Tom McCabe's Genealogy 2025

Taken from The Gann Gazette, Volume 31, No. 1, Summer 2023

Highlights of the ABEL Research

Jane ABEL (1734/36-1788/89), who married Adam Gann, and Jane’s sister (1741-aft. 1787), her first name unknown, who married Nathan, were daughters of Joseph ABEL (1705/151772), the immigrant, and his first wife. The first wife’s family surname is unknown but possibly discoverable through DNA trails and Orange or Spotsylvania County, Virginia, records.

Joseph ABEL declared his importation on 25 November 1736 in Orange County court. He was likely 20-something years old and imported himself, most probably from Great Britain since the Abel surname is first found in the Pipe Rolls of 1100’s Essex. There is no known evidence of an indenture, and he was not an exiled convict. Possibly he was already married for a couple of years by the time he declared his importation. He could have been living on a father-in-law’s land since he was apparently not in need of 50 acres of free land and assigned his headright to Lewis Davis Yancey, a land speculator. Orange was formed from Spotsylvania in 1734. Frederick was formed from Orange in 1738. Joseph’s first wife could have been born in Spotsylvania, and their daughter Jane, who married Adam, could have been born in Spotsylvania or Orange.

Between 1739 and 1748, Joseph appears in Orange County road orders in the same place with same neighbors, indicating a consistently stable presence and that he was not moving around. By 1748, road orders mention his “plantation.” This could be land he inherited by right of his wife.

Sometime between 1748 and 1750, Joseph moved his family to Frederick County, where we know Samuel and Elizabeth Gann were also living by or before 1748 when son Samuel Gann was born there. Jane and Adam married in 1750 and their first son, John, the one we call “Steadfast,” was born in 1751. Jane had a brother John, near her own age, giving rise to a speculation that Jane may have named her firstborn after her brother, and that the brother may have even been her fraternal twin since “John” and “Jane” are gender cognate names, though both names were very popular in the day. Jane’s younger brother, Joseph Abel Jr (1738- 1809), mentioned a few paragraphs above, was court-martialed and fined in Frederick court on the same day, September 2, 1755, that Samuel Gann also appeared and was fined for missing muster in the previous 12 months. Land records of Joseph Jr.’s two militia captains—in 1754-55, Captain Samuel Odell on Passage Creek and, in 1761, Captain Henry Spears on Brush Bottom Ford at a bend of the South River Shenandoah—establish the general location between Passage Creek and the South River where Joseph Sr. settled his family.

Men were assigned to militia captains nearest their area of residence. At a not far distance to the northeast lived John Rout [Roult] and John Bridges who were involved in legal and court matters in 1762, 1764, and 1765 with John Gann and Clemwell [sic Clement] Gann.

On 6 May 1763, Nathan Gann, by then aged 33 or 34, purchased a number of fineries— Irish linen, white sheeting, red everlast (a heavy fabric used for shoe tops), twist (special thread, usually strong, lustrous silk, used for buttonholes, sewing buttons, and decorative designs ), a dozen small buttons, two large gilt buttons, and a quart of brandy, likely imported— altogether odd purchases for a frontiersman, unless they were bridal gifts and preparations for a wedding, which rather certainly they were since Nathan’s oldest known son, Samuel Gann was born by 1766.

On the 25th day of November 1771 in Frederick County, exactly 35 years to the day after he declared his importation in Orange County, Joseph wrote his will, making his second wife, Jane (likely a sister to his first wife), and his “good friend” Fergus Cron co-executors and charging them with the task to make good on the land he had sold to Peter Cox and Charles Reagan when there should be a “title from Lord Fairfax or the Grantees.”

Had Virginia been a good life for Joseph? It appears so. He was prosperous in a material way, and we imagine a personal way too, even though he outlived a first wife and outlived his oldest son, John, and appears not to have had a large family, or maybe had not many children who lived to adulthood. Such was not uncommon in the day and was part of life’s acceptance. We don’t know how he and the family fared through the Indian depredations that the Ganns went through, though just about everybody in the area was affected in one way or another. Those were fearful times. Though Joseph has not been found in the few church records that exist for the area, he likely was at least as religious as the community at large in which he lived and was no doubt a good citizen, friend, and neighbor as evidenced by an absence of court cases against him. He was, however, taken advantage of by a couple of persons who had stolen equipment from him and sought and won restitution in court from Henry Netherton, who was a neighbor, since Henry was in the same 1761 militia company under Captain Henry Spears as Joseph Junior.

Joseph’s will was proved in Dunmore County court on 26th of May 1772. Only eleven days earlier, Dunmore had been formed from Frederick County, on the 15th of May 1772. In 1778, Dunmore was changed to Shenandoah. Records of our Joseph Abel appear in four different Virginia counties—Orange, Frederick, Dunmore, and Shenandoah—a reflection of the growing settlement of the lower Shenandoah area of the Northern Neck of Virginia, but Joseph had moved only once during that time, from Orange to Frederick County.

Info from Thea Baker's research for the Gann Society, 2023.