COLES.
The main body of the land on which the Coles family resided,
was granted to Francis Eppes in 1730, who received
a patent for six thousand, five hundred acres. He devised
it to his sons Richard and William. They sold three thousand
acres to John Coles, but their deed was never admitted
to record, because proved by only two witnesses. In 1777
Francis Eppes, son of Richard, with his wife Elizabeth, made
a conveyance of the tract to Mr. Coles, and acknowledged it
before Thomas Jefferson and George Gilmer as magistrates.
John Coles' father, John, came to this country from Enniscorthy,
Ireland, and established himself in Hanover County,
Virginia, where he married Mary Winston. His children were
Walter, Sarah, Mary, the wife of John Payne, and mother of
Dorothy, President Madison's wife, John, and Isaac, who
lived in Halifax County, and was a member of Congress
from that district. John settled in Albemarle on the land
above mentioned. He married Rebecca E. Tucker, who
first drew the breath of life in the historic city of Jamestown.
His children were Walter, John, Isaac, Tucker, Edward,
Rebecca, the wife of Richard Singleton, of South Carolina,
Mary Eliza, the wife of Robert Carter, Sarah, the wife of
Andrew Stevenson, Elizabeth, and Emily, the wife of John
Rutherford, of Richmond. John Coles died in 1808, and his
wife in 1826.
Walter was a magistrate of the county, but soon resigned.
His home was at Woodville, the present residence of Charles
Shaw, where he died in 1854, at the age of eighty-two. He
married first Eliza, daughter of Bowler Cocke, of Turkey
Island, and secondly Sarah, daughter of John Swann, of
Powhatan. His children were Walter, who succeeded his
father at Woodville, who married Ann E. Carter, and who
was the father of Dr. Walter, of St. Louis, and of Sarah and
Elizabeth, still residing near the old home, and Edward,
who was given a farm about five miles south of Charlottesville,
which his father bought from William T. Henderson
in 1806, who married Letitia, daughter of Rezin Wheat, and
who died in 1883.
John married Selina Skipwith, of Mecklenburg. His home
was Estouteville, where he died in 1848. He left three sons,
John, who lived near Warren, Peyton, who married his
cousin Isaetta, and succeeded his father at Estouteville, where
he died in 1887, and Tucker, whose present residence is
Viewmont.
Isaac A. was a member of the Albemarle bar, for a time
President Jefferson's private secretary, and a member of the
House of Delegates. He lived at Enniscorthy, married
Mrs. Julia Stricker Rankin, widow of Hon. Christopher
Rankin, of Louisiana, and had two children, Isaetta and
Stricker. He died in 1841, and his wife in 1876. Tucker also
represented the county in the House of Delegates. He married
Helen Skipwith, of Mecklenburg, and died without
children at Tallwood in 1861.
Edward, the youngest son of John Coles, was the private
secretary of President Madison, sold the plantation on Rockfish
River left him by his father, and in 1818 removed to Illinois,
carrying with him all his slaves, giving them their
freedom, and settling them by families on farms near Edwardsville.
He was appointed by Mr. Monroe first Governor of the
Territory of Illinois, was elected its second Governor when
it became a State, and having made an earnest and successful
struggle against a party seeking to make it a slave State,
he removed to Philadelphia in 1832. He there married Sarah
L. Roberts, and died in 1868. He had three children, one of
whom, Roberts, came to Virginia, lived on the old Clarkson
farm on the south fork of Hardware, was a Captain in the
Confederate army, and fell on Roanoke Island in 1862. His
remains were brought for interment to the Coles cemetery at
Enniscorthy.
