Captain Finney's Militia Company: Additional Notes

Captain Finney's Militia Company: Additional Notes Francis James Dallett, F.G.S.P., F.A.S.G. A T THE TIME of publication of "Captain John Finney's Company of Philadelphia Militia, 1704" (Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazin e, 36 [1989-90]:165-94 by Jane Gray Buchanan, Peter Stebbins Craig, and Jeffrey L. Scheib, it was noted (p. 167) that several members of the company, who were not a part of Pennsylvania's Swedish community, had "proved elusive" of identification. Since that time, two of these elusive militiamen, John Bristoll and Charles Oxford, have been tentatively identified. Additionally, more information has come to light on two others, Richard Prigg and Jeremiah Gatchell. Jo[h]n Bristol! It seems highly likely that John Bristoll, the militiaman of 1704, is identical with John Bristow, a contributor to the building fund of St. Paul's Church in Chester, Pennsylvania, who was appointed a vestry man of that church on 18 April 1704.1 John Bristow is probably the minor son named in the will of his father John Bristow, edgetool maker and maltster, dated and probated in 1694. The elder John Bristow, a Quaker, resided in Chester Township, then in Chester County, which he represented in the Provincial Council in 1687-89 and in 1691-92, and in the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1690.2 The younger John Bristow/Bristoll, if an active Anglican and a sometime soldier, must have left the religious society of his birth. It should also be noted that a John Bristow owned land in the Northern Liberties of Philadelphia in 1723.3 The elder Bristow shipped iron and brass from Bristol, England, in 16834 and paid taxes on a Philadelphia city lot in 1.689,5 but had evidently settled in Chester by 1686. 51 52 The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine The suggestion of identity, involving in Bristoll and Bristow a far less extreme surname variant than those widely found among the Swedes in Captain Finney's company, is mirrored in the alternates of the same surname borne by two contemporaries of the two John Bristows (father and son). One of these, Thomas Bristo (also Bristol!), a collarmaker6 who died in Philadelphia in 1690 with an, unrecorded will? and received Friends' burial, is likely identical with Thomas Bristow, indebted in 1686 to the estate of Thomas Bull, of Gloucester County, New jersey, and Philadelphia,' and with Thomas Bristow, who leased a Front Street lot from Robert Turner in 1687.'0 A second Thomas, rendered as Bristol or Bristoll, a carter, acquired two lots in Fourth Street in Philadelphia, together with his wife Margaret, after 1689." Margaret, who administered his estate in 1703,' is found as "Widow Bristow" among sixteen "cartmen" of 1704." In 1696/7 this second Thomas, who had been assessed in Philadelphia County in 1693, signed, among the other founders of the Christ Church congregation, a letter to Governor Francis Nicholson of Maryland, for which he has been rewarded by the misspelling of his surname as Briscoll in the published version of the letter and on the baroque marble mural tablet seen today in the church." Charl[e]s Oxford Given the presence of other young men of Salem County, New Jersey, in the Finney company, this may very likely be Charles Oakford, of Alloways Creek, Salem County, who died testate on 8 April 1711, survived by his second wife, Margaret (who died between 21 April and IS May of the same year), and six minor children, three by each of his two marriages.