Patrick Hamrick December 17, 1726 A

Patrick Hamrick

December 17, 1726

An indenture was established between Patrick Hamrick & Margaret his Wife Robert Inglesh & Sarah his Wife of ye one part and Sam’l Skinker of King George County Mercht on ye other part. For the sum of five Shillings, the agreement conveys a tract of land to Skinker containing one hundred acres lying in Stafford County that was (by Indenture bearing date ye twentieth day of October in ye Year of Our Lord One thousand Seven hundred & nine) Conveyed by Sem Coxe to Robert Ingles [ . . . ] To have and to hold the said one hundred acres of land [ . . . ] from ye day before the date hereof for & during the term of One whole Year from thence next Ensuing & fully to be Compleat and Ended Yielding and paying yearly therefore the rent of one Ear of Indian Corn at the feast of S’t Michael onely if the Same be demanded to the Intent that by Virtue of these presents & of the Statute for transfering uses into possession the Said Sam’l Skinker may be in the Actual possession of these premises & be enabled to Attept a Grant of the reversion & Inheritance therof to him & his heirs [ . . . ]

The document was signed by Patrick. Margaret and Robert Ingles signed with an ‘X’. Sarah Ingles also signed the document. Witnesses included Paul Micou Junr., Jno. Long, and John Arthard.

In a Court held for King George County on Friday the 6th day of January anno Dom’i 1726

Then came Patrick Hamrick & Margaret his wife & Robert Ingles & Sarah his Wife & Acknowledges this Deed of Lease to Sam’l Skinker to be their proper Acts and Deeds & Margaret Hamrick & Sarah Ingles their wives Relinquished their Rights of Dower & thirds at the Common Law in & to the Lands & premisses by ye Said Lease Conveyed Which at ye Instance of him the Said Sam’l Skinker is admitted to Record the Said Margaret & Sarah being Solely and privatly Examined Confessed their Consent thereto(1)

Comments

This deed makes it apparent that Patrick married Robert Ingles’ daughter Margaret sometime after October 1709, when Sem Cox conveyed this property to Robert Ingles (with Margaret as an entail). Patrick was named on this deed because of the deed of entailment that Sem Cox had used when conveying the property. (REF: October 10, 1709) As Margaret’s husband, Patrick gained a vested interest in the property because of her entail. (In eighteenth century Virginia, a woman lost control of her real and personal property when she married.)(2) Skinker, who was no stranger to land transactions (in fact, the neck of land just west of the Dogue Run area, across the Rappahannock River in Caroline County (REF: Map in March 30, 1719 comments) is still known to this day as Skinker’s Neck(3)), was very thorough in his acquisition of this property, as evidenced by the next few entries. The legal method for conveying property burdened with entails was by legislative action. (Many examples can be found during this timeframe in Henings Statutes At Large, Vol. IV, 1711 - 1736 by referring to the index under "Lands" or "Fee Tail".) However, for whatever reason, legislative action was not used in this case. In actuality, this deed was not a legal conveyance—the law clearly stated that a property with entails could only be conveyed to another party through an act of the general assembly. If conveyed by any other means, the transaction was to be considered null and void.(4) So, even though Skinker was very thorough, he did not legally gain title to the property. However, the situation was never challenged, so it is a mute point.

Table of Contents

(1) King George County Deed Book No. I, Part II. pp. 410 - 411.

(2) Lois Green Carr, Philip D. Morgan, and Jean B. Russo. Colonial Chesapeake Society. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988. pp. 326-327. AND Albert Alan Rogers. Family Life in Eighteenth Century Virginia. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia, 1939. p. 84. AND William Waller Hening. Hening’s Statutes At Large, Vol IV, 1711 - 1736. Charlottsville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1969. p. 223.

(3) Virginia Atlas & Gazetteer. Freeport, Maine: DeLorme Mapping Company, 1989.

(4) Hening. Vol. III, 1684 – 1710. p. 320.