Is anybody here descended from Scottish families who left Scotland because of

[csziggy]

7. Have you looked at the Virginia State Archives online?

There is a Samuel Clark listed as an indentured servant in a 1718/1719 document available online.

Their links directly to documents or even the search engines are unreliable. Go to http://www.virginiamemory.com/collections/ Then Collections by Topic, then use the drop down box to go to Historic Virginia Government then Virginia Colonial Records Project. In the second search box, put in Clark, Samuel. The search result has as the second hit "Clark, Samuel -- indentured servant -- 1719, SR 00873, p. 1, 2"

If you click on the image link, you find a transcription of selected papers from records of indentured servants. The immediate portion about Samuel Clark reads: "2 January 1718/1719 Memorandum that Samuel Clark of the parish of Betherton in the County of Somerset did by indenture bearing like date herewith agree to serve Philip Macduel of London, Marriner, or his assigns seven years in Virginia."

You can download a copy of the image very easily. I've gotten a lot of information on the few ancestors I had go through Virginia. On the Collections by Topic page, there is a link to go to Land Office Grants search. There are land grants to Samuel Clark in 1715 and in 1724, as well as later grants. The 1715 grant would likely not be to the same Samuel Grant who was the 1718 indentured servant, but you can do more research there to see if you can find your ancestor and trace him back.

None of my bookmarked links ever work for anything but their main page and some of the places I found don't show up there. For instance, there is a search page for wills and administration, but it is not listed anywhere I can find it - ever. I do a Google search for "virginia memory wills" and that finds it down in the list of hits as "Basic Search: Wills/Administration".

There I find Clark, Samuel, Sr., 1736 and Clark, Samuel, 1756, both in Brunswick Co. VA (the years are when the wills were probated). Could they be yours? The will records are usually just an index entry, but I think you can order copies of the originals from the Virginia State Archives - if they still exist.