The consensus among Bristow family historians is that the subject was the eldest son of Jedediah Bristow and his second wife, Eleanor. James was probably born in the Virginia Tidewater, in Middlesex or New Kent County, north of the James River. A birthdate of 28 Sep 1751 is generally accepted, but without documentation.¹   The parish records of Christ Church and St. Peter's are silent, though they do mention some of his siblings.²   I suspect that the 1751 date is in error, and that he was born earlier, perhaps to Jedidiah's first wife, Catherine Thompson.

Family tradition, as recorded in Judge Louis Lunsford Bristow's notes, holds that James married the widowed Margaret Pasley, neé Clopton. This union is also recognized by descendants of her first marriage to Thomas Pasley, though I have seen no proof of any of the several Margarets among the prolific Clopton family of Virginia wedding either a Pasley or a Bristow.³   However, the circumstantial evidence is persuasive. In his 1804 will James names his wife Margaret, and there are several documented connections to the Pasley family (see below).⁴

If he was born in 1751, James would have been a teenager when he married the Widow Pasley, who was born in 1728 or 1729. Additional evidence for an earlier birthdate comes from the age of his eldest son, John, who died in February 1840. John's tombstone gives his age as 75, which would place his birth in 1764.⁵   If this is correct, James would have been twelve or thirteen at the time of his marriage, while his bride would have been in her thirties, more than twice his age. Such precocity in a bridegroom is not credible. While it was common for older men to marry second wives young enough to be their daughters, the reverse was even rarer in 18th-century Virginia than it is now, at the cusp of the millennium, when "boy toys" are not unknown. Perhaps the 1751 date is a transcription error, with a "3" mistaken for a "5," which would yield an age difference of two or three years, inconsequential for a couple in their thirties. Even a date of 1734 or 1737 makes more sense than the previously accepted 1751.

Whatever the date of his birth, by the 1770s James and his brother Thompson (who was born in 1741) had moved from the Tidewater to the rolling hills of Buckingham County, west of Richmond, not far from Appomattox, where they appear in tax lists. In 1773 James was charged with 10 tithes, and in 1774, 8 tithes. Thompson was charged to Robert Saunders in 1773.⁶   In 1782 James Bristow was charged with 14 slaves, 7 white males and 18 cattle. Also listed were Thompson and their father Jedediah.⁷   Five years later, the commissioner listed James, one white male above age 16 and under 21, five blacks over 16, eight blacks under 16, four horses, etc., and ten cattle. Although he did not have a wheeled vehicle of any sort, he appears to have been comfortably situated.⁸   (Since white women and children were not tithed, they were not recorded.)

There is no record of James serving in the American Revolution, as did his brother Benjamin, who died at the Battle of the Brandywine in September 1777. (The James Bristow who was in Captain Ashe's Company from North Carolina was probably a cousin.)⁹

Sometime in the mid or late 1780s, James' father Jedediah probably died, and his brother Thompson migrated to North Carolina, where he was recorded in 1790.¹⁰   In 1789 the family that included James Bristow and his wife, Margaret, and their four sons joined the great migration to Kentucky. On a clear day from a hilltop in central Buckingham, the Blue Ridge stretches across the western horizon, an ever-present reminder of the possibilities in the lands beyond. Over their years in the Piedmont the Bristows must have gazed on the mountain barrier and wondered what lay beyond. With a new national government at last in place under the Constitution, which had replaced the ineffective Articles of Confederation, Americans in the former colonies along the Atlantic seaboard uprooted themselves in a movement of almost Biblical proportions and headed west across the Appalachian mountains.¹¹   The Bristows were accompanied by some of their Pasley half-siblings. Thomas Clopton Pasley also went to Kentucky, eventually settling in Owen County, where he later claimed a pension for Revolutionary service.¹²   James Bristow's granddaughter, Mary Beckley Bristow (1808-1890), mentions visiting her father's elderly half-sister in Bourbon County in 1836: "She had been blind for years and was so entirely childish that she did not know her own brothers. . ."¹³   Although Mary does not give a name, there were three Pasley sisters, Frances, Nancy, and Lucy, all at least ten years older than Mary's father, who was born in 1770.¹⁴

