John Battaile — an Anglo-Norman according to extensive early 19th-century records — first appears in the records of Essex County, Virginia on 2 April 1684. The name is pronounced Battle.
Colonel William Bernard, younger brother of Sir Robert of Huntingdon, son of Francis of Kingsthorpe, grandson of Francis of Abingdon, and cousin to Richard of Bedford, England and Gloucester County, Virginia, came from Gravesend in June 1635 to Nansemond County, served on the King's Council from 1642 to 1660, and was one of the first justices of Cumberland County.
James aka Jacques de Bourdeaux, born c 1640 in Grenoble and a blacksmith rather than an affluent merchant, died in Charleston, South Carolina of yellow fever during the 1699 epidemic.
Two brothers, George and Conrad Broecher, arrived from Berlin by way of the Bahamas to South Carolina in 1781. George changed his to Breaker, and begot many Baptists. Conrad changed his name to Pritchett and hasn't been heard of since.
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. A great-granddaughter married a MacGehee.
Gilbert and William Brooks, teenage brothers, arrived in Scituate, Massachusetts in 1635 from Plymouth, England. William appears as a householder in 1644 on a farm near Norwell that stayed in the family until 1918.
Teige Cantey appears in Goose Creek, South Carolina in 1670 on the heels of his son George, leaving property behind him in the Barbados. By most accounts he originated in Ireland. The family's history in South Carolina, however, is well documented and indisputable.
Colonel Miles Cary, born in 1620 in Bristol, England, came to Virginia in the middle of the 17th century. He was killed there not long after, on 19 June 1667, leaving five sons and two daughters.
Ambrose Cobbs arrived in Virginia before 1639, settled on the James River, and had a son Robert — church warden, justice, and high sheriff of York County. A hundred years later, the family moved to Georgia and dropped the s. A county bears witness. As does the most famous Civil War novel of all time, Gone With the Wind, in its mentions of Cobb's Legion.
Carl Court, a widower, came to New York from Cologne, Germany in 1848, leaving behind his father, four brothers, a sister, and at least a few children. He soon moved to Texas, dying there of fever in 1861 in uniform for the Confederacy. Word has it that his widow was denied a Confederate pension.
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 2 August 1642. He was fined there for not paying the appropriate taxes on tobacco. By 1646 he had migrated to York County, Virginia, where he is listed as a lawyer. Before he died, however, he'd worn a great many other hats. Now established to have been born in Virginia in 1615. Maybe.
Jacob Garrard, a Huguenot, left England in the middle of the 18th century with — it is said, in keeping with the three brothers motif — his brothers John (who settled in South Carolina) and Robert. Jacob remained in Virginia, where his son Anthony was christened in Stafford County in 1756. The family passed through North Carolina but settled in Georgia after the Revolution.
William Goddard, christened on 28 February 1628 at Inglesham in Wiltshire, was a prosperous citizen of London and survived the Great Fire. In 1665, he emigrated to Watertown. Employed by the town to instruct the children in Latin, he became a freeman in December 1677.
Edmund Gwynne, specific English origin uncertain, 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, donated the land for Gloucester Court House, and died before 1684.
Mark Hardin, born in New York City, settled in Virginia in about 1706. The colorful line through Ruffled Shirt Martin and Racer Mark is collateral. The direct line is Humdrum Henry, whose granddaughter married a Garrard.
Captain Robert Higginson died in Virginia about August 1649, though only after commanding the Middle Plantation fort (later Williamsburg), receiving title to 100 acres nearby, and serving as executor to his father Thomas's will in Berkeswell, County Warwick, England in 1610.
The Hornbys did come to South Carolina toward the end of the 18th century, most likely from Ireland. According to one account, the family home was in Lancashire, but the assertion of an estate and earldom are refuted by English records. William was held in May 1781 off Charleston, South Carolina on the prison ship HMS Torbay, along with 130-odd others, to prevent them from participating in, to use their words, the "Advancement of the Glorious Cause."
