November 21, 2024
research notes

Richard Wharton never married a Sally Scott! A careful review of the records shows that her husband was Richard MORTON.

- - mcwieser

2/20/2020 – A further update regarding DNA evidence has been added at the end of this post.

10/23/2019 This post has been updated with further information about the will of John Scott who was Sally Scott’s father.

On a number of online family tree sites Richard Wharton – of Spotsylvania County VA, Fayette and Clark Counties KY and Wayne County IN – is said to have married Sally Scott on 19 August 1790 in Campbell County VA. The specific source usually given for this marriage is Ancestry.com’s Virginia, Select Marriages, 1785-1940 1 and related Ancestry databases but some people reference the Mannon Genealogy or a DAR lineage paper set. This Sally Scott is either supposed to be the mother of Sally Scott Wharton, Richard’s oldest daughter, or to have died in 1792 and Richard’s first daughter with his second wife Mary McLeland is supposed to have been named for her.

But there are at least 4 serious problems here. Let’s examine them from least critical to most critical –

  • Richard Wharton has no known connections to Campbell County Virginia.  All of the evidence from his Revolutionary war service indicates connections to Spotsylvania County in Virginia.
  • There are no Richard Whartons in Campbell County marriage, tax and probate records between 1785 and 1795. And there are no other Whartons in these records either.There is no evidence that there were ANY Wharton families in Campbell County during this decade.
  • Richard Wharton is present on the tax lists for Fayette County Kentucky2 continuously from 1788-1791 and then for many years on the lists of Clark County, Kentucky which was cut from Fayette in 1792.  The distance between Fayette County, KY and Campbell County, VA is over 440 miles on today’s roads. And travelers in the 1790s were crossing the Blue Ridge Mountains and 2 sizeable rivers on a blazed horse trail and ferries because at this point there was no wagon road and no bridges. Various online sources suggest a man on a good horse could make 30-40 miles a day on level terrain.  Being generous and assuming he averaged 30 miles a day (remember those rivers and mountains) it would have taken Richard Wharton at best 16 days hard travel to get to Campbell County.  And you don’t just show up the day before the wedding.  There is no visitation date for the 1790 Fayette tax list containing Richard Wharton’s record.  Another list has dates in late May.  Earlier lists with dates show that taxes were typically collected between late May and mid-July.  So its just barely possible that Richard could have made it to Campbell County after paying his taxes for 1790.
  • Richard Wharton kept a family bible record.  There is a lovely set of 4 images, placed on line as part of the gallery for the Oldaker Family Tree on Ancestry.com3.  In those pages he recorded his birth, the birth of his wife Mary (McLeland) Wharton, their marriage date and the births and marriages of all his children and many of their grandchildren as well as the death dates of his wife Mary and several of their children and grandchildren.  The earliest records are clearly in the same handwriting, probably Richard’s own hand.  They were all entered together sometime between 1820 and 1825. Thereafter the individual entries clearly appear to be written contemporaneously with the events they record and as time goes on they are clearly written in differing handwriting.  There is no record of a first wife, no birth date, no marriage date and no death date.  Richard and his heirs were clearly careful and complete record keepers. Why would he have left information about his first wife out of this record?  Especially if he named his first daughter after that first wife.
  • Perhaps the most challenging issue around this proposed marriage is that the first source quoted by researchers (referenced above) actually says Sally Scott married Richard MORTON in Campbell County on 19 August 1790.  Several online researchers, when asked about this, said that Morton is a mis-reading of poor handwriting and that a WH was mistaken for M by the original indexer.  This is very easy to research.  The Campbell County Virginia Marriage Records 4 are on microfilm at the Family History Library.  The microfilm of the actual marriage entry is of very good quality and there is no question  – the name is Morton.  There is also an excellent index which show marriages for each surname, male and female.  Between 1785-1800  there are 3 Morton marriages – Josiah in 1790, Richard in 1790 and William in 1799.  The same index shows that there are NO Wharton marriages between 1785 and 1820. There could possibly be an issue with the index since the index microfilmed is clearly a copy of an earlier index because all entries are in the same handwriting.  However, there are two supporting set of records.  In 1937, Joel Ricks published a transcription of the Marriage Bonds for Campbell County5 which is also in the Family History Library. In that volume, on August 19th 1790 Richard MORTON posted bond for his upcoming marriage to Sally Scott. And 1971, Lucy Barber and Hazel Williamson published “Marriages of Campbell County, 1792-1819” 6 which includes the following text

Morton, Richard and Sally Scott, bond 19 August 1790.  Richard Morton (b) and John Scott (b)

The name of bondsman John Scott led to additional evidence for the groom’s identity as Richard Morton.

John Scott died in Campbell County in 1795 (between the signing of his will on 20 February and the proving of that will on 3 September.)  In a published volume of will transcriptions7, the will of John Scott divides his residual estate among his children, including Sally MORTON.  I have reviewed the microfilmed original will books and there is nothing in the will that indicates Sally MORTON is deceased or that Sally MORTON is living in a different community.  And in 1793, per his bible record,  Richard Wharton married Mary McLeland in Kentucky so any first wife would be deceased well before 1795.  As an aside – the Mannon Genealogy,8  cited by many researchers, is very specific that the Scott family was very well off with numerous enslaved people and substantial property. The DAR themselves have now marked that line of descent as needing further proof before being used again.