Like most of those who began their journey in central Virginia, the Bristow party likely took their path west across the Blue Ridge near present-day Roanoke, then southwest along the Valley of Virginia to Wolf Creek near modern Abingdon, west and then north through the Cumberland Gap, following the Wilderness Road blazed by Daniel Boone in 1775. ¹⁵   The entire route from Buckingham to Lexington in the heart of the Bluegrass was about five hundred miles through rugged territory, mostly along barely-improved paths little better than game trails, far too rough for wheeled vehicles. Some in the party may have ridden horseback, but most walked, leading their horses or driving their cattle. Step after step, more than a million in all. The most demanding portion ran from the new settlements along the upper reaches of the Holston River to the Bluegrass, two hundred miles across the folds of the Appalachians, through rocky, thickly forested, steep hillsides and cane-choked stream beds, a "desert" void of habitations, where travelers faced natural hazards compounded by fear of Indian raids on immigrant parties.¹⁶   Though no one will ever know for sure, the annual death toll on the Wilderness Road was estimated at a hundred.¹⁷  

The Bristows and their fellow travelers were in the second wave to settle in the Bluegrass, not true pioneers as were Boone and Kenton and Harrod, striking off into unknown territory, but they were willing to give up life in an established community for the uncertainties of the frontier. Although there had been no major incursions into Kentucky by Indian war parties since the Battle of Blue Licks in 1782, and most tribes were in theory at peace with the Americans, small groups of warriors conducted what amounted to guerrilla war against the invaders, attacking isolated homesteads and unwary travelers. In 1789, the year of the Bristows' migration, more Kentuckians were killed by Indians than in any prior year.¹⁸

None of the Bristows claimed land awarded for military service; they purchased tracts that had been claimed by others. The population of Kentucky was growing at a high rate. Contemporary observers reckoned that the number of settlers in the Bluegrass passed 60,000 by midsummer of 1788, and the first Federal Census two years later tallied 73,000. When Kentucky finally gained admission to the Union in 1792 as the first state west of the Appalachians, the total was close to 90,000. Even so, Lexington, the largest city in Kentucky, could register only 842 inhabitants in 1790.¹⁹

Judge L. L. Bristow said that his great-grandfather settled for a time in the Green River Country, in south central Kentucky.²⁰   This is possible but I think not likely, as that area was still pretty wild territory before the turn of the century.²¹   I suspect there may be some confusion with Green Creek in Bourbon County, where James, Jr., did buy land in 1795.²²   Also, some cousins had settled in Green County by 1800.²³   James Bristow purchased 200 acres on Stoners Fork of the Licking River from Nathaniel Gist on 8 Nov 1791. Witnesses were James Calloway, John Bristow, and Thomas Passlay.²⁴   Surviving records from Bourbon show he was charged with taxes on this land in 1793 and 1795.²⁵

The Bristow connection with the Gist family continued. On 13 July 1793, Nathaniel Gist, who was preparing to move his family from Buckingham County to the Bluegrass, made an agreement with James Bristow, Jr. "to take from stump, erect and complete on or before the first day of May next, in a neat and workmanlike manner a frame house."²⁶

The tax lists of 1800 find James and three of his sons established in the Bluegrass. James, Sr. and John were recorded 22 July in Clark County, Archibald in nearby Jessamine a week later. James, Jr. was in Bourbon. Gideon had moved west to the vicinity of Louisville, in Bullitt County.²⁷

In August of 1803, James and Margaret Bristow were listed among the founders of Stony Point "Baptist Church Situate at Green Creek in Bourbon County,"²⁸   as was their son Archibald, who later became widely known as a preacher, and Margaret's daughter, Mary Pasley.²⁹

Although he drew up a will in 1804, James never got around to signing it.³⁰   In spite of this irregularity, his wishes were carried out, as seen by the following records:

