Harshbarger line: John Edmondson 1688-1733

I am so confused.  I want to write about the Ednmondsons, who have a very long history in Virginia.  The Harshbarger connection is Sukey or Susanna Edmondson who married Thomas Wyatt on November 25, 1747 in Essex County, Virginia.  Her parents were John Edmondson and Mary Boughan.  After that it gets murkier.  I seem to have too many sets of Edmondsons in the higher branches of the tree to fit the facts.  For instance, I have a Judith Allaman as a grandmother to John, and that cannot be if the birthdates are correct, because I show Judith as born in 1695 and John (the husband of Mary Boughan) as born in 1688.  Something is surely wrong here.

However, I want to at least mention the Edmundson family as being part of the Harshbarger heritage, because I do think the John Edmondson-Mary Boughan parentage is correct for Sukey.  From what little I can find on line, John was of Essex County, Virginia, and he owned slaves that were later deeded from Gabriel Jones and his wife to their children.  (Mary Boughan Edmondson mararied Gabriel Jones of Orange County, Viginia in 1738, after John had died in 1733.)  He left a will, which I have not seen, mentioning an unborn child who apparently did not survive.  The will also mentioned his wife Mary and daughter Sukey, as well as Augustine Boughan and the children of his brother Samuel Edmundson, William Smith, Thomas Moore, Sarah Boughan and brother Thomas Edmundson.  Mary must have been a capable woman as she served as executrix with James Webb, John Webb, and Thomas Sparke as securities.

John apparently left very little other tracks in the deeds or court books of the time.  He is believed to have been born about 1688, although I have seen other sources guessing his birth date as about 1700.  I don't know where either of those dates came from.  At any rate, we was still a young man when he died, with one child born and another on the way.  Presumably he attended church somewhere although that is not a given, since church attendance in the early 1700's was not necessarily important to many Virginians.

More research needs to be done to determine his birthdate, tax records, any deeds that show land ownership, and other details of his life.  Nevertheless, we know that he lived, fathered a Harshbarger ancestor, and thereby left a legacy. The Virginia heritage is a small one in this line, but every ancestor is important and  I would love to find out more about him!

The line of descent is: 

John Edmondson-Mary Boughan
Sukey Edmondson-Thomas Wyatt
John Wyatt-Alice Gordon
Jean Wyatt-William Farmer
Margaret Farmer-Solomon Bennett
Mary Bennett-John Harter
Clara Harter-Emanuel Harshbarger
Grover Harshbarger-Goldie Withers
Cleveland Harshbarger-Mary Margaret Beeks
Their descendants