Could His Excellency George Washington, the first President of the United States and Commander in Chief of the victorious Continental Army, have had an ancestor who came to Virginia as an immigrant headright? Of course. After all, is that not what the American story is all about?
Coming to Virginia
A headright to the British Colonies in the 17th Century was someone whose passage was paid for by another person who in turn received a land grant, typically of 50 acres, for each person brought as an effort to encourage sponsorship of emigrants. The headright was then expected to repay his or her passage, usually through labor as an indentured servant for 4-7 years. Augustine Warner was among the first 35 individuals recruited as headrights by the newly wed Adam and Sarah Thorowgood in England. Augustine accompanied them to Virginia in the Hopewell in 1628. 1 (See Pied Pipers to Virginia: The Recruitment of 17th Century Headrights)
Adam Thorowgood himself had first come to Virginia as an indentured servant, but within three years of completing his service, he was bringing his own immigrants. Adam and Augustine Warner were among those who defied the common stereotype of poor, illiterate, and unsuccessful indentured servants. They both became prominent landholders and government leaders in the Colony, were ancestors to important founders of this nation, and had descendants who continued to connect their stories. (See Indentured: The Gamble of a Lifetime)
Augustine Warner was born September 28, 1611 in Norwich in Norfolk County, England to Thomas Warner and Elizabeth Sotherton. It is not known when or how he became interested in immigrating to Virginia, but he was likely influenced by the stories of Adam Thorowgood and the successes of earlier immigrants from Norfolk, including Henry Spelman, John Rolfe, and Lady Temperance Flowerdiew Yeardley. (See To Go Or Not To Go: Early Immigrants from Norfolk, England) It is possible that the Thorowgood and Warner families knew or knew of each other. Although Adam Thorowgood was raised in Grimston, Norfolk, his mother was from Norwich, and his father had been a commissary to the Bishop of Norwich. 2
Augustine at age 17 and his family might well have been reassured by the fact that Adam, who also went to Virginia when he was 17, had not only survived, but had begun to prosper. Augustine seemed to have concurred with the outlook of Charles Alsop, a later literate indentured servant to Maryland:3
What’s a four years Servitude to advantage a man all the remainder of his dayes, making his predecessors happy in his sufficient abilities which he attained to partly by the restrainment of so small a time?
Spending his later teen years in servitude learning how to farm tobacco (Virginia’s gold), Augustine was then ready to start off on his own once he reached his majority at age 21. As both Adam and Augustine were born into armorial families who could have paid their passage, they represent an often unacknowledged group of young emigrants who seem to have chosen temporary servitude as part of their “career path” in order to gain the knowledge and skills to become successful planters. Having once been servants did not impede their upward mobility in Virginia in the middle of the 17th century.
A Fortune in Land
Adam Thorowgood brought more headrights than he would have needed to work his own land in 1628, so he would likely have followed the custom of selling indentured contracts to other planters. It is not known where Augustine served his indentureship. However, in 1635, a few years after having finished his service, Augustine obtained his first 250 acres of land, based on sponsoring 12 headrights of his own to Virginia. He purchased “one neck of ground called…Pynie Neck…lying at the new Poquoson.” 4
Like Adam Thorowgood, Augustine Warner then returned to England to find a wife and recruit more headrights. In 1638, he expanded his holdings at Pynie Creek by 450 acres for “his own personal adventure, the adventure of his wife Mary and transport of 7 persons.” Augustine had married Mary Townley of Stone Edge in Lancashire, England. 5
It was not until 1642 that Augustine Warner obtained 600 acres on the Severn River for his transport of 12 more individuals. He built the first Warner Hall there on the site which still is known by his name. He then added 80 more acres to that plot in 1653; 594 acres in 1654; and 348 acres in 1657, all by transporting headrights. 6
In addition, he acquired 2,500 acres in 1652 for transporting 50 persons, including four negroes. This land was located along the Piankatank River which runs through the Middle Penninsula in Virginia between the Rappahannock and York Rivers. Then in 1658, Augustine Warner was granted 3,000 more acres in Northumberland/ Lancaster Counties for bringing 60 more persons to Virginia. Using this headright system which had given him his start in the Colony, he obtained over 7,500 acres by bringing 160+ people to Virginia. 7
Government Service
Along with becoming a wealthy planter, Augustine Warner became a significant leader of the fast growing colony of Virginia. In 1652 he was chosen as a Burgess to represent York County at the capital of Jamestown.8 His descendant George Washington would also be elected a member of the House of Burgesses, but 106 years later. There was a tense political climate at the time, for this was the period of the English Commonwealth. Charles I had been beheaded in 1649; Parliament ruled; Oliver Cromwell was rising in power. In opposition, Virginia Governor Berkeley had maintained his support for the monarchy and offered asylum to fleeing Royalists.
