Hunting for Fauquier Corders in Stafford County VA

Originally published June 13, 2011

This past Friday (June 10, 2011) I drove down to Spotyslvania County, VA to meet with Bob Corder, founder of the National Corder Family Association and long-time researcher of the Corder line that traces back to William Corder b. ca. 1702. Having over the years exhausted all of the low-hanging Corder records, Bob and I decided it was time to drag out the ladders and begin shaking the limbs higher up (or further back, in this case).

My Edward Corder is first found in Virginia in an Orange County petition dated February 22, 1738. Orange County was formed from Spotsylvania in 1734 so I had hoped that a careful search of Spotsylvania records might yield something new for the Greenway Court line. 

Bob and I strategized at the Spotyslvania Courthouse Cafe and realized that he was unlikely to find anything relevant to the Fauquier line in Spotsylvania, since Fauquier was formed in 1759 from Prince William (formed in turn from Stafford in 1731). We decided to press north about 15 miles to Stafford and seek our fortune there. 

Stafford's records begin in the last decade of the 17th century. It's a sensational thing to hold in one's hand papers that last felt the scratch of a pen in the year 1699. I pulled out the oldest Will Book I could find (1699-1709) while Bob settled in with the oldest Deed Book. A cursory search of the county's digitized indices had yielded nothing, but a cross-reference of names from the first few pages of these older books revealed that there were many, many names mentioned in the deeds, wills and inventories which did not appear in the county's computerized data. This was very good news indeed. There were literally thousands of pages of possibility stacked on the shelves in front of us - all we had to do was start reading.

We quickly accustomed ourselves to the spidery script, and while Bob stayed on task, rapidly skimming the pages in search of the Corder name, I began to familiarize myself with the residents of Stafford County, Virginia in the year 1699. Prominent among them were George Mason, grandfather of the revolutionary patriot of the same name, John Washington, son of emigrant Lawrence, and William Fitzhugh, who represented Stafford in the house of Burgesses. Common surnames at the turn of that century were Withers, Newton, Burkner, Thompson, Waugh, Massey, Wright, and Downing. For several hours I snooped through the worldly goods of these old Virginians and by the end of the day Bob was nearing the 300th page of his book while I finished a far second on page 132 of mine.

While neither of us hit the mother lode -- this time -- I did find one entry with a familiar name: John Ashby (probably formerly of Lancaster County VA). In the same record was a name that looked like it could be either John Condon, Cordon, Cordor or Condor. We know that the Ashby's were one of the earliest settlers of the area that would later be home to both (apparently unrelated) lines of the Corder family, so it's a name I always watch for.

Bob and I will re-group in the winter and return to Stafford to carry on a line-by-line search of the records in which Bob will, no doubt, outdistance me again as I tarry in centuries past.