First Families of Virginia
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First Families of Virginia is an informal association of people who can trace their ancestry to the original Virginian colonists from England who landed at Jamestown in 1607.
Many members of the First Families of Virginia most likely did not settle at Jamestown in 1607. Instead, they came some 20 odd years later. The first families of Virginia are basically the most prominent names that we see in Colonial Virginia. They were considered part of the Aristocracy of England that claimed land in the New World, namely in the Southern colonies during the Colonial period in American history. The First Families of Virginia, as a consequence of primogeniture, evolved heavily from third or second sons of English nobility who inherited land grants or land in the New World. This formed part of the Southern Aristocracy in America.
Most members of the first families of Virginia would likely not have been part of the Jamestown settlement. The earliest Jamestown settlers, those who arrived in 1607, were mostly a group of skilled tradesmen, young gentlemen and soldiers, all eager for new opportunities. Women arrived only on later supply voyages. A larger number of the royalists and wealthy land owners came to Virginia a few years later. However, notwithstanding some lineage of English aristocracy, many of the First Families of Virginia trace their lineage to both Pocahontas and John Rolfe through their only son, through Thomas Rolfe, joining an Englishman who arrived in 1611 and a Native American who was already in Virginia in their combined heritage.
In shorthand, families or people in them can be called FFV.
Some family names include:
- Ackiss
- Allerton
- Armistead
- Bacon
- Bailey
- Ballard
- Baskerville Robert and John Baskerville arrived 1635
- Bassett
- Beale
- Bell--Sir Robert Bell
- Berkeley
- Beverley
- Blair
- Bland
- Branch -- although Christopher Branch did not arrive until 1620
- Bray
- Bridger
- Browne of "Four Mile Tree"
- Browning
- Burwell
- Byrd
- Carter
- Cary
- Chandler
- Chichely
- Churchill
- Claiborne
- Corbin
- Custis
- Cole
- Compton of Henry County
- Dawson
- Digges
- Eppes
- Fairfax
- Farrar
- Firby
- Fitzhugh
- Fairfax
- Gooch
- Gilbert
- Grymes
- Hammond
- Haywood of Gloucester County
- Harrison
- Hobby
- Holland
- Jenings of Ripon Hall
- Kemp
- Lewis
- Limerick (Vincent Limerick 1635)
- Limbrick
- Littleton
- Ludwell
- Lunsford
- Lee
- Lightfoot
- Martiau
- Matthews
- Morris
- Nelson
- Page
- Percy
- Parke
- Randolph
- Robinson
- Rolfe
- Scarborough
- Smith, of Gloucester Co.
- Spotswood
- Snipe
- Sullivan
- Talliaferro/Toliver
- Tayloe
- Tyler
- Thorogood
- Thornton
- Warner
- Washington
- West
- Whiting
- Willoughby
- Willis
- Wood
- Woodson
- Wormeley
- Yardley
- Young
[edit] See also
- WITHINGTON, LOTHROP. Virginia Gleanings in England: Abstracts of 17th and 18th-Century English Wills and Administrations Relating to Virginia and Virginians: A Consolidation of Articles from The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. Baltimore: Clearfield Co., 1998. 745p.
