... who came over and when ...
John Battaile—an Anglo-Norman according to extensive early 19th century records—first appears in the records of Essex County, Virginia on April 2, 1684. The name is pronounced "Battle", so he definitely came through England.
Colonel William Bernard came to Nansemond County, Virginia in 1640, served as a member of the King's Council in Virginia from 1642-1660, and was one of the first justices of Cumberland County. He was, according to 19th century research, either a son or grandson of Francis Bernard of Kingsthorpe.
James aka Jacques ("de" if you must) Bordeaux was born circa 1640 in Grenoble (France) and died onstage about the time of the 1699 yellow fever epidemic in Charleston, South Carolina. A roundabout florid tale written by a lonely widow in 1890 put him as an elderly Hugenot moving from London circa 1750 to continue the family's "mercantile activities" in Charleston, bringing with him much inherited wealth. Pat, PC and a tad muddled on a few points. James was a blacksmith and his son Anthony a carpenter.
Two brothers, George and Conrad Broecher, came from Berlin by way of the Bahamas to South Carolina in 1781. Conrad changed his name to Pritchett and hasn't been heard of since. George changed his to Breaker, and begot a boy who begot a brood of Baptists (plague of proselyters).
Peter Brooks appeared in Virginia in 1638, as head-right of one Thomas Bush, and seems—records provide no corroboration save the use of his first name for several generations—to have settled in Essex County. His son John received a grant of 189 acres there in 1693.
Gilbert and William Brooks, teen-aged brothers, arrived in Scituate, Massachusetts in 1635 from Plymouth, England. William appears as a householder in 1644, a farm which remained in the family for six generations.
Teige Cantey appears in central South Carolina, in the Camden area, sometime in the late 17th century. By some accounts he originated in Ireland, by others in England. The history of the family in South Carolina is well documented and indisputable, but the only certainty about his origins in Europe is that he left where he came from.
Colonel Miles Cary, born in 1620 in Bristol, England, came to Virginia in the middle of the 17th century. He was killed there on June 19, 1667, leaving five sons and two daughters.
Ambrose Cobbs, the emigrant, and his brother Joseph arrived in Virginia, the second in about 1613 on the "Treasurer" and the first some time later. Ambrose settled on the James River and had a son Robert—church warden, Justice and High Sheriff of York County. A hundred or so years later, they moved to Georgia and dropped the "s". A county bears witness. As does what is perhaps the most famous Civil War novel of all time, Gone With the Wind, in its mention of Cobb's Legion.
Carl Court came to New York from Koln, Germany in 1848, leaving behind his father, four brothers, a sister, and several children. He soon moved to Texas and died there of malaria in 1861 while in uniform for the Confederacy. There's paper to prove the last. Rumor has it that his widow was turned down for a Confederate pension. Paper pending.
Robert Ellyson appears in St. Mary's County, Maryland in the middle of the 17th century—where he was mentioned in the levy on St. Mary's Hundred of August 2, 1642. He involved himself in a scrape here and there, most memorable of which was getting into dutch for not paying the appropriate taxes on tobacco. By 1646 he had migrated to York County, Virginia, where he is listed as a lawyer. Now established to have been born in Virginia in 1615. Before he died, however, he'd worn a great many other hats. Maybe I can attribute my lack of focus to him. Maybe not.
Jacob Garrard, a Huguenot, left England in the middle of the 18th century with his brothers Robert and John (who settled in South Carolina). Jacob remained in Virginia, where his son Anthony was christened in Stafford County in 1756. The family eventually settled in Georgia before the Revolution.
Thomas Gerrard of the Newhall in Ashton-in-Makerfield came to St. Mary's County, Maryland about 1637 and became a member of the council, dying in 1672-73 in Westmoreland County, Virginia. He had more sons than daughters, but the name died out promptly regardless.
William Goddard, christened on 28 February 1627/28 at Inglesham, Wiltshire was a citizen and grocer in London and survived the Great Fire. In 1665 he emigrated to Watertown, Massachusetts, followed by his wife and surviving children the following year. Employed by the town to intruct the children in Latin, he became a freeman in December 1677. And, yes, this is the Goddard of Goddard Space Station. Fun, no?
Robert Green emigrated from England via Ireland with his uncle William Duff, a Quaker, to Virginia, arriving in King George County about 1710 and settling in what is now Culpeper County. He died in 1748, his will and the inventory of his estate recorded in the Orange County clerk's office.
Edmund Gwynne, specific English origin unknown, is only known to have lived in Gloucester County, Virginia, married Lucy Bernard (daughter of William Bernard of Nansemond County), owned a tract of 550 acres in the parish of Ware, and died before 1684.
Mark Hardin, born in New York (ye gads!), settled in Virginia in about 1706. The colorful line of descent through Ruffled Shirt Martin and Racer Mark is sadly only a cousinship. We are left with Humdrum Henry, whose granddaughter married a Garrard in Georgia some years further down the line.
