Facts: Henry [Gembill] Jr., married Charlotte Jouett, daughter of Matthew Jouett, Tavern Keeper and Land Speculator of Louisa County. Henry, Jr., either did not move with his parents to Culpeper County from Hanover in the early 1750s or moved back to Louisa when he married Catherine and thereby obtain a large plantation on the waters of the South Anna in Louisa near the Hanover Line.
Charlotte was the younger daughter of two. The elder Jouett daughter Frances was married to James Davenport, Henry, Jr.'s uncle and youngest brother to Mary Davenport Gambill. Uncle and nephew were brothers-in-law.
Henry, Jr., lived adjacent to his brother-in-law John Jouett, the principal heir to the Matthew Jouett estate (Matthew died in 1743). He was a millwright by profession and like John Jouett kept a tavern. Jouett kept the famed Cuckoo Tavern in Lower Louisa. Henry, Jr.'s tavern was nearby, but his principal occupation, other than as a planter, was that of a builder, i.e., a millwright. In 1768 he was the master of his cousins Jack Smith Davenport, son of John Davenport, brother of Mary, and Jouett Davenport, a double cousin, son of James Davenport and Charlotte Jouett. Jack Smith and Jouett were his apprentices. Henry, Jr., and David Davenport, a brother of Henry, Jr.'s mother who lived in Cumberland County and a carpentry contractor, were in Cumberland Court litigation, 1767-1772, in suit and countersuit apparently over a joint building venture that had gone sour. (Henry, Jr., ultimately won.)
In the middle of the Revolution, John Jouett moved to Charlottesville in Albemarle County, roughly 40 miles west of Cuckoo Tavern. Henry, Jr., followed him. John opened a tavern. Henry, Jr., did likewise, but apparently did not stay with it, for shortly after the end of the War he obtained the contract to build a new County Court House and Jail (a separate building).
It was his downfall. The report of the Inspectors appointed by Albemarle Court to accept the building spread on the Court minutes is an agonizingly detailed analysis of the contractor's poor craftsmanship, virtually joist by joist, nail by nail, brick by brick, sill by sill. The work had to be redone in total, and Henry, Jr., and his securities had to pay. That apparently bankrupted Henry, Jr., for never again was he a man of assets on the Albemarle Personal Property Tax Lists. Two of his Davenport-Jouett double cousins, namely William Davenport and Jesse Davenports, thrived where he had failed. Both living in Charlottesville, William was a successful millwright and ran a boarding house. Jesse, who apparently apprenticed with John Jouett, was an off and on successful tavernkeeper.
Henry, Jr., died unprobated in Albemarle in the early 1810s. His last public record appearance was in 1810 Court records when he was appointed Flour Inspector for a hamlet near Charlottesville, apparently a sop for an old man. He was no longer on the Tax Lists. He had several sons, at least one was a man of substance, stature, and long life in Albemarle. The Jouetts moved on to Kentucky in the first decade of the 19th Century.
Whatever, Henry Gambill, Jr., was high profile in the records of Louisa and Albemarle County, Virginia, from the later 1750s, when he pursuing his millwright craft, to his death in the early 1810s. The Gambills play a major role in "The Further Chronicles of the Pamunkey Davenports" to be published in CD format later this year. While the Gambills are likely the least researched of any of the descendants of Martin Davenport, Sr., of Hanover County, Virginia, what we do have is well documented.
John Scott Davenport, Ph.D.
http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/GAMBILL/2008-04/1207160781
