Whence I Came

  In 1753, John and Joseph Holt along with seventeen other individuals purchased one acre of land lying in the southeast portion of Louisa County from Arthur Slayden. Those involved in the purchase as well as the land itself are described within the below Louisa County deed. Access to the property was detailed as "a road from the said land into the adjacent road commonly called the Three Chopt Road". Two other purchasers mentioned in the deed were Elisha and William White ( brothers in law to John and Joseph Holt ).  Louisa County VA DB A page 514 This deed is such a great record which tells us so much in regards to the society of friends that John and Joseph Holt kept which included several known dissenters and participants in the spreading of the Virginian evangelical movement. In Rodger M. Payne's New Light in Hanover County: Evangelical Dissent in Piedmont Virginia, 1740-1755  , Payne described the role of a few of the individuals mentioned in the deed including: Tuc

Sisters Edith and Helena Maria White (daughters of Mr. John White and his second wife, Katherine) married brothers, John and Joseph Holt. The double marriage in these two families came to light in the below 1758 Louisa County, Virginia deed where John and Joseph Holt, as husbands of Edith and Helena Maria, signed their permission to lend Katherine Brain (Brane) the real and personal property which their wives inherited from their father's estate, plus a female slave named Lydia. The deed explains that when Katherine's "natural life" ended, the properties would then return to her children. Other signers of the deed include Elisha and William White (brothers to Edith and Helena Maria), Thomas King (husband of sister Tillah White), and Sackville Brewer (husband of sister Martha White).   Louisa County VA DB C pages 72-73 So, who were John and Joseph Holt? And is there evidence that they were brothers? Find out more in the next blog entry .  copyright©2024 Deborah Thurman