Thomas Sowell

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Thomas Sowell (1714 - 1763) was an inhabitant of early Albemarle County.

Biography

Sowell was born in 1714 in Bertie County in North Carolina. At an unknown point, he migrated northwards to Virginia.[1]

Sowell made one of the earliest entries of land within the present boundaries of Albemarle County. In 1734, he obtained a grant of 550 acres west of the southern end of Carter Mountain. Sowell Branch, a stream that passes through this land into the north fork of the Hardware River, is named after Sowell.

Sowell died in 1763.

Family and descendants

The Sowell House near Michie Tavern. Reproduced from the Dalgliesh Gilpin Paxton Architects.

Sowell's wife was named Martha. The couple had four children together named John, William, Joseph, and Thomas. Thomas died unmarried three years after Sowell. In 1834 Lewis and Nimrod, great-grandsons of Sowell through one of John's children, purchased from William Garland a lot on University Avenue east of R.F. Harris' Warehouse, where they conducted a wheelwright business for many years.[2]

Pleasant, another descendant of the family, married Sarah, a daughter of Edward Garland. Around 1822, he constructed what became known as the Sowell House on a 100-acre tract of land near Charlottesville, where his family and descendants would reside for the next 173 years. The Sowell House was dismantled and reassembled at a site near Michie Tavern (six miles north of its original location) in 1994, with the structure soon after being recognized with three architectural preservation awards.[3]

References

  1. Web. Thomas Sowell, Geni, 12/06/2019
  2. Web. Albemarle County in Virginia, C.J. Carrier Company, 1901
  3. Web. The Sowell House ca. 1822, The Historical Marker Database, 04/11/2021