SHARPE John I b. Abt 1725 Virginia d. 1759 Virginia: Booth Family Website

Abt 1725 - 1759 (~ 34 years)

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Name	SHARPE John I
Birth	Abt 1725	Virginia
Gender	Male
Death	1759	Virginia
Will	21 Apr 1759	Dendron, Surry, Virginia, United States
Will	Transcription of the will of John Sharpe Will of John Sharp In the name of God, Amen, this twenty first day of April, one thousand seven hundred and fifty nine, I John Sharp of the county of Surry, being in a low state of health, but of perfect mind and memory, thanks be to Almighty God, but calling to the mortality of my body and knowing that it is appointed for all men living once to die. Do make and ordain this my last Will and Testament that is to say, principally and first of all, I recommend my soul into the hands of Almighty God that gave it and my body in the ground to be buried in a Christian like manner at the discretion of my executrix, hereafter named. Nothing doubting, but at the general resurrection, I shall receive the same again by the mighty power of God. Ye as touching much worldly estate, wherewith it has pleased God to help me within this life, I give and dispose of the same in the following manner and form- I give and bequeath to my loving wife, Constant Sharp, my desk corner cupbord and falling table during her life, also one feather bed and furniture. Likewise, I give her the labour of my three negroes, James, Charles and V. Jane during her life. Also I give her the labor of three other negroes, Daniel, Frank and McCall until the legatees, hereafter named, comes to the age of twenty one to receive them and further my Will and desire is that my loving wife should have the sole use of all my land and plantation during her natural life and after her death to my son, Burwell Sharp and if he should die before he comes of age, to be sold and the money arising, thereby to be equally divided between my three daughters, Elizabeth, Mary and Cherry. I give and bequeath to my son Burwell Sharp, one feather bed and furniture and also do set him free at the age of eighteen years to act and do for himself, free from under anyone's jurisdiction or command as fully as though her were twenty one years. I give to my daughter, Elizabeth Sharp, two negroes I give to my daughter Mary Sharp, two negroes I give to my daughter Cherry Sharp, two negroes I desire that the remainder of my estate after legacies and true debt is paid, should after decease of my wife be equally divided among my four children. I appoint my loving wife, Constant Sharp and my Son, Burwell Sharp. Signed, John I Sharp Probated September 18, 1759
Notes	Red Lion Inn A BRIEF RESUME OF NOTES ON FAMILIES AND INDIVIDUALS ASSOCIATED WITH THE RED LION INN.(Note: This resume is confined to source data contained in the Research Department files.) AUGUST, 1932. RED LION INN ^{Block 17 Bldg 3B} One of the things that set Williamsburg apart from other Tidewater Virginia towns was the fact that by its very nature it had to be supplied with an unusually large number of taverns. Four times each year the general courts convened, twice each year the House of Burgesses sat, and on all of these occasions the officials, planters, lawyers, merchants and traders, frequently accompanied by their families, arrived at the little Capital city. Some few of the notables had town houses for the accommodation of themselves and their families, but the greater majority were dependent on public houses and the strain upon the housing facilities of the town was great. One Frenchman travelling through pre-Revolutionary Williamsburg said that as many as five or six thousand people were in town on court days. ⁽¹⁾ Another traveller, in 1736, was amazed at the number of coaches thronging the streets bringing the planters, Councillors, Burgesses and others to their Capital. He wrote, "Williamsburgh is the most wretch'd contriv'd Affair for the Capitol of a Country, being near three Miles from the Sea, is a bad Situation. There is nothing considerable in it, but the College, the Governor's house, and one or two more, which are no bad Piles; and the Prodiguous Number of Coaches that crowd the deep, sandy Streets of this little City." ⁽²⁾ There were great taverns in those days, The Raleigh, Wetherburn's, Ayscough's, Mrs. Campbell's, The English Coffee House and the Sign of the King's Arms, to mention a few of those which accommodated the gentry, but where did the hundreds of others stay? There was the Red Lion Inn practically adjacent to the Capitol, the Sign of Edinburgh Castle, the Rose and Crown, the Blue Bell, the Market Square and the Brick House, in addition to innumerable others named for their keepers. In fact, in a very literal sense, every house became a public house in "public times" as they were called. There were few, if any, that did not at one time in their history serve as inns, or at least as lodging houses. Even with the town so liberally supplied with taverns, inns and ordinaries, and with private houses accommodating their share of lodgers, there was still tremendous pressure on housing facilities. There was one other solution to the problem, and if disgruntled travellers from abroad are to