Sinclair, Samuel

Samuel Sinclair (“Saintclair” in the Mason family manuscript account book) was born in Loudoun County, Virginia, on 10 September 1762, the oldest son of John and Sarah Sinclair. Samuel had six sisters, four older and two younger, and five brothers. After John’s death in 1792, Samuel served as co-administrator with his father's second wife, Mary, of his father’s estate. Mary brought suit against Samuel in 1793 when she planned to remarry, perhaps hoping to enlarge her dowry. The case ended in abatement and with Mary’s remarriage. In 1804, Samuel brought suit in chancery against his younger brother Amos and other family members in an attempt to settle what remained of the estate after Mary died. The court decreed that a previous division of the estate was to be regarded as final and conclusive, and further ordered that Mary Sinclair’s dower portion be divided among eleven parties, including Samuel.

On 7 November 1792, a few months after his father’s death, Samuel married Edith Craven. Edith Craven was born in Warwick in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on 7 November 1768 to Thomas and Eleanor Craven. Samuel and Edith resided in Loudoun and had four children—Thomas McDowell Sinclair, George Hough Sinclair, Sarah Sinclair, and Samuel Craven Sinclair. Samuel Sinclair probably made his living as a planter. An inventory completed after his death recorded livestock--fifteen hogs, three sows, twelve piglets, a bull, five steers, seven cows, four calves, twelve horses, and twelve sheep. He also owned a variety of farming tools, such as ploughs, and at least two wagons. Sinclair's property holdings also included a corn house and perhaps a blacksmith shop, suggested by the presence of blacksmith tools in the estate inventory.

Sinclair died on 27 May 1806, and was interred at Loudoun’s New Valley Baptist Cemetery, where his headstone still stands. His estate was appraised by Aaron and Preseley Sanders and Isaac Steere, who valued it at time of his death as worth $3,185.49. Nearly half this value lay in the nine people he held enslaved: Mary and her four children; siblings Suckey, age six, and Jack, age three; William; and Joseph.

Edith Sinclair outlived her husband, dying in 1822. Aaron Sanders, who had appraised her husband’s estate sixteen years earlier, did the same for Edith’s. Although she had owned six slaves in 1810, only two are listed on the inventory: a girl named Emily and a man named Joe, perhaps the Joseph previously owned by her husband. Her property, including Joe, was sold at an estate sale in November of 1823.

By Adam Nubbe