Jeremiah Spurling of Colonial Virginia

Jeremiah Spurling Sr. (died 1725 or 1726)

WikiTree's profile of the first Jeremiah Spurling says he was born about 1666 and lived in Cople Parish, in eastern Westmoreland County. He worked as a cordwainer (shoemaker) and also planted tobacco^[1]. The profile says he witnessed land sales in Cople Parish in 1704 and 1707, citing Westmoreland deed and will book 4^[1]. He married Mary Chandler, daughter of Thomas Chandler, and had three children: Jeremiah, Sarah and Thomas. After Mary died he married Mary Barnwell, a widow^[1]. According to the profile, he dictated his will on 13 February, asked to be buried beside his first wife, and died within days. The will was filed for probate on 30 March and his estate was valued at £55 14s^[1]. The profile's biography dates his death to 1726, while its date fields and the DNA project give 1725^[1][2]. The family history A Spurlin Family in America (1987) dates him 1680–1725^[3].

WikiTree suggests he may have been a son of Richard Spurling. On 24 July 1659 James McGregor and Hugh Foutch claimed 300 acres in Northumberland County for bringing Richard and five others to Virginia^[4]. The Richard profile itself states that this "has not been proven"^[4].

Jeremiah Spurling Jr. (c. 1704 – c. 1770)

A Find a Grave memorial, which records no known grave, gives Jeremiah Jr.'s birth as 1704 in Cople Parish and his death as 1770 at Alexandria. It names his parents as Jeremiah Spurling and Mary (Chandler) Spurling and says he married Hannah in 1738^[5]. The memorial and his WikiTree profile share a biography that cites Fairfax County court, deed and survey books^[5][6]. According to that biography:

• He was in the new Fairfax County by March 1743. That month he carried the chain for a survey whose plat shows his house and cornfield on Little Hunting Creek^[6].
• On 10 September 1744 he leased a 100-acre plantation in Truro Parish from Owen Williams for 21 years, at 550 pounds of tobacco a year (Fairfax Deeds B:252). A 1756 survey measured his lot at 108 acres^[6].
• He appeared in trespass and debt suits between 1749 and 1765. His family bought goods at Glassford & Company's stores at Falls Church and Alexandria between 1756 and 1766 and paid with hogsheads of tobacco^[6].
• He was exempted from annual taxes in 1765, at about sixty-one. The biography treats a 1769 court entry as probably the last mention of him and concludes that he died about 1770^[6].

Part of this account can be checked in a printed source. Beth Mitchell's Beginning at a White Oak (1977), a guide to Fairfax County land grants, describes the 1726 Fitzhugh and Pearson grant on Horsepen Run and the North Branch of Hunting Creek. It notes that a survey of the tract shows "Jeremiah Spurling had 108 acres". Mitchell adds that this and two neighbouring holdings could be leases, but that the record of the leases had not been found^[7]. Truro Parish was the Anglican parish that at first covered all of Fairfax County. After 1765 it covered only the southern part of the county^[8].

Family of Jeremiah Jr.

WikiTree lists six children: Keziah (born about 1738), John (about 1740–1822), Jeremiah (about 1745–1816), Zachariah (about 1749–1837), William (about 1752–1819) and Jesse (1765–1813)^[6]. The Find a Grave memorial names the same children but lists two different sons called John^[5].

• Zachariah married in Fairfax County about 1768. By 1790 he was in Surry County, North Carolina, and by 1800 in Ashe County, according to his WikiTree profile^[9]. See Spurlins of Ashe and Alleghany Counties.
• William married Ann Charltran in Fairfax County, served in the county militia, and moved to the newly formed Chatham County, North Carolina, by 1772. He died there in 1819^[10].
• John is identified in the online trees with "Big John" Spurlin of Lincoln County, North Carolina. No document yet found confirms that link (see "Big John" Spurling and the Spurlin DNA Project).
• Jesse is the least certain. His WikiTree profile relies on Ancestry databases and member trees. It says he served in the War of 1812 and died at Fort Meigs, Ohio, in 1813^[11].

The name of Jeremiah Jr.'s wife, Hannah, is also uncertain. WikiTree and Find a Grave call her Hannah Mae Johnson (1724–1797)^[5][6]. A FamilySearch tree page for her once carried the surname Spurling, as its old web address shows. It now shows only "Hannah", born about 1715 in Virginia and died in 1797 at Alexandria, with no historical documents attached^[12]. The WikiTree biography of Jeremiah III says a tax roll of 16 October 1797 listed Hannah Spurling next door to her son^[13].

