He left his children "well-fixed" as to land. In Northumberland alone he had patented 3700 acres. Tradition says that he left the daughter of his associate, Nicholas Morris, "a riding mare." His will was referred to the governor "because of some ambiguities in the procurings of it." No copy of it can now be found.
Due to distances and lack of fast transportation the widow's hand was sometimes spoken for at the funeral of her husband by one of the guests who was afraid that he might lose out if he waited to make another visit. This was probably not true in Ursula's case, but she did remarry soon enough for her new husband to act as one of the executors of Colonel Mottrom's will.
Major George Colclough, Ursula's third husband, was a burgess in 1658. After his death Ursula Bish Thompson-Mottrom-Colclough married Colonel Isaac Allerton. Even after she had married this fourth time she continued to have trouble in settling Colonel Mottrom's estate, because of the "ambiguities" of his will.
Colonel and Mrs. Allerton lived at his home, The Narrows, which was located in the new county of Westmoreland, formed from Northumberland in 1653.
Colonel Allerton was the son of Isaac Allerton, who came to Plymouth on the Mayflower in 1620, and of Fear Brewster, only daughter of Governor William Brewster, of Plymouth. He was born in 1630 and was one of the early graduates of Harvard College. He came to Virginia and settled in the Northern Neck at The Narrows.
From Ursula and Isaac Allerton was descended President Zachary Taylor.
WITCHCRAFT
The belief in witchcraft was prevalent amongst the early settlers of the Northern Neck. The Neck at this time was beset with wolves and Indians and was a true type of a frontier colony.
To the witch was ascribed the power of inflicting strange and incurable diseases, of changing men into horses when they were asleep at night, and after bridling and saddling them, riding them at a gallop over the countryside to the places where the witches had their frolics. Horses too were thought to be ridden at night, unbridled and barebacked. In the morning these horses would be fagged-out and caked with sweat and mud and their manes plaited into "witches' stirrups."
That witches were taken seriously by settlers of the Neck in the seventeenth century is proven by the following abstract from the Northumberland County records: