First Families of Virginia

{{short description|Socially prominent families in colonial Virginia}}

{{For|the hereditary society|Order of the First Families of Virginia}}

File:Stratford, State Route 214, Stratford Hall, Westmoreland County, VA HABS VA,97- ,4-21.tif in Westmoreland County, the ancestral home of the Lee family of Virginia. Along with the Byrds, Carters, Washingtons, Harrisons and others, these families were at the core of Virginia's plantocracy for centuries.]]

The First Families of Virginia, or FFV, are a group of early settler families who became a socially and politically dominant group in the British Colony of Virginia and later the Commonwealth of Virginia.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. They descend from European colonists who primarily settled at Jamestown, Williamsburg, the Northern Neck and along the James River and other navigable waters in Virginia during the 17th century. These elite families generally married within their social class for many generations and, as a result, most surnames of First Families date to the colonial period.

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 supported and often took leading roles in the Revolution.{{cite book |last=Gutzman |first=Kevin R. C. |title=Virginia's American Revolution: From Dominion tor Republic, 1776–1840 |location=Lanham |publisher=Lexington Books |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-7391-2131-3 }} 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 of the First Families 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.{{cite journal |last=Fishwick |first=Marshall |title=F. F. V.'s |journal=American Quarterly |year=1959 |volume=11 |issue=2 |pages=147–156 |doi=10.2307/2710671 |jstor=2710671 }} However, mirroring the fortunes of other White Anglo-Saxon Protestant social groups, the political and financial influence of the First Families in Virginia has declined over the last century.

English heritage, second sons

File:Mann Page II of Virginia Charles Bridges.jpeg, painted by Charles Bridges. The Rosewell plantation was called one of the finest homes in colonial America and built of brick imported from England.]]

The English colonists who eventually became the First Families emigrated to the new Colony of Virginia. Their migration took place from the settlement of Jamestown through the English Civil War and English Interregnum period (1642–1660). Some royalists left England on the accession to power of Oliver Cromwell and his Parliament. Because most of Virginia's leading families recognized Charles II as King following the execution of Charles I in 1649, Charles II reputedly called Virginia his "Old Dominion" – a nickname that endures today. The affinity of many early Virginia settlers for the Crown led to the term "distressed Cavaliers", often applied to the Virginia plantocracy. Some Cavaliers who served under King Charles I fled to Virginia. FFVs often refer to Virginia as "Cavalier Country". These men were offered land or other rewards by King Charles II, but most who had settled in Virginia stayed in Virginia.

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."{{cite book |title=The American Civil War |page=[https://archive.org/details/americancivilwar00keeg/page/334 334] |first=John |last=Keegan |author-link=John Keegan |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |location=New York |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-307-26343-8 |url=https://archive.org/details/americancivilwar00keeg/page/334 }}

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

File:Pocahontas by Simon van de Passe 1616.jpg by Simon de Passe]]

Pocahontas (1595–1617), a Native American, was the daughter of Chief Powhatan, founder of the Powhatan Confederacy. According to Mattaponi and Patawomeck tradition, Pocahontas was previously married to a Patawomeck weroance, Kocoum, who was murdered by Englishmen when Samuel Argall abducted her on April 13, 1613.{{cite journal |last=Deyo |first=William "Night Owl" |date=September 5, 2009 |title=Our Patawomeck Ancestors |url=http://patawomeckindians.org/Patawomeck%20Tides%202009.pdf |journal=Patawomeck Tides |volume=12 |issue=1 |pages=2–7 |access-date=July 6, 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714145119/http://patawomeckindians.org/Patawomeck%20Tides%202009.pdf |archive-date=July 14, 2014 }} Educated among the English of Virginia and converted to Christianity during her captivity in Henricus, Pocahontas married colonist John Rolfe at a church in Jamestown on April 5, 1614. Rolfe had become prominent and wealthy as the first to successfully develop an export cash crop for the colony with new varieties of tobacco. Their only child, Thomas Rolfe, was born on January 30, 1615. He married and had a family: his descendants married into other elite families.