Jeremiah Spurling III (c. 1745 – c. 1810)

WikiTree's profile of the third Jeremiah calls him "third in his line of that name". It says he appears to have spent his whole life in Fairfax County. Tax records of 1789 and 1797 place his home on the road to the Little Falls warehouse near Falls Church^[13]. The biography lists more than a dozen Fairfax County lawsuits between 1770 and 1807. It says the 1790 enumeration recorded his household as eleven white persons^[13]. In 1793 and 1797 he bought large tracts in Pittsylvania County, apparently for his grown sons^[13]. The biography says he was living with his son William in 1810 and died before the end of that year, and that his heirs sold the Pittsylvania land in 1813. The profile's date field gives his death as 1816^[13].

Sons in Kentucky

Two of Jeremiah III's sons moved to Kentucky about 1816: William (1769–1857) and Hanson (1771–1838). Their families settled in Clark, Green and Taylor counties^[14][15]. Find a Grave memorials in Taylor County record gravestone inscriptions naming a Jeremiah Spurling as the father of both. The memorial for William A. "Pat" Spurling (26 December 1769 – 28 May 1857) is a cenotaph in the Spurlington United Methodist Church Cemetery. It gives his birthplace as Fairfax, Virginia, and records the inscription "Son of Jeremiah Spurling".^[16] The memorial for John Hanson Spurling (4 October 1771 – 20 December 1838), born in Virginia and buried in the same cemetery, says his headstone names him as the son of Jeremiah Spurling.^[17] Accounts of William's actual grave differ. His WikiTree profile says he was buried on his farm about a mile from Spurlington, "a town named for the family",^[14] while his Find a Grave memorial places the grave in a smaller burial ground, the Raley-Spurling Cemetery, behind the church cemetery.^[16]

William's son John Kipsey Spurling (1813–1897) died at Spurlington, according to his memorial.^[18] The place-name scholar Robert M. Rennick recorded that the Spurlington post office, established in 1880, was named for the pioneer forebears of its first postmaster, John Spurling Sr.^[19] Local accounts name the first postmaster as John Kipsey Spurling.^[20] See Spurlington, Kentucky.

The Westmoreland branch

Not all of the family left Westmoreland County. A list of the county's slave owners in 1782, printed in The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography in 1903, includes a Jeremiah Spurling with one enslaved person^[21]. WikiTree says the younger son of Jeremiah Sr., Thomas (born about 1712), was placed under the guardianship of his grandfather Thomas Chandler in 1726^[22].

DNA

The FamilyTreeDNA Spurlin surname project groups six testers in a lineage it labels "Descendants of Jeremiah Spurling b. 1667 – d. 1725 (Virginia)". Three have Big Y tests placing them in haplogroup R-BY141437. Two others are assigned to its upstream branch R-FGC13959, and one, with only a basic SNP test, to the broad R-M343. The lineage includes men whose paper trails lead to Jeremiah Spurling, to Zachariah Spurlin of Ashe County, and to John Spurlin of Lincoln County, North Carolina^[2]. A tester who names Jeremiah Spurling (1704–1770) as his ancestor does not match this group^[2]. See Sperling/Spurling DNA surname project.

Later generations

The names Jeremiah, Zachariah and Keziah recur among the family's descendants. WikiTree lists a Jeremiah Spurlin born in Truro Parish in 1781 who died in Alleghany County, North Carolina, in 1870. It makes him a son of Zachariah^[23]. John Spurlin (1780–1851) of Wilkes and Ashe counties had brothers named Zachariah and Jeremiah^[24]. WikiTree also files the 1781 Jeremiah under Long Creek Baptist Church in Warrenton, Georgia, and lists a son born in Warren County, Georgia, in 1806^[23]. These Georgia links may confuse him with a different Jeremiah Spurling (1760–1820), who died at Warrenton according to FamilySearch^[25].

Caveats

Almost all of this comes from user-contributed genealogy sites. Several of the WikiTree profiles were created by a 2014 GEDCOM import^[13][22]. Their biographies cite Westmoreland and Fairfax County deed, will, court and survey books by volume and page but do not transcribe them. Researchers should check these references against the original records.