The year that Augustine Warner became a Burgess, Parliament sent a fleet to Virginia to force Berkeley to resign. Though Warner, like many Virginians, had royalist leanings, the Assembly, with Parliament’s approval, elected Governor Richard Bennett, a respected Virginia Puritan, as the next governor. In 1659, Warner was serving as a Burgess from Gloucester County, but in 1660, he was selected for the powerful, lifetime position of Councilor on the Governor’s Council. That year the English monarchy had been restored and the royalist Governor Berkeley reinstated. 9
Augustine Warner remained on the Council until his death on December 24, 1674 at the age of 63. He and his wife Mary were buried in the family cemetery at Warner Hall in Gloucester, Virginia.10
Warner Hall
Although no original structures remain of the first Warner Hall built on the Severn River and this plantation was sold out of the family in 1830, the site has continued to be known by the Warner name. 11 The oldest structures are an 18th century colonial brick barn, a smaller 18th/19th century barn, and two connected dependencies (an office and a kitchen) on either side of the main house.
The archaeological study at Warner Hall conducted in 2000-2001 estimated that the dependencies may date from the 1740s. Some earlier 17th century artifacts have been found in the vicinity of the kitchen, indicting it may have been the site of an earlier building. The center part of the house burned in the mid nineteenth century and was reconstructed around 1905 in a Colonial Revival style. 12
Today The Inn at Warner Hall is an elegant Bed and Breakfast, filled with exquisite antiques and the fascinating history of those who have lived there and their descendants. Recently, an Open House with costumed guided tours of the house and grounds was offered as a charitable fund raiser for the Children’s Hospital of King’s Daughters in Norfolk. “True to the legacy of the Warner, Lewis, and Clarke families, Warner Hall remains a great house of fellowship, entertainment, and hospitality.”13
Bacon’s Rebellion at Warner Hall
Augustine Warner II was given the advantage of education in England before following in his father’s footsteps as a landowner and governmental leader. He was elected to the House of Burgesses in 1666, becoming its Speaker in 1676-77. In a rare occurrence, he remained as Speaker even when he became a Councillor to Governor Berkeley in 1677. Warner worked with the Governor on the Indian policy which became a much disputed issue with colonists in the northern and western areas of Virginia. In 1675-1676, Nathaniel Bacon, the opportunistic, newly arrived, rebel cousin to the elder Nathaniel Bacon on the Governor’s Council, rallied discontented colonists in Bacon’s Rebellion against the established government and wealthy land owners. The complex causes and consequences of the Rebellion will be dealt with in a future post. 14
Augustine Warner II was the Speaker of the House when Nathaniel Bacon agreed to submit himself to the Assembly and ask forgiveness of the Governor on June 9, 1676 so that he could serve as the Henrico County Burgess. However, not long after the Assembly, Bacon reignited the rebellion and on September 19, 1676, he led the burning of Jamestown, the Governor and Warner having already fled to the Eastern Shore.
On October 26, 1676, Nathaniel Bacon died of bloody flux (dysentery), causing the movement to fall apart. He was secretly buried in Gloucester County. However, a number of wealthy properties had been damaged by Bacon’s men. In September 1676, Nathaniel Bacon and Captain William Byrd I, a lieutenant and neighbor to Nathaniel Bacon, arrived at Warner Hall with 200 soldiers while attempting to raise supporters in Gloucester County. They stole £845 worth of possessions from Warner Hall. 15
Augustine Warner II unfortunately died at only 39 years of age. This Warner portrait has been ascribed to both Augustine Warner I and his son Augustine II. There is some historical support that it is Augustine II in his Speaker robes, but the two were likely similar in appearance, as they were in life. Augustine II’s three sons died without leaving heirs to carry on the Warner name. However, his three daughters married well and provided numerous descendants. His daughter Mildred Warner married Lawrence Washington becoming the grandmother of George Washington; Elizabeth Warner married Councillor John Lewis, with descendants including the explorer Meriwether Lewis and Confederate General Robert E. Lee; and marriages of Mary Warner’s descendants who returned to England made her an ancestor to the present Queen Elizabeth. 16
Descendants and Legacies
Adam Thorowgood died in 1640, so he never saw the great success of his fledgling immigrant. However, like many of the early elite families, their families continued to intertwine. Augustine Warner’s descendant George Washington’s step children, Jackie and Patsy Custis, were Thorowgood descendants. While George Washington fought for liberty with the sword, his gout-ridden neighbor and friend George Mason, another Thorowgood descendant, fought with the pen. Mason was the primary author of The Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776 which heavily influenced The Declaration of Independence penned by Thomas Jefferson.
