Ancestors

Absalom Looney

Absalom Looney was a son of Robert Looney, who settled on the upper James River in Virginia in the 1740s and kept a ferry there. Depositions in an Augusta County lawsuit of the 1760s say so in plain words: Robert "sent for his son, Absalom." A compiled family page gives Absalom's birth as 1729, "probably in Pennsylvania." He was a married man with a family by 1753.

Before 1753 he was living on the Blue Stone, the Bluestone River of what is now Tazewell County, Virginia. Abb's Valley there is "so called from Absalom Looney, the first white settler," George Bickley wrote in his History of Tazewell County in 1852. Johnston's Middle New River Settlements, of 1906, dates his exploring trip into the valley to 1771. The deposition puts him on the Blue Stone nearly twenty years before that.

In 1753 or 1754 his father called him in to the James. Robert arranged for Absalom's brother Daniel to give up his land "in the Draft" for other land "over the Creek," and settled Absalom on the Draft. Daniel later made Absalom a title to it. In the years after, Absalom went away to Carolina. He ordered his land sold while he was gone, and his father bought it and paid him £10 on his return.

His wife was Margaret, called Peggy. On 15 March 1765 "Absolum ( ) Luney and Margret" sold 180 acres on Looney's Run, a branch of the James, to his nephew Peter Luney, heir-at-law of Absalom's dead brother Peter. The land had been "formerly in possession of Robert Luney, Sr." Absalom signed with a mark, and his brother David witnessed. One compiled page calls his wife Margaret Moore.

His father died in 1770, the year Botetourt County was cut from Augusta. In March 1771 the Botetourt court swore Absalom and Amos Potts to view a road from Sinking Creek to William Caldwell's mill. On 19 July 1787 he received a patent for land in Botetourt. On 14 December 1791 "Absolem Looney of the County of Botetourt" sold land to Daniel Givens.

He made his will on 28 September 1791, and it was probated in June 1796. Its text is not known. A Botetourt deed of 1807 describes his patent land as conveyed by "Benjamin Looney son & heir to the said Absalom who is now deceased." This Benjamin married Elizabeth McClure in 1793, recorded as "son of Absalom Looney."

DAR lineage forms make him the father of Michael Looney, the Botetourt militiaman of 1774 who settled in Hawkins County, Tennessee, and a family history calls Michael his oldest son. One of these forms was verified under National No. 290295. A Looney family history of about 1900 adds that "Big Ben" Looney, "son of the original Absalom and Peggy ... of Botetourt County," moved to Stanley Valley in Hawkins County, where Michael also lived. That supports the link without proving it.

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Cite: Heirology, "Absalom Looney (b. 1729)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/absalom-looney-1729-491531.