Third Generation – Seth Pettypool
(m. Martha ??)

circa 1700 – 1773

Halifax County, Virginia

Seth of the third generation, son of William and Elizabeth Pettypool, was born by 1701, likely in Charles City County, Virginia and married Martha (??) before 1721. Seth moved his family south and west in the mid 18th century as the Virginia Southside frontier opened for settlement. By the early 1750’s Seth had settled permanently along Aaron’s Creek in what ultimately became known as Halifax County (having been at earlier stages of development part of Brunswick and then Lunenburg Counties).

Although not all of the documents detailing Seth’s land acquisitions and sales may have survived, those that have show that he acquired many acres of undeveloped Southside Virginia land by the end of his life circa 1773. While Seth would not have been considered wealthy, a deed of 1768 transferred Seth and Martha’s farmstead to their son, William, for “the sum of 500 Pounds current money of Virginia.”2 An accounting of the personal property accompanying the transaction indicates that Seth had attained better than subsistence status on the Aaron’s Creek properties.

Although no will has been found for Seth, it has been possible to at least partially reconstruct his family based on Bristol Parish birth records3 and Lunenburg County tax4 records. Seth’s known children include:

For more information...

Please see The William Pettypool Family of Southside Virginia: Lineage Reconstruction Based on Current Review of Evidence, The Virginia Genealogist, Vol. 4, No. 1 (January-March, 2003) for more information about this family. The complete text of the article is available for download here.


1. Landon C. Bell, Cumberland Parish, Lunenburg County, Virginia, 1746-1816, Vestry Book 1746-1816 (Richmond, Virginia: The William Byrd Press, Inc., 1930), 276.

2. Halifax Co., Va., Deed Bk. 7, 270.

3. Churchill Gibson Chamberlayne, Births from the Bristol Parish Register of Henrico, Prince George and Dinwiddie Counties, Virginia, 1720-1789 (Baltimore, 1980), 75-77, 79.

4. Landon C. Bell, Sunlight on the Southside: Lists of Tithes, Lunenburg County, Virginia, 1748-1783 (Philadelphia, Pa., 1931), 71.