Person:William McGlasson (4)

From Marguerite Ward: William was brought from Scotland to Virginia and was apprenticed as a carpenter in Richmond, Virginia. He later moved to Buckingham County, Virginia, married and had three sons. He died the year the Revolutionary War began in 1776. Marguerite Ward: Also said William Sr. was born about 1733. My information said about 1705.

From Tony Popp: William Sr., my eigth-great grandfather, is the furthest back my McGlasson ancestry has been positively traced. According to family legend, he was kidnapped by an Englishman and brought to Richmond, Virginia as a lad sometime before 1753. He was probably an indentured servant who worked as an apprenticed carpenter to pay for his passage to America. His family may have been from Aberdeen, Scotland. I also found a James McGlasson in 1753 land records in Virginia. Because William Sr's son, James would not have heen old enough to own land, this was probably a brother of William's.

By the 1750's William Sr. moved to Albemarle County, which became Buckingham County, VA. He and his family belonged to the Tillotson Parish Angelican Church there.

William Sr. was a slave owner.

I have not been able to find who William's wife was.

William's sons, Matthew and James, served in the Virginia Infantry int the American Revolutionary War.

James was also a minister. James moved to Amelia County, Virginia and died in Prince Edward County, Virginia. Matthew moved to Adair County, Kentucky about 1810 to claim land granted to him for his service in the war. He and James served in the infantry during the war. This above information found on web sight www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/3653/SKA.HTM.

Robert Lee McGlasson wrote in his book "OUR FAMILY" in regards to William McGlasson Sr., was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1734. We have no information on either of his parents' names nor the names of siblings, if any. As a young lad he was taken by an Englishman from Scotland to the Virginia Colony. The tradition is that he was "kidnapped' by said 'Englishman'; suggesting that he was subject to the practice euphemistically called 'impressment' of seaman so common at the time. We have no precise date for his arrival in Virginia but the Battle of Culloden in Scotland in 1746 which 'wiped out most of the McGlassons there' suggests that it was probably in this time frame; he would have ca. 12 years of age. Considering the practice of the time, it is likely that he would have been indentured for some period of time to work out his passage.

At some early point, William was apprenticed to a carpenter in Richmond, Virginia. How long he stayed there is not known; we do know that he later moved to Buckingham County where he married and raised a family of at least three children. His three known children were all boys: William II or William, Jr. (b.?/?/?; d. ?/?/1776), Matthew, our patriarch (b.1/3/1756; d.6/30/1834) and James (b.?/?/?;d.12/6/1801). Considering the much larger normal size for families of McGlassons and others in that time, it is possible that there were other children but we have no record of their names.

Apparently, William continued to work as a carpenter and live out his life in Buckingham County, Virginia. A record of tithables for the years 1773 and 1774 show him listed there in those years as well as his three sons. In the first of these years both Matthew and James are shown to be in Williams's household his eldest son, William II, is living in another household and is identified as "overseer". The latter had apparently reached maturity by this year.

By the next year, James is still living in William's household but Matthew, being 18yrs of age, is listed as living in his own household. That these latter records show no other children suggest that there were none; unless, of course, some of those later identified as belonging to Matthew were, in fact children of William and brothers or sisters of Matthew. Stranger things do occur when one begins to deal with these older, near mythical records.

Since neither I nor my major source of information on this first McGlasson patriarch, Ms. Betty Cochran, have any specific documentation for our account, I will here disagree somewhat from the usual format and provide more detail of the sources of our information.

What we have available is a summary account and some family group sheets provided us by Mrs. Oscar (Alice)McGlasson, 1865 Shore Drive, Beloit, Wisconsin 53511, (608)362-4487. She tells us that most of her information comes from "The Record of the McGlasson Family, published by a Mr. Joel Hamilton McGlasson, Gonzales, Texas, in 1899 for his grandchildren. Alice McGlasson tells us that Mr."Joel" is a great-grandson of William and apparently did have considerable documentation for his account and handed these 'original papers' down through his daughter-in-law, Mrs. William Fleming McGlasson, to Mr. Reginard Bertrand McGlasson, Houston, Texas, in 1934. The location or even existence of these documentary sources today is unknown to the writer.

The other sources used by Alice in her summary includes Virginia Tithables for Burned Counties published by Kathleen Booth Williams, and a 'rough copy' of an Agreement Settling the Estate of George McGlasson, Buckingham County, Virginia, in 1796. This latter includes a listing of William's children that corresponds to that in Mr. Joel's account and that inferred from the record of tithables.

And one other name shows up in these materials as being the source of some additional research on Matthew McGlasson. She is Ms. Ethal T. Lockhard, 29 Dubois Terrace, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 35401. This lady is identified in the material as "a decendant of Matthew McGlasson."

I burden this write up with more than the usual source information simply because some of these much older source documents may yet exist somewhere and could be a starting point form some further study of this Scot immigrant patriarch and his descendants. It should be noted, however, that the materials I have in hand date from no later than the 1930's. And the older they get the less likely they will continue to exist and be retrievable.

That William McGlasson, "ol Bill" as my dad, Lee Pollard McGlasson, referred to him one time, is the patriarch of our line and probably all other McGlassons in the USA is more that just probable; it is more like a near certainty. Ms. Betty Cochran has noted that most of the McGlasson clan remaining in Scotland were killed off during the Battle of Culloden, 1746, which ended the forty-five Rebellion, when pretender Charles Stuart and his Jacobites were finally defeated by the Duke of Cumberland; thus leaving few if any other McGlassons to migrate.

Perhaps more direct evidence is provided by simple geometric progression analysis. Such analysis shows convincingly that through the 8+ generations since his time, ol 'Bill' could more than have accounted for the ca. 467 McGlasson househods and ca. 1,355 McGlassons known to reside in the USA in the early 1980's. Thus, there is little doubt that our - and probably that of all other McGlassons in the US - originated with this one patriarch; it would seem that ol 'Bill' was 'Pappy' to us all!

The Joel McGlasson genealogy said that William 'died the year the Revolutionary War began'. This would be the year 1776 and, if our data on his birth year, 1734, be correct, he would have been a rather youngish 42-yrs. of age when he died. Perhaps this accounts in part for his family being of relatively small size. We have no information as to the cause of his death; whether a war casualty or some other of the many reasons for leaving this life early. Our data indicate that his eldest son, William II, died the same year as his father, perhaps these two deaths were from a common cause.

That's about the limit of our knowledge about this first patriarch. We don't know who or precisely when he married. We presume but don't know whether he continued as a carpenter all his life or not. We know he sired three boys but not whether there were other children. We have no record on any involvement for him in the Revolutionay War. But it does seem a rather safe bet that all of our clan in the USA carry some of ol 'Bill's genes in our carcasses!.