Will of James Bristow, Clark County, Kentucky.³¹

To all who these presents may concern, know ye that it is my desire that what property I may leave behind may be disposed of in the following manner, Viz., the hundred acres of land whereon my son John Bristow now lives, I formerly intended for my son Gideon Bristow, But he not being willing to live thereon, and at his request, I suffered him to sell it to my son James Bristow, and the said James Bristow to my son John Bristow. It is now my desire that the said John Bristow shall have the said hundred acres of land with all its apertenances to dispose of in any manner he may think proper. The ballance of the tract above mentioned my will and desire is to my son Archd Bristow shall have, him and his heirs forever for certain services rendered. I give and bequeath unto my son John Bristow a negro boy, by the name of Elijah, by his giving a clear receipt of all demands against my estate. Not believing that I have given my son James Bristow as much as the rest of my children, my will and desire is that he shall have fifty pounds extra before any division be made.

My will and desire is that my wife Margarett Bristow shall have a desent support out of my estate after all my Just Debts are paid out of the ballance. Whatever remains, my will and desire is that it may equally be divided between my four sons John, Gideon, James and Archd. If there should [be] any dispute between Mrs. Gist, or her heirs of Nathl. Gist,³²   and there should be any loss in the above tract of land, the loss shall be equally divided between my three sons Gideon, James and Archd, But not to affect the hundred acres of land where my son John lives. My desire is that my sons John Bristow and James Bristow and Archd Bristow shall be executors of this my last will and Testament, given this twelfth day of March, one thousand, eight hundred and four.

Signed in the presence of - [blank]

Kentucky Clarke County, to wit

Whereas James Bristow Decd of Clarke County and State aforesaid died in the fall of the year 1806, and before his Death had the foregoing Instrument of writing drawn, we believe was his intended Will, and we John Bristow, Gideon Bristow, James Bristow, & Archibald Bristow, legal heirs and representatives of said James Bristow, Decd, feel a willingness and desire that the said Instrument of Writing shall stand in Law as though the said Writing had been signed sealed and acknowledged by the sd James Bristow, Decd, and become his lawful will. Therefore, we the aforesaid John Bristow, James Bristow, & Archibald Bristow do bind ourselves to each other in the sum of one thousand Dollars to stand to the aforesaid Instrument of Writing and Divide the estate of the deceased accordingly. Witness our hand and seal this 5th day of March, 1807.

Signed and acknowledged   in the presence of -     Tho Wornall     Jno Donnoldson     Thos Gist

John Bristow Gideon Bristow Jas Bristow Archd Bristow

The inventory of his personal property estate, filed with the court 14 Jan 1807, shows him to have been a prosperous farmer and an early devotee of Kentucky horseflesh.³³

The document provides us with a snapshot of everyday life on a Bluegrass farm two centuries ago, on the eve of the industrial revolution. Items familiar to us such as plates, kettles, coffee mills and shears are found along with what are now esoteric devices such as swingletrees, hackles, hames, barshare plows and t-bows. Although the handwritten listing covers two and a half pages, the administrators may have overlooked a few items. For example, though they do list two sets of dishes, earthenware for everyday and pewter for special events, somehow they overlooked the eating utensils as well as the spoons and ladles needed to prepare and serve the meals.

The total value of his personal estate comes out at £822/ 5/ 0, or $2,740.80 at the going exchange rate of three-and-a-third dollars per pound.³⁴   It is interesting to note that more than three decades after Americans declared their independence from Britain (and two decades after writing the Constitution) they were still using the traditional English monetary system of 12 pence to the shilling and 20 shillings to the pound, along with Jefferson's dollars and cents. Most of James' worth was in slaves, whose value of £501 was 61% of the total. Livestock, from horses to cattle to swine to geese, was another 21%. Loans James had made to neighbors and family accounted for a third of the remainder, with produce being valued at even less than the household goods. Absent from the inventory is tobacco, a crop his ancestors and some of his descendants were closely tied to. (If he did raise tobacco, the harvest must have been sold before the inventory.) However, in addition to the wheat and bawn and fodder, there was on hand some hemp, a crop which for a time approached tobacco as a cash crop in the Bluegrass. Ropewalks, where cannabis fibers were turned into bagging and cordage, were almost as common as tobacco warehouses. The household had wheels for spinning both flax and cotton.

