An American Family History

Rachel Oxley was born April 30, 1742 in Hopewell, Mercer (formerly Hunterdon) County, New Jersey. Her parents were Henry Oxley and Mary Everett.

On April 10, 1761 she was dismissed from the Hopewell Baptist Church to the Ketoctin Baptist Church in Loudoun County, Virginia.

Rachel never married. She had two sons who were mentioned in her will:
Joel Oxley (1772, married Sarah Troth), and
Jeremiah Oxley (1778, married Elizabeth Murray).

Thomas Harris, a Quaker, was disowned in 1772 from the Fairfax Monthly Meeting for fathering a child by a "daughter of Henry Oxley." It was also mentioned that he had promised to marry her.

January 26, 1771 her father gave her 50 acres of land in Loudoun County where her brother Henry had been living adjacent to her sister, Hannah Stephens, and brother, Everitt Oxley.

In 1777 when her father died she inherited

. . .all the goods that shee had before I came to live with her the last time and likewise all the remainder of my goods that I brought from Clear Oxley and I make and Ordain my Daughter Rachel Oxley Executrix. . .

Rachel must have been an unusual woman for her time and held in high esteem by her father. Normally an unmarried woman would not have owned land herself or have been made the executrix of the estate.

Rachel died when she was only 37 in 1779 in Loudoun County. Her son Joel was left in the care of her sister, Hannah Stephens.

In 1792 Jeremiah Oxley was apprenticed to Jeremiah McGahey to learn weaving. In 1794 Jeremiah McGahey, age 16, was apprenticed to Francis Titus.

Jeremiah married under the name Jeremiah Oxley McGhahay in Frederick, Virginia on February 1, 1801.

Baptist churches were found in early colonial settlements and grew out of the English Separatist movement and the doctrine of John Smyth who rejected infant baptism.

Children of Henry Oxley and Mary Everett Everit Oxley Mary Oxley Howell Elizabeth Oxley Hannah Oxley Stephens Henry Oxley Rachel Oxley Clare Oxley John Oxley