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Historical and Genealogical Notes

William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 1.
(Jul., 1897), pp. 57-70.

GRYMES-MAURY. - Dr. Joseph Leidy send the following extracts from
Walker Maury's Bible records:
Mary Grymes, born Aug. 25, 1758; died Sept. 23, 1839; burined at
Bellegrove.
Walker Maury, born July 21, 1752; died October 11, 1788, of yellow
fever, Norfolk.
Married March 7, 1777, in Williamsburg. Children: Mary Stith Maury,
born June 7, 1778; James Walker Maury, born March 18, 1779; Leonard Hill
Maury, born December 4, 1780; Ann Tunstall Maury, born September 5, 1782;
William Grymes Maury, born March 29, 1784; Penelope Johnstone Maury, born
June 23, 1785; Matthew Fontaine Maury, born September 15, 1786; Catherine
Ann Maury, born May 20, 1788.
Wm. Grymes Maury's first daughter was named Mary Dawson Maury; first
son, Ludwell Grymes Maury.

The will of Mary Grymes,
dated May 15, 1787, and proved June 23, 1788, and other records of
Orange county, show that Mary Maury was daughter of Ludwell Grymes.
The will mentions daughter Hannah Grymes, son John Grymes; legacies
to Mary Maury, daughter of Rev. Walker Maury, and to Mary Moore,
daughter of William Moore. Mary Grymes frees certain negroes at
twenty-two years, and enjoins "each legatee to teach or cause to be
taught each negro respectively to read," and the General Assembly
to be petitioned, in case any difficulty exists as to their
manumission "from my being a femme covert." Hon. James Madison,
Esqr., Hardin Burnley, Thomas Barbour, Esqr., and Mr. Henry Fry,
executors. In 1795, there is in the Orange records an account of
John D. Grymes, as administrator of Ludwell Grymes, in which he
charges for expenses incurred by "travelling to Williamsburg to
attend suits in the high court of chancery," between Ludwell Grymes
and Walker Maury, and by having "the graves of his father and mother
paled in." Mary Grymes, the wife of Ludwell Grymes, was Mary Dawson.
The following obituary, which appeared in the Nashville, Tenn.,
Republican Banner, April 15, 1852, is of interest: "Died -- On
Wednesday, March 31st, 1852, at the residence of her son-in-
law, W. C. Richmond, Esq., of Robertson County, Tenn., Elizabeth
Johnson Moore, relict of the late Rev. William Moore, in the 87th
year of her age. Mrs. Moore was born in Gloucester county, Va., and
was the second daughter of Ludwell and Mary Grimes (or Grymes) and
granddaughter of Rev. William Dawson, of William and Mary College.
Her parents removed to Burlington, their country seat in Orange
county, where she married the Rev. Wm. Moore, then an itinerant
Methodist minister and settled in Fluvanna county, where they re-
mained a few years, and afterwards moved to the vicinity of Milton,
N.C., where they raised their family, and in 1820 removed to Robertson
county, Tenn. She was descended from pure old Virginia blood, being

connected with the Lees, Pages, Randolphs, Maurys, and Dawsons,
and was a woman of

Page 209.

great vivacity of spirit in early life, of unbounded benevolence
and charity, a great talker and fine reader, in a word the idol of
her company, but in after life she became much afflicted and was
subject to great melancholy, and a few years before her death lost
her eyesight, which deprived her of her last earthly enjoyment,
reading. She lived to see her fourth generation, and wore out the
cord of life thread by thread until the last fibre parted and she
died without a struggle. She was a member of the Baptist Church
thirty years before her death."

Mr. E. D. Richards, of Nashville, Tenn., under date January 8,
1895, writes that Mrs. Moore left three daughters, one of whom
married W. C. Richmond, the writer of the above obituary, and had
seven or eight children, all of whom died young. Another daughter
married a Mr. Durrett, and they have quite a number of children,
grandchildren, and great-grandchildren living in Robertson county,
Tenn. The third daughter married Mr. Richards' grandfather (Durrett
Richards) at Milton, N.C., and died about 1820.