James Dillard (abt. 1709 - abt. 1768)

Born about 1709 in New Kent, Virginia [uncertain]

Descendants

Died about 1768 at about age 59 in Amherst, Virginia [uncertain]

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Biography

James Dillard was born about 1709 in New Kent, Virginia.

(See Dillard-84 James Stephen Dillard for notes about disproven existence and the Dorothy Dillard Hughes research)

The descendants of James Dillard d. 1768 that are attached as siblings of James Dillard d. 1794 are sourced on the work of Henry Moorman Dillard.

There is a reference which holds that the father of James Dillard d. 1794 was Capt. James Dillard who fought in the French/Indian Wars and died in 1768 in Amherst County. This reference is from the work of Leonora Higginbotham Sweeney.

"From Virginia in the Revolution: name ="revolution">Sweeny, Lenora Higginbotham. 1998. Amherst County, Virginia in the Revolution: including extracts from "Lost Order Book", 1773-1782. Greenville, SC: Southern Historical Press.

"There were three James Dillards living in Amherst Co., during the Revolution: Capt. James Dillard (b. 1727: d.1794), son of Capt. James Dillard (d.1768) of the French & Indian War; Capt. James Dillard, Jr., an officer in the Contl. Army; and Capt. James Dillard (b. 1744; d. 1823), son of Thomas and Elizabeth (Holliday) Dillard of Spotsylvania Co., Va. ...Footnote: Capt. James Dillard was a grandson of [Dillard-83] James Dillard, (d. in Amherst Co., 1768) Captain of a Company of Rangers in the French & Indian War."

Important Note: The following was a MISQUOTE that conflated two James Dillards in Sweeney published in Historical Southern families: Boddie, John Bennett, and John Bennett Boddie. 1967. Historical Southern families. Baltimore: Genealogical Pub. Co. http://books.google.com/books?id=tF13AAAAMAAJ.

"A Captain James DIllard, probably a grandson of the first George Dillard, served in the French and Indian War under Col Abraham Maury of Halifax County, September 1758. Another James Dillard was a Lieutenant in the same regiment with Capt. James Dillard.(Crozier's Colonial Militia - page 73).
We are on firmer ground now, for he was the father of Captain James Dillard (1727-1794) who served in the Revolution from Amherst County. (Sweeny - Amherst County in the Revolution). Pittsylvania was cut cut off from Halifax in 1766/67 and Captain James Dillard died there in 1768. He is said to have married Lucy Wise of New Kent in 1724 and moved to Essex County, but there is no support for this assertion."

IMPORTANT : According to Larry Reid, Larry E. 2006. My Reid and Harrison families in North America from their arrival to present: with special section on the Eells, Loss, Smiths of New York. Collierville, TN: Instant Publishers. The two men cited above in Historical Southern Families are a SINGLE man who was first a Lt and later a Captain in Halifax. *That man would be James Dillard, who has no relationship to any of the Dillard's of Amherst and who died in South Carolina in 1795. He also is not the same James Dillard said to have married Lucy Wise.

Sweeny made no mention of Halifax or Pittsylvania in her book in reference to the James Dillard that died in Amherst in 1768 and had been a Captain in the French & Indian War. It looks like the reference in Historical Southern Families to Sweeney was quoted in error and conflated two different James Dillards. One dying in Amherst with another James Dillard from Pittsylvania. There are almost no records of the soldiers from Albemarle/Amherst who fought in the French & Indian War, so the existence of [[Dillard-83] James Dillard]] d. 1768 cannot be proven or dis-proven. The one record that does exist is in the Amherst County Order Book - in which is a list of soldiers who had proved service in order to obtain bounty land. However, this entry is from 1773 - after the death of James Dillard, so he would not be listed.

The proposed but unproven father for [Dillard-269] is [Dillard-2001] James Dillard (Dellerd/Dollard)]] was born 15 April 1710-1712 recorded in the St. Peter's Parish Register of New Kent.

Dorothy Dillard Hughes name="hughes1992" Dorothy Dillard Hughes. s. Dillard in Print: Fact or Fallacy? Dorothy Dillard Hughes; Copyright © 1993 by Dorothy Dillard Hughes has carefully researched some entries which appear as "Dollard" but were originally "Dillard".

