Three things are visible here that a list cannot show.
The clerkship was a commute. James Rigby lived inland and served a church on the river. Village Green to Marcus Hook is about five miles as the crow flies and eight to ten by road, and he made that journey for thirty-one years.
The guns were audible. Chadds Ford is roughly eight miles west of Village Green. On 11 September 1777 that was close enough to stop a school day.
The second James Rigby sits somewhere else entirely. Marple, Newtown and Edgmont form their own cluster in the north of the county, five to ten miles from the southern townships where our man is documented. Seeing them apart on a map is a large part of why we now treat them as two households rather than one.
The recordEvery Place, and What Puts Him There
| Township | When | What the record says | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lower Chichester Marcus Hook | 1760–1791 | Clerk of St Martin’s Church. Separately, a rate assesses him for a house and lot at £5 10s a year plus a schoolmaster’s charge and one cow. | Vestry book; Chester Co. rate |
| Concord | c.1768–70 | Listed under Inmates at 2s 6d — a married householder holding no land. | Chester Co. rate |
| Upper Chichester | undated | Tenement at £4 a year, plus a schoolmaster’s charge. Also a tenant of Jacob Howell at £4 10s. Smedley calls him “of Upper Chichester.” | Chester Co. rates |
| Aston Village Green | 1774, 1781, 1793, 1798, 1800 | Taxed 1774 (“James Regy”) and 1781 (“James Rigby, Clk”). Enumerated as schoolmaster in 1793. In 1798 owns 5 acres 80 perches, $66, no dwelling. Head of household, 1800 census. | Tax rates; septennial; Direct Tax; census |
| Middletown Lima | 1790 | Head of household — four people. | U.S. census |
| ⚠ Attributed to the second James Rigby, not to ours | |||
| Marple | c.1787, 1800 | A James Rigby at 3s 9d beside a Daniel Rigby at 5s; “James Rigbey” among 128 taxable inhabitants in 1800 — the year ours is enumerated in Aston. | Chester Co. rate; septennial |
| Newtown | 1798 | Occupant of Samuel Black’s 100 acres: a stone house 18×23, wooden kitchen, barn, stable, “adjoining Enos Worrall” — who appears on the Marple list. | U.S. Direct Tax |
| Edgmont | 1779, 1781 | Daniel Rigby pays supply tax. | Chester Co. rates |
ElsewhereDoe Run, and the Move East
Eli Rigby married Elizabeth Harlan near Doe Run village in 1796 and worked there as a nail maker. Doe Run is in western Chester County, about twenty miles west of his father’s townships — too far to fit on the map above at any useful scale, which is why it is shown as a margin marker.
He came back east. By the 1850s he was in Concord Township, Delaware County, a few miles from where his father had been assessed as an inmate eighty years earlier, and he was buried at Chichester Friends beside his mother.
Still to doGround Not Yet Walked
Open in this section
- The 1798 Direct Tax general list — it describes buildings one at a time and may identify the room the 1777 school met in.
- Village Green as it stood — the Seven Stars tavern, the British camp of September 1777 from Mount Hope to the lower village, and where the schoolroom sat in relation to both.
- The Rigby Farm in Concord, held into the twentieth century.
- A period map overlay. The 1848 and 1875 county atlases would let these points sit on contemporary township lines rather than modern approximations.