° Genealogical data on Oakford's New Jersey and Philadelphia descendants has been compiled by the present contributor,' Richard Prig Richard Prigg (died 1719), innholder of Philadelphia as stated, is covered in some detail, as the husband of Katherine, daughter of Jasper and Katherine (Batsford) Farmar, in Lewis D. Cook, F.G.S.P., Captain Finney's Militia Company: Additional Notes 53 F.A.S.G., "Farmar of Ardevalaine, County Tipperary, Ireland," PGM, 21 (1958-64105-107, where it will be seen that his surname was sometimes written Wigg, an error. He had two children, William Prigg, a Philadelphia ship joiner, and Ann Prim, who in 1740 was the wife of Timothy Millard, a yeoman of Coventry Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. The Millard family proliferated in northwestern Chester County throughout the nineteenth century. Living posterity of Ann and Timothy, if any, would share the gentry alliances of the Farmar and Billopp families. jeramia Gachell Jeremiah Gatchell, born ca. 1648, probably at Salem or Marblehead, Massachusetts, died at Philadelphia in 1720, as shown. He is set in a full genealogical context, together with his first wife, Elizabeth Boude, and his second wife, the widow Katherine (Moll) Conyhane, as well as with his nine children, all from his first marriage, in Francis James Dallett, F.G.S.P., F.A.S.G., "The Inter-Colonial Grimstone Boude and His Family," The Genealogist, 2 (198482-85. See also Clayton R. Adams and Francis James Dallett, "Some Additions and Corrections to the Boucle Pedigree," ibid., 6 (1985):232-34J7 It is just possible, but unlikely, that the militiaman was Jeremiah Gatchell, junior, born Ca. 1682, certainly in Marblehead, Massachusetts, where he died prior to the probate of his will on 5 March 1749/50. Although he purchased land in Marblehead in 1706, as a young adult, and setded on it, the younger Jeremiah was in Philadelphia in 1713 on family business and possibly could have been briefly in the neighborhood earlier, although it is improbable that such a non-resident would have done local militia duty. Notes 1, John Hill Martin, Chatter (And Its Vicinity) ( Philadelphia, 1877), 125. 2. George Smith, History of Delaware County, Pennsylvania ( Philadelphia, 1862), 449. 3. This is indicated in a General Loan Office Mortgage of John Gardiner, Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine, 6 ( 1915-17) :275, hereafter cited as PGM. 54 The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine 4. Marion Balderston, "Pennsylvania's 1683 Ships," PGM, 24 (1965-66):108. 5. Hannah Benner Roach, F.G.S.P., EA.S.G., "The Blackwell Rent Roll, 1689," PGM, 23 (1963-64):92. 6. Philadelphia Administration Bk. A, 121, Register of Wills, Philadelphia. This records the acceptance of the nuncupative will of Thomas Bristo who, on S of 6 month 1690, named one Deborah Morgan his executrix. His occupation is given in both the administration of 3 of 7 month 1690 and the additional administration of 21 July 1696, to Magdalen Waite. Ibid., 223,266. See also PGM, 19 (1952-54):258. 7. The grant of administration does not incorporate the words of the will other than the naming of the executrix, as noted above in note 6. 8. Thomas Bristoll, buried 12 of 6 month 1690 by Philadelphia Monthly Meeting. PGM, 19 ( 1952-54) :258. 9. Calendar of New Jersey Wills, Vol. 1,1670-1730, New jersey Archives, 1st set, 23:72, hereafter cited as NJA. 10. The lease was executed 11 of 6 month 1687. Philadelphia Exemplification Bk. 8:12, and Philadelphia Deed Bk. D, 4:220-22. The lease was assigned 18 of 2 month 1688 by Thomas Bristow to blacksmith Lionell Brittain, of Bucks County. Philadelphia Deed Bk. D, 4:223; PGM, 23 ( 1963-64) :120. 11. "William Parsons' Plan of Philadelphia," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biogniphy, 80 (1956):225 (plat). 12. She was designated as Margarett Bristol' of Philadelphia County, widow of Thomas, in this act of 22 July 1703. Philadelphia Administration Bk. B, 16 ( paper #242 of 1703). 13. J. Thomas Scharf and Thompson Westcott, History of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1884), 1:183. 14. Rev. Louis C. Washburn, Christ Chunh (Philadelphia, 1925), 98. 15. NJA, 1st set, 23:342-43. 16. Francis James Dallett, "The Oakford Family of New jersey and Philadelphia," typescript genealogy prepared for Mrs. John R. Hoopes, Sarasota, Florida. 17. These two articles serve also as the source of information on Jeremiah Cache% junior, which follows.