The venerable Margaret Clopton (Pasley) Bristow appears to have died between the date of James Bristow's will, 12 Mar 1804, and his death a year and a half later, and he seems to have remarried quickly, because in the settlement of the estate his widow is cited as Sarah or Sally. She is most likely Sarah Newman (1754-1817), who at one time was thought to have been James Bristow's mother, married to yet another James, who apparently never existed.³⁵   Sarah relinquished her dower rights to the 200 acres of land on Strodes Creek to the four brothers in return for three slaves (Lucy, Nancy, and Judal) and the sum of 78 pounds.³⁶   In addition to his widow, James was survived by all four sons and at least 16 grandchildren.³⁷

Two of the slaves cited in James Bristow's probate, Tom and Elijah, seem to have lived on for some time. In April 1834, James Bristow, Jr., who had relocated to Boone County on the banks of the Ohio, was "exempted from the payment of any county levies on his two old negroes Tom & Jemima on account of their age & infirmity.³⁸   Elijah, who went to John Bristow, may have outlived his new master, and is mentioned in John's will, dated 1835, in which John provided that Elijah (then about sixty) and his family be freed and set aside funds for them and for their migration to "Libera."³⁹

 

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Notes:

[Click on the footnote number to return to the text.]

¹ John Walton, "Politicians and Statesmen: the Bristows in American Government" in Genealogies of Kentucky Families from the Filson Club Quarterly (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1981), 75-77. Gordon Byron Woolley, John Bristow of Middlesex and his Descendants through Ten Generations (New York: Vantage, 1969), 29-30.

² Thompson was christened 14 Dec 1741 at Christ Church, and Benjamin 17 Jun 1755 and William 28 Apr 1758 at Saint Peter's. See: Parish Register of Christ Church, Middlesex County, Virginia 1653-1812 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1964 [1897]), and The Parish Register of Saint Peter's, New Kent County, Virginia, 1680-1787 (Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1988 [1904]). The dates may indicate that Jedediah remained close to his birthplace on the Piankatank longer than I had thought.

³ See LDS Ancestor File, information submitted by (among others) Randall G. Paisley of Gerry, NY, Mary Lou Collyer of Menlo Park, CA, and William Thomas Mitchell of Morrow, GA. Margaret's first husband, Thomas Pasley (the name is spelled in a variety of forms: Paisley, Peasley, even Parslay), was born 7 Jul 1724 in New Kent, the son of William Pasley, and died about 1762. Lucy Lane (Mrs. William Whitehead) Erwin, Ancestry of William Clopton of York County, Virginia (Rutland, VT: Tuttle, 1939), 140, lists Margaret as the daughter of Walter Clopton and Mary Jarratt, but omits any reference to Pasleys or Bristows.

⁴ James Bristow was bondsman for his stepson Thomas Clopton Pasley's marriage to Winifred Adcock. Minister's return dated 17 Nov 1785 for marriage on 5 Nov. Buckingham Marriages, cited in Walton, 79.

⁵ Martha B. Cheek to Bayless Hardin [no date], Bristow file, Kentucky Historical Society. Mrs. Cheek transcribed the badly-worn inscription, "John Bristow, died 27 February, 1840 aged 75 years, -?- days and two months." A 1944 transcription by descendants of John's adopted daughters found an age of 78 years and 2 months, which would place his birth even earlier, in December, 1761. See Bristow Blue Book, Kenton County Public Library, Covington. Other readings differ, but all give John's age as 70 or more. But Walton, 79, and Kathryn Owen's Old Graveyards of Clark County, Kentucky (New Orleans: Polyanthos Press, 1975), 10, give only the name and death date.

⁶ Robert F. Woodson, and Isobel B. Woodson, comps., Virginia Tithables from Burned Record Counties (Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press, 1982 [1970]),15; Edythe Rucker Whitley, Genealogical Records of Buckingham County, Virginia (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1984), 25.

⁷ Walton, 77.

