Recently, a man named Michael “Mike” Marshall, who is a transcriber/abstracter, and evidently the owner) for a website called Early Colonial Settlers of Southern Maryland and Virginia’s Northern Neck Counties commented on my blog, saying
RE: [4] Deed between William Murdoch and Moses Ouno, Montgomery County Court, Land Records,July 13, 1778, Liber A, p. 195, 196 [MSA CE 148-1]. Courtesy of mdlandrec.net. Not sure how pages of Liber D, 166 and 167 [MSA CE 148-4] relate to this topic as one source suggests.
=== Moses Ouno is Moses Orme
Montgomery County Land Records, 1777-1781; Liber A1, Page 195. Jul 30, 1778 from William Murdoch of Prince George’s County, merchant, to Moses Orme of M, planter, for 492 £ 12 shillings and 6 pence, a tract of land called Shawfield, being part of a tract of land called Discovery, bounded by John Coffee’s land, Samuel Blackmore’s land, containing and now laid out for about 281-1/2 acres. Signed – Will:m Murdoch. Wit – Chrisr Lowndes, Rd Henderson. This deed was ack. by William Murdoch in Prince George’s County. John Read Magruder, Clk, Prince George’s County, certified that sd Christopher Lowndes and Richard Henderson, Gentlemen, were JPs for sd County. Recorded Nov 10, 1778.
I responded by saying that I may have read the name wrong, then looked back at the deed itself, showing, yes, the name is Moses Orme, not Moses Ouno as I had written in a previous post. In that previous post, focusing on the life of Benjamin Murdoch, a captain within the Extra Regiment of Maryland, I was referring to that fact that in Benjamin “later settled some of his deeds in Montgomery County in the Orphans Court with his relatives there reportedly,” hinting that the William Murdoch who “bought a part of a tract named Discovery from Moses Ouno” was related to Benjamin because he would buy this land “in later years.”
The question that comes out of this is obvious: who is Moses Orme? Marshall’s website lists three men named Moses Orme. The first was born on Oct 31, 1755 in Prince George’s County, MD, and dying in November 1827 in Lewis County, Kentucky, and is likely related to another (his father?)who was born in 1693 in Prince George’s County, and had his probate on December 17, 1772 in the same country. While the first one could be him, he had no abstracted wills in Montgomery County. The last Moses Orme does: he was born about 1730 in St. John’s Parish, Prince George’s County and had his probate in Rockville, Montgomery County Feb 12, 1782.
Abstracts on Orme’s page, show that he had three sons (James, Moses, and Samuel Taylor), a wife named Priscilla (Verlinda seems to be his first spouse), eight daughters (Mary, Ursula, Verlinder, Rebecca, Harriet, Eleanor, Priscilla, and Charlotte). It also notes that when he wrote his will in 1772, he owned 100 acres, stock, and had at least eight enslaved Blacks, if not more (possibly four more), along with varying farm animals.He began such a lifestyle by buying, for “30 pounds sterling” a “portion of the two said tracts containing by approximation 50-1/2 acres” in 1761. By 1774, he gained more land through marriage. After his death, his son Moses, “sold by these presents part of a tract called “Taylorton” alias “Taylor’s Rest” and containing 51 ¾ acres” which had been bought by his father in 1761. This Moses may the same one living in Annapolis by the 1830s.
Nothing else is currently known about this man except what is written by Florence Bayly DeWitt Howard for the Montgomery County Historical Society in 1994 (uploaded here), also noting the history of the Orme family in the area:
William Murdock Junior in 1778 conveyed Shawfield, “281.5 acres,” to Moses Orme for 492 pounds 12 shillings 6 pence and in his will of 1782, Moses Orme gave “Shawfields known by the name Discovery” to his wife, Priscilla (Taylor) Orme during her widowhood, and after her death to his son James Orme. Priscilla Orme was left with three sons, one married daughter and seven younger daughters, a large family. It is not known exactly when the Ormes moved onto the tract Shawfield but Moses Orme is listed in the 1777 Montgomery County tax list in Rock Creek Hundred with four taxables. The early owners of Discovery were residents of present-day Prince George’s County and had patented and purchased it as an investment, expecting that the land would increase in value as settlers moved into the area, which it did…In 1787 William Murdock Junior, who by this time was a merchant in London, executed a deed to Priscilla Orme and her son James, which stated that Moses Orme in his lifetime contracted to purchase 281.5 acres, part of the tracts “divided between brothers William and Benjamin Murdock by virtue of a judgment in partition…all that part of said land so willed to him by his father William Murdock which was assigned to him upon the execution of the partition aforesaid.” Priscilla and James Orme had paid 500 pounds for the land and it was conveyed to them…Shawfield, the western half of the northern section of Beall and Edmonstons Discovery, was still the home of the Ormes at the time of the 1793 county tax assessment. Priscilla Orme was listed with 285 acres of Shawfield and eight slaves. By 1810, the land was assessed to her son, James Orme. James made his will in 1829, several years before his death in 1832, leaving Shawfield to his wife Rebecca during her lifetime and after her death to their three sons, Jeremiah, William and Patrick Addison Orme. He instructed his children to free his slaves when the female slaves reached the age of 30 and the male slaves at age 35. Rebecca Orme must have died by June 11, 1841, when William Orme and his wife Anna Maria Orme of Washington, D.C., Jeremiah Orme of George Town, D.C., and Patrick A. Orme and his wife Anna R. Orme of Baltimore sold the land. They conveyed, for $2800,their 281.5 acres of Shawfield to Edward Stubbs…Although the conveyance from the sons of James Orme to Stubbs did not mention it, in 1827 James had sold one acre of Discovery, just inside its north line, to William Beckett for $30, the deed stating that the land was commonly called “The Old Cabbin” and was “in the tenure of said William Beckett.”…Many families have lived on this land that was once Beall and Edmonstons Discovery: three generations of Ormes, four generations of Stubbs, and so many other families. Today the land belongs to the residents of Montgomery County and is visited by people from far and near. It has become our treasure and part of our heritage, to be cared for and enjoyed and passed on to future generations
We know from other sources that the Orme family lived in Montgomery country. We also know that Moses Orme, on the pauper list in 1783, came a “well-known, financially stable” family, and was living “in the Lower Newfoundland district.”
That is all that is known, but it adds a little more to Maryland history.
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