James, David

David James was a Welsh farmer who moved to Virginia from Chester County, Pennsylvania, in 1765. James rented 150 acres of land his first year in Virginia, which was the average acreage leased by a tenant farmer in Loudoun County. There is no evidence that James ever married. When he wrote his will in 1818, he mentioned no wife or children, though he bequeathed either $50 or $100 to several family members. 

James’s life in Virginia reflected the realities of the credit system in the post-revolutionary world. Credit was based on reputation and physical money was scarce. Filing deeds with the court cost money, so in many cases, documents and bonds were issued and signed between participating parties without entering the official record. The final entry of James’s account in the Mason family manuscript account book is the only way to possibly determine James’s identity. This entry details the name of a defendant in one of James’s numerous court filings regarding property deeds and bond payments. 

On 20 March 1766, James bought four hundred acres of land near modern day Philomont in Loudoun County from Nehemiah Garrison. To pay for this land, James took two bonds from Garrison. Both were to be paid in full in five years. When payments were due, James withheld payment because he had not received a deed for the land. Without a deed, he claimed that he did not improve the land as he normally would have and therefore could not rent the land to pay the bond as planned. Regardless of his inability to pay this debt, James sold 120 acres of this land to Thomas Phillips, who then sold the 120 acres to his brother Jenkins Phillips. Jenkins took the money to Garrison and convinced him to sell James’s land plus one hundred acres more, which spurred a conflict among James, Garrison, and the Phillips brothers. After fifteen years of living on this land, James became indebted to Jenkins Phillips when James believed the property was his. This dispute resulted in two chancery suits and two criminal cases. In the criminal cases, James was charged with disturbing the peace against parties involved in this conflict. 

In the following years, James took Augustine Love, Ananias Randall, and Thomas Botts to court for unpaid debts. Love did not pay his bond for land, Randall never paid for a horse before he left for Kentucky, and Botts died before James received payment from a bond.  

James was charged three more times with disturbing the peace and once for assault by the time he died on 11 February 1828. At his death, James had lived in Loudoun County for sixty-three years and owned seventy-eight and a half acres of land, with a few other possessions to his name. After he died, James’s land was sold to pay his debts. 

 

By Andrew Snowman