⁸ Thomas Peasley appears on the same list, charged with one black under 16 and two horses. Netti Schreiner- Yantis and Florence Speakman Love, The 1787 Census of Virginia (Springfield, VA: Genealogical Books in Print, 1987), 678, 684. (James is missing from Heads of Families, the Census Bureau's effort to reconstruct the lost 1790 census.)

⁹ Walton, 76-78. But Woolley, 30, cites John H. Gwathmey's Historical Register of Virginians in the Revolution to the contrary. That source does list a James Bristow as having received pay in 1775 at Romney for militia duty.

¹⁰ Woolley, 24.

¹¹ Dale Van Every has examined this phenomenal movement in a quartet of books on the American Frontier from 1754 to 1845: Forth to the Wilderness; A Company of Heroes; Ark of Empire; and The Final Challenge (NY: Morrow, 1961-1964).

¹² Thomas Pasley had served in the Virginia Line. His pension application, W-8506, is abstracted in Whitley, 68-69. He received a pension of $96 per year from 27 Feb 1830, as noted in The Pension Roll of 1835 [Senate Doc. 514, 1835] (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1992). He was born 29 Jan 1762 and died 13 Apr 1844, in his 83rd year.

¹³ Neil Allen Bristow, ed., Aunt Polly's Diary.

¹⁴ LDS Ancestor File, above.

¹⁵ A thorough history of the route is Robert L. Kincaid, The Wilderness Road (Indianapolis & New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1947). For a detailed description of the Road, including photographs, predating the onslaught of the automobile, see William Allen Pusey, The Wilderness Road to Kentucky: Its Location and Features (New York: Doran, 1921).

¹⁶ A young lawyer (thought to be Thomas Perkins) who had traveled the route in October of 1784 wrote home to friends in Massachusetts, giving a matter-of-fact account of the journey.

The wilderness is 195 miles from the block house [the last settlement in Virginia] to the first settlement in Kentucky, though for 40 or 50 miles, there are a number of little huts, with small pieces of cleared land, where the hunters have endevoured to raise corn. The badness of the road from the block house is not easily described. From the rugged ascents and descents, which seemed absolutely impassible; and from the mire, which was every step up to my horses knees, occasioned by heavy rains, which had fallen a few days before, I had hard work to go a mile in an hour. I however made the best of my time 'till sunset. . . . As marching in the dark was out of the question, I began to look out for a place to sleep. Some little apprehension of danger from the Indians, the lonliness of my situation, the howling of wolves and croaking of ravens on every side, made me feel somewhat gloomy. I turned aside from the road about a quarter of a mile, by the side of a steep rock, where I found green grass for my horse, and after giving him my hat full of corn, tied him to a tree, then bringing my saddle, my bag of corn and wallet of provision by the side of the rock, I wrapped myself in my blanket, and with a large horse-man's pistol in each hand I set down to guard him and myself. About one o'clock I fell asleep, and forgot the danger of my situation 'till morning.

Wade Hall, ed., "Along the Wilderness Trail" in Filson Club History Quarterly 61: 292.

¹⁷ Van Every, Ark of Empire, 159. Not all fell to Indian attack; accidents and disease claimed many lives.

¹⁸ Van Every, Ibid., 208.

¹⁹ Van Every, Ibid., 159; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington: GPO, 1975) 2: 542.

²⁰ "Louis L. Bristow" in H. Levin, ed., Lawyers and Lawmakers of Kentucky (Chicago: Lewis, 1897), 567.

²¹ A James Bristow appears in 1788 Fayette County tax lists, so the family may have migrated a year sooner than generally thought. AIS Search 1.

²² George Shortridge and James Bristow, Jr. bought 1050 acres on Wolf Creek and Green Creek for £1050 from Alexander Donaldson, heir of John Donaldson, on 24 Oct 1795. The transaction was witnessed by Julius Clarkson, James Bell, and Beletha Scott. Bourbon Deeds C: 560. By the following year tax records show that the parcel had been split, with James being charged with 525 acres of first class land. Julius Clarkson was James's father-in-law; he had married Jane Shelton Clarkson 9 Sep 1794. What became of George Shortridge is not known.

