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Joanne:
George Pace, b. abt 1685 in Charles City Co, VA was a son of James Pace and Elizabeth Lowe. He married an Obedience abt. 1710. Her surname may have been Worsham. In recent years it has been assumed that the Mary Pace who married Jacob Alford was a daughter of this George Pace. However, noted Pace researcher, Bruce Howard (in his recent book, "Our Colonial Ancestors", available through the Pace Society of America) argues that Mary was actually a daughter of George's brother James Pace.
Here is part of what Bruce said in his book (p 272-274):
"It has been agitated for years that Jacob Alford married the daughter of George and Obedience Pace because, I suppose, she was the only visible Mary Pace and therefore had to be the wife of Jacob Alford. I believe there is more than sufficient circumstantial evidence to support his wife, Mary Pace, as being the daughter of James Pace, Sr. of Granville, which ... it soon becomes clear that she was the daughter of James and not George. [Note: this James was the brother of George].
"It is by my calculation that her year of birth is given in the year 1741, approximately. It is a known fact that her husband, Jacob, was born December 12, 1738 in New Kent County, Virginia, the child of Lodowick and Susannah Alford. It is further calculated that she and Jacob were married in Granville in about the year 1759 and their eldest son, Lodowick, was born the following year. It is my belief that she was at least 18 years of age at the time of marriage....
Shortly after their marriage they, along with at least one of her brothers, left the county and ventured down into Cumberland County where Jacob and Mary resided for a short time before going a few miles to the south into Bladen County, that part which is today Hoke County, where he applied for patents on more than one tract of land in the northwestern portion of the county as it was then situated, on the east side of Drowning Creek and on the west side of a creek or branch then known as Gum Swamp. The first patent issued in the year 1764 and others followed in 1769. As best that can be determined he then owned a total of 650 acres...
They remained in this situation, farming and rearing their children, until he began acquiring new land further south, just before the ... Revolutionary War....At the termination of the war, and starting in the year 1784 he began receiving grants of land from the State of North Carolina... This makes me very suspicious that Jacob performed some valuable service to the American cause during the war...
[Note: In 1787 his land became part of the new Robeson County.]
"By the year 1791, he owned land all over the county and he and his older boys and his slaves went to work to establish working plantations on some of the better tracts, and he sold off those that he did not wish to keep. As the older boys married he would place them on one of the plantations to work and keep in good order with the promise that is would become theirs when he died. The two oldest boys, James and Sion, were the recipients of this promise. He also helped his son James, who I believe to be the second oldest, file for and receive a grant of land on Little Ashpole Swamp near his own lands along that creek, in the year 1793.
Jacob and Mary had been quite successful in their active years, not only in business matters but in the rearing of six boys and five girls. We do not know the names of all of the girls but two. The boys are all known and are being researched by members of The Alford Ameerican Family Association, and descendants of this part of the family. The known surviving children were James, Sion, Lodowick, Warren, Elias, Charity, Cinthia and Wiley.
"Ther is, of course, a great deal more history of this family than I have given in this brief sketch which members of this family will want to discover in the future, and I hope they will."
Bruce presents some important documents concerning this family in Appendix I of his book.
My opinion is that Bruce is right about Mary being the daughter of James rather than George Pace, mainly because she was probably born too late to be George's daughter.
Perhaps Alford family researchers have more definitive evidence.
Gordon W. Pace
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