One of “three youngest Sons”: Identifying a
Missing 18th Century Pettypool Family Member
Carolyn Hartsough
My favorite genealogical moments involve discovering the identity of extended family members who are known to exist but haven’t been identifiable using easily accessed historical sources and “reasonably exhaustive research.”1 Although one such individual has eluded my best efforts since I started to research the early branches of the Pettypool family over 35 years ago, a concentrated review of one Pettypool family branch along with a chance “hit” on an online database seems to have solved the mystery.
I finally published “The William Pettypool Family of Southside Virginia: Lineage Review Based on Current Review of Evidence” in 2003 knowing that some lines had not been fully extended and that one line, in particular, was missing an un-named heir. The individual in question was a son of William(4) Pettypool (ca 1720 – ca 1774), fourth in a line of Pettypool men all named William, the first of whom was the mid-17th century English immigrant to colonial Virginia.2