Ancestors

Richard Warfield

Richard Warfield was born on 7 January 1697 in All Hallows Parish, Anne Arundel County, Maryland. He was the eldest son of John Warfield and Ruth Gaither. His grandfather, Capt. Richard Warfield, had come into Maryland in 1662 and taken up land in the woods west of Crownsville, reaching down to Round Bay of the Severn. Richard signed his own name "Rich'd Warfield."

His father died without a will in July 1718, when Richard was twenty one. That made Richard his father's heir-at-law. Under the English law that Maryland followed, the land of a man who died intestate passed whole to his eldest son. Richard did not keep it. "His son, Richard, as heir-at-law, deeded his estate to his brothers," J. D. Warfield wrote in his 1905 history of the county's families.

Two of those deeds still marked the ground nearly fifty years later. When Richard made his own will in 1765, the land he left to a cousin ran along the part of Warfield's Range "formerly Deeded to Alexander Warfield" and met "the seventeenth Line of John Warfield's Part." Alexander and John were his younger brothers.

"Returning to the homestead, he married Marion Caldwell," the 1905 history goes on. The marriage was in 1720. Marian, as a later genealogy spells her, bore him four sons: John in 1722, Seth on 15 January 1723, and then Richard and Luke. When Seth was christened in All Hallows Parish, the clerk wrote the parents as "Richd Warfeild" and "Maran." Marian died about 1725, when her eldest boy was three.

About 1726 Richard married again. His second wife was Sarah Gambrill, a daughter of Augustine Gambrill. She bore him a son, Joseph, and a daughter, Rachel. Joseph never married. Rachel married Philip Turner, and their son Richard Warfield Turner later inherited the homestead from his uncle Joseph.

The homestead was Warfield's Plains. It lay on the Severn and reached up toward Millersville. His sons John and Seth were settled on Warfield's Range, the family's larger tract to the west along the Patuxent, while Richard and Luke stayed on the Severn. In 1739 Richard was a vestryman of St. Anne's, the parish church at Annapolis. The vestry was the board of parishioners that managed a parish's church, money and business.

His son John died in 1763, leaving three children. Richard made his will two years later, on 21 March 1765, "being Sick in Body but of good and perfect Mind and Memory." He named "my loving Sons Seth Warfield and Joseph Warfield" his executors, one son from each marriage. To "my loving Wife Sarah Warfield" he left "my now dwelling Plantation whereon I now do live during her Life," so long as she claimed no right in his other lands. After her death it was to go to Joseph.

The other sons had land. Richard received "Lancasters Plains" and "the Contention." Luke received "Warfield Forrest" and "Owings's Range," and if Luke died without a lawful heir, those lands were to pass to his sister Rachel. Seth was left no land at all. He was already settled on his own.

The will divided the people Richard enslaved by name. Rachel received "one Negro Woman named Priss and her Increase and one Negro Boy named Dick." Her increase meant any children Priss would bear, who would be enslaved too. Richard received a woman named Moll, "to be appraised and go to him in his part of my Estate," while "the Child that the said Negro Woman now hath is not to be appraised but to be his own right and property." Luke received a man named Jacob, and Joseph a boy named Cato. John's three children received "one Negro Woman named Easther with all the Children she now hath or may hereafter have," to be divided among them when the eldest daughter came of age.

One man was kept out of the division. "My Negro Man Peter is not to be appraised with my Estate but to live where he will amongst my Children but not to go out of my Family," the will says.

The last bequest went to Joshua Warfield, "Son of Benjamin long deceased." Richard left him his right in part of Warfield's Range, "two hundred and forty Acres of Land more or less," bounded on the Middle River of Patuxent and laid out course by course in perches. A perch was a surveyor's measure of sixteen and a half feet. The will was witnessed by John Marriott, John Druce and John Marriott Junior.

He died within six weeks. On 6 May 1765 Seth and Joseph came before Elie Vallette, the deputy commissary for Anne Arundel County, the officer who took the proof of wills. They swore on "the holy Evangels of Almighty God" that this was "the true and only Will and Testament of the said Richard Warfield that hath come to their Hands Possession or knowledge." The three witnesses swore the same day that they had seen him sign and seal it, and that he was then "of sound and disposing Mind Memory and Understanding." He was buried in the churchyard of St. Anne's at Annapolis.

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Cite: Heirology, "Richard Warfield (1697-1765)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/richard-warfield-1697-1765-12d499.