Consider the following 17th-century Virginia land patent abstract: “MATHEW PRICE, son and heire to JOHN PRICE, late of Va., labourer, 150 acs. Henrico Co., upon Turkey Island Cr., 23 May 1638, p. 558. E. by S. upon sd. Cr., W. by N. toward Bremo, S. by W. upon land granted to his late father, now[…]Read more
From its beginnings in 1893 until the 1950s, the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography devoted considerable space to the publication of genealogical source material. In all, the Magazine published nearly 5,000 pages of compiled genealogies and related source material. In 1981, Genealogical Publishing Company (Genealogical.com) re-arranged the genealogies, so that each is complete in[…]Read more
Have you ever wondered what life was REALLY like for our 17th-century ancestors? How did they dress; in fact, how did they make their clothing? What did they use to decorate their meager (or not so meager) dwellings? How did men relate to women? What was their diet on a daily basis? How often did[…]Read more
“On May 13, 1607, Virginia’s first colonists came ashore on what became known as Jamestown Island. The next day, they commenced establishing an outpost they called James Cittie or Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the United States. The 104 colonists were unaware that they had arrived at the close of the most severe[…]Read more
Prepared under the auspices of the Order of First Families of Virginia to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown (2007), the Fourth Edition of Adventurers of Purse and Person extends the lines of descent of the founding families documented in previous editions from four generations to six, bringing most families down to the Revolutionary[…]Read more
The late Virginia Lee Hutcheson Davis was one of our leading authorities on the earliest inhabitants of Jamestown and the entire Tidewater region of Virginia. Her most famous book on this area of research was the diminutive volume, Jamestowne Ancestors, 1607-1699, a list of approximately 1,200 persons who are known to have landed or resided[…]Read more
From the mid-18th to the mid-19th centuries, millions of Americans (both native- born and immigrant) abandoned the Tidewater region of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia for greener pastures. Since their predecessors had already claimed the best lands of the alluvial Tidewater, these families had little choice but to start their farms on the upland soil of[…]Read more
The following article is excerpted from the book, Without Indentures: Index to White Slave Children in Colonial Court Records, by Richard Hayes Phillips. Drawing on records found in county courthouses, Dr. Phillips has compiled incontrovertible evidence of 5,000 children who were kidnapped from Ireland, Scotland, England, and New England and sold into slavery in Maryland[…]Read more
In the July 28 issue of “Genealogy Pointers,” we referenced the work of the late Dr. David Faris, Plantagenet Ancestry of Seventeenth-Century Colonists. This important book traces the descent from England’s kings Henry III, Edward I, Edward II, and Edward III of British emigrants who arrived in the North American colonies before 1701, and who[…]Read more
Unprecedented Biographical Dictionary of Early Virginians puts flesh on bare bones of Founders. “On May 13, 1607, Virginia’s first colonists came ashore on what became known as Jamestown Island. The next day, they commenced establishing an outpost they called James Cittie or Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the United States. The 104 colonists[…]Read more
