Robert "King" Carter (1662/63 - 1732) of Lancaster County, Virginia, at the time the wealthiest man in Virginia, if not all of America, was a businessman, a planter, and an employer of Henry Tapscott, the Immigrant, who did some carpentry for him. From Jul 1726 to Sep 1727, Robert served as acting governor of Virginia following the death in office of Governor Hugh Drysdale. During that time Virginia was hit with a dreadful pandemic.We don't know what the illness was--perhaps smallpox, or typhoid fever, or yellow fever--but Governor Carter believed it resulted from the sinful condition of Virginians. Accordingly he issued the following proclamation:

Whereas it hath pleased Almighty God for the punishment of our sins to afflict this Colony with a long and violent sickness and grevious Mortality And to the End all persons may be excited to a Speedy Repentance that So the Almighty may be moved to avert his Judgments I have thought fitt by and with the Advice and Consent of the Council to appoint That Wednesday the Tenth day of May next be observed and kept throughout this Colony and Dominions a Day of Publick Fasting and Humiliation...

"King" Carter's proclamation was issued 21 April 1727, the month and year that Henry the Immigrant is believed to have died. Thus Henry may well have been a victim of the "violent sickness," passing too quickly to be aided by "fasting and humiliation." A rapid onset would explain why Henry died without a making a will.

Author Anne R. Davis discusses the proclamation (though not Henry) in her soon to be published monograph Distempers and Physic: Eighteenth Century Health in Lancaster County, Virginia. (TimeLines, Foundation for Historic Christ Church, Vol. 10, Issue 2, Fall 2014.)