John Rudolph, son of Adam Rudolph and Margaretha Weimer was born about 1772, perhaps before the family settled in Virginia, but he grew up in the Cedar Creek area of Frederick and Shenandoah Counties. He and Elizabeth had three children in quick sucession but after five years of marriage things began to go wrong. According to court records John Rudolph laid in wait and attached a young girl named Mary Fletcher and cut off her ear in May of 1802. He was apprehended and jailed in Winchester, where trial was held in District Court September 1802. A jury trial was held and John was sentenced to seven years in the Virginia state penitentiary in Richmond. The jury believed him to be "a man of incorrigible disposition," and should serve at hard labor while in prison. He was also fined 200 dollars, one quarter of that to compensate the victim, the rest to cover cost to the state.
What resources John had were needed to provide for his wife and children and so he was unable to pay the fine, so Fletcher (a minor) by a guardian, believed that John's brothers, George and Jacob, were hiding some of his assets and brought them to court to recover what was owed her. His brothers insisted that John had no assets to hide and they had nothing to surrender.
Upon serving sentence, John returned to his home in Frederick County, but it was not long until Elizabeth left and went to live with relatives in Shenandoah County and in November 1811, the two older children were bound out to David and Jonathan Pitman by the Overseer of the Poor. Elizabeth then filed suit for support for herself and the children in July 1812. John refused to answer the summons to appear in court and Elizabeth failed to follow up. Where John lived and what he did for the next six or seven years is not known but in May 1819, Joseph Lockmiller, a youth of 13 testified that as he was walking to his grandfather's house, John Rudolph came out of the woods grabbed him and cut off his ear. Rudolph was apprehended but details about a trial or his fate have not been found. If he was incarcerate it was for a short time because by 1824 he was back in the Cedar Creek area and received a patent for 200 acres on Cedar Creek, straddling the Frederick and Shenandoah County line, that had been survey for Jacob Garrett in 1823 and assigned to Rudolph by Garrett. He apparently took up residence there and in 1826, conveyed 100 acres of the tract to "Adam Rudolph, (his son)." He died some time between then and September, 1832. Adam and his two sisters, Catherine and Elizabeth, "heirs of John Rudolph, deceased," sold all interest in his land to their uncle, Henry Richards, in October, 1832.
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Rudolph-1055
