George Nestor

• formal_name:
• first_date: 1804
• last_date: 1811
• function: Printer
• locales: Norfolk
• precis: Printer in the office of the Norfolk Gazette and Publick Ledger (1804-11), so employed by its proprietors John Cowper (110), George Lewis Gray (188), and William Davis (127).
• notes: Printer
  Norfolk
  Printer in the office of the Norfolk Gazette and Publick Ledger (1804-11), so employed by its proprietors John Cowper (110), George Lewis Gray (188), and William Davis (127).
  Nestor is known as a part of the Virginia print trade primarily from the notices of his death published in Norfolk's two newspapers in March 1811. He had recently left the employ of John Cowper and William Davis, proprietors of the Publick Ledger; Cowper described Nestor as "an attentive, good workman" who had for "many years … acquitted himself with credit, and to the satisfaction and advantage to the Proprietor of this Establishment." That account suggests that he had been a part of Cowper's journal from its beginning in July 1804.
  Research in genealogical references reveals that Nestor was working in New York City in the summer of 1803 when he married there. That same marriage notice reported his origin as being "of Virginia." Such an identification, as well as his later association with Princess Anne County, suggests that he was the son of Richard Nestor, a moderately-wealthy planter from that county who speculated in properties seized from Loyalists in Portsmouth during the Revolution; he had married in Princess Anne in June 1778, a year before the printer's birth, and died in 1790 when George was just eleven. How the printer made his way to New York is unknown, but significant links to New York press offices had been forged by 1790 through a three-year residence in Norfolk of New York publisher John McLean (297). However, these suggestions are speculative, not proven, because of Nestor's relative obscurity.
  
  
  Personal Data
  
  Born:
  in
  1779
  Princess Anne County, Virginia [?]
  
  Married:
  July 2
  1803
  Maria Britton @ New York City, New York.
  
  Died:
  Mar. 10
  1811
  Princess Anne County, Virginia.
  
  
  Obituary reported that he left "a wife and two children."
  
  Sources: Death notices published Mar. 11, 1811 in Norfolk Gazette and Publick Ledger and the Norfolk and Portsmouth Herald; New York Genealogical and Biographical Record (1918).
  Richard Nestor is mentioned in several Loyalist claims recorded in American Migrations, 1765-1799 (2000); his 1778 marriage is recorded in ministerial returns from Princess Anne County.
  
• Related Bios:
  • John Cowper
  • William Davis
  • George Lewis Gray

This version of the Index of Virginia Printing was a gift from the estate of the site's creator, David Rawson. The content contained herein will not be updated, as it is part of the Library of Virginia's personal papers collection. For more information, please see David Rawson Index of Virginia Printing website. Accession 53067. Personal papers collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.