In 1831, their families joined again as Augustine’s descendant Robert E. Lee married Adam’s descendant Mary Anna Randolph Custis. Their home, the Custis-Lee Mansion in Arlington, Virginia, continues as a reminder of that union. Together, Augustine Warner and Adam Thorowgood illustrate a similar early 17th century path to achieving the great “American Dream.”
Next Post: Kecoughtan/ Hampton: Living in the Second Settlement
Footnotes:
- Brown, David and Thane Harpole, Warner Hall: Story of a Great Plantation (Gloucester, Virginia: DATA Investigations, LLc, 2004), 1. Nugent, Nell Marion, Cavaliers and Pioneers: Abstracts of Virginia Land Patents and Grants, vol. I (Richmond: Press of the Dietz Printing Co, 1934), 22. ↩
- McCurdy, Mary Burton Derrickson, “The Townleys and Warners of Virginia and Their English Connections,” in Genealogies of Virginia Families, vol 5, indexed by Thomas L. Hollowak (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co, Inc., 1982), 542-543. ↩
- Morgan, Kenneth, Slavery and Servitude in Colonial North American: A Short History (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 16. ↩
- Nugent, 32. ↩
- Nugent, 92. McCurdy, Mary Burton Derrickson, “A Discovery Concerning the Townley and Warner Families of Virginia,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 77:4 (October 1969), 475-476. ↩
- Brown, 4-6. Nugent, 227, 301, 365. McCurdy, “The Townleys and Warners,” 543. ↩
- Nugent, 264, 385. ↩
- Neill, Edward D., Virginia Carolorum: The Colony under the Rule of Charles the First and Second (Albany: Joel Munsell’s Sons, 1886; Scholar Select: reprinted facsimile) 226. McCartney, Martha W., Jamestown People to 1800 (Baltimore, Genealogical Publishing Company, 2012), 424. ↩
- Neill, 266-270; 352-353. ↩
- McCartney, 424. Branch, Joseph Bryan, Epitaphs of Gloucester and Matthews Counties in Tidewater Virginia Through 1865 (Richmond: The Virginia State Library, 1959), 98, 100. ↩
- Brown, 18-19. McCartney, Martha W., With Reverence for the Past: Gloucester County, Virginia (Richmond: The Dietz Press, 2001), 114-115. Sorley, Merrow Egerton, Lewis of Warner Hall: The History of a Family (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1935), 45. ↩
- Brown, 32-44. ↩
- Brown, 31. ↩
- Sorley, 48-51. ↩
- Brown, 6-8. McCartney, With Reverence, 58-61. Billings, Warren M., The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 330, 338-346. Rice, James D., Tales from a Revolution: Bacon’s Rebellion and the Transformation of Early America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 98-99. ↩
- Brown, 8. Sorley, 51-53; 836-839. Spencer, Albert H., Genealogy of the Spencer Family (River Edge, New Jersey: A. H. Spencer, 1956), v. ↩
Coming to Virginia as a servant prior to 1626, Adam had received 50 acres of land at the end of his indentureship. Bond servants arriving after that date were promised only “the custom of the country” at the end of their time, which often consisted only of a bushel of corn and a new suit of clothes. Other items could be included if the master agreed. 
The system also worked relatively well for a number of the white English servants during the second quarter of the 17th century when Adam Thorowgood was bringing them over. The threat of death from disease and Indian attacks had decreased in Virginia, and there were still opportunities to find good land, import their own servants, and move up in Virginia society as had Adam. In this period, those who chose to come as servants appear to have been more skilled and better off than many who came either at the beginning or in the last quarter of the 17th century. However, much depended on their masters, as they were considered as “chattel” and could be sold, inherited, or traded while under bondage. Unlike the enslaved, though, their servitude was only for a specified term–if they survived.
Broadsides and pamphlets praising Virginia had been circulated since the beginning. However, many of the desired recruits were illiterate. Thus, much recruitment took place by word of mouth and by setting up recruitment stations at ports, taverns, fairs, and popular gathering places. Letters or testimonials from settlers living in the colonies were read as powerful inducements. There were even ballads sung promoting life in the colonies.