James Dellard/Dollard/Dillard

There is a James Dillard (Dellard/Dollard) with a son James [Dillard-2001] of record in St. Peter's Parish, New Kent County, Virginia. James Dollard, with no wife named, had children:

1. Elizabeth, baptized 19 October 1703 and
2. James, baptized 15 April 171[]. name="hughes1992"

Notes about New Kent, St. Peter's Parish Vestry Book:

This entry and several following entries are missing years. If the order of the entries is chronological.

The following is the list of entries in order. See New Kent County, Virginia St. Peter's Parish Vestry Book and Register, 1684-1786 Dollard Entries for details.

Feb 1710 - (previous entry)

15 April 171[x] - (entry for James - missing year)

Followed by:

April 171[x] - (missing year)

June 17[xx] - (missing year)

October 17[xx] - (missing year) (Note: as these months are in order they could :still be 1710 or 1711 or 1712)

March - (missing year) (Note: as the next entry is for Feb, this March must be :before 1714 and after 1712 - so 1713.)

February 1714

The earliest record for a James Dillard (with that spelling) appears in 1758, when a James Dillard patented 269 acres, part in New Kent and part in James City County, Virginia name="hughes1992"

Birth Year Estimation

Dillard-269 James Dillard, the proposed son of Capt. James Dillard d. 1768 was known to be born in 1727. Assuming his father was about 18 years old at his birth, that would put the estimation of his birth about 1709 which is a bit earlier than the birth record of a [Dillard-2001] James Dellerd/Dollard/Dillard in 1710-1712. (Note: If the father of [Dillard-269] James b. 1727 is James b. 1710 then he would have been about 17 years old when he fathered a child. Unusual, but not impossible)

• James (1758), Edward and Thomas (1782) Dillard -- not Dollard -- appear in New Kent records. name="hughes1992"

Research Notes about Dollard/Dellard/Dillard

from Dorothy Dillard Hughes article:

"This, then, seems to be the answer. It was found earlier in the twentieth century by a skilled Virginia researcher and by others later and has been verified by this writer. There was no seventeenth century James Stephen Dillard, but there was a James Dillard of record, who very well could have been George Dillard's son. What is the explanation? He was the James Dollard/Dellard, with no wife named, whose daughter Elizabeth (in 17__, on the same page as the 1703/04 baptismal records) and son James (in 17__ [page torn], on the same page as 1709 baptismal records) were baptized in St. Peter's Church, New Kent County. The son, James Dollard/Dellard, probably was the ancestor of later Dillards, since the Dollard name does not appear in eighteenth century New Kent County records after Susann was baptized in 1757. 25 This James, however, was not the progenitor of all later Dillards, as a number of printed genealogies imply. Dillards with other given names also had children. Thus a knowledge of the handwriting of the period seems to have solved one puzzle of the second and later generations of Dillards. Often a man of one time is confused with a man of another time who has the same name and lives in the same place. Could that have happened here? (Implying a reference to H. Moorman Dillard's work and a man he called James Stephen Dillard) That, then, leads to the third question. Was James Stephen Dillard confused with a later Dillard? Could James Stephen Dillard have been a later Dillard rather than the son of George Dillard, the founder? One of the most frequent errors in genealogy is confusing two persons who had the same name. (Implying the H. Moorman Dillard genealogy) The next is from "The Genealogy of the First Four Generations of Dillard in America."26 James, son of John Dollard, was born in 1736 and was probably the James Dillard, who was the first James Dillard, spelled with an i, in a Virginia record, and was the one cited previously who patented 269 acres, part in New Kent and part in James City County in 1758. (The first number of James Dillard below is his Modified Register System number; the number after his name is the number given by Personal Ancestral File and indicates the order in which an individual is entered into the computer program.) 84. James Dillard 4- 682, (John 3, James 2, George1) baptized 15 May 1736 in New Kent County, was PROBABLY the one who patented 269 acres of land, part in New Kent County and part in James City County in 1758. IF SO, he had advertisements in the Virginia Gazette on 12 September 1766 and Thursday 20 October 1774. He had a son, James, Jr., whose death was announced in the Virginia Gazette for 31 May 1776: "About 2 o'clock in the morning mr. James Dillard, jun. an amiable youth, was snatched off in the flower of his age, to the great grief of his friends. In the midst of life we are in death! Of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord!" 27 [This James Dillard, Jr., is probably the one buried three miles from Williamsburg and called JAMES STEPHEN DILLARD on the tombstone ERECTED TO HIM SOME TIME DURING THE PRESENT CENTURY. 28 This illustrates a common genealogical error, that of confusing a person who lived at one time with one who lived in another. It is obvious that a James Dillard who died in 1776 "in the flower of his age" could not have been a son of George Dillard, first of record 22 May 1650. It is possible, however, that a James Dillard of 1776 COULD HAVE A SECOND GIVEN NAME, since men with two given names first appear in Virginia records about the time of the American Revolution. So did a later Dillard researcher confuse James Stephen Dillard with a young James Dillard who died more than 125 years after George's first appearance in a Virginia record in 1650 and less than two months before the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776? The question, of course, cannot be answered. This paper, however, has presented evidence that no Dillard was part owner of "The Williamsburg Plantation" and that, since no record of an early James Stephen Dillard has been found in records, and records of men named James Dellard (recopied as Dollard) do exist, ONE OF THOSE MEN OF RECORD WAS LIKELY THE JAMES DILLARD OF HENRY MOORMAN DILLARD'S ARTICLE and later Dillard families. Records of later James Dillards have also been discovered. Correct reading of the early handwriting and consideration of a spelling variation of the Dillard surname have solved the puzzle." Note: There was a land patent of over 5,000 acres in Williamsburg of which George Dillard was 1 headright of 107 persons transported.

