census.¹

John Casebolt₁ second family

As we just saw on the preceding page, the first solid evidence we have that John₁ was away from Little Levels for an extended period of time is in 1791 when he spent almost half a year with Capt. Morris on the Kanawha River in what is now central West Virginia.

That settlement which was to become Charleston, the state capital, was begun in 1788 by Col. George Clendenin and a group of Greenbrier men.² Clendenin had been in charge of the defense of the Little Levels during most of the Revolution and John₁ probably had served as informal militia under him then. We know that John's brother Henry₄ did.³

John₁ and his brother Henry₄ probably began traveling earlier than 1791. In 1786, sheriff Thomas Hughart of Augusta County listed Henry as a delinquent taxpayer, noting that Henry had "removed to French Broad",⁴ which is a river in eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. The charge of delinquency was proven false in court and the good Sheriff (for whom the DAR chapter in Staunton, Virginia is named) was indicted for perjury.⁵ Nevertheless, mention of the French Broad area may be very suggestive of actual Casebolt movements, albeit temporary.

There is evidence in personal property tax data to suggest that the Casebolts may have been engaged in horse trading. The numbers of horses recorded owned by them tend to vary from 1 to 4 from the mid-80's to the mid-90’s.⁶ So it may well be that they were trading horses and doing so as far south as the French Broad area throughout the 1780's and 1790's. It is said that there was a constant stream of pioneers coming from North Carolina into the area that was to be

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Copyright 1992 - RAK         CASEBOLT -- An American Family

Page 4-14                   Ch.4 - Second Generation, South

                             Last revised: 7 September 2001