Nearly all of the records cited so far in the matter of the Jacoby family were land records, especially those in Culpeper Co., Virginia. In 1762, Francis Jacoby is credited with a payment to the estate of Richard Burk.
The will of John Daniel Jacoby was filed in the Culpeper Court, on the 17th of December, 1767. In it, John Daniel Jacoby named five children and a wife. The wife was Anna Barbara. The children were Francis, John, Daniel, Elizabeth, and Anna Barbara.
Three hundred acres of land and slaves are mentioned. Anna Barbara was named as the youngest child. The executors were to be his wife, son Francis, and beloved friend John Strother.
The estate was valued at £ 118 by the appraisers, Thomas McClanaham, Thomas Baker, and Sebastian Hatler.
The 300 acres of land was apparently acquired from a survey that had been made for James Compton, Esq., one of the Commissioners of His Majesty’s Navy, for 10,000 acres. Before the grant for this was issued, Compton sold three 300 acre parcels out of this to three different people. One of these was Daniel Jacobus, who obtained a grant for the land in his own name. The land for Compton was clearly defined as being in the Little Fork on Cannon R., Battle Run, and Hunger Run, Rush R.
We seem to have an unusual family in the Jacobys. As an alien, according to his son, he would not have been English. Several things suggest a German origin for the family. But the interactions with the Germans is minimal; Daniel Jacobus seems to be more involved with the English. And, we have Francis, who goes to London where he finds a wife of German birth.
It seems to me that Daniel Jacoby was very much at home in England, probably arising from living there for some time. We know that the wife of Francis Jacoby was living with her German uncle in London. I wonder if the Jacoby family had been associated in some way with Ralph Ladenburg, the uncle. Had they worked together in London? Maybe Daniel Jacoby wrote to Ralph Ladenburg and suggested that his son, Francis, was not finding a wife. Maybe Ralph wrote to Daniel and said that he knew a good girl who was not married.
Of course, this is fiction. I
do
mean to suggest that the history of the Jacoby (and Lotspeich) families, were it to be known, would probably be a tale that went beyond your usual immigrant story. I would like to inspire some of the descendants to dig deeper.
(03 Feb 01)
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.