+ v. William Newby Born 30 Dec 1743, William was our direct ancestor and would
eventually move to Indiana.
Sixth Generation
William Newby, our direct ancestor, was born 30 December 1743 in Perquimans County, North
Carolina. On 8 October 1766, William married Elizabeth Ratliff, the daughter of Joseph Ratliff and Mary Fletcher, at Old Neck Meeting House in Perquimans County (the actual date of the marriage was later recorded by Center Monthly Meeting).
William Newby may have been the Quaker of that name who was disowned by the Perquimans
Monthly Meeting on 5 August 1767. There was more than one person of that name living in the
Perquimans area at the time, but a large percentage of disowned Quakers were in their twenties when they were disowned, so the age is about right for our ancestor. Seven years later, the records indicate that William Newby condemned his misconduct and was reinstated. As was typical, the records did not identify William’s transgression.
In his will, his father left William “all that land I bought of my brother Jese,” identified as the 50-acre parcel where Jesse Newby had lived. His father had bought this land before William was born, and William Newby may have been living on the parcel before inheriting it in 1771.
On 18 January 1769, William Newby assisted his widowed mother-in-law Mary Ratliff in petitioning
the court to divide the estate of Mary’s husband among the Ratliff family. Much of the estate’s value was in the black slaves received as a gift from Cornelius Ratliff of Virginia. The nine slaves were eventually divided among members of the Ratliff family by court order on 12 February 1770. William Newby’s wife Elizabeth received a “negroe man named Simon.”
It is rare to encounter a personal tale regarding an early ancestor, but a short account about William Newby in the Wayne County, Indiana History provides a fascinating story: “William Newby was a blacksmith, and when he was eighteen years of age he took a contract to iron a large vessel. Later he took a voyage of eighteen months around the West Indies and returned to Perquimans. He married there and had six boys and six girls. One day the British soldiers came to the house for William. They were going to take him away because they had heard that he was a Whig sympathizer. He turned and ran for their dugout cave where he would have a better chance to defend himself. A saber cut knocked him down the stairs. That was too much for his wife, Elizabeth, and she grabbed a dipper of hot lye soap from her soap kettle which was bubbling nearby. She threw it on those soldiers and they ran off howling to tend their burns. William bore the scar of that saber cut as long as he lived.”
While the American Revolution was being waged, few families moved since it was not considered
safe, but after peace was restored in 1783, people began to think about migrating west. William
Newby was evidently one of those, and moved to Guilford County, North Carolina. When he made
that move is unclear, but on 19 July 1784, William Newby “of Guilford County” sold his 50-acre farm back in Perquimans County for a mere £5 At first, William and his family were members of Center Monthly Meeting in Guilford County, but in 1792 were founding members of Back Creek Monthly Meeting in Randolph County when the latter split from Center meeting. This would indicate that William probably lived in southern Guilford County, near its boundary with Randolph County.
The Back Creek meeting records indicate that William’s wife, the former Elizabeth Ratliff, died on 25 August 1803. A year and a half later William transferred his membership to Springfield Monthly Meeting, probably without moving. There, on 7 April 1805, William Newby married Elizabeth (Symons) Small, nearly 25 years his junior and the widow of Obadiah Small, who had died twelve years prior. Combining William’s twelve children (though some were likely gone from home by then) with Elizabeth’s five children by her first husband, the couple went on to have four more sons of their own, the first born just eight and a half months after they married.
In April of 1813, William Newby and his family joined the Quaker exodus to the west, which at the time consisted of Ohio and Indiana. William was 69 years old when the family made the move, rather old for the time. But he must have been a spry 69, since his youngest son was born two years later.
In his book The Newby Family from William to Emra, Larry M. Bell offered this perspective of the
westward migration: “This westward movement was due, in part, to the general expansion of
American settlers during the second half of the century. However, it was also driven by changes
taking place in Quaker beliefs at the time. During the previous hundred years slavery had been
common in the southern plantations and farms. Although the Friends discouraged the practice, it was not until the last quarter of the 18th century that it was actually prohibited. Slaveholders were faced with the choice of manumitting their slaves or being disowned. After losing this cheap source of labor, they were at an economic disadvantage compared with their slave owning neighbors.
Resettlement west to a more open frontier area was the choice of many.”
On 1 May 1813, William Newby and his family were in Preble County, Ohio, where their certificate
from Springfield Monthly Meeting in North Carolina was received at Elk Monthly Meeting. They had
made the trip to Ohio in less than a month. William Newby purchased land from the government in
Somers Township of Preble County on 8 June 1813 about three miles west of Camden, near the small
town of Fosterville, Ohio. He and his family stayed the winter in Ohio, but moved on to Whitewater Monthly Meeting in Wayne County, Indiana the following year.
The first record that could be found of William Newby buying land in Wayne County, Indiana was
on 24 April 1823, when William bought an irregularly shaped parcel of land containing slightly over 44 acres from Nathan Symons for $276. The property is about a mile north of the town of Cambridge City, Indiana, located on the south side of Goose Heaven Road between Cambridge Road and the west fork of the Whitewater River. Today this property is still a prosperous farm, now owned by an Amish family, complete with horse-drawn buggies.
William Newby sold the land on 6 September 1830 to John Harvey for $300 and moved a few miles
west to Henry County, Indiana. There he and his wife Elizabeth lived with his son Cyrus just south of the small town of Spiceland, on land Cyrus had purchased in February 1830. William Newby died there on 30 May 1831 at the age of 87. His second wife, Elizabeth, lived until 15 February 1842.
Both are buried in the Quaker cemetery near the former Duck Creek Monthly Meeting (today Spiceland Meeting). As was common for Quakers, neither grave has a headstone.
William Newby left a will dated 18 April 1831, which was short and sweet:
I, William Newby of the County of Henry and State of Indiana, knowing the uncertainty of life and the certainty of death make this my Last Will and Testament. I will and bequeath unto my son Cyrus one bed and furniture, four head of hogs one year old. I will and bequeath unto my son Joseph seventy silver dollars now in hand also one bay mare named file and nine head of large hogs. I will and bequeath unto my beloved wife Elizabeth Newby one mare named Dot and all other property such as cattle, sheep and hogs, farming utensils and kitchen furniture, [for] her natural life and then to be divided equally between my three sons, Thomas, Cyrus and Joseph Newby. The money and property left to my son Joseph Newby is to be laid out in land for him according to the judgement of the Executors.
This is to certify these, my children, Joshua and Frederick Newby, Ann Hunt, dec’d, Elizabeth Farrington and Mirian Overman, William and Josiah Newby, Grabel and Samuel Newby, Sarah Farlow, dec’d, Mary Nixon and Jemima Gilbert, having heretofore received their portion of my estate.
http://family.beacondeacon.com/the-history-of-the-hunt-family-by-roger-d-hunt-2011-at-www-k7mex-com-books-HuntBookComplete.pdf