be believed, it was a frequent one. "In private houses as well as inns several people are crowded together in the same room", wrote one European, "and in the latter it very commonly happens that after you have been some time in bed, a stranger of any condition comes into the room, pulls off his clothes, and places himself without ceremony between your sheets." ⁽¹⁾ Another commentator speaking of the crowding in Virginia houses says, "... and they make no ceremony of putting three or four persons into the same room, nor do these make any objections to being thus heaped together." ⁽²⁾ 3 The Red Lion Inn was probably typical of a large class of taverns and had the distinction of being one of Williamsburg's earliest public houses. It was built by Francis Sharp between 1718 and 1719. ⁽¹⁾ On May 19, 1718 Sharp was granted his first license to keep an ordinary. ⁽²⁾ For this purpose he and two bondsmen pledged 10,000 pounds of tobacco to "Our Sovereign Lord the King" to "constantly find and provide in his said ordinary good, wholesome and cleanly lodging and diet for travellers and stableage, fodder and provender for their horses." He was further pledged not to "suffer any unlawful gaming in his house, nor on the Sabbath day suffer any person to tipple or drink more than is necessary." Sharp owned also the tavern to the east of the Red Lion called the Sign of Edinburgh Castle. After his death he bequeathed a tavern to each of his sons, Jacob and John, John inherited the Red Lion Inn. ⁽³⁾ In 1742 Thomas Penman, by trade a carpenter and joiner, became also an inn keeper. He rented Sharp's inn and agreed to repair and add to the buildings instead of paying rent. This agreement was to build a brick chimney to the "Billyard House" or to build a new kitchen. Sharp was to rebuild the "shed" to the "Mansion house" as the inn was called, and put it in repair. ⁽⁴⁾ Penman sub-let the inn to Seth Seekright who became involved in a law suit in 1743 with John Burdette, keeper of the ordinary next door, claiming that the latter's building encroached on his lot. 4 The York county court ordered an exact survey made of the disputed lot line, and Joseph Davenport, surveyor of the city of Williamsburg, made a plat. He drew on the plat a small scale elevation of each tavern, and this was entered in the court order books, thereby preserving the significant architectural features of two early taverns which were destined to disappear more than one hundred years later. ⁽¹⁾ Penman won the suit and was awarded damages. Penman belongs rightly in the great oligarchy of Williamsburg innkeepers who were connected not only through their common business, but through ties of kinship and marriage. Penman's daughter, Elizabeth married Anthony Hay, keeper of the celebrated Raleigh. ⁽²⁾ While Penman was still leasing the Red Lion Inn, John Sharp sold it to Henry Wetherburn in October, 1772 for£80. ⁽³⁾ Henry Wetherburn was one of Williamsburg's most enterprising innkeepers, who at one time held a large amount of good tavern property. He also married two wealthy widows who had extensive holdings of this sort, too. At one time he had been keeper of the Raleigh, but soon moved into a tavern of his own. His first wife, Mary, was the widow of Henry Bowcock, an innkeeper, who at one time owned a building on the Raleigh tavern site. John Blair in his diary wrote on July 3, 1751, "Very rainy while at Mrs. Wetherburn's funer^l. He has found her hoard they say". 5 A series of three cryptic notes in John Blair's hand in an almanac of that same year refer to Wetherburn's second marriage: "July 1. M^rs. Wetherburn died 3. now buried in wett 11: H. Wetherburn married to Mrs. Sheilds." ⁽¹⁾ Mrs. Sheilds ⁽²⁾ had been Ann Marot, daughter of Jean Marot, a French Huguenot who kept a tavern across the street from the Red Lion Inn in the early part of the eighteenth century. When her father died in 1717, Francis Sharp, keeper of the Red Lion was arrested on the suspicion of murder, but evidently was acquitted speedily as he took out his first ordinary license a year later. ⁽³⁾ Ann first departed from the innkeeper tradition when she married James Inglis, son of Mungo Inglis the first grammar master of William and Mary College. After his death, she married James Sheilds, owner of a tavern just west of the Red Lion Inn, and in 1750 he died. As a daughter of one innkeeper and widow of another, Ann Marot-Inglis-Sheilds brought with her a large estate when she married her neighbor, Henry Wetherburn a year after her husband's death, and just eleven days after the first Mrs. Wetherburn's demise. She survived him. As Henry Wetherburn kept a tavern himself in several places chiefly in the so-called "Richard Bland" house across from the Raleigh, he rented the Red Lion Inn to various tenant keepers during the rest of his life. Little record of these tenants exists. The inn, so convenient to the Capitol continued to receive its usual share of the custom. Men met here to complain of the burden of taxation imposed by the Crown, to game at one-and-thirty and backgammon, to play billiards, to tipple (but not more than was necessary") and to transact business. The sign which hung before the inn, the sign of the