William LEVITT/LEVET/LEVETT

[janbooth]

I have discovered the first convict in my ancestry and, as I know nothing about researching people transported across the seas, I am asking for advice. William LEVETT (my 7 x grandfather) baptised 2 November 1725 in Ashwell, Hertfordshire was convicted at Hertford Assizes on 17 March 1768 of stealing a whether valued at 21 shillings, sentenced to death which was commuted to 14 years transportation. I have found his transportation record which was from London to Virginia in October 1768 on the Justitia (surname shown as LEVIT).

From researching where convicts in Virginia landed up at that time, it would appear that most of them were sent to Tobacco Plantations in the Chesapeake area. Using that as a search parameter, I have found a 1782 census record of a William LEVIT in Monongalia County and then a Land Grant on 1 May 1784 (by which time presumably William would have become a free man) of 158 acres at Tygarts Valley River to a William LEVIT.

I am somewhat dubious as to whether this is my William LEVITT - did convicts receive Land Grants after their sentences were over and are there any records I can look at to see if my William LEVITT survived the journey on the Justitia remarried in Virginia (or elsewhere) and had another family as his wife Mary remained in Ashwell and died there in 1803.

Any advice or help would be extremely gratefully received.

Janet

[joellevitt]

Hello, my name is Joel Levitt and I now live in Denver, CO, USA. My research on the Levet (Levitt, Leavitt, Levit, Levet,
etc.) have me as a descendant or either William Levitt, Sr. or William Levitt Jr.? I am a part of the Levet
Family of Monongalia County, Virgina (now West Virginia).

My email is: joellevittATaolDOTcom.

My research goes back several generations likes yours but perhaps our versions of the Levet family tree
apparently ends with William Levet. However, I know the story of the "Levet" family (at least my side
of it since the 1770s. The name has changed being spelled from Levet to some of the names above
when you look at the records in these other states. In around 1850 it was standardized to Levitt in
Clay County, Illinois.


There are several of the Levet family that were massacred by the Indians in 1777 (The Year of the Three Sevens)
because the British were paying a pound a scalp. Later, the "survivors" moved to Kentucky, then Indiana,
and then to Illinois. My side of the family has been in Illinois since around 1826. We have a Levitt Cemetery
there in Clay County, Illinois (Pixley Township) where many but not all of the Levitt Family have been buried
since the 1820s. I grew up near the village of Sailor Springs, Illinois which is one mile west of where the
Levitt family settled. I grew up on a farm at the Levitt Cemetery was directly east of our family home about
a quarter mile away. My paternal grandfather Eldridge Jennings Levitt and my father Melvin Doyle Levitt
were good enough to give me a lot of family information as well as many more of my relatives. I have some
records of these moves from Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and from Virginia (now West Virginia).

So, please get in touch with me and we can move forward to helping each other. I thank you for this information
about William Levet as your information is my first "link" back to England. I do hope that once I get the dates
right this will be a direct ancestor of mine!

I believe you will find out that William Levet probably did not serve a full 14 years as an indenture servant.
If his sentence started 1768 it would have ended in 1782. I believe he must have decided to leave "early"
and go into the mountains west of civilization before 1782 where no "British Law" could find him?. We will
just have to compare notes!

Hope to hear from you!

Joel N. Levitt

[janbooth]

Replied off list.

Janet