First Families of Virginia
First Families of Virginia (FFV) are the families in
The American Revolution cut ties with Britain but not with its social traditions. While some First Family members were loyal to Britain, others were Whigs who not only supported, but led the Revolution.[2] Most First Families remained in Virginia, where they flourished as tobacco planters, and from the sale of slaves to the cotton states to the south. Indeed, many younger sons were relocated into the cotton belt to start their own plantations. With the emancipation of slaves during the Civil War and the consequential loss of slave labor, Virginia plantations struggled to turn a profit. The First Families, albeit poorer than before, maintained social and political leadership. Marshall Fishwick says that by the 1950s, "the old-time aristocracy [had] not given up, or sunk into decadence as Southern novelists suggest." They adopted modern agricultural technology and co-opted rich "Yankees" into their upper-class, rural horse-estate society.[3]
English heritage, second sons
English colonists who formed the FFV emigrated to the new
Many such early settlers in Virginia were called Second Sons. Primogeniture favored the first sons' inheriting lands and titles in England. Second or third sons went out to the colonies to make their fortune, or entered the military and the clergy. Tidewater Virginia evolved as a society descended from second or third sons of Englishmen who inherited land grants or land in Virginia. They formed part of what became the Southern elite in Colonial America.
In some cases, longstanding ties among families in England were carried to the new colony, where they were reinforced by marriage and other relations. For instance, there were ancestral ties between the Spencer family of Bedfordshire and the Washington family; a Spencer secured the land grant later purchased by the Washingtons, where they built their Mount Vernon home. These sorts of ties were common in the early colony, as families shuttled back and forth between England and Virginia, maintaining their connections with the mother country and with each other.
A thin network of increasingly interrelated families made up the planter elite and held power in colonial Virginia. "As early as 1660, every seat on the ruling Council of Virginia was held by members of five interrelated families," writes British historian John Keegan, "and as late as 1775, every council member was descended from one of the 1660 councillors."[4]
The ties among Virginia families were based on marriage. In a pre-Revolutionary War economy dependent on the production of tobacco as a commodity crop, the ownership of the best land was tightly controlled. It often passed between families of corresponding social rank. The Virginia economy was based on slave labor as the colony became a slave society. The landed gentry could keep tight rein on political power, which passed in somewhat orderly fashion from family to family. (In the more modern mercantile economy of the north, social mobility became more prominent. The power of the elite was muted by newcomers who gained wealth in the market economy.)
Pocahontas
Pocahontas was much celebrated in London, where she was welcomed with great ceremony at the Royal Court. She died young but became legendary as the first Indian from Virginia to become Christian, marry an Englishman, and have a known child from such a marriage (there were no doubt mixed-race children born to lower-class colonists and Algonquian women, although they may have been neither married nor Christian). She became an important symbol of friendly Native American-English relations of the Jamestown colony. By virtue of many fictional accounts, her marriage was romanticized and became part of the mythology of early American history.[6][7]
Organizing the FFV
In 1887, following the
Families often used surnames as given names, as in the "Johns" of
In 1907, the Jamestown Exposition was held near Norfolk to celebrate the tricentennial of the arrival of the first English colonists and the founding of Jamestown. Preservation Virginia, formerly known as the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, was founded in Williamsburg in 1889 to memorialize Virginia history.[11] In the 20th century, Preservation Virginia emphasized patriotism by highlighting the Founding Fathers that hailed from Virginia.[12] To commemorate the 350th anniversary of the first settlement at Jamestown, the Order of First Families of Virginia published genealogies compiled by F.A.S.G. Annie Lash Jester and Martha Woodroff Hiden in 1956. The same pair published a second addition in 1964 (also during Virginia's
Notable families
Some notable family names include:
- Allerton[14][15]
- Archer[16]
- Bacon
- Baskerville[16]
- Belcher
- Bentley
- Berkeley[14][16]
- Beverley[14]
- Billingsley
- Bland[14][16][17]
- Bolling[16]
- Branch[16]
- Braxton[16][17]
- Browne[16][14]
- Buckner [16][17]
- Burwell[14][16]
- Byrd[14][16][17]
- Capps[14][16][17]
- Carter[14][16][17]
- Cary[14][16]
- Chiles
- Christian[18]
- Conway
- Custis[19]
- Dameron/Damron
- Dandridge
- Dalton
- Eldridge
- Fairfax[14][16]
- Farrar[14][20]
- Fitzhugh[14][16][17]
- Gooch[14]
- Graves[16]
- Harrison[14][16][17]
- Hill
- Hopkins[16]
- Jefferson[16]
- Jenings[14]
- Kennon
- Lee[14][16][17]
- Madison
- Marshall
- Mathews[14]
- Nelson[14][16][17]
- Norvell
- Payne[21]
- Randolph[14][16][17]
- Robinson[14][16][22]
- Rolfe
- Saunders[16]
- Selden
- Sharp
- Shifflett family
- Skillern
- Spencer[16]
- Stagner
- Starnes
- Stith[16]
- Taliaferro[16]
- Taylor[16]
- Terrell
- Waller[16]
- Warner[14]
- Warren[23]
- Washington[16][17]
- West[14][16]
Portrait gallery
-
Robert Carter, Portrait at Shirley Plantation
-
Colonel William Fairfax (1691–1757)
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Benjamin Harrison V Portrait
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William Henry Harrison byJames Reid Lambdin
