Col. John Waller, Gent. (1673-1753) My 7th Great Grandfather on My Father’s Side

This Parish Lines map of Colonial Churches shows
the location of King & Queen County, on the left.
From Google.

Col. John Waller was the first of this family line to immigrate to the British colony of Virginia. He arrived sometime around 1693 when he was in his early twenties. He was the son of Dr. John Waller, a man of prominence in Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, England, and his mother was Mary Pomfrett.

John was the eldest in a family of nine children. He was christened on February 23, 1673, in Newport Pagnell, so he was probably born a few days before that. He had two sisters – Mary born May 23, 1674, and Jemima, the youngest born August 31, 1684. John also had five brothers including Thomas born October 17, 1675, Steven born November 24, 1676, Benjamin born about 1678, Dr. Edmund born February 3, 1680, and James born May 25, 1683.

The first record of John being in America is a land record showing that he purchased 1036 acres from Elias Downs. The location of the land was on Pamunkey Neck in King William County. Later it became part of Spotsylvania County.  John was the first of four generations of our family to live in Spotsylvania. He married Dorothy King about 1697, so shortly after having immigrated. See my blog post dated July 6, 2018, for more about Dorothy and their children.

The county seat was moved from Fredericksburg to Spotsylvania in 1839, and at that time a lot of records were lost. This is the reason why exact dates are sometimes unknown. The birth records are from the register in Newport Pagnell, England which survived.

Civic Life

When John was 26 he was appointed as Sheriff of King William County. He held that position from 1699-1702.  According to an article posted on Wikipedia, there was a small building on the property where John and Dorothy lived that served as the county jail. That is the only place I’ve read that tidbit so I am not at all certain that it is true, so don’t quote me.

Two photos of Endfield found on Google

About 1705, John established his plantation and built a large home that he named “Endfield”. In the book Old King William County Homes and Families by Payton Neal Clark, he wrote this about Endfield, “The original home of the Waller family in King William County. The house is situated on the bank of the Mattapony River, and the land is part of the original grant to John Waller by King Charles II. The patent is still in existence. The house is more than one hundred and fifty years old, and has been occupied by a long line of Wallers.”

John’s father died in 1716 when John was 43. He was mentioned in the will. About 1720, when John would have been 47 he served in the military under Captain John West as a Colonel. I don’t know anything more about his service.

Life at Newport Plantation

In 1723, John and Dorothy relocated to Spotsylvania County, Virginia and established a new plantation that they named “Newport” after his place of birth in England. This is where John was living when he died and is the property he left to his son William in his will. Newport was at least 400 acres. He also left 500 acres to his son John.

Survey of Enfield property

John was appointed as a County Judge in King and Queen County in 1705, and according to multiple sources he elected as a member of the House of Burgess, 1719-1722. According to Wikipedia the men who served in the House of Burgess governed their communities along with a royally-appointed Colonial Governor and six-member Council of State. The Governor could veto the actions of this body but it did provide the settlers with “limited say in the management of their own affairs, including their finances.”

When Spotsylvania was formed from King William County, John was sworn in as a Justice of the Peace and as the first County Court Clerk on August 1, 1722. He remained in that position until 1742, when he stepped down and his son Edmund became the second county clerk. Others sworn in at the same time as John were Augustine Smith, John Taliaferro, Wm. Hansford, Richard Johnson and Wm. Bledsoe.  Bledsoe was named Sheriff.

Between 1726 and 1730 John was identified seven times as being involved with various road construction projects. They all seemed to be located near the Po River and Mattapany Church. 

In the year 1727, an act of the Assembly had been passed founding the town of Fredericksburg. John along with John Robinson, Henry Willis, Augustine Smith, John Taliaferro, and others, and their successors were appointed trustees to oversee the building of a town. They were charged with laying out lots and streets on a fifty-acre parcel as well as deciding on locations for the church and a churchyard.

Map of Spotsylvania County showing St. George's Parish

In 1745, John was appointed as a vestryman of Church of England. In Rev. Phillip Slaughter’s History of St. George’s Parish, he describes the duties of a vestryman in this footnote. “The first meeting of the vestry of St. George's Parish, of which we have a record was held in June of 1726, at the lower church on the Rappahannock, and was composed of the following persons, viz. : Rev. Theodosius Staige, minister; Augustine Smith, and John Grayson, church-wardens; John Taliaferro, Francis Thornton, Thomas Chew, William Hansford, Stephen Sharp, and George Wheatle. Among the duties imposed by law in these times upon the vestry was the superintendence of the processioning of land, and the cultivation of tobacco. The vestry was required to divide the parish into so many precincts as to them shall seem convenient, and to appoint two intelligent, honest freeholders, in each precinct, to see such processioning performed. The proceedings incident to this duty occupy a large space in the records of the vestry. These proceedings are not without interest to the antiquarian, as they describe many localities as they were long ago, and recite the names of many of the ancestors of the present generation, who encountered great perils and privations in subduing those lands on which their descendants now repose with none to make them afraid.”

This is an image of the interpretive exhibit board about Col.
John Waller in the museum in Spotyslvania County. 

According to Slaughter’s book, as a vestryman, John was “directed to provide a set of books and plate for each of three congregations in the parish - one in Germanna, one near the present site of Fredericksburg, and the third at Mattapony, which was called the "Mother Church", probably because it was the place of worship for the inhabitants of the frontier before the parish of St. George was erected.” He was also directed to, “send to England for pulpit cloths and cushions for each church in the parish, to be of crimson velvet with gold tassels, each cloth having a cipher with the initials S.G.P.(St. George’s Parish). He was also directed to send for two silver chalices.

John’s brother Edmund died when John was 72. In his will Edmund left 100 pounds to his brother or, if John was deceased, to be divided among John’s children. But, he added that John’ eldest son was to receive 50 pounds. He did not explain why this nephew was supposed to get more than his siblings.

Col. John Waller died on August 2, 1753, when he was 80 years old. In his will, he left each of his grandchildren one Negro each, if they had not received something previously, and twenty shillings. Sadly, even though John had tried to distribute his property fairly to each of his descendants, there was a dispute between his sons when Benjamin objected to the amount of land he had received from his father. Benjamin filed a lawsuit against his brother William and won. As a result, Benjamin received 421 acres in King William County. Eventually, the land that Benjamin accumulated totaled 1496 acres, all of it was left to his son John, who sold the family estate to Carter B. Berkeley in June of 1814, so the plantation was in the family for 87 years.

John is buried in Waller Cemetery on land that was part of his Newport plantation in Spotsylvania.

Sources for this post: Spotsyvania County Road Orders 1722-1734; Rootsweb; Genealogies of Virginia Families by R.M. Glencross, a London Genealogist published in the William and Mary College Quarterly Magazine; Spotsylvania Museum exhibit material; the Wallers of Endfield by Andrew Lewis Riffe with notes by Clayton Torrence; FindAGrave website; Virginia County Records Spotsylvania Co. 1721-1800; Old King William County Homes and Families by Peyton Neal Clark; History of St. George Parish by Rev. Slaughter; Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia, Vol. 2 by William Meade; A History of Caroline County, Virginia by Marshall Wingfield; Virginia Magazine of History and Bio Vol. 26 by Philip Alexander Bruce editor & William Glover.