Thomas McCollick [Collett]. Paid £16.7sh.6d for 131 days.44 He is said (on no known evidence) to have been born about 1760, but if this is so he was considerably younger than his wife.
How he arrived in Pendleton County is unknown, but he may have come from what is now Greene County, Virginia. His Pendleton County neighbors John Warner, Thomas Wilmoth, and Samuel Richards all seemingly came from Greene (then Orange) County.45 Thomas is said to have had a brother George Collett who was captured and raised by the Indians, and who was killed while fighting with them at Point Pleasant. Thomas Collett is reported to have recognized his brother’s body when looking at the dead left on the battlefield.46 He married Margaret Bartlett, an illegitimate daughter of Mary Conrad. Margaret Collett was an eventual heir to her grandfather Jacob Conrad, a blacksmith at Ruddle.47 The Colletts seemingly prospered, and on 30 March 1782 he filed a public service claim (as Thomas Collick) with the Rockingham Court for driving packhorses.48 In 1788 he was taxed on seven horses and was living in the Buffalo Hills.49 The Colletts stayed there until 3 October 1804 when they sold four tracts (apparently all their holdings) to Oliver McCoy, and moved to Beverly in Randolph County.50 On 28 October 1816 Thomas Collett, Senior, having given bond, was licensed to celebrate the rites of matrimony in the county.51 On 27 August 1818 he gave a deposition for Andrew Scidmore in which he stated:
“that he [Collett] was at pnt Plesant under the command of Connl. Andrew Lewis in
the old Indian war and that he the said Andrew Skidmore was there in the Service
under him [i.e., Lewis] and that he the said Skidmore was wounded there in the
Battel.”
Collett is said to have died on 27 June 1823 according to his D.A.R. marker in the Beverly Cemetery.52
______
44Since these notes were written David Armstrong has published “Thomas Collett Sr. of Pendleton and Randolph County” in the ARA, vol. 7, no. 2 (Summer 1998) 45-51.
45Thomas Collett is mentioned in the loose papers that survive in a suit Phares vs. Veneman adds some genealogical detail about these people: John Walker (who had moved away from Pendleton by 1790) had been a witness to the note given by John Phares to Peter Veneman in 1777 promising to repay a loan. Phares defaulted and this generated a number of depositions. Thomas Wilmoth, Senior, died in 1778 and his widow Margaret married John Phares as his second wife.
Phares then moved in with the widow Wilmoth, and Thomas Colleck testified that he had gone to Wilmoth’s plantation to see Phares in 1779. Jacob Conrad gave a deposition on 10 August 1790 at his smithery that Phares had promised to repay the loan to Veneman after he sold a grey horse belonging to Margaret, but did not do so. John Smith, apparently the man of his name in Captain Skidmore’s company noticed later, also testified on 17 August 1790 that John Phares had lived in 1777 at the Buffalo Hills on the plantation belonging to Margaret Wilmoth. (Extracted from Envelope No. 3 of loose papers from the Pendleton County Court Records given by H. M. Calhoun to West Virginia University at Morgantown.) See also my article on the Phares family in the Allegheny Regional Ancestors, vol. 5, no. 2 (Summer 1996) 2-10.
46Thwaites and Kellogg, page 422. This is on the authority of a document in the Draper Mss (Ref: 8ZZ71). Two other young white men, both former captives, also fought with the Indians at Point Pleasant but survived the battle.
47Jeff Carr points out that Margaret was old enough to partake of communion in 1767, and that her daughter Mary (wife of Edmond Wyat) was born about 1770-5. This would put the indiscretion of Mary Conrad with Bartlett back in the Berks-Lancaster Counties area of Pennsylvania where the Conrads lived until about 1763. Jacob Conrad’s will was proved on 19 March 1776. (Chalkley, III, 143)
48Levinson, I, 116.
49John W. Wayland, Virginia Valley Records, (Reprint edition, Baltimore, Maryland, 1978) 104. His neighbors were Peter Phenimon (Veneman), Sammeywell Richards, and John Smith of the Buffalo Hills. The last two were presumably his former comrades at Point Pleasant.
50Rick Toothman, Pendleton County (West) Virginia Deedbook Records, 1788-1813, (Bowie, Maryland, 1995), 124. In 1805 he purchased 181 acres at Beverly from William Briggs (Randolph County Deed Book 2, page 244) and is first noticed there in the tax list of 1805.
51See Hu Maxwell, History of Randolph County, West Virginia (Morgantown, 1898) 313. This may be a confusion with his son, Thomas Collett, Junior (1788-1870), who was a clergyman. The son was a founder of the Arnold Hill (Primitive Baptist) Church near the Elkins Airport, where he was a Trustee in 1818.
52His date of birth on the same marker is certainly wrong.
http://www.skidmorefamilyhistory.com/OP34%20John%20and%20his%20companies.pdf
