Will of Robert Bolton mentions John Warnock, not John Womack

The 1789 will of Robert Bolton in Chatham County, Georgia has been cited as proof that a John Womack lived there.

Luckily, we have both the recorded will and the original.

Chatham Co, GA original wills. Etc - LDS Film # 005765219, image 639 - 644, Robert Bolton, Sr will, dated 24 July 1786, recorded 22 May 1789. This is the original will. One paragraph mentions John Warnock, not Womack. The name ‘Warnock’ is very legible: “I devise to my afflicted neighbour John Warnock such of my old waring apparel as my Executors shall think proper to give, and that my executors shall pay to John Warnock Twenty Shilling annum during his natural life to be paid out of my Estate not before bequeathed.” 

The recorded will, in Chatham Co, GA Will Book C:61 (LDS Film # 005759791, image 61) is much harder to read, and “John Warnock” looks more like “John Womack”.

The John Womack who lived in Savannah, Chatham Co, GA in the early 1800s was the son of Wiley Womack and Elizabeth Shuman.  He married first Mary Hudson, and after they divorced, he married Ann Black (who had recently divorced her first husband, Edmund Warren).  John Womack had a daughter, Mary Ann Womack, Mary Hudson, but no known children with second wife Ann Black.  John Womack and wife Ann are in the 1850 Federal Census of Burke Co, GA, living with Ann's son-in-law and daughter, James Griffin and Lucy Warren, Ann's daughter from her first marriage.  John is shown as age 60, but was older, likely born circa 1785 or a little earlier.

Subsequent posts will give more documentation on this.