In talking about the John Rector family, there has been some confusion because there were two Catharines and two Henrys. In this note, the confusion will be compounded because there were more John Rectors. All of our discussion has centered on the family of Hans Jacob Richter, the 1714 immigrant and his children. He did have a son John, and this John has been deeply involved in the recent discussions.
Today we introduce John Rector who came in 1734. He arrived at Philadelphia with nineteen other Nassau-Siegen colonists, on 23 Sep 1734, on the ship Hope . This John did not live long in Virginia, as he died in 1742. This fact is used to distinguish him from other John Rectors. John Rector (d. 1742) was married by 1736, and B. C. Holtzclaw thought that he was married to a daughter of John and Mary Spilman of the 1714 group. The records provide ample evidence that John (d. 1742) and his wife had two sons, John, Jr., and Nathaniel. Nathaniel was the younger of the two; he married Anne and died sometime before 20 February 1805, when his estate was sold.
Until a few years ago, when Barbara Vines Little researched the question, John, Jr., was confused with another John Rector. She pointed out that the records generated by John Rector would have been difficult for one person to generate. She traced a path of land purchases and sales that led south for John Rector and another path which led north. It would have been very unlikely that one individual would have been involved in these land deals which were not in the same region.
One John Rector purchased and sold land in Fauquier County, then in Culpeper County, and then appears in North Carolina. He had a son, Benjamin, who said, in his Rev. War pension application, that he had originally been of Culpeper County, and that he had served as a substitute for his father, John Rector, in a North Carolina regiment. Barbara Vines Little made a convincing case that this John Rector was the son of John Rector (d. 1742).
Meanwhile, there was another John Rector who was appearing in the records of Fauquier County, at this same time as the North Carolina John. They must have different individuals, though in the past they had been treated as one person. Holtzclaw, for example, said that the Fauquier John had a second wife, Mary, and left a will in 1815, and had nine children. Holtzclaw also said that this Fauquier John and the North Carolina John were the same individuals. The work of Little made it clear that this could not be the case.
With this challenge, John Alcock examined the records again (using his own book, "Fauquier Families, 1759-1799") and found the second John who had been overlooked. The lesson for us is that we must examine the records outside of the action arena to find the anomalies. John (d. 1742) came to Fauquier Co. in 1734 and left a son, John, Jr. Because Little went outside of Fauquier Co. and looked at the records in other areas, she was able to prove there were two John Rectors whereas previously there had been thought to be only one. Coming up, who was the second John Rector?
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.