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.Camilla Townsend, Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma (2007)F. W. Gleach, Powhatan's world and colonial Virginia (1997)

Crucially, Pocahontas became a focal point in all First Family genealogies. So great was the importance of Pocahontas in these family trees that, upon the passage of the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, First Family lobbying resulted in the "Pocahontas Exception", which allowed white people claiming native descent to circumvent the Act's one-drop rule and remain classified as white.Kevin N. Maillard, The Pocahontas Exception: The Exemption of American Indian Ancestry from Racial Purity Law, 12 Mich. J. Race & L. 351 (2007).

Organizing the FFV

In 1887, following the Reconstruction era after the Civil War, Virginia Governor Wyndham Robertson wrote the first history of Pocahontas and her descendants, delineating the ancestry of FFV families including the Bollings, Clements, Whittles, Blands, Skipwiths, Flemings, Catletts, Gays, Jordans, Randolphs, Tazewells, and many others.[https://archive.org/details/pocahontasalias00robegoog Wyndham Robertson, Pocahontas, alias Matoaka, and Her Descendants], Richmond VA: J. W. Randolph & English, 1887 Excluded from this history were 'natural children', mixed-race descendants of unions with slaves.

Families often used surnames as given names, as in the "Johns" of Johns Hopkins University, or where a surname might die out because the last holder only had daughters, Cole Digges was the grandson of William Cole. A mother's maiden name might also be used as a middle name, to document that part of the person's ancestry; or even middle and first as is the case with John Tayloe Lomax, John Tayloe Washington,{{cite web |title=Details for Roster ID 152 |url=https://archivesweb.vmi.edu/rosters//record.php?ID=152 |website=Historical Rosters Database |publisher=Virginia Military Institute |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151009210342/https://archivesweb.vmi.edu/rosters//record.php?ID=152 |archive-date=October 9, 2015}} and John Tayloe Corbin. For example, Lt. Col. Powhatan Bolling Whittle of the 38th Virginia Infantry, Confederate States Army was an uncle of Matoaka Whittle Sims.[http://www.victorianvilla.com/sims-mitchell/history/whittle_pb/index.htm Lt. Col. Powhattan Bolling Whittle], Victorian Villa: Sims-Mitchell history

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.{{cite book |first=David |last=Blight |title=Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory |publisher=Belknap Press |edition=Paperback |year=2002 |isbn=0-674-00332-2 |url=https://archive.org/details/racereunion00davi }} In the 20th century, Preservation Virginia emphasized patriotism by highlighting the Founding Fathers that hailed from Virginia.{{cite journal |first=James M. |last=Lindgren |title='Virginia Needs Living Heroes': Historic Preservation in the Progressive Era |journal=Public Historian |volume=13 |issue=1 |year=1991 |pages=9–24 |doi=10.2307/3378156 |jstor=3378156 }}

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 Massive Resistance crisis). The third edition was compiled and edited by Virginia M. Meyer (1974-1981) and John Federick Dorman (1981-1987). The fourth and current edition, in three volumes published between 2004 (vol.1) and 2007 (vol.3)by Baltimore's Genealogical Publishing Company in collaboration with the Order of First Families of Virginia.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

Notable families

Some notable family names include:

Allerton{{cite journal |date=April 1915 |title=The F. F. V.'s of Virginia |journal=William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine |volume=23 |issue=4 |page=277 |location=Richmond, Virginia |publisher=Whittet & Shepperson |editor1-first=Lyon Gardiner |editor1-last=Tyler |editor1-link=Lyon Gardiner Tyler |access-date=February 11, 2011 |url=https://archive.org/details/williammarycolle19141915tyle}}{{cite book |last1=Fischer |first1=David Hackett |author-link1=David Hackett Fischer |title=Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_gd63RFlXIMC |year=1991 |orig-year=1989 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |isbn=9780195069051 |pages=219–220 |chapter=The South of England to Virginia: Distressed Cavaliers and Indentured Servants, 1642–75 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_gd63RFlXIMC&pg=PA207 |quote=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. }}
Archer{{cite journal | date=February 1989 |title=Questions and Answers |journal=Notes and Queries |volume=VI |issue=2 |pages=244–245 |location=Manchester, New Hampshire |publisher=S. C. & L. M Gould |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VeARAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA244 }}
Bacon
Baskerville
Berkeley
Beverley
Blair