Captain Robert Higginson—by all accounts pronounced "Hickerson" thus proving beyond other extensive documentary evidence his English heritage—died in Virginia about August 1649 after serving as executor to his father Thomas's will in Berkeswell, County Warwich, England in 1610.
The Hornbys—James, John, Thomas, Eleanor and Hannah—did come to Georgia toward the end of the 18th century. One story says from England in the autumn of 1784. Another says Ireland, a bit earlier. According to one melodramatic, hence highly dubious, family account, their home was in Lancastershire, but the florid story of a family estate is refuted by English records.
Edward Jacqueline, according to one story, of Huguenot descent, born in 1668, emigrated to Virginia in 1697 from County Kent England, married Martha Cary in 1696-7 and died circa 1730. The second version has him the son of John Jacqueline born in France and Elizabeth Craddock born in France. A Craddock born in France? Hmph! A third version has him born in Jamestown in 1690. Something's muddled.
Jean de Jarnat arrived in Gloucester County, Virginia with several parties of Hugenots in 1700 and petitioned the colonial assemby for naturalization on April 18, 1705—shortly after his marriage to Mary Mumford of Abingdon Parish.
Jean-Jacques Juhan was born in Yverdon, the canton of Bern, Switzerland on April 2, 1743 and emigrated to Novia Scotia before 1763, thence to Charleston thence to Philadelphia. The excessively fanciful and convoluted tale rendered by a descendent 150 years later centered around the young child Francois St. Jean being smuggled to San Domingo after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by two aunts in nun's garb and raised by a Spanish don of Swiss extraction, and later marrying the beautiful Jewess heiress Marguerite de Bonneville of French extraction, and his grandchild fleeing the slave uprising in 1778 to settle in Charleston. Not quite the way it happened.
Many of the accounts of a General Robert Lewis gaining a land grant of 33,333 acres in Virginia are patent foolishness. Three Robert Lewises came to America in the 1600s. One irrefutably arrived in New England on the "Blessing." The other two came to Virginia at about 1635. One was Welsh and had the right in those rigidly controlled days to bear the Lewis coat of arms, for whatever that was supposed to be worth. The rest, as they say, is history.
The immigrant Thomas MacGehee, a descendent of the outlawed MacGregor clan, came to Virginia toward the end of the 17th century, and died while a member of St. John's parish, King William County, Virginia, where his will was dated July 27, 1727.
Captain Nicholas Martiau, born in 1591 according to Hotten's Emigrants, came to York County, Virginia sometime before 1620. An order of the Assembly, dated March 28, 1656, states that Martiau had obtained his denization in England and was therefore eligible to hold an office in Virginia.
In 1832 Christian Frederick Mohl left Stuttgart, Germany for Baltimore, settling eventually in New York four years later, and dying there on April 1, 1850. His daughter Louisa encountered Carl Court while he was in New York. They married at a Lutheran church in New York and made their way to Texas, where they stayed, produced more Courts, and eventually died.
George Reade, having inherited 9 shillings in his mother's otherwise generous will, came to Virginia from Faccombe, Hampshire in 1637-38 in a secretarial capacity for Governor Harvey and settled in Gloucester County. Cut rather a swath, made something of a name for himself, but is no less dead for having done so.
Little is known of Philip Rootes except that he came to Virginia in the early 18th century from England and had, like Robert Lewis, legal right to use a coat of arms. Whoopy whoopy cheer cheer. First mentioned in the records of King and Queen County in 1738, he served as justice of that county in 1739. Left a great many belongings to his several children, all of whom, like him, died damn near broke. I think it's in the genes. His grandson Philip wrote a letter to Geo Wash in 1798 and got an answer.
David Urquhart, born in Scotland in 1779, came to Charleston, South Carolina in 1796 at the behest of his maternal uncle Charles Banks. A personal account rendered by his daughter tells of his leaving Inverness for Edinburgh to London, with socks knitted for him by his mother. He settled in Augusta, Georgia working in, then running, a store on Broad Street "at the John P. King corner." The most we can say now is to wonder about the Augusta National.
Colonel Augustine Warner Sr.—born November 28, 1610 and died December 24, 1674—came to Virginia most probably in 1628, settling in York County and becoming a member of Abingdon Parish.
Edward Waters arrived in Virginia on the ship "Patience" in 1608 in the party of Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers, and returned there after a shipwreck in Bermuda in 1609. After becoming a member of the governor's council there, he returned to Virginia in 1618 and settled on the James River. He and his family ran into awkward circumstances with irate natives, but came out of it in a dugout canoe, all alive and well.
Colonel Francis Willis, born in St. Algate's Parish, Oxfordshire, settled in Gloucester County, where he was active in politics in the 1640s and 1650s. He had no children, however, and it is from his brother Henry, who died in Virginia before 1689, that the family is descended.
© 1993-2008 Helen Glenn Court | All rights reserved