Notes on Peter Glascock Sr.
By 1741 Peter had left Virginia's Tidewater and moved northeast to the backwoods to join his brother John at the foot of Mother Leathercoat mountain. On June 19, 1741, Peter leased from Captain George Brent, for whom present Brentsville Virginia
was named, a 200 acre tract, and it was described as being on Slaty or Slate Run, and was just west of Brentsville.
On the eve of the Revolution in 1770, Peter, or his son Peter Jr., was hailed before the Loudoun court for behaving in an ungentlemanly manner towards Abraham Lewis. Peter was the leader of three men who each had to post bonds of good behavior
and "severally acknowledge themselves indebted to our Sovereign Lord King George the Third." Peter Sr. was sixty-one in 1775, so probably he did not fight in the War. However, he was appointed surveyor of the road from Painter Skin (Pantherskin
Creek) to the Blue Ridge, and was charged with keeping the road in good repair. Because of this "Road Reviewer" service, his descendants are entitled to D.A.R. membership.
In 1741 the names of John Glascock and Peter Glascock are on the tax lists of polls who voted for burgesses in Prince William County, Virginia. Peter continued to live in this region for twenty more years or so, and John lived there until his
death in 1789. They were backwoodsmen and a part of the American frontier that was strongly growing in independence and economics. A poll list for 1761 survives, and it shows that Peter Glascock voted for Colonel John Baylis and Colonel Henry Lee
(father of Lighthorse Harry Lee of Revolutionary fame and grandfather of General Robert E. Lee) for burgesses of Prince William County. His first wife Jane evidently died in the 1760's, and he married Mary Rector of the family for which present
Rectortown, Virginia was named.
The tax list for Fauquier County for 1782 shows a Peter Glascock as head of a family with two white polls and eight slaves. In the same year, the tax list for Loudoun County shows a Peter Glascock with one white poll and eleven slaves. No doubt
one of these men is Peter Glascock Sr., and the other is his son Peter Glascock Jr. A neighbor of Peter several miles to the west was John Marshall, who was born in 1755 in Fauquier County, and became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1801. In
the 1780's, Peter Glascock was sued by John Marshall for two pounds, and Marshall collected, proving that it doesn't pay to go to court against the best lawyer in the country. Shortly after the tax lists for 1782 were made up, Peter and his
family by his second wife, Mary, moved to Rowan County, North Carolina which was then the whole Northeast corner of the state.
It appears that a large group of Fauquier families migrated at the same time to the North Carolina Piedmont, perhaps in one caravan. This migration was just after the end of the War, for Cornwallis surrendered after the Battle of Yorktown in
1781. Peter and his family moved South and settled on Dutchman's Creek in the Yadkin Valley of Rowan County (now Davie County) just north of Salisbury.
Some of Peter's sons fought in the North Carolina militia during the war, and perhaps they were attracted to new land in the Carolinas during this adventure and consequently moved there after the hostilities ceased. Three of them, Gregory
Glascock, Peter Glascock Jr., and Jesse Glascock, are listed on the 1778 Rowan County tax list, and probably they encouraged the others to move to North Carolina. Very likely the Virginia homes and farms of these people were destroyed during the
War as were many of both Tories and Patriots as the tides of war moved back and forth, and they were forced to leave their old homesteads to find new land. Old Peter Glascock did not live long after his arrival in North Carolina. On October 24,
1783, he wrote his will. It included a plantation of 320 acres lying between Dutchman's Creek and Cedar Creek in Rowan County, ten Negroes and several amounts of cash. The children born of his first wife, who were apparently all back in Virginia
by this time, received only one shilling each; while the children of his second wife, who were apparently with him in North Carolina, received the bulk of his estate.
Peter's deathplace has been documented as Double Creek Farm, Davie Co., NC or Dutchman's Creek, Rowan Co., NC.
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