Pre-Eminent Works on Virginia's Founders

Starting in 2004, Genealogical Publishing Company undertook several projects leading to the publication of definitive titles pertaining to the genealogy of Virginia’s founding families. We completed these projects just in time for the May 11-13, 2007, celebration of the settlement at Jamestown, America’s first permanent English-speaking colony.

Adventurers of Purse and Person Virginia 1607-1624/5. Fourth Edition

The titles to which we refer are the three-volume Adventurers of Purse and Person, Virginia, 1607-1624/25, Fourth Edition by John Frederick Dorman; Virginia Immigrants and Adventurers, 1607-1635: A Biographical Dictionary, by Martha W. McCartney; and Jamestowne Ancestors, 1607-1699, by Virginia Davis. Since 2007, we have published several additional works by Martha McCartney that focus on Virginia’s early settlers, namely, Jamestown People to 1800 and Powhatan Indian Place Names in Tidewater Virginia.

Each of these publications is unique in its own way, although researchers will find some small overlap. Jamestowne Ancestors names individuals who served in the Virginia legislature (House of Burgesses or Governor’s Council) or owned land on Jamestown Island during the 17th century, along with a place of origin and associated date(s).

Martha McCartney’s Virginia Immigrants and Adventurers, a biographical dictionary of the earliest Virginians, is a work of much broader scope, if narrower in its chronological focus. The author has assembled in a single volume every significant detail concerning the 5,500 persons–whether or not they are known to have had progeny–who set foot along the banks of the James and York rivers and the communities (“hundreds”) established there as of 1635. Ms. McCartney’s sequel biographical dictionary takes that town’s inhabitants to 1800.

Lastly, the three-volume Adventurers of Purse and Person, Virginia is the most expansive title of all and the most genealogical in nature. Based on the “Muster” of 1624/5–essentially a census taken by the Royal Commission that succeeded the Virginia Company–this three-volume set traces the descent for six generations of about 150 families known to have had progeny. Its editor, John Frederick Dorman, was the foremost authority on colonial Virginia genealogy.

For more information concerning these titles–which, in the aggregate, comprise the cornerstone of Jamestown and early Virginia genealogy–please visit the following pages: