Received email (12/8/20) from Tom Rhyne concerning information he found in Fredrick County VA court house concerning John Yoho. Tom's information not only contains new facts about the history of John Yoho in Fredrick County it corrects and rewrites some of that history.
Tom explained his reason for contacting me about that history:
I first corresponded with Hugh Yoho and I believe he copied my emails to you. One of you sent me information about "The Year of the Avenging Angels" which was 1738 when a couple of thousand immigrants died on their way across the Atlantic to North America. My ancestors were on the Fox as it made its way across.
As a way of thanking you for this information, I kept my mental radar scanning for Yoho as I perused some 15,000 pages in the Frederick County, Virginia Court Order (minute) Books and Will Books over the course of two months last year.
I am researching and writing a perhaps 1,000-page history of two colonial families, the Tiptons and the Butlers. Around 1680 the Tiptons came from Jamaica to Maryland then to Virginia and finally moved to East Tennessee. The Butlers came from Ulster, Ireland to perhaps Pennsylvania and then certainly to Frederick County, Virginia by the early 1740s. The Tiptons and Butlers were intermarried in Frederick County. John Yoho bought the survey warrant of land from my 5th-great grandfather John Tipton.
The first new piece of information from Tom was that John Yoho had obtained the land from John Tipton. Up to this time, Hugh Yoho and I assumed the land was directly commissioned from Lord Fairfax in 1766.
The second new piece of information was that John Yoho bought the survey land warrant in 1755 which means John had this land eleven years before the official Lord Fairfax deed of 1766. In addition, Tom's research established that John Yoho was present in Fredrick County Virginia in 1760 and served as an appraiser for the county.
Frederick County, Virginia Will Book, vol. 2, p. 467:
On September 2, 1760 the court appointed John Yoho and others to inventory and appraise the estate of late German Martin Wetzel, a neighbor of Yoho in the area. Yoho was obviously known to the justices of the peace and trusted with this assignment for which each participant had to swear an oath for his faithful performance.As a result of the above new findings, my earlier hypothesis that this John Yoho may have been a son of Johannes Yoho is no longer valid. In two articles on the Yoho Website, the Origin of Most American Yoho's and the History of Johannes's Children I had questioned whether the John Yoho of the Lord Fairfax Grant in Virginia was Johannes or his son John. The documentation provided by Tom settles that question. The John of the Fairfax deed must have been Johannes Yoho for the following reason:
Johannes's son John was born in 1746 which would have made him nine years old in 1755, the year John bought the Tipton Survey. He would have been only 14 in 1760 the year Fredrick County appointed a John Yoho to appraise the estate of Martin Wetzel. Tom pointed out that when Yoho was appointed to inventory/appraise the estate of Martin Wetzell in 1760, he had to be at least 21 years old (of legal age that is). No court would send out a man younger than that to do such a sensitive job. Those who did inventories/appraisals were trusted, respectable men in the community and quite often friends of the deceased. They rummaged through every item they believed valuable in his personal (not real) estate and estimated its price.
Another new finding by Tom was that Johannes (John) was not present in Fredrick VA in 1762 as he was sued with a court "attachment" on his personal property after he evidenly left the area to perhaps move some of his family to Pennsylvania and Western Virginia where they eventually settled.
Frederick County, Virginia Order Book, vol. 10, pp. 311-312:
On November 3, 1762 Henry Earnest got an attachment in the Frederick County Court against the personal (not real) estate of John Yoho who has privately moved out of this county or so absconded that the ordinary process of law cannot be served on him for £3, 5 sh., 2 d., and ½ d. By his attorney Earnest (who may not have been present) proved his accounts (showing what Yoho owed him from his books). John Funk was summoned as garnishee (who had attached some of Yoho’s personal property) and said he had more of the effects of John Yoho in his hands that would be of value sufficient to satisfy the debt and (court) costs. The court condemned the amount in Funk’s hands to satisfy the plaintiff Earnest. (Funk may have been the local constable or a justice of the peace whom Earnest had asked to attached some of Yoho’s property by a special writ and seize it outright. A John Funk owned land near Yoho.)Tom nicely explained the Order Book finding:
Yoho bought John Tipton's warrant to survey and had the land surveyed on January 31, 1755. At that point it was technically his property. No one else could survey and claim it. Tipton moved off leaving the house, cleared land, and any outbuildings. With the sale price Tipton later established himself about 14 miles away on the Seven Bends of the North Shenandoah River. But like so many who had made surveys before and after him Yoho dawdled about going to the Proprietor's Office to pay the fees and get a deed for the land. This was a way of saving money and defrauding the Proprietary and the government because one was not paying rents to the Proprietary nor special taxes to the county or colony related to paying the costs of the French and Indian War. In March 26, 1765 the Proprietor, Lord Thomas Fairfax, issued an ultimatum to those who had not gotten their deeds. If they did not finish the process by September 29, 1766, he would begin legal process against them to escheat their land and remove them from it. Thus Yoho, Jonathan Tipton, and many others made their way to the Proprietor's Office at White Post, Virginia to obtain their deeds in 1766. Yoho showed up there on August 19 about 40 days before the deadline. So Yoho had been living on this property for more than 11 years without a deed. And so had Jonathan Tipton who went to the office the next day.
The final piece of information in the Fredrick County Court record book concerning the sale of the land was known by Hugh and I and in fact was the only information we had up to this time.
Frederick County Virginia Deed Book, vol. 15, pp. 233-235 and Frederick County, Virginia Order Book, vol. 15, p. 277
Yoho sold his 246-acre tract to Scotsman Alexander Macher on July 22-23, 1771 for £60 and it was recorded in court on November 6, 1771 probably by Macher.Tom Pointed out though Yoho may have left the county for an unspecified length of time when Henry Earnest sued him on attachment, he apparently came back because the land conveyance describes him clearly as of the County of Frederick as it also does Macher.
The chronology of events occurred as follows:
- John Yoho Had survey on January 31, 1755 and took possession of property from John Tipton. See Northern Neck Warrants and Surveys, vol. 2, p. 171
- Given ultimatum on March 26, 1765 to procure deed by September 29, 1766. See Virginia Northern Neck Land Grants, vol. 2, p. 168
- Got deed (also called patent or grant) on August 19, 1766. See Virginia Northern Neck Land Grants, vol. 2, p. 175
- Sold July 22, 1771. See Frederick County, Virginia Deed Book, vol. 15, pp. 233-235
- Recorded in court November 6, 1771 by new owner Alexander Macher. See Frederick County, Virginia Order Book, vol. 15, p. 277; also noted in the deed book
On another but related subject, I aksed Tom Rhyne if he was related to the Rine Family as the Yoho's are related to the Rine's through Lazarus Rine (1809-1864) and Rachel Yoho. Lazarus’s father was John Rine (1782-1863) who settled on or near what is known as Rine’s Ridge in Marshall County (then Ohio County) WV (then VA. Many of the Yoho’s settled in this area including Johannes who lived on Fish Creek. There are 175 Rine’s in the Yoho database all descendants of John Rine. Tom responded:
My name could be spelled various ways: Rine, Rein, Rhine, Rhein, Reinau, etc., etc., etc. I would love to know your connection with the Rines. Ours came to York, PA before some of them moved to NC around 1754.
Although we did not establish any link between the Rine-Yoho and Rhyne family it would be interesting to research a possible link.
Tom Rhyne lives in Strassburg Virginia.