Ancestors

John Gaither

John Gaither was born on 15 January 1677/8 at Abington, the family plantation between the Severn and South Rivers in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. The double year is the old calendar, in which the new year began on 25 March, so his January birth fell in 1678 by the modern count. He was the eldest son of John Gaither of South River and his wife Ruth. His father and Robert Proctor had taken up Abington in 1663. Years later, giving evidence in a lawsuit over the bounds of White Hall, he gave his own birth year as 1677. Before the Land Commission, between 1716 and 1718, he swore that his mother had been Ruth Beard.

He held land of his own before his father died. He was already in possession of 148 acres of Abington when, on 27 August 1699, he had the tract resurveyed. The new survey brought it up to 1,091 acres. A resurvey remeasured a tract and could take in vacant land along its edges.

On 21 August 1701 he married Jane Buck, the daughter of John and Catherine Buck. Her father had died without a will in 1686, and her mother had married Theophilus Kitten. Their first child, Charles, was born and died in 1702.

His father died without a will in November 1702. John and his brother Benjamin signed the inventory as next of kin, and his mother administered the estate. Under the English law that Maryland followed, the land of a man who died intestate passed whole to his eldest son, and at the settlement the court awarded John "as the eldest son the parental dwelling and plantation." As heir-at-law he deeded parts of the land to his brothers. On 29 March 1703 he gave his brother Edward 182 acres. In January 1703/4 his mother married Francis Hardesty.

Jane bore him ten children. After Charles came Edward, Rebecca, Benjamin, Joseph and Rachel, who were all baptized together on 2 March 1713. Benjamin had been born in 1712. Alexander was another of hers. Richard was born on Christmas Day 1714, Samuel was baptized on 7 April 1717 and David on 20 March 1718. Edward and Joseph died young, and Rebecca never married. Rachel married William Pickett, and Alexander married Sarah Wells of Queen Anne Parish, Prince George's County, in 1729.

Jane died in 1716. "After a year of widowerhood, John Gaither courted and married Elizabeth, the young widow of Benjamin Warfield," Harry Wright Newman wrote in his 1933 history of the Anne Arundel families. Elizabeth Duvall was born in 1687, a daughter of Capt. John Duvall. Her first husband had died in 1716 and left her "a widow with two small children, Joshua and Elizabeth, and a comfortable estate." Benjamin Warfield had been the youngest brother of John Warfield, the husband of John Gaither's sister Ruth. Elizabeth's own sister Mary had married John's brother Edward Gaither in 1709 and died the next year.

Elizabeth bore him eight more children. Amos was baptized on 10 July 1720 and Ruth was born on 15 November 1721. Mary was baptized on 4 October 1724, and Joshua was born in 1726. Rezin, John, Edward and Elizabeth followed. Ruth married Robert Davis, Mary married Seth Warfield, Rezin married Sarah Yieldhall, John married a wife named Anne, and Elizabeth married an Ijams.

On 9 January 1733 he bought part of a tract called Left Out from John and Ruth Howard. Ruth Howard acknowledged the transfer. A wife's acknowledgment released her dower, the claim she would otherwise keep to a third of her husband's land for her life.

He died in 1739. His will divided Abington in equal portions among seven sons, Alexander, Benjamin, Richard, David, Amos, Joshua and Rezin. Newman calls the land "the original grant of their grandfather." Three other sons, John, Edward and Samuel, received Left Out, 252½ acres in the western part of Anne Arundel County that later became Howard County. His widow Elizabeth was his executrix, the woman named by a will to carry it out. She filed the inventory of his personal estate on 4 December 1739. It was appraised at £358 10s. 6d. His sons Benjamin and Edward signed it as kinsmen.

Ten years later his widow was still gathering the Abington shares back together. On 2 October 1749 she deeded their son Joshua 52 acres of it "for natural love and affections." The land, she wrote, had been bequeathed "to my son, Richard, as his share, and Richard sold it to me." Richard was Jane's son. In 1757 she deeded another 52 acres of Abington to their son Amos.

His children by both wives outlived him by many years. His son Benjamin became the richest of them and died childless in Prince George's County in 1793. When his estate was divided by the chancery court in 1814, only two of John's eighteen children were still alive, Joshua Gaither and Ruth Davis.

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Cite: Heirology, "John Gaither (1677-1739)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/john-gaither-1677-1739-7f2939.