The Rosier & Roe deed, 7 October 1820 — Susannah Roe signs her own name

The oldest original document in the Fleming side of this archive — and the only one that shows an ancestor’s own handwriting.

A conveyance of 100 acres in Harrison County, Virginia, dated 7 October 1820, from Andrew Rosier and John Roe to a J. Lang. The docket on the fold reads:

A. Rosier & J. Roe · To · J. Lang · Deed 100 acres

Witnesses: Hannah Shugill, Sarah Boly, Simeon Lang and John Lang jr. Certified by the justices Matthias Winters and J. Waldo on 26 May 1821, and recorded 18 June 1821.

Three signatures, and what they show

At the foot of the deed:

• Andrew Rosier — signed with his mark, an X, the clerk writing “his mark” around it
• John Roe — signed
• Susannah Roe — signed, in her own clear hand, with her own seal

Clarissa Roe’s parents could both write. Their co-grantor could not.

Robert Earl noticed it at once, and it set him off on the thing he found most interesting about the family:

“I share your amazement that our ancestors could write and apparently read. Especially surprising that Susannah … Roe could write and that she had her own seal. A personal seal was a sign of a refined, cultured person. In all my readings of the Scotch-Irish, I’ve always been impressed by their strong belief in education. When they built a settlement, they first built a church (Presbyterian) and then a school.”

The privy examination

Most of the page is taken up by a procedure that no longer exists, and it is worth reading for what it says about a married woman’s position in 1821 Virginia. A wife could not simply sign away her dower right; she had to be questioned out of her husband’s hearing to confirm she was not being coerced. The justices certify that Susannah Roe

“personally appeared before us in our County aforesaid and being examined by us privily and apart from her husband and having the Deed aforesaid fully explained to her she the said Susanah Roe acknowledged the same to be her act and Deed and Declared that she had willingly signed sealed and Delivered the same and that she wished not to Retract it.”

Seven months passed between the deed and that examination, and another three weeks before recording — the ordinary pace of county business when the justices had to come to you.

What it establishes

• John Roe and Susannah (Meeks) Roe were in Harrison County, Virginia by October 1820 — consistent with his death there in 1829, and with the family having left Fayette County, Pennsylvania.
• Susannah was alive in May 1821. Her death is otherwise unrecorded in this archive.
• Both were literate, in a county where a co-signatory of property was not.
• The Lang family recurs — two Langs witness, and a Lang buys. (Charlotte Fleming, who supplied this document, descends from a Lang line herself.)

How it got here

It reached Robert Earl in April 1995 from Charlotte Fleming of Tucson, who had found it printed in the Harrison County Genealogical Society newsletter:

“I feel sure it is signed by Clary’s father, John Roe, since I have found no other family by that name in the area. It lists his wife as Susannah. I thought it interesting that both John and his wife could write. This was unusual at that time.”

Her caution is the right one and is repeated here: the identification rests on no other Roe family being in the county, not on the deed naming a daughter. It is very likely the right John Roe. It is not proven to be.

Source: photocopy of the recorded deed of 7 October 1820, Harrison County, Virginia, as printed in the Harrison County Genealogical Society newsletter; sent by Charlotte Fleming to Robert Earl Wildermuth, April 1995. In his research papers, in Chuck’s keeping. Photographed 2026.