Edward Jacqueline, of Huguenot descent, born in 1668 in County Kent, England — son of John Jacqueline, born in France, and Elizabeth Craddock — emigrated to Virginia in 1697, married Martha Cary in 1697 and died c 1730. A second disproved version has him born in Jamestown in 1690.
Jean de Jarnat arrived in Gloucester County, Virginia with several parties of Huguenots in 1700 and petitioned the colonial assembly for naturalization on 18 April 1705 — shortly after he married Mary Mumford of Abingdon Parish.
Jean-Jacques Juhan, musician, born in Yverdon, the canton of Bern, Switzerland on 2 April 1743, emigrates to Novia Scotia before 1763, then to Boston, then to Charleston, then to Philadelphia.
The accounts of a General Robert Lewis gaining a land grant of 33,333+ acres in Virginia are folklore. Three men of that name arrived in the colonies in 1635. The only certainty about any of them is that they left where they came from and got where they went to. The rest, as they say, is history.
The immigrant Thomas MacGehee, a descendant of the outlawed MacGregor clan, came to Virginia late in the 17th century, and died while a member of St. John's parish, King William County, where his will was dated 27 July 1727.
Captain Nicholas Martiau, born in 1591 according to Hotten's Emigrants, came to York County sometime before 1620. An order of the Assembly, dated 28 March 1656, states that Martiau had obtained his denization in England and was therefore eligible to hold office in Virginia.
In 1832 Christian Frederick Mohl left Stuttgart, Germany and sailed for Baltimore, settling in New York City four years later, and dying there on 1 April 1850. His daughter Louisa encountered Carl Court in New York and married him at a Lutheran church there. They made their way to Texas, where they settled on the post road near Houston, produced more Courts, and eventually died.
In 1754, from Caen by way of Jersey, Louis-Philippe Payzant arrived in Nova Scotia, where in 1756 on a now-uninhabited island in Mahone Bay he was scalped by MicMac Indians, who then kidnapped his pregnant wife and four children.
George Reade, having inherited 40 shillings in his mother Mildred Windebanke's otherwise generous will, sailed from Faccombe, Hampshire to Virginia in 1637 as secretary to Governor Harvey and settled in Gloucester County.
Little is known of Major 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. First mentioned in the records of King and Queen County in 1738, where he served as justice in 1739. Left a great many belongings to his several children, all of whom, like him, died damn near broke.
Cornet Robert Stetson, born in South Devon, near Plymourth. Baptized in St. George's Church in Modbury in 1615. Sporting a coat of arms, settled in Scituate, Massachusetts in 1634, receiving a "considerable tract of land on the North River." Raised the first Horse Company in Plymouth Colony c 1658. And thus, thanks to a tubercular cousin in Philadelphia, the Stetson hat.
David Urquhart, born in Scotland in 1774, came at the behest of his maternal uncle Charles Banks to Charleston, South Carolina in 1796. A personal account written by his daughter Lucy in her old age tells of his leaving Inverness for Edinburgh to London, with socks knitted for him by his mother. He settled in Augusta, Georgia working in and then running a store on Broad Street "at the John P. King corner."
Augustine Warner Senior, born 28 November 1610, died 24 December 1674, came to Virginia from Norwich about 1628, settled in York County and joined Abingdon Parish. Predecessor of Robert E. Lee, Queen Elizabeth II, and others.
Edward Waters arrived in Virginia on the Patience in 1608 with Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers, and returned after a shipwreck in Bermuda in 1609, where he became a member of the governor's council. He returned again to Virginia in 1618 and with his family ran into awkward circumstances with irate natives, but came out of it in a dugout canoe alive and well.
The English origin of William White is unknown, but he and his wife Susanna did sail on the Mayflower in 1620 with 5-year-old Resolved. Peregrine was born at harbor in Cape Cod. William died the first winter.
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 through his brother Henry that the family is descended.
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