Joseph Lupton, the Immigrant, was a weaver by trade. He is said to have left England for Pennsylvania about 1710, when he was about 24 years old. He settled first in Newtown, Bucks Co., Pennsylvania, where he was a member of the Middletown Monthly Meeting.
The first record of him in America is on 7th mo., 10th d. 1713 (under the old calendar, 10 Sep 1713) when he married (1st) Mercy Twining, ... The marriage of Joseph took place at the home of his bride's parents in Newtown.
Joseph Lupton's name appears in very few Bucks land records, suggesting that he spent his years there as a tradesman. A map of that era shows him with 50 acres on the south side of Newtown, but the records relating to the estate of his father-in-law, Stephen Twining, who died in 1720, suggest that the 50 acres reverted to the estate on his death, and that they were redistributed among Stephen's sons.
The first four of Joseph and Mercy's children - William, Sarah, Joseph (Jr.) and Elizabeth - were born in Newtown, and their dates of birth are recorded in the Middletown minutes.
The fifth and final child, John, was born in 1725 at around the time the family moved some 10 miles away to Solebury Township, Bucks Co. It is not clear whether John was born at Newtown or Solebury, but he was born in Bucks Co.
In December, 1725, the certificate from Middletown Meeting into Buckingham Monthly Meeting (Lahaska, Bucks Co.) for Joseph Lupton, Nathaniel Twining "and their wives" was read and accepted. This is the last date on which Mercy is known to have been living. There has been some suggestion of a family legend concerning her death in England, presumably while visiting Joseph's family, but there is no known evidence to support this story. A handwritten record in some material given to me (John T. Lupton) by my father contains a date of death for Mercy of 1762, but this would appear to be an error - possibly a transposition of digits from 1726, which would be a much more likely date. The Twining Family genealogy by T. J.Twining states that she died before 1730, which also seems very likely. Some credence to the notion of an extended absence from Bucks (e.g., fora trip to England) is given by the fact that Joseph does not appear in the Buckingham minutes from the date of his and Mercy's acceptance until 1730, when he and Mary (Scarborough) Pickering declare their intention to marry, after which he appears regularly as an overseer and functionary of the Meeting.
Joseph married Mary, widow of Samuel Pickering as his second wife, and had three additional children with her - Ann, Mercy and Jonathan. In 1740, he obtained a grant of land a short distance to the west of the young frontier town of Winchester, in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia .He spent the winter of 1740-41 camping on the land with his son John (although some versions of the story have claimed that it was his brother John, who had come over from England - there is no evidence of this, though).
He moved there permanently in 1741 and took with him his wife, Mary, their three young children, and the two younger sons of his first marriage, Joseph Jr. and John. There they became members of the Hopewell Monthly Meeting of Frederick Co., Virginia.
William, his oldest son,remained in Pennsylvania for a year or so, where he married his stepsister Grace Pickering before moving to Virginia as well. By the time of Joseph's removal to Virginia, his daughter Sarah had also married a step-sibling, Isaac Pickering, and she remained in Bucks Co. for the rest of her life. The younger daughter of the first marriage, Elizabeth,appears to have lived with her sister in Bucks until 1745, when she married Henry Paxson. Elizabeth remained in Pennsylvania for the rest ofher life as well.
On 15 Jan 1741, in his Pennsylvania Gazette, Benjamin Franklin published a list of unclaimed letters at the Philadelphia Post Office .Among them were a letter addressed to Joseph Lupton, of Solebury Township, Bucks Co., and also a letter addressed to George Fisher, which was to have been delivered to him at Joseph Lupton's, Solebury Twp. The letters, of course, were not claimed because Joseph was not there toc laim them, being in Virginia.
The land granted to Joseph in the Valley stretched westward from Winchester along the present-day track of US Route 50, centering around the area still known as Round Hill. The long-time (and current) location of the Round Hill Presbyterian Church is said to have been surrounded by Lupton farms in the 18th and 19th centuries. As his family grew, most of Joseph's children and grandchildren remained members of the Society of Friends, but his son John became a Presbyterian, his line becoming known as the "Presbyterian" Luptons, as differentiated from the "Quaker" Luptons.
On Joseph's death, the land in the original grant remained in John's line, and the "Presbyterians" also came to be known as the "Round Hill" Luptons. The Quaker families of William, Joseph Jr. and Jonathan spread northward and westward from the original grant along a low ridge that led to their becoming known as the "Apple Pie Ridge" Luptons. Over the years, the families grew apart, to the point that many, including members of both familes, believed they were entirely separate families.David Walker Lupton, publisher of "The Luptonian" and a descendant of Joseph Jr., recalls asking his aunt Caroline Damon Lupton about the Luptons living in the Round Hill area, and being told by her, "we're not related to them."
Joseph Lupton, the Immigrant, died in 1758 in Frederick County. His descendants of the Lupton name spread in all directions from the Shenandoah Valley, but especially through modern-day West Virginia, into Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. In addition, there are several instances of Pennsylvania descendants through his daughters, Sarah (Lupton) Pickering and Elizabeth (Lupton) Paxson, moving westward and linking up with family lines in later generations.