name="Tyler"/>

Blackwell

name="Tyler"/>

Bland{{cite book |last1=Purvis |first1=Thomas L. |title=A Dictionary of American History |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=556-YcjJYhkC |year=1997 |orig-year=1995 |publisher=Blackwell Publishers |location=Malden, Massachusetts |isbn=9781577180999 |page=136 |chapter=First families of Virginia |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=556-YcjJYhkC&pg=PA136 |quote=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. }}
Bolling
Branch
Braxton
Browne
Buckner
Burwell
Byrd
Capps
Carter
Cary
Chiles
ChristianThe William and Mary Quarterly
Conway
Custis{{cite web | url=https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/custis-family/ | title=Custis Family }}
Dandridge
Eldridge
Fairfax
Farrar{{cite journal|title= Mutiny in Virginia, 1635|editor= Bruce, Philip A. |url=https://archive.org/details/virginiamagazine01virguoft/page/418|journal=Virginia Magazine of History and Biography|volume=1|year=1894|issue=4|pages=419, 2nd footnote}}
Fitzhugh
Gooch
Graves
Harrison
Hill
Hopkins
Howell{{cite web|author=Lexington, Eleanor|url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/daily-arkansas-gazette-howell-family-his/131972880/|title=Castle in Wales|work=Daily Arkansas Gazette|page=10|date=May 29, 1921}}
Jameson
Jefferson
Jenings
Lee
Madison
Marshall
Mathews
Nelson
Norvell
Pace
Page
Payne{{cite book |last1=Payne |first1=Brooke |title=The Payne's of Virginia |date=1937 |publisher=W. Byrd Press |location=Richmond, Va |isbn=9780598483539 |url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89069611630;view=1up;seq=7 |access-date=June 26, 2018 |ref=Payne}}
Randolph
Robinson{{cite book |last1=Scadding |first1=Henry |author-link1=Henry Scadding |editor1-first=Frederick H. |editor1-last=Armstrong |title=Toronto of Old |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xJq1Nr8sFbMC |year=1987 |orig-year=1873 |publisher=J. Kirk Howard/Dundern Press Limited |location=Toronto, Canada |isbn=9781550020274 |page=376 |chapter=Biographies |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xJq1Nr8sFbMC&pg=PA376 |quote=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. }}
Rolfe
Saunders
Scrivener
Selden
Spencer
Stith
Taliaferro
Tayloe
Taylor
Tucker
Waller
Warner
Warren{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ir6kljPPONgC&q=thomas+warren+&pg=PA48|title=Colonial Surry|last=Boddie|first=John Bennett|date=1974|publisher=Genealogical Publishing Com|isbn=9780806300269|language=en}}
Washington
West{{div col end}}

Portrait gallery

File:35 JamesBlair1941-005-1-scaled.jpg|James Blair (clergyman)

File:Richard Bland.jpg|Richard Bland

File:Robert Bolling (1690).jpg|Robert Bolling

File:William Byrd II.jpg|William Byrd II of Westover Plantation

File:Landon Carter I.jpg|Landon Carter

File:Robert Carter I, Portrait at Shirley Plantation.png|Robert Carter, Portrait at Shirley Plantation

File:Robertcarteriii.jpg|Robert Carter III by Thomas Hudson

File:Col. John Dandridge Jr.jpg|Col. John Dandridge Jr

File:Colonel William Fairfax (1691–1757).jpg|Colonel William Fairfax

File:William Fitzhugh.jpg|William Fitzhugh

File:Sir William Gooch.jpg|Sir William Gooch

File:Benjamin Harrison V Portrait.jpg|Benjamin Harrison V

File:William Henry Harrison by James Reid Lambdin, 1835 crop.jpg|William Henry Harrison by James Reid Lambdin

File:Official Presidential portrait of Thomas Jefferson (by Rembrandt Peale, 1800)(cropped).jpg|Official Presidential portrait of Thomas Jefferson (by Rembrandt Peale, 1800)

File:Colonel John Jameson (1751-1810).jpg|Col. John Jameson

File:Col. Richard Lee I.JPG|Col. Richard Lee I "The Immigrant"