In the early years of colonization, laws had been enacted to allow courts to send orphaned children, vagrants, and convicts to the colonies, even against their will. While this was promoted as a win-win solution to the overpopulation of English cities, these unfortunates were among the most vulnerable to disease and death and often were not productive in the new world. With an unquenchable need for servants in the colonies and a lessening urgency to leave England, some agents resorted to questionable or illegal means to secure them. Kidnapping became a serious concern, leading ports to begin to keep records of those going onboard. 
In the last half of the 17th century, over 4,500 children (under age 21) arrived in Virginia and Maryland without indentureships and were assigned by the courts to involuntary servitude, sometimes to those very justices. In 1660, the Privy Council addressed the problem of “diverse children from their parents and servants from their masters are daily enticed away, taken up, and kept from said Parents and Masters, against their wills, by Merchants, Planters, Commanders of Ships, and Seamen trading to Virginia, Barbados….”
In December 1657, the Hopewell, which had earlier carried so many English to their adventures and indentureships, was transporting enslaved Africans from Angola to Virginia when it was seized off the coast of Africa. 
Since Biblical times, good Christians had been taught to fear the Devil and his evil spirits, but around the 14th century, suspicions developed that the odd ones living in their communities might have sold their souls to the Devil and contracted to do his biding.
As the trial was in September, it is unknown whether Adam had returned to England before the trial started. However, having lived in Kecoughtan the previous years as part of Edward Waters’ household, he may well have known the Wrights or at least heard talk of Joan’s suspicious activities. According to the surviving 
Joan Wright had been asked by Lt. Allington, to attend to his pregnant wife as the midwife, but when the wife discovered that Joan was left-handed and heard the rumors about her, she refused her and had another midwife brought. When Goodwife Wright found out, she was upset. The Allingtons believed she therefore cursed them, and consequently, each sequentially became ill (although of different disorders). Even though they all recovered, the infant succumbed after a second illness more than a month after its birth. 
The Virginia justices found most of the accusations of witchcraft unsubstantiated. The only guilty verdict that remains is for William Harding of the Northern Neck in Virginia, who was accused by his Scottish preacher of witchcraft and sorcery in 1656. The accusations must not have been too serious, for his punishment was only ten lashes and banishment from the county. Nor were the citizens overly concerned, as he was given two months to leave. Katherine Grady was the only suspected witch to be hung, but it was done before she even reached Virginia in 1654 and under the direction of the ship’s captain, not court justices. When the ship encountered a severe storm near the end of its journey, the passengers were convinced that Katherine had caused it through witchcraft. Upon reaching Jamestown, the Captain had to appear before the admiralty court, but its findings have been lost.
This was put to the test in 1698 when John and Ann Byrd sued Charles Kinsey and John Potts for having “falsely and scandalously” defamed them by claiming they were witches and “in league with the Devil.” Kinsey finally admitted to the court that he might have only dreamed that they “had rid him along the Seaside and home” through witchcraft . John Thorowgood, a son of Adam Thorowgood II, was one of the justices on that court which surprisingly did not give a cash award to the Byrds, but rather found for the defendants. However, they chose not to pursue witchcraft charges against the Byrds. 
In 1705, Elizabeth Hill, another neighbor, called Grace a witch, and a brawl between them ensued. Grace filed a complaint of trespassing and assault and battery against Elizabeth. Although Grace prevailed, she received little in monetary damages. Elizabeth Hill’s husband then made a formal charge of witchcraft against her. Accusations included that no grass would grow where she had danced in the moonlight, that she had soured the cow’s milk, and that she had made herself small enough to fly in an eggshell to England and back in one night to get rosemary seeds for her garden. However, rosemary was abundant locally and, ironically, often used to protect against witches. 
Virginia Beach has erected a kindly statue in honor of this misunderstood woman, and the Governor of Virginia recently pardoned her, even though there is no record of her conviction. Grace seems not to have had the sweet disposition portrayed in the statue, but still she serves as a symbol of those innocent “
Witchcraft and the occult are still practiced by some today. While there are those who try to connect with the spirit of the earth and be “good witches,” there are others who have carried out horrific acts. Unfortunately, over the ages, many innocents were sent to their deaths because of the superstitions and suspicions of others. It has been estimated that 85% of those killed in European witch hunts were women. A Puritan preacher of the time, William Perkins, was unapologetic in his explanation: 
The Virginia Beach History Museum staff had thoughtfully invited not only the descendants of Adam Thorowgood, but also those with Native or African ancestors who might have lived or worked at the site. Generously, they also offered free admission and birthday cake to anyone else who showed up. I thought surely some of the departed ancestors would come for cake and a chance to see how their descendants turned out. However, if they did, they were most discreet, and any missing cake was attributable to hungry guests.
