Tarkington Family in the Colonies

By now it is becoming evident that our ancestors only show up in the very early records when they have a “brush with the law”. This might give a false impression. On the whole, our TARKINGTON ancestors were hard working, working honest landowners. But we must realize that we would learn nothing at all about them if they had not had some sort of contact with the legal system, even though in an adversary manner.

The one thing we do know for certain is that William was the son of John Tarkington. William was named in his father's will in 1715 and was also named in two tax lists dated 1717 and 1721. He received a land patent about 1730, and witnessed a will in 1746, shortly before his death (see #121 through #124).

There is a contradiction I n the early records regarding the will of our William Tarkington, which was written and signed in February of 1747 and probated in September of 1748. Some records say “wife mentioned but not named”, and other records say that the wife's name was Anne (see #117 and #125). Although there is no data to back it up, it has been assumed that William married Anne Starke who was named in the 1703 petition for headrights (see #99, #100). If so, then she was probably the daughter of William and Frances Starke of Richmond County, Virginia

It was the practice to name children in a will in the order of their birth (see #90-C). The next set of documents seems to bear this out. The minutes of the Tyrrell County Court, published in 1981 and 1983 in two Volumes, covers the many dealings the TARKINGTON's had with the court system. There were too many pages to include in the appendix, so the dates and pertinent information has been abstracted (see #126, #127). Of the six sons of William and Anne - John showed up in 1751, Joshua and Benjamin in 1752 and Joseph in 1756. The two youngest, William and Zebulon, did not show up during the period covered by the reference books - up to 1761.

Research begins to get more difficult as we move into the next generation. This was mainly due to the fact that William and his wife were able to raise nine childre, six of them sons, in times when infant mortality was extremely high. As these young men married and raised families, they kept using the same names, i.e. William, John, Joshua, Joseph, Benjamin and Zebulon. They compounded the situation by carrying these same names through the subsequent generations. As the years moved on, many tax and census lists revealed two and three individuals with the same name.

During the years before the Revolutionary War, each colony enacted laws requiring military service. We see some of our TARKINGTON males on the muster rolls for Tyrrell County dated 1754 (see #128, #129). There are other documents naming the Tarkingtons dated 1755, along with an article from the NC Historical Review dated 1775 (see #130, #131, #132).

We are now up to the period of the American Revolutionary War. So far, research has not uncovered records of any TARKINGTON ancestor who fought on either side - patriot or loyalist. So, we have no way of knowing their political ideology during this time of conflict. However, it is difficult to imagine anyone not have loyalty to one side or the other. We can give the reader some insight into what life was like in the Carolinas during this period of history (see #133 through #141). That fact that no TARKINGTON held any political office until well into the eighteen hundreds, might indicate either neutral and loyalist feelings (see #142 - surrounding counties were also searched).