File:ThomasLEE.JPG|Thomas Lee of Stratford Hall

File:Francis Lightfoot Lee.jpg|Francis Lightfoot Lee, signer of the U.S. Declaration of Independence

File:Charles Willson Peale - Richard Henry Lee - NPG.74.5 - National Portrait Gallery.jpg|Richard Henry Lee by Charles Willson Peale, signer of the U.S. Declaration of Independence

File:HenryLee.jpeg|Light-Horse Harry Lee by Gilbert Stuart

File:Warner Lewis II and Rebecca Lewis John Wollaston.jpeg|Warner Lewis II and Rebecca Lewis, John Wollaston

File:James Madison(cropped)(c).jpg|James Madison by John Vanderlyn

File:Col. John Page by Peter Lely.jpeg|Col. John Page by Peter Lely

File:John Page Rosewell Gloucester County Virginia.jpg|John Page of Rosewell, Gloucester County, Virginia

File:Mann Page Elizabeth Page John Wollaston.jpg|Mann Page and His Sister Elizabeth, John Wollaston

File:EdRand.jpg|Edmund Randolph

File:PeytonRandolph.jpeg|Peyton Randolph

File:Peyton Randolph Virginia Governor.jpg|Peyton Randolph

File:Thomas Mann Randolph.jpg|Thomas Mann Randolph Jr.

File:William Randolph III.jpg|William Randolph III of Wilton House circa 1755, John Wollaston

File:SPEAKER JOHN ROBINSON (1704-1766).jpg|Speaker John Robinson

File:John Tayloe I.jpg|John Tayloe I of the Old House

File:John Tayloe II.jpg|John Tayloe II of Mount Airy, Richmond County, Virginia, John Wollaston

File:John Tayloe III (Stuart).png|John Tayloe III (Stuart) of The Octagon House

Estate Gallery

File:BaconCastle.jpg|Bacon Family, Bacon's Castle Surry County, Virginia, oldest documented brick dwelling in the United States

File:Blandfield, U.S. Route 17 & State Route 624, Caret vicinity (Essex County, Virginia).jpg|Beverley Family, Blandfield, Caret, Essex County, Virginia

File:Fmt main house.jpg|Browne Family, Four Mile Tree, Surry, Virginia

File:CartersGrove.jpg|Burwell Family, Carter's Grove, James City County, Virginia

File:WestoverPlantationSEGL.jpg|Byrd Family, Westover Plantation, Charles City County, Virginia

File:Nomini Hall Westmoreland County Virginia.jpg|Carter Family, Nomini Hall, Westmoreland County, Virginia

File:Sabine Hall (Richmond, Virginia).jpg|Wellford-Carter Family, Sabine Hall, Richmond Co, Virginia

File:Shirley Plantation 2006.jpg|Hill-Carter Family, Charles City County, Virginia

File:Stratfordpotomacfront2011.JPG|Lee Family, Stratford Hall, Westmoreland County, Virginia

File:Belle Grove, Rappahannock River, Port Royal, Caroline County, VA.jpg|Madison Family, Belle Grove, Carolina County, Virginia

File:ROSEWELL BEFORE IT BURNED- It burned in 1916.jpg|Page Family, Rosewell, Gloucester County, Virginia

File:Mount Airy HABS Color.jpg|Tayloe Family, Mount Airy, Richmond Co, Virginia

File:Front Side of Burgh Westra.jpg|Taliaferro, Wellford, Burgh Westra, Gloucester, Virginia

File:Marmion, State Route 649 vicinity, Comorn vicinity (King George County, Virginia).jpg|Fitzhugh Family, Marmion, Comorn, Virginia

References

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, January 16, 2006
Note: Source 3 / Author: Marie Moore / Publication: RootsWeb.com, November 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, January 1, 2008

External links

[https://web.archive.org/web/20130506100401/http://vahistorical.org/sva2003/virginians.htm "Becoming Virginians, The Story of America: A Virginian Experience", Virginia Historical Society], vahistoricalsociety.org

Massie

Category:History of Virginia

Category:Lineage societies

Category:Pocahontas