannah" and her children(33) and by the fact that the John Key who married Agnes Witt also lived in Amherst County and signed his name as junior as late as 1777.(34) Dropping the junior after 1777 would ordinarily indicate that the elder Key (as then used, senior could have applied to father, uncle, or older cousin) was either dead or out of the county. However, there was hardly enough time for the John and Susannah (Watts) Key generation between John Key, Sr., of Albemarle County (born ca. 1696) and the John Key who married Agnes Witt in 1750, so some other relationship would seem to be more appropriate to explain the various John Keys. Perhaps John Key, Sr., of Amherst County was an older cousin of John Key, Jr., of Amherst County, or perhaps John Key, Sr., of Albemarle County and John Key, Sr., of Amherst County, were the same and Susannah was his second wife (Note: this second scenario appears to be more plausible). Susannah is listed in the enumerations of Amherst County for 1783 and 1785 as the head of a family of nine(35) and in the personal property tax lists of Amherst County from 1787 to 1802 for between none and two tithes.(36) The tax lists for 1787 and 1794 indicate that she was the mother of Dabney and Thomas, names not found on Mrs. Lane's list of the children of John and Susannah (Watts) Key. One of the children can be identified as the William Waller Key who married Elizabeth Alford in Amherst County in 1795.(37) Another of Susannah's may have been George Key who enlisted in the army from Amherst County in 1776. He was born in 1753 and married Susannah Craighead in Bedford Co., VA., 12 Oct 1785. In 1831 he moved to Missouri where he died in Callaway County in 1836.(38)

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2} Ancestry.com. OneWorldTree. (Name: The Generations Network, Inc.; Location: Provo, UT, USA;)
   Database online.

   Record for Agnes Witt _FOOT: Ancestry.com, OneWorldTree (Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc.), Database online.