County (Richmond), Virginia
(Note: Webpage in preparation)
Very little to go on yet - immigration record, 1810 and 1820 census records, and newspaper account.
N
 | Webpage Credits |
Thanks go to
| Immigration Record |
From companion webpage...
- Samuel Grimshaw, 1805, Virginia
Scott, Kenneth, compiler, 1979;
Samuel Grimshaw also arrived in the U.S. in 1805, as indicated in another source of immigrant information, the records of British aliens who were living in the U.S. during the War of 1812 and were required to register as resident aliens. The following information is provided in the reference (Scott, 1979, p. 324):
Grimshaw, Samuel, age 30, in U.S. since Sept. 1795, Henrico Co., farmer, (5-12 Sept. 1812)
Samuel apparently registered in September 1812 while living in Henrico County, Virginia at age 30 as a farmer. No family is indicated, but it seems unlikely he was a descendant of earlier Virginian immigrants; he would have probably been born in the U.S. and therefore not an alien.
This reference includes records of registrations from 21 states in the U.S. Four Grimshaws are included – Samuel from Virginia, and Isaac, John and Joseph from New York. The last three are described in subsequent sections of this report. The following background information is provided in the reference (Scott, 1979, p. v-vi):
The recording of ships’ passenger lists was not required by law until 1819, and prior to that date only scattered lists of immigrants exist. It is, therefore, of the greatest importance that another source can supply information concerning thousands of British subjects – Canadian, English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and West Indian, most of them immigrants – who were residing in the United States during the War of 1812. On June 1, 1812, President Madison sent his war message to Congress, which on June 18 declared war. Subjects of Great Britain were henceforth enemy aliens and were to be dealt with in accordance with an act of July 6, 1798, and a supplementary Act of July 6, 1812.
Accordingly, notice was promptly given that all British subjects in the United States were to report to the marshall of the state or territory of their residence "the persons composing their families, the places of their residence and their occupations or pursuits; and whether, and at what time, they have made the application to the courts required by law, as preparation to their naturalization." It was ordered that notice was to be published in the newspapers and that reports by the aliens were to be sent by the several marshals to the Department of State.
The returns, long in the custody of that department, were many years ago deposited in the National Archives….
Normally a return gave the name of the alien, aged fourteen or more, years of residence in the United States, number of persons in the family, place of residence and status. Happily many returns supply further data of no little genealogical value – country of origin, for example….
| 1810 and 1820 U.S. Census Records |
See companion webpage for 1810 record.
Before the automated search capabilities became available on Ancestry.com, a manual search of printed census indexes was performed, as described on a companion webpage. The results of this search for the 1810 index (and a prior census) are summarized below.
Virginia
Henrico Co
Grenshaw, Samuel
Albemarle Co
Grenshaw, Thomas
Campbell Co
Grishaw, Isaac S.; William
Before the automated search capabilities became available on Ancestry.com, a manual search of printed census indexes was performed, as described on a companion webpage. The results of this search for the 1820 index (and a prior census) are summarized below.
See companion webpage for 1820 record.
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Virginia |
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Grimshaw, Thomas |
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Gremshaw, Eliza. |
It seems likely that Elizabeth may have been Samuel's wife or daughter (or slave?).
| 1829 Newspaper Account |
From "Heritage Quest"
Headline: Advertisement
Paper: Richmond Enquirer; Date: 03-27-1829; Volume: XXV; Issue: 106; Page: [4]; Location: Richmond, Virginia
| Was Samuel Grimshaw a Slaveholder? |
Sketchy evidence indicates that Samuel may have been a slaveholder of William and Elizabeth Grimshaw. Juliet Grimshaw may also have been in the slave family. The following records from the Virginia Historical Society indicate the presence in Virginia of slaves William, Elizabeth and Juliet Grimshaw. The 1820 U.S. Census record (shown above on this webpage) also indicates the presence of Elizabeth Grimshaw in Henrico.
http://www.lexisnexis.com/academic/guides/southern_hist/plantations/plantm1.asp
Section 81, Tayloe, William Henry (1799-1871), Correspondence, 1818-1871
This section consists of 5,800 items, correspondence, 1818-1871, of William Henry Tayloe (of Windsor, King George County, and Mount Airy, Richmond County, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.). Letters concern agricultural operations in Virginia and Alabama, overseers, slaves and slavery, horses, the management of real estate and family affairs. Correspondents include Richard H. Adams, Henry Addison ... William Grimshaw [runaway slave], Rebecca Tayloe (Wormeley) Grymes ...
