Showing posts with label seventeenth century. Show all posts
Showing posts with label seventeenth century. Show all posts

Jail-keeping and Wolves' Heads **


November 7, 2007

While taking a break from working very hard on this quarter's statistics at work today, I found a really cool and amazing thing on a genealogy site....transcriptions of Westmoreland County, Virginia court records concerning John Minor (a 10th great-grandfather from Garway, Herefordshire...the immigrant!) and his wife, Ellinor. This document has his date of birth as 1625, which could be more accurate than my date of 1600. But look! He was in court practically ALL the time, which I guess is not shocking since this also reveals that he was the undersherriff of Sheriff Youell for many years. It looks like he was responsible for prisoners, and for building a jail, providing accommodations for transported indentureds, etc etc which his wife seems to have continued after his death. This is totally fascinating, and I recognize some of the other names in these records as names appearing in my tree, too (Bull, Allerton, Sturman, and even a Thomas Vaughn who maybe he knew from back home?)

John Minor's Court Records

***October 23, 2015.  This REALLY needs to be about the wolfs heads!

John Chandler - Part One


 I find it interesting that this year, the year my father died, is also the year that two major immigrant brick walls have come down in my family history research.  One of those walls has revealed John Chandler, the youngest person at the time of his arrival to ever land at Jamestown.  The timing was dramatic; if he had been on an earlier fleet, he may have had to endure The Starving Time, which ended with the arrival of Lord DeLaWarr's fleet in 1610, on which John was a passenger.  The evidence linking this particular John Chandler to my family was established earlier this year, following genetic testing and research...more details of that later.  Some months ago I began putting together John Chandler's story, and typed up the sketch below to give context to his arrival:




                     The situation at Jamestown, Virginia on June 10, 1610, the day that                            John Chandler  (age 9) arrived on board the Hercules, the third ship in Thomas West, Lord DeLaWarr’s fleet

At the end of the previous summer (October 4), an injured John Smith returned to England.  Conditions in Jamestown quickly deteriorated. Relations with the natives quickly went from a fragile truce to an open campaign by Chief Powhatan to starve out the colonists.  Since previously, colonists had relied on trade with the natives for the bulk of their food supply, this spelled huge trouble with the coming winter.  The colonists had neglected their fishnets, which rotted in the water.  Hunting was extremely dangerous, since natives attempted to kill anyone who left the fort.

The expected fleet from England had suffered damage from a hurricane that summer, with the flagship becoming stranded in Bermuda, with a bulk of the supplies and food. One ship returned to England, and the seven other ships landed at Jamestown, delivering 200-300 men, women, and children and few supplies.  Although a fleet returned to England to warn of the settlers’ predicament, no further supply ships arrived that year, or the following spring.

The Starving Time followed, and that winter, 88% of the approximately 500 colonists died.  All of the fort’s animals were eaten, many houses and parts of the palisade were burned for firewood, and some even resorted to cannibalism to survive. 

The Bermuda contingent, including the recently widowed John Rolfe, arrived in May of 1610 to find 60 sick and starving colonists confined to the safety of the blockhouse, with the rest of the fort deteriorated around them.  It was decided to abandon the colony and on June 7, 1610, everyone boarded the ships and began to sail down the James River. 

At approximately 10 miles downriver from Jamestown, they were met by a fleet of supply ships led by Thomas West, Lord DeLaWarr, that had left England on April 1.  The newly appointed Governor West headed the group back to Jamestown.  On the third ship in this fleet, the Hercules, the youngest passenger was John Chandler.  He was also the youngest person to date to have been sent/brought to Jamestown.


*Governor Percy had sent Capt. Francis West on a trading mission to the Potomac.  After trading for corn, West and his men on the Swallow began to return to Jamestown, and at Ratcliffe’s fort at the mouth of the James learned that the colony was in dire need and had resorted to cannibalism.  Instead of proceeding with due speed, they headed to sea and consumed the corn themselves on a return trip to England.

Although he was very young, John Chandler wasn't traveling with relatives.  It is not known if he had any connection to anyone else on the fleet, or why he was aboard.  Just a few weeks later, another boy would arrive:  Thomas Willoughby, age 10, whose uncle was an investor in the Virginia Company.  It is a safe bet that the two boys, as the only children in the colony, became friends.  In any case, by 1624, John Chandler was living as an employee at Thomas Willoughby's military encampment at Elizabeth City.  John Chandler's fortunes were just about to change.  (to be continued)

A Wedding in Stepney, and Neighbors


This weekend, I found an image of the church registry page which lists the marriage of my 10th great-grandparents, Anthony West and Anne Barlow Huffe, on March 11, 1633. Anthony is the relative who went to Jamestown in his late teens, spending a few years farming tobacco at George Sandys' plantation and working for Mr. Rowley, the barber-surgeon. He returned to England in the late 1620s, where he met and married Anne, returning to Virginia before 1649 with his wife and surviving children.

Today I noticed that just below the entry in the register for Anthony and Anne, there's an entry for a Tilbury Strange (waterman) and Mary Finicombe (widow) who were from the same neighborhood as A & A, and were married on the same day. I wonder if they knew each other? I wonder if they were friends? I wonder if they all went out together to celebrate after their weddings?

I decided to look up Tilbury Strange, on the off-chance that there was something out there about him. Such an unusual name. I found a page on him, and a link to another interesting person...John Taylor, "The Water-Poet", who was his neighbor. John Taylor was also a member of the guild of boatmen licensed to ferry people across the river, a vital service at this time when London Bridge was the only bridge crossing the Thames. Taylor and Tilbury were both members of the royal watermen, serving as leaders of this guild at various times. John Taylor produced more than 150 publications in his lifetime, and although his work was not sophisticated, it provided keen observations of people and pastimes during his lifetime, making it valuable to social historians.----which is why I need to find it and read it, to better understand the life and times of my relative, his neighbor ;-)

Tilbury was born in about 1588, John Taylor in 1578, so they were both considerably older than Anthony. Before Anthony, born in 1605, even left for Virginia, Tilbury and Taylor traveled through Europe together.

From RootsWeb:
'From "The World of John Taylor the Water-Poet, 1578-1653" by Bernard Capp, 1994 (Oxford University Press) ISBN.0198203756, page 24:
"TAYLOR ... left England on 4 August 1620, accompanied by a fellow waterman named TILBURY." They took ship to Rotterdam, went through Amsterdam and Brunswick to Leipzig; TAYLOR's brother joined them. They could find no transport in Leipzig except 'a fellow with a wheel barrow', who transported their 'cloaks, swords, guns, pistols, and other apparel and luggage'. They themselves carried all across the mountains and forests into Bohemia where they were welcomed. To return to England they bought a small boat and navigated 600 miles down the Elbe to Hamburg, then across the channel, arriving in London on 28 October. Footnote: "TILBURY is probably Tilbury STRANGE, a neighbour [of TAYLOR's] and royal waterman, often employed in the Lord Mayor's Pageants: 'A Calendar of Dramatic Records in the Books of the Livery Companies of London 1485-16_0' ed. J. Robertson and D. J. Gordon (Malone Soc. Collection__ iii, 1954)"'

I don't know if either of them ever traveled to Virginia, or if Anthony heard of their travels before he made his own. I don't even know if Anthony lived in Stepney before his voyage to Virginia, or if he really did know these men....but I like to think of the possibility.

MR. WALSH

(June, 2015) ~  Mr. Wm. Walsh, of New York, has bought a house and lot at Mappsville, of Mr. Nehemiah W. Nock, for $1,000. He proposes to en...