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Official Presidential portrait of Thomas Jefferson (by Rembrandt Peale, 1800)
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Col. Richard Lee I "The Immigrant"
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Thomas Lee of Stratford Hall
-
U.S. Declaration of Independence
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U.S. Declaration of Independence
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Warner Lewis II and Rebecca Lewis, John Wollaston
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Col. John Page by Peter Lely
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Mann Page and His Sister Elizabeth, John Wollaston
-
Peyton Randolph
-
William Randolph III of Wilton House circa 1755, John Wollaston
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Speaker John Robinson
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John Tayloe I of the Old House
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Mount Airy, Richmond County, Virginia, John Wollaston
Estate Gallery
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Bacon Family, Bacon's Castle Surry County, Virginia, oldest documented brick dwelling in the United States
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Browne Family, Four Mile Tree, Surry, Virginia
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Burwell Family, Carter's Grove, James City County, Virginia
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Byrd Family,Charles City County, Virginia
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Carter Family, Nomini Hall, Westmoreland County, Virginia
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Wellford-Carter Family, Sabine Hall, Richmond Co, Virginia
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Hill-Carter Family,Charles City County, Virginia
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Lee Family, Stratford Hall, Westmoreland County, Virginia
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Madison Family,Belle Grove, Carolina County, Virginia
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Page Family, Roswell (plantation), Gloucester County, Virginia
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Tayloe Family, Mount Airy, Richmond Co, Virginia
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Taliaferro - Wellford - Burgh Westra , Gloucester , Va
See also
References
- ^ Tyler, Lyon Gardiner, ed. (April 1915). "The F. F. V.'s of Virginia". William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine. Richmond, Virginia: Whittet & Shepperson. page 277.
- ISBN 978-0-7391-2131-3.
- JSTOR 2710671.
- ISBN 978-0-307-26343-8.
- ^ Deyo, William "Night Owl" (September 5, 2009). "Our Patawomeck Ancestors" (PDF). Patawomeck Tides. 12 (1): 2–7. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 14, 2014. Retrieved July 6, 2014.
- ^ Camilla Townsend, Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma (2007)
- ^ F. W. Gleach, Powhatan's world and colonial Virginia (1997)
- ^ Wyndham Robertson, Pocahontas, alias Matoaka, and Her Descendants, Richmond VA: J. W. Randolph & English, 1887
- ^ https://archivesweb.vmi.edu/rosters//record.php?ID=152 [bare URL]
- ^ Lt. Col. Powhattan Bolling Whittle, Victorian Villa: Sims-Mitchell history
- ISBN 0-674-00332-2.
- JSTOR 3378156.
- ^ front matter of 4th edition, isbn of vol. 1=0-8063-1744-2, of vol.2=0-8063-1763-9, of vol.3=978-0-8063-1775-5
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z Tyler, Lyon Gardiner, ed. (April 1915). "The F. F. V.'s of Virginia". William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine. 23 (4). Richmond, Virginia: Whittet & Shepperson: 277. Retrieved February 11, 2011.
- ISBN 9780195069051.
Another unlikely 'FFV' was the wayward Pilgram Isaac Allerton, a London tailor's son who emigrated in the Mayflower to Plymouth Colony and resettled in Virginia, ca. 1655, where he married into Berkeley's ruling elite.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai "Questions and Answers". Notes and Queries. VI (2). Manchester, New Hampshire: S. C. & L. M Gould: 244–245. February 1989.
- ^ ISBN 9781577180999.
Among the most prominent of these lineages are those of the Bland,Blackwell Braxton, Breckenridge, Byrd, Carter, Chapman, Corbin, Fitzhugh, Harrison, Lee, Lindsey, Ludwell, Nelson, Randolph, Washington, and Wormley families.
- ^ College of William & Mary Quarterly
- ^ "Custis Family".
- ^ Bruce, Philip A., ed. (1894). "Mutiny in Virginia, 1635". Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. 1 (4): 419, 2nd footnote.
- ISBN 9780598483539. Retrieved June 26, 2018.
- ISBN 9781550020274.
The Robinsons were one of the first families of Virginia where they settled about 1670, before becoming one of the first families of Upper Canada.
- ISBN 9780806300269.
Further reading
- ISBN 0-19-503794-4.
- Fishwick, Marshall (1959). "F. F. V.'s". American Quarterly. 11 (2): 147–156. JSTOR 2710671.
- Gutzman, Kevin R. C. (2007). Virginia's American Revolution: From Dominion to Republic, 1776–1840. Lanham: Lexington Books. ISBN 978-0-7391-2131-3.
- Willison, George F. Behold Virginia: the fifth crown. Being the trials, adventures & disasters of the first families of Virginia, the rise of the grandees & the eventual triumph of the common & uncommon sort in the Revolution (1951), popular history by a scholar
Notes on sources
- Note: Source 1: Captain William Tucker / Author: Barbara Jennifer Benefield / Publication: RootsWeb.com, May 12, 2004
- Note: Source 2 / Author: Doug Tucker / Publication: GenForum, Jan 16, 2006
- Note: Source 3 / Author: Marie Moore / Publication: RootsWeb.com, Nov 29, 2004 / "Note: died at sea"
- Note: Source 4 / Author: Phillip Judson Clark / Title: Royal Families and Others & also their Famous Descendants / Publication: rootsweb.com, Jan 1, 2008
External links
- "Becoming Virginians, The Story of America: A Virginian Experience", Virginia Historical Society, vahistoricalsociety.org