Margaret (Dagood) Dodson (1708 - aft. 1785)

Born 30 Apr 1708 in Richmond County, Virginia

Wife of George Dodson Sr — married 30 Apr 1726 in North Farnham Parish, Richmond, Virginia

Descendants

Died after 1785 after age 76 in Pittsylvania County, Virginia

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Biography

Margaret Dagood was born on the 30th of April 1708 in Richmond County, Virginia, the daughter of Henry Doggett and Judith Hunt.

There are several variations of the spelling of Margaret's surname Dagood. Some of the variations are Dagod, Dagord, Doggett.

Margaret Dagood married George Dodson on the 30th of April 1726, in North Farnham Parish, Richmond, Virginia.

Margaret appeared in court in Pittsylvania county, Virginia to release her right of dower in land owned by her husband George Dodson. The court record reads as follows: "October Court 1785 . . . Margaret the wife of George Dodson came into Court and relinquished her right of Dower in and to two hundred and fifty acres of land conveyed by her husband to Thomas Hill."^[1]

Margaret Dagord Dodson date and place of death are unknown.

Research Notes

Very little is known about Henry Dagod or Dagord except that he was the father of Margaret Dagod or Dagord born in North Farnham Parish in Richmond County, Virginia on April 30, 1708. The North Farnham Parish register record does not tell us who Henry’s wife is, and there are absolutely no other records in Richmond County that can be attributed to Henry Dagord. Not one. Nada.

In fact, we’re not even sure of his surname.

In the document, “The Registers of North Farnham Parish 1663-1814 and Lunenburg Parish 1673-1800, Richmond County, Virginia” compiled by George Harrison and Sanford King and published in 1866, they record Margaret’s surname as Dagod, not Dagord. This is the first and to my knowledge only publication of the North Farnham Parish registers, so we’re just going to have to trust their interpretation. The publication “Married Well and Often: Marriages of the Northern Neck of Virginia, 1649-1800,” available at Ancestry shows the Dodson/Dagod marriage as well. These folks obviously thought that Dagod was a misspelling of Doggett, and there were Doggett families in the area. They may have been right – and they may have been wrong.

However, for some reason, within the Dodson family, Margaret’s surname has always been listed as Dagord, not Dagod or Doggett, either one. The great irony is that no place in these records or the Richmond County records does Dagord, spelled as such, ever appear.

Speaking of the North Farnham Church Register, the original parish register no longer exists and apparently hasn’t for about 200 years or so. We’re working with a disintegrating (but now preserved) leatherbound alphabetized transcription housed at the Virginia State Archives that includes records from 1663 to 1814. It’s these records, already alphabetized and transcribed once that were transcribed a second time by Harrison and King in 1866.

These records can very effectively be used in conjunction with the existing marriage records from the area which exist beginning in 1668. Neither set of documents appears to be complete. Pages are missing from the North Farnham Parish register. At least three sets of page numbers have been added at different times (pen, ink and crayon) and are not in sync with each other, not to mention that it’s obvious in an alphabetized list when sections or pages are missing.

In 1663, North Farnham Parish was still Farnham Parish which was split between north and south in 1684. North was north of the Rappahannock River, now Richmond County and South was south of the river, now Essex County.

Another challenge is the spelling of the Dagord surname. It may not be Dagord, and whatever it was, it could certainly have been spelled myriad ways. I found variations that included Dagod, Doggett, Doged, Doget, Dogged, Dogett, Doggett, Daggett…you get the idea. So I looked for every somewhat similar record beginning with Da and Do. The good and bad news both is that there really weren’t many records at all.

I thought sure that perhaps researchers hadn’t researched thoroughly, so I undertook that task, perusing not just Richmond County, but also the preceding counties from which Richmond was formed. I checked Lancaster, York, Old Rappahannock and Richmond County land, probate and court records closely. I did not check Essex County records since Essex was located across a mile-wide river, which would not have placed Margaret Dagod in close enough proximity to George Dodson to get to know each other well enough to marry, given that the Dodsons lived on or near Totuskey Creek in Richmond County.  A ferry ride would have been the most expedient way to cross the Rappahannock River, and ferries were not free.

• https://dna-explained.com/2017/02/12/margaret-dagord-1708-of-north-farnham-parish-52-ancestors-147/

Sources

1. ↑ Pittsylvania County Virginia Court Records No. 5 (2783-1787) page 245 & 246; https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CS4N-SQJ1

• Marriage: The Registers of North Farnham Parish 1663-1814 and Lunenburg Parish 1783-1800 Richmond County Virginia, Compiled and Published by George Harrison Sanford King Fellow, American Society of Genealogists, Fredericksburg, Virginia, 1966.

• The Dodson (Dotson) Family of North Farnham Parish, Richmond County, Virginia: A History and Genealogy of Their Descendants Volume One, by Mrs. Sherman Williams, Compiler and Editor, The Rev. Silas Emmett, Lucas, Jr., Publisher, page 16 & 17.

• "U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560-1900." Yates Publishing - Provo, UT, USA: MyFamily.com, Inc., 2004. (This unique collection of records was extracted from a variety of sources including family group sheets and electronic databases.)

Acknowledgements

• WikiTree profile Doggett-124 created through the import of FISCUS Family Tree.ged on Jun 6, 2011 by Liisa Small.
• Entered by Arik Russell, May 31, 2012