Documenting a Life

His name did not come down to us in our family's oral tradition.  The only branch of the family that actually had a connection back to his name was that branch of Wesley Stafford's descendants who inherited Richard's Family Bible and passed it down generation to generation.  The rest of us had to do some digging!

 

My great-grandfather's cousin Ted Stafford of Fort Worth, Texas, corresponded with his grandfather's sister Mazie Stafford McNeil in the 1940s.  The letters are lost, but from memory he said, "Our first Stafford ancestor came to the Colonies as one of John Wesley's lay preachers....He came from Great Britain by way of the port of Dublin, and when the Revolution started, he joined the militia and served under General George Washington."

 

My gggg grandfather Washington Stafford submitted his portrait and biography to The History of Livingston County (Illinois) in 1888, which made the following statement:  "His paternal grandfather, John Stafford, was a native of Belfast Ireland, whence he was brought to this country as a soldier by the British during the Revolutionary War.  He was taken prisoner by the soldiers under Gen. Washington.  He afterward married, and located in Hampshire County, Va., where he reared a family of eight children, all of whom have since passed away."  Since we know now that his grandfather's name was Richard, I have sought to reconcile this statement to other facts.  The best conclusion I have reached is that he confused the names of his grandfathers--Washington's maternal grandfather was John Henry Myer who was at Valley Forge with General Washington's army.  But Washington's daughter Lydia Stafford Shubkagel repeated the story in her own family's story in The History of Marshall County,Kansas, 1888.

 

Bernita Barney Chance of Olathe, Kansas, great-great granddaughter of Washington Stafford, wrote in 2003:  "I wrote the authorities in England and have a letter stating that the was sentenced to be hung for robbery, but was given the opportunity to serve in the army for 14 years instead, was taken prisoner by Washington's men.  My genealogy instructor advised he was probably one of the group which was marched to the governor of New York who rejected the prisoners as he had no facilities to house or feed them, he advised them to march them to Virginia where they were also refused, then the guards just faded away.  When the war ended, anyone could become a citizen by declaring allegiance." 

 

Richard Emberson Stafford, a member of the Washington descendants of Francis Asbury Stafford through his son William Josephus Stafford and grandson Charles Montgomery Stafford, wrote this to me in 2011:  Many years ago, a relative of mine, now deceased, told me that my branch of the Stafford family came from Wexford County, Ireland.  At the time I was not interested and I didn't ask him how he knew that."  A little investigation showed that the largest concentration of Staffords in Ireland is in Wexford County, making the claim at least credible.

 

The family of Waldo G.W. Stafford, a descendant of Wesley Stafford, who presently has the Family Bible, maintained the tradition that Richard Stafford was a Methodist preacher.

 

But aside from those private oral traditions, there is a good amount of written documentation for the life of our immigrant ancestor Richard Stafford.

 

The best, I think, is the Family Bible.  Currently in the possession of Rita Stafford Fawcett of Winter Haven, Florida, it was purchased by Richard Stafford in 1804, and the family records of his marriage to Catharine Brobeker and the births of their children were written by his own hand.

 

Other Records

• Frederick County Deed Books 19 & 20:  4 entries
• Virginia Northern Neck Land Grants, 1775-1800, Volume III:  7 entries
• Capon Valley Pioneers:  listed as one of Fort Ashby's founding trustees
• History of Hampshire County:  1 entry
• Hampshire County, WV, Personal Property Tax Lists:  1782-1799:  11 entries
• Hampshire County, WV, Personal Property Tax Lists:  1800-1814:  6 entries, and 2 more for his widow
• Hampshire County Minute Book, 1788-1791:  3 entries
• Early Records of Hampshire County, Virginia:  15 entries, plus 1 for his wife
• Frederick County, Virginia, Chancery Court Records:  Galloway vs. Stafford
• Estate Papers for Richard Stafford, 1808-1820, found on microfilm at the Mineral County Library in Romney, WV.
• The Last Will and Testament of Catharine Stafford, 1810, at the Hampshire County, Court House in Keyser, WV
• Settlement of Catharine & Sally Stafford estate, 1811-1826
• Frederick County, Virginia, Chancery Court Records:  Stafford vs. Collins & Stafford, 1820-1834
• References to Richard Stafford properties in the papers of Governor Henry Lee, Mathias Brandenburg, & William Anderson, Hampshire County