25NSCDA VA, St. Peter's Parish Register, pp. 7, 8, 153. 26 Hughes, "Genealogy of the First Four Generations of Dillard in America" (Lubbock, TX: unpublished manuscript, 1995), p. 20.

Dorothy Hughes reports that several records of George Dillard appear in Nugent's Cavaliers and Pioneers. name="nugent" Cavaliers and Pioneers, cited by Dorothy Dillard Hughes.

• George was a headright of Capt. Moore Fantleroy on 22 May 1650 (p. 195), through his acquisition of land in New Kent County, which fell into King and Queen County when it was created in 1691. name="nugent"
• (Note: The land patent that Fantleroy received was for 5000 acres plus and it was located in Williamsburg but our George Dillard was only 1 of 107 persons in the headright. Not part owner as purported by H. Moorman Dillard)
• George had a wife when the two sold 76 acres of New Kent County land in 1679. name="nugent"

• The 1704 Quit Rent Rolls, published in several books, are really a census of Virginia landowners. Every landowner had to pay the King an annual quit rent of one shilling per fifty acres. Names included were Nicho. and Edwd. Dillard and Thomas and Geo. Dillard in King and Queen County and William Dolerd (Dellard/Dillard)) in New Kent County. (Isle of Wight County records show that Henry Dullard was Henry Bullard.) Dillard/Dolerd names were found only in adjoining counties of King and Queen and New Kent. Yet none of the Dillard landowners except George are in genealogies published before.

From the Revolutionary War Pension application of grandson James Dillard: name ="revolution"

"...My father, James Dillard, was born 15th Oct., 1727, and married to my mother Mary Ann Hunt, the 8th of July, 1748. The said Mary Ann Hunt was born 28th April, 1734 (old style). My mother, Mary Ann Dillard, departed this life 26th August, 1787, aged 53; my father, James Dillard, departed this life 24th August, 1794, aged 67. My youngest son, Washington Dillard, departed this life the 4th of April, 1814. Note: Mary Ann (Hunt) Dillard was a daughter of John Hunt, Sr., and wife, Ann. Footnote: Capt. James Dillard was a grandson of James Dillard, (d. in Amherst Co., 1768) Captain of a Company of Rangers in the French & Indian War.

Sources

• Gresham, Robinson & Allied Families https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/6989691/person/-1151351849/facts
• "From Virginia in the Revolution: name ="revolution">Sweeny, Lenora Higginbotham. 1998. Amherst County, Virginia in the Revolution: including extracts from "Lost Order Book", 1773-1782. Greenville, SC: Southern Historical Press.
• Larry Reid, Larry E. 2006. My Reid and Harrison families in North America from their arrival to present: with special section on the Eells, Loss, Smiths of New York. Collierville, TN: Instant Publishers.
• Dorothy Dillard Hughes. s. Dillard in Print: Fact or Fallacy? Dorothy Dillard Hughes; Copyright © 1993 by Dorothy Dillard Hughes
• 25NSCDA VA, St. Peter's Parish Register, pp. 7, 8, 153. 26 Hughes, "Genealogy of the First Four Generations of Dillard in America" (Lubbock, TX: unpublished manuscript, 1995), p. 20. (See WIKI archive for copies of the Dillard Family Newsletters by Dorothy Dillard Hughes originally published on the website which has been taken down)
• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:The_Dillard_Family_Association