Seth Warfield
Seth Warfield was born on 15 January 1723 in All Hallows Parish, Anne Arundel County, Maryland. The parish wrote his parents as "Richd Warfeild" and "Maran," Richard Warfield and Marian Caldwell. He was their second son, after John. J. D. Warfield, who wrote the county's family history in 1905, calls him Seth "of Richard," the form the family histories use to mark a man by his father.
His mother died about 1725, when he was two. About a year later his father married Sarah Gambrill, and Seth grew up with two younger half-siblings, Joseph and Rachel. His full brothers were John, Richard and Luke. "The first two were located upon 'Warfield's Range,'" the 1905 history says of John and Seth, while Richard and Luke stayed on the Severn.
His father made his will on 21 March 1765. He named "my loving Sons Seth Warfield and Joseph Warfield" as his executors, one son from each marriage. The will left land to Richard, Luke and Joseph but none to Seth, who was settled on his own. On 6 May 1765 Seth and Joseph came before Elie Vallette, the deputy commissary for Anne Arundel County, and swore that it was "the true and only Will and Testament of the said Richard Warfield that hath come to their Hands Possession or knowledge."
He built up land of his own. On 27 May 1760 he took out a patent for Warfield's Folly, 700 acres. A patent was the grant from the proprietor's land office that gave title to surveyed land. On 4 July 1794, at seventy one, he had Warfield's Forest resurveyed at 1,800 acres. A resurvey remeasured a tract and could take in vacant land along its edges. Celia Holland, the historian of Howard County's old houses, records the family's boast that nobody had ever owned that land but "God, the Indians and the Warfields."
His sons were born on the family land called Warfield's Range. Five of them, Seth, Beni, Bela, Elie and Azel, went up the Old Frederick Road together and seated themselves on a tract called Warfield's Forest, near Lisbon, to grow tobacco. "They took for their wives a Welsh, three Dorseys and a Welling," the history says.
In 1778 he took the Oath of Fidelity. Maryland required every free man to swear it during the Revolution, giving allegiance to the new state and renouncing the King. Those who refused lost rights and paid heavier taxes.
His wife was Mary Gaither, baptized on 4 October 1724, a daughter of John Gaither of Abington and his second wife Elizabeth Duvall. Her father was a brother of Seth's grandmother, Ruth Gaither, so Seth married his father's first cousin. Her mother had first been the wife of Benjamin Warfield, a brother of Seth's grandfather. Seth and Mary married about 1750 to 1754, and their children were Seth, Benjamin, Beale, Elizabeth, Azel, Eli and Amos.
He signed his will on 2 August 1798 and named his son Amos sole executor. It left "unto my five sons Namely Seth Warfield, Bani Warfield Eli Warfield & Azel Warfield Beal Warfield all the Reside of my Negroes." The residue was whatever enslaved people were left after his other bequests. It named two granddaughters, Mary, the daughter of his son Amos, and Carol Anne Owings. If his children fell out over any of it, the dispute was to go to two neighbours, Henry Griffith and Thomas Worthington.
One line of the will dealt with a single boy. "It is my will and Desire that my Mulato boy named Harry be sold among my Children to serve untill he arrives to the age of Twenty two years and shall at that period be free." Harry was to be sold only within the family, and only for the years until his twenty-second birthday.
He died in 1805 and is believed to be buried at Warfield's Forest, near Lisbon. Mary is believed to lie there too. She was dead by 1814.
Sources
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Cite: Heirology, "Seth Warfield (1723-1805)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/seth-warfield-1723-1805-eb55de.