The Scotts….were of the best of Virginia stock and very aristocratic, and depended upon servants to attend them at all time.  Sally Scott (Sally Wharton Mannon’s mother) had two maiden sisters who never attempted to comb their own hair or make their own toilet , but left all such work to their negro maids.  They were all refined and well educated and when Sally Scott married Richard Wharton, who was not supposed to be in their class or of their rank, to avoid being shunned and twitted, she went with husband to the new country of Kentucky….

However, this simply doesn’t work with John Scott’s will or inventory.  He doesn’t leave his heirs any enslaved people and doesn’t list substantial property.  In his inventory, his appraisers document a modest household – a few cattle and a bull, 1 feather bed, various earthenware dishes, a walnut table, 1 candlestick, 6 knives and forks, 2 chairs, miscellaneous tools and 1 mare “very old and poor.”  He also has only a Psalter and no other books or family bible.  The total personal estate is only $23.46.9  This is not a household of wealthy, educated, aristocrats.  What is described in the Mannon Genealogy is simply a fantasy.

The evidence in this situation seems very, very clear – The man who married Sally Scott in 1790 in Campbell County is Richard Morton.  There is no connection to Richard Wharton.

We can be relatively sure that the information that Richard’s “first wife was Sally Scott” came solely from the Mannon Genealogy which was written circa 1913 by George Mannon who indicates that the work was started by a group of Mannon descendants in the 1880s.  In that brief typescript he states that Richard Wharton married Sally Scott and that their first child, a son, was born in Virginia before they decided to move to Kentucky.  (which is inconsistent with the earlier quote that they moved immediately to Kentucky.) There are many, many incorrect and contradictory statements in this document and this statement is clearly incorrect based on the continuous residence of Richard Wharton in Fayette KY from 1788 through 1791 and beyond.  And there is no son recorded in the Family Bible – Sally Scott Wharton in the oldest child of the family. The Mannon Genealogy cannot be considered a reliable source for the earlier generations of family.

Why did Richard and Mary name their first daughter Sally Scott Wharton? Well family lore states that Mary was raised by her uncle William Scott. Perhaps this daughter was named for one of William’s daughters. Or perhaps she was named for one of Mary McLeland’s Scott aunts. We really have no way of knowing for sure. She could even have been named for the midwife which was not uncommon in frontier culture.

Since I wrote the above I completed an Ancestry at-DNA test – I am not a descendant of Richard and Mary McLeland Wharton – I am a descendant of Mary’s brother James and his wife Jane Rulon. So it set off bells when I started getting DNA matches from descendants of Richard Wharton through his daughter Sally Scott Wharton Mannon. The Mannon Genealogy insists that Sally is a child of Richard’s first marriage.  Therefore her descendants and I should have no genetic connection.  This DNA connection MUST come from Mary McLeland Wharton.  The amount of DNA is small but considered relevant by experts and the distance is large – at best we are 5th cousins.  But that is exactly what I would expect to find if I was looking for a DNA connection traceable through my Great-Great-Great-Great-Grand Aunt.  One more piece of evidence that confirms – Richard Wharton never married Sally Scott of Campbell County, Virigina.

  1. Virginia, Select Marriages, 1785-1940, on-line database. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc, 2014 ↩
  2. Tax books, 1788-1875, Fayette County (Kentucky), Tax Assessor , Family History Library microfilm #2110987, also available as a digitized image at www.familysearch.org ↩
  3. Oldaker Family Tree,  Ancestry.com online database, visited 16 August 2019 ↩
  4. Marriage registers, 1782-1936; index to marriage registers, 1782-1930, Campbell County (Virginia), Clerk of the County Court, Family History Library microfilm #31050 and also available as a digitized image at www.familysearch.org ↩
  5. Joel Ricks, Campbell County, Virginia marriage bonds 1781-1854, typed by the Genealogical Society of Utah,
    1937, page 92. ↩
  6. Marriages of Campbell County, Virginia, 1782-1810, compiled and published by Lucy Harrison Miller Baber and Hazel Letts Williamson, Lynchburg, Virginia : L.H.M. Baber and H.L. Williamson, c1971, page 72 ↩
  7. T.L.C. Genealogy, Campbell County, Virginia Wills (Miami Beach, Florida) 1991 ↩
  8. George, Mannon, Mannon Genealogy, unpublished, selected photocopied pages furnished as part of proof in the DAR application of Esther Louise Severs Dungan, national number 565479, application created in 1972.  At this time the standard of document was not high and undocumented genealogies were accepted as proof for generations beyond that of grandparents. ↩
  9. Campbell County Will Book 1, pages 278 & 279 (will), pages 328 & 329 (inventory), Campbell County (Virginia), Clerk of the County Court, Family History Library microfilm 31015, item 3 ↩

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.