Red Lion, was significant of the desire of the Virginia innkeeper and his patrons to transplant the atmosphere of the English inn to their new environment. In England, in Essex county alone, there were thirty-eight Red Lion Inns at one time, and so in each of the American colonies an echo of this old country popularity could be found. There are two advertisements in the Virginia Gazette of lessees of Wetherburn which are of interest: "November 6, 1766. Stephen Buck Tailor from London, Begs leave to inform his Customers, and others, that he has remov'd from the Red Lyon to a house adjoining Mr. Attorney's; where he continues to carry on his business with the greatest expedition... N.B. Ladies Riding Habits neatly Made..." ⁽¹⁾ "March 24, 1768. Walter Lenox, Perukemaker, Begs leave to inform the Publick in General, and his Customers in Particular, that he has moved to the house known by the name of the Red Lion, next door above Mr. Rind's Printing Office, where he carries on his business in all its branches as usual; and as he has good accommodation for private lodgers, he will be much obliged to those Gentlemen who may please to favour him with their Custom, and they may depend upon the best usage for themselves and horses..." ⁽²⁾ 7 During the Revolutionary War the council of the state of Virginia ordered that a warrant be issued for one pound eighteen shillings to Walter Lenox, "for boarding sick soldiers". ⁽¹⁾ When Wetherburn died in 1760 he bequeathed the bulk of his large estate to his nephew, Edward Nicholson ⁽²⁾, who in this way acquired the Red Lion Inn, which he too, leased to various keepers. In the patriotic fervor of the Revolution any name so frankly English as the "Red Lion" savored too much of loyalism so the ancient name was changed to Union Tavern. ⁽³⁾ This was a common phenomenon of the war in all the colonies, and patriotic Williamsburg obliterated all traces of names like Sign of the King's Arms and Red Lion Inn by a deluge of Eagle Taverns and Union Taverns. Habits of a lifetime were not changed however with the mere repainting of an offending Tory sign - Union Tavern it might have been for the brief period of militant enthusiasm but the old habits reasserted themselves, and as the Red Lion Inn its memory was passed down to the descendants of the patriots. In 1789 Henry W. Nicholson sold the inn to Samuel Crawley while it was in the tenure of Ebenezer Ewing and Joseph Bryan.⁽⁴⁾ In 1802 the building was tenanted by John Crump who insured it with a Richmond insurance company which drew such careful plats of insured property that they made a valued contribution to the architectural history of Williamsburg. ⁽⁵⁾ 8 The removal of the capital to Richmond brought about the decay of many formerly flourishing taverns. Travellers were no longer amazed at the throngs of carriages in the dusty streets or the thousands who attended during court sessions, instead they painted a picture of decay. Isaac Weld wrote that the town was to ruin at the close of the eighteenth century and that a number of houses were uninhabited. ⁽¹⁾ Johann David Schoepf ⁽²⁾ a German traveller, describing the Williamsburg of that day wrote, "Thus like so many older ones in Europe, do cities of this New World lament for the uncertain fate of a past glory." Without its former patronage the Red Lion was one of those that succumbed to the passage of time. Mrs. Victoria Lee who wrote "Williamsburg in 1861" ⁽³⁾ said that at that time the house was occupied by three families of refugees from the War Between the States. The house at that time called the Red Lion Inn, and Lee recalled a hunting scene painted above the mantel in one of the lower rooms which had doubtless looked down on many scenes of past conviviality. Some years later the house was so dilapidated that it was razed to make room for a new one. ⁽⁴⁾ From a number of contemporaneous drawings, insurance policies and documents it is possible to reconstruct a replica of this inn upon its old foundations, so that not even a relatively obscure inn which flourished in the day of the colonial capital can be said to have passed into oblivion. Harold R. Shurtleff, Director Department of Research Record. History by: Helen Bullock.
Person ID	I11118	Booth Family
Last Modified	22 Aug 2013

Father	SHARPE Francis, b. 1680, Northumberland County, Va d. Jan 1740, Isle of Wight County, VA (Age 60 years)
Mother	FITCHETT Elizabeth, b. Abt 1690, Virginia d. Bef 1739, Virginia (Age ~ 49 years)
Marriage	Spouse & Children Comfort Fitchett 1683 - 1710 William Sharpe 1708 - 1742 Elizabeth Sharpe 1710 - 1765 Other Spouse & Children Elizabeth Fitchett 1690 - 1739 Comfort Sharpe Mary Sharpe Sarah Sharpe Jacob Sharpe 1714 - Francis Sharpe 1718 - 1762 John I Sharpe 1725 - 1759
Family ID	F3733	Group Sheet \| Family Chart

Family SHARPE Constant --LNU-- d. Yes, date unknown

Marriage Abt 1750

Children

1. SHARPE Burwell, b. Abt 1750, Dendron, Surry, Virginia, United States

d. Between Aug and Oct 1799, Dendron, Surry, Virginia, United States

Family ID F3732 Group Sheet | Family Chart

Last Modified 22 Aug 2011

Event Map

Birth - Abt 1725 - Virginia

Death - 1759 - Virginia

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