Section 300, Various Persons, Correspondence, 1756-1970
This section consists of 215 items, letters, 1756-1970, written by or addressed to various persons. An index of names is included at the beginning of the section. Correspondents include Robert Abercrombie, Charles B. Adams, ... Elizabeth Grimshaw [slave], Juliet Grimshaw [slave], William Watts Gwathmey ...
The above records are described on the webpage as follows:
Records of Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations
From the Revolution Through the Civil War
Series M: Selections from the Virginia Historical Society
Part 1: Tayloe Family (1650-1870)
Introduction
Note on Sources
Editorial Note
Other Introductory Material
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
General Introduction (partial)
By Kenneth M. Stampp, Professor Emeritus, University of California at Berkeley
The impact of the ante-bellum southern plantations on the lives of their black and white inhabitants, as well as on the political, economic, and cultural life of the South as a whole, is one of the most fascinating and controversial problems of present-day American historical research. Depending upon the labor of slaves who constituted the great majority of the American black population, the plantations were both homes and business enterprises for a white, southern elite. They were the largest, the most commercialized, and on the whole, the most efficient and specialized agricultural enterprises of their day, producing the bulk of the South's staple crops of tobacco, cotton, sugar, rice, and hemp. Their proprietors were entrepreneurs who aspired to and sometimes, after a generation or two, achieved the status of a cultivated landed aristocracy. Many distinguished themselves not only in agriculture but in the professions, in the military, in government service, and in scientific and cultural endeavors.
Without much basis, it is further conjectured that Virginia-born William Grimshaw of Washington, D.C. (described on a companion webpage), black author of "History of Freemasonry among the Colored People of North America", is descended from this line of Grimshaws.
However, it is also possible that William was descended from slaves owned by Thomas Grimshaw, first of nearby Alexandria, Virginia and later of Winchester, Virginia, although there is no corroborating evidence as there is in the case of Samuel, where Elizabeth Grimshaw is recorded in the 1820 U.S. Census.
Who was Winney Grimshaw, Virginia slave?
Reference is made to a Winnie Grimshaw in a document prepared by Gary Nash. The reference is shown below with the webpage link to it.
http://cip.cornell.edu/DPubS/Repository/1.0/Disseminate/psu.ph/1129773668/body/pdf
The Work of Richard Dunn
Gary B. Nash
University of California, Los Angeles
Richard Dunn's published work thus far spans 42 years-from 1954 when he published a graduate student seminar paper in the William and Mary Quarterly on "The Trustees of Georgia and the House of Commons, 1732- 1752," to 1996 when his introduction to the Journal of John Winthrop appeared. His impressive oeuvre consists of two major scholarly books, an important textbook, four edited volumes of William Penn's papers, the edited journal of one of the key figures in colonial history, another. major book comparing slavery in Jamaica and Virginia nearing completion, twelve chapters in books, articles numbering a baker's dozen, and book reviews as numerous as his age. I tote these up only for the record because Richard Dunn would never want to be measured by the number of pages in print but rather by the quality of the pages.
In life stories, Dunn provides case studies that poignantly explain how differently slavery operated in two of England's most important colonies. The medical and labor histories of Sarah Affir, a Jamaican woman, and Winney Grimshaw, a Virginia slave, dramatize how the relationship of deaths to births in Jamaica, roughly two to one, were reversed in Virginia, and correlatively how the American mainland, receiving only 4-5 percent of all African slaves, came to contain something like 40 percent of the hemispheric black population by the mid-nineteenth century.
The reference cited is an unpublished manuscript:
33. "Sarah Affir vs. Winney Grimshaw: Caribbean vs. Old South Slavery," unpublished mss., 23.
The source of the above document is self-described as follows:
http://cip.cornell.edu/webdocs/
Cornell University Library's Center for Innovative Publishing is a field station for the design, deployment, and effective management of on-line publishing projects from Cornell University, as well as other academic communities, university presses, and scholarly societies. Through active engagement with scholars, and respect for the authoring environment, the CIP is able to cost-effectively tailor its services to specific user needs.
| References |
1Author
2Author
Skeletal webpage posted December 2006. Updated February 2007 with addition of 1810 and 1820 U.S. Census records.