²³ Five Bristoes — Benjamin, Levin, Peyton, Thomas, and William — were listed in Green County tax rolls for 1800. G. Glenn Clift, The "Second Census" of Kentucky, 1800 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1976), 33. Charles Bristow also received a land grant in Lincoln County in 1786. (Walton, 78n, proposes that Charles may have been an otherwise unknown brother of James and Thompson, based on his reading of a deed of 13 Nov 1750 in Albemarle County from Jedediah Bristow of New Kent, Planter, to William Woodson, Planter, of St. Anne's, witnessed by Charles. However, an examination of the filmed record of Albemarle Deeds and Wills 1: 241, shows the name in question to be Charles Ballow, not Bristow. See also Rev. Bailey Fulton Davis, Deeds of Amherst County, Virginia, 1761-1809, and Albemarle County, 1748-1763 (Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press, 1979), 19.)

²⁴ Bourbon Deeds B: 241. (Bourbon County then included part of what became Clark County in December 1792.)

²⁵ In 1793 he was also charged with 8 slaves, 3 horses and 12 cattle; in 1795 the figures were 10, 2, and 22.

²⁶ Gist-Lee Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Quoted in Jean Muir Dorsey and Maxwell Jay Dorsey, Christopher Gist of Maryland and Some of His Descendants, 1679-1957 (Chicago: John S. Swift, 1958.), 38. Gist named his new home Canewood. The land lies in northern Clark County on the Bourbon line, as does the land bequeathed to John and Archibald Bristow.

²⁷ Another James Bristow (from Loudon County, Virginia) owned land in nearby Woodford, where he appears on a tax roll in 1800. Clift, Second Census, 33. Within six years Gideon had sold his land in Bullitt and removed to Shelby County, where he remained for a time, before moving north to Indiana. Bullitt Deeds B: 93, Kentucky Genealogist 16:62.

²⁸ June Baldwin Bork, Stony Point Baptist Church Monthly Register, 1802-1850. Photocopy of original, with introduction and index, 21, 22. FHL. Transcribed by Neil Allen Bristow, 1998.

²⁹ No women were included among those designated as founders, but Margaret is sixth on the list of female members immediately following. Copy in Kentucky Historical Society files, s.v. Churches - Stony Point Baptist.

³⁰ Woolley, 29, repeats an unfounded story that he died 6 Apr 1798 en route to Kentucky from Dinwiddie County, Virginia, which lies south of Petersburg. I know of no evidence to place him in Southside Virginia, below the James.

³¹ Clark Wills 2: 261-263. Recorded 22 June 1807.

³² Judith Bell Gist survived her first husband, Nathaniel, who died in 1796, and her second, Gov. Thomas Scott. She perished in the cholera epidemic of 1833. Dorsey, 39.

³³ Clark Wills 2: 243-246. The complete text of the inventory is attached.

³⁴ Oddly, there was no total given in the court records. These figures were obtained by adding the columns as given in the Will Book, but it appears that either the appraisers or the County Clerk made a few errors of arithmetic or transcription, so the totals are not exact. The value in modern dollars is impossible to calculate.

³⁵ Sarah's dates can be found on a sheet of notes that Judge L. L. Bristow recorded from his Aunt Polly (Mary Beckley Bristow) in 1881; the sheet was included with her diary when it was microfilmed by the Margaret I. King Library at the University of Kentucky. See Special Collections films M-144 and M-380. The episode reveals how family traditions can hold a kernel of truth, yet be garbled in transmission. The family knew that the head of the family who came to Kentucky was named James and his wife was Margaret Clopton, but were at a loss to place the Sarah Newman, who was also married to a James. Overlooking the evidence from the Clark probate records, Sarah and James were somehow moved back a generation.

³⁶ Clark Deeds 6: 87, recorded 22 Jun 1807, the same day the will was presented for probate. Judal may have been Lucy's child, not named in the inventory.

³⁷ Although John Bristow had no children of his own, the other three brothers are known to have sired 35 children. John raised two of Archibald's daughters.

³⁸ Boone Orders C: 460. If Tom was the same person listed as age 34 in 1807, he would have been 62.

³⁹ Clark Wills 9: 437.