Person:George Cunningham (38)

Records in Virginia

At a court continued and held for Berkeley County, the 18th day of November, 1773. Present: John Neville, Robert C. Willis, Robert Stephen, Godwin Swift, William Patterson, Gentlemen, Justices.

The Persons appointed to view the ground for a Road to lead from Beeson's Mill to Back Creek made their report. William Patterson came into Court and objected to the establishment of the said road alleging that as the said William Patterson had a Mill upon his land it was necessary for him to have a road leading thereto, and that the road now contended for would run parallel with that Road three quarters of a mile, and not above forty poles asunder. Thereupon it is ordered that William Slaughter, William Henshaw, James Strode and George Cunningham, or any three of them, being first sworn, do make a Review of the same and Report the convenience and inconvenience attending the same to Court.

1. ↑ Using Lawsuits to Identify Family Origins: George Cunningham of Virginia, By Victor S. Dunn, CG, in VirginiaAncestry.com.

   PROBATE, LAND, AND CHURCH RECORDS
   George Cunningham, Gentleman
   George Cunningham first appears in public records on 3 October 1750, when he served as a chain carrier for a survey of Robert Cunningham’s 318 acres on Mill Creek in Frederick County.1 Assuming George was in his mid-twenties when he first purchased land in Fairfax County, Virginia, in 1755, he was born about 1730.2 In 1763 George and his wife Lydia Cunningham sold this land, 252 National Genealogical Society Quarterly which then lay in Loudoun County, Virginia.3 The purchase and sale deeds refer to him as George Cunningham of Frederick County, millwright. George bought several tracts of land in the part of Frederick County that later became Berkeley County, Virginia, and during the Civil War became part of West Virginia.4
   An apparently accurate family record of unknown provenance indicates George and Lydia married 7 September 1758, Lydia died 30 August 1774, and George and his second wife, Ruth, married on 20 March 1776. Ruth was probably the daughter of William and Priscilla (Bowen) Gaddis.5 By 19 October 1779 Ruth Cunningham was the “late widow of Absalom Chinoweth, deceased.”6
   The Mill Creek Baptist Church register of members indicates “Ruth Chenoweth alias Cunningham died Feby 26th 1815.”7 Ruth is the only Cunningham listed in the register, suggesting her second husband, George Cunningham, was not a member of this congregation.
   Prominent in Berkeley County, George served as a gentleman justice of the county court and was addressed as “esquire.”8 On 21 September 1791 “George Cunningham[,] Gentleman” was sworn sheriff of Berkeley County.9 Listed on the 1811 property tax rolls, George died likely between 1 March and 17 October that year.10 His will, written 16 May 1807 and proved in 1811, names his “present” wife Ruth; son Robert, deceased; son George Geddis Cunningham;
   son Levi Cunningham; eldest daughter Lydia Cunningham; and daughter Rhoda Brown.11
   
   https://www.virginiaancestry.com/CunninghamNGSQ.pdf