MAYO.
The Mayos have had a name and place in Albemarle from
the beginning. Colonel William Mayo, the County Surveyor
of Goochland, obtained a patent for eight hundred acres on
the branches of Rockfish, near the Blue Mountains, in 1738.
The patent of Dr. William Cabell for forty-eight hundred
acres on both sides of the Fluvanna, obtained the same year,
adjoined this entry of Mayo. Among the first deeds recorded
in Albemarle, is one from Ann Mayo, conveying this land to
Robert Barnett in 1748.
In 1749 Philip Mayo, of Henrico, entered four hundred
acres on the branches of Hardware, situated in the limestone
belt, and long known as the Limestone Survey. In 1752 he
sold it to Peter Jefferson, Joshua Fry, Arthur Hopkins,
Thomas Meriwether, Daniel Scott, and William Stith, President
of William and Mary College. It is presumed that in
making this purchase, these gentlemen had in mind some
project for utilizing the mineral it contained.
The original record of the deed having been destroyed, it
was restored in 1802. As late as 1830 these separate interests
were not all united, as in that year Governor Gilmer, as executor
of Christopher Hudson, sold to George Gilmer, his
father, one-sixth of the tract.
James Mayo died in 1777, leaving eleven sons and two
daughters. The most of them no doubt lived in Goochland.
One of them, Thomas, who belonged to that county, bought in
1779 from Thomas Collins four hundred acres on Edge Creek,
the small branch of Moore's Creek that runs on the east side
of the Teel place. Four years later Thomas sold part of this
tract to his brother, Richard George Mayo. If Richard George
ever lived on it, he removed elsewhere, as in 1809 his brother
Joseph, as his attorney, sold it to another brother, James.
James died in 1821, in his eighty-third year. His wife was
Mary, daughter of Stephen Hughes, and his children John
W., Stephen, Claudius, James E., Catharine, the wife of William
Thompson, and Nancy, the wife of John Harris.
