This project was started to backtrack on an excellent book entitled THE GRIMSLEY FAMILY IN AMERICA published some years ago. The author did an outstanding job in the old fashion way of reading records from the originals as the book was published prior to abstracts. There are a couple of references I could not find in the abstracts due to a gap in years and not sure if those abstracts are available.

It is my opinion there may be a missing generation between Thomas I of Rappahannock County, Va. and John - maybe Thomas Jr. There is just too much spread in dates for John and there was one reference to a Thomas Jr. about the time John's son Thomas was born. More work needs to be done.

Also, it has also been written that John of Greene County was the son of John of Halifax. There is no indication this was true as that John appears to have given all his children his estate in a series of deeds just prior to his death and there was no John listed. The elder John had a brother, Sherwood, who moved to Dobbs, now Greene County, and our John lived next to him. More important is the Will of Elijah of SC who calls John of Greene his brother. John of Halifax had a son Elijah born after his death who could not have been the Elijah of SC. Thus, John of Greene appears to be the son of Sherwood, not John.

All of the GRIMSLEY family of Halifax appears to have moved out of the area by the 1780's - some went to Robinson County, NC where many still remain. Some went to Georgia and descendants are missing one generation in hooking up with them. We know that John, son of Sherwood remained in Greene County but it is not known if any of his children remained. There are a number of GRIMSLEYs in Greene Co in the mid 1800's that I can't connect. There was a Sherwood/Sherrod Barrow in Greene - could he have been connected to this family? I suspect there were intermarriages with the Dail family as they were neighbors and the name Theophlius appears in the GRIMSLEY family.

I am not going to run a report at this time hoping to find the gaps in the Virginia abstracts.

My thanks to Clarence Lee for his assistance and especially to Deborah GRIMSLEY Yates of Georgia who provided a copy of the Will of Elijah GRIMSLEY of SC which proves the father of my John of Greene County.

GRIMSLEY Family in Virginia

GRIMSLEY of Dobbs County, NC

GRIMSLEY of Halifax County, NC