Was there an Elizabeth who was the daughter of Samuel Gaulding and Elizabeth Turner?

Catherine Gauldin
Jun 13
3 min read

The people who are specifically named in the 1785 will of Samuel Gaulding are: (1)

Wife - Elizabeth.

Daughters - Kesiah, Anne, Lucy and Patty

Sons - Archibald and William

Trustees, Arbitrators and Witnesses - Daniel Marshall, John Black, Williston Talbot, Thomas Marshall, Robert Alexander, Richard Stith, Charles Moile Talbot, Edward Robertson, Richard Baughm.

The Douglas Register, Births and Baptisms records the birth of Elizabeth to Samuel Gaulding and Elizabeth Turner. She was born December 28, 1764. This would be the Elizabeth that Ronnie Walker identifies as the wife of Robert Smith.

The Douglas Register. Two daughters born to Samuel Gaulding and Elizabeth Turner are Elizabeth born December 28, 1764 and Kesiah born December 13, 1766. (2)

Ann (Gaulding) Stewart born about 1767 who died on June 7, 1855 in Charlotte County, Virginia. Anne Gaulding is named in the will of Samuel. Her certificate of death indicates she was the daughter of E. and S. Gaulding and was 87 years old when she died. The informant was her daughter Mary Stewart. (2) If she was 87 in 1855, that would mean she was born in 1768.

Marriage, November 16, 1795 between John Stuart and Anne Gaulden, William Bosher, Surety. (4)

There are two Stewart marriages recorded in Campbell County. This one records the same information, John Stewart and Anne Gauldin bond 16 November 1795, married by Charles Cobb. (5)

Ronnie E. Walker of Greensboro, NC recorded five daughters and included Elizabeth born 28 December 1764 in Goochland County, married to a man named Robert Smith. There is no Elizabeth mentioned in the will, but her birth is certainly confirmed in the Douglas Register. (2) He gave no sources.

The only record I have found regarding an Elizabeth Gaulden who married Robert Smith is an index, U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560-1900 which lists Elizabeth Gaulden born in Virginia in 1764 married Robert Smith. He was born in 1751. (7) This is not a valid source, so therefore I cannot attach Robert Smith to this record.

Conclusion

Was There a Daughter Named Elizabeth?

The surviving records make it clear that Samuel Gaulding and his wife Elizabeth Turner did have a daughter named Elizabeth, born 28 December 1764, as recorded in The Douglas Register, a primary source documenting births and baptisms in Goochland County. This same register also records the birth of Kesiah in 1766, confirming that Samuel and Elizabeth had at least two daughters born in the mid‑1760s. A third daughter, Ann, appears in Samuel’s 1785 will and is independently documented through her 1855 Charlotte County death record, which identifies her parents as “E. and S. Gaulding” and gives her age as 87, placing her birth around 1767–1768. Ann later married John Stewart in 1795, a marriage recorded in both Goochland and Campbell County.

The question arises because Elizabeth, born in 1764, does not appear in Samuel’s 1785 will, which names daughters Kesiah, Anne, Lucy, and Patty, but not Elizabeth. In eighteenth‑century Virginia, a living daughter was almost always named in her father’s will because she was entitled to a distributive share or dowry portion. The complete absence of Elizabeth from the will—without any reference to a married daughter, a deceased daughter, or heirs of a deceased daughter—strongly indicates that she died before 1785. No marriage bond, court record, Bible entry, or deed has been found linking an Elizabeth Gaulden/Gaulding to Robert Smith, despite a later researcher’s claim. The only “record” suggesting such a marriage is a modern compiled index, U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560–1900, which is not a primary source and frequently merges unrelated individuals.

For these reasons, the most historically defensible conclusion is that Elizabeth (b. 1764) was indeed a daughter of Samuel and Elizabeth Turner, but she likely died young, probably before reaching adulthood, and certainly before her father wrote his will in 1785. She should therefore be included among their children, but with the notation that she did not survive to adulthood and that no reliable evidence supports a marriage to Robert Smith. This interpretation aligns with the documented evidence and follows accepted genealogical standards.