The party celebrated the 300th birthday of the construction of the house. As noted in my 
To celebrate, there was dancing on the lawn and children’s activities as well as informative presentations by historian Matthew Laird on “Adam and Sarah Thorowgood–Virginia Beach’s First Power Couple” and on “Finding Your 17th Century Ancestor,” by Donald Moore, a professional genealogist. Although I made contact with some friendly, living Adam Thorowgood descendants and experts, I did not meet any of the haunting kind.
Therefore, I decided to take a more direct approach and returned the next week for an evening tour, “Haunted Encounters of the Thoroughgood Kind.” The staff had set the stage for our adventure by serving the guests either witches’ brew or dragon’s blood and cookies while showing the silent movie version of Phantom of the Opera in the waiting area.
As we headed across the grounds, our guide became enveloped in fog before we found our way to the gardens. There we were instructed in the proper techniques and herbs to use to protect our houses from evil spirits. Though the house was quiet that evening, the tales of inexplicable encounters and occurrences experienced by reputable staff and guests gave credence to the earlier stories.
There continue to be accounts of the openings of a door bolted from the inside; of noises and shadowy figures; of the man in the brown suit and the woman in the window. In the dim interiors, the 17th century crackled looking glass (mirror) gave back eerie reflections.
As I left that evening, a full moon was rising over the darkened house. Was there something hidden in those obscure corners, waiting to come out after the noisy intruders left? I didn’t stay to find out.
This was my puzzlement–the curiosity that started my research and blog. How did a twenty-two-year-old young man raised in Norfolk, England, having just spent four years working as an indentured servant in Virginia, suddenly show up in London and, within a year, marry the daughter of a wealthy merchant who was also a granddaughter and great-granddaughter of Lord Mayors of London? In the Big Bang Theory of life, how did these two very different orbits ever come crashing into each other? The marriage of Adam Thorowgood to Sarah Offly was recorded in the parish register of St. Anne’s Blackfriars, London, on July 18, 1627.
William Thorowgood was born around 1560 in Felsted, Essex, but moved to Grimston, Norfolk around 1585 when he married Anne Edwards of Norwich, Norfolk, and accepted the post as the Vicar of St. Boltolph’s Church. All of William’s nine children were born in Grimston. Reverend Thorowgood was honored by being appointed as the commissary for the Bishop of Norwich. William came from an armorial family. Although not needed for his position with the church, he received “a confirmation of this Armes and Crest” in March 1620. 
Robert Offley II and his wife, Anne Osbourne, were both born in London. Robert was a “Turkey merchant” with the Levant Company (traders with the Ottomans) whose first Governor was his father-in-law, Sir Edward Osborne. Osborne had been knighted and had been a Lord Mayor of London (like his father-in -law William Hewitt). The Offleys were also an armorial family, and Robert II’s “step-uncle,” Sir Thomas Offley, had been a Lord Mayor of London. 
It has sometimes been assumed that Adam’s older brother, Sir John Thorowgood of Kensington, brought the families together based on his position in the court of King Charles I and the erroneous belief that he had been serving as the secretary to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, a significant member of the Virginia Company of London. As 
Sarah and her sisters might have been even more daring than her brothers. They likely had watched with interest as the Virginia Company had recruited “young, handsome, and honestly-educated Maids” to send to the Colony in 1620-21 on “bride ships” to establish families and bring greater stability and order to colonial society. These women were as much “adventurers” as their male counterparts. 
Sarah and Adam would certainly have been familiar with Reverend William Gouge’s famous sermon “Of Domestical Duties” delivered there in 1622 which was considered a “text” on family life in that era. In the hierarchical structure popular in that age, Reverend Gouge saw a wife as above her children, but below her husband who was to be “as a Priest unto his wife…. He is as a king in his owne house.” 
However, in 1623, accusations of mismanagement fueled by the report “Unmasked Face of our Colony in Virginia as it was in the Winter of the Year 1622” by Nathaniel Butler (a Governor of Bermuda who had only briefly visited Virginia), led to an investigation by the King’s Privy Council. That had been a particularly difficult year for the Colony with the unanticipated Powhatan Uprising, and there were deep divisions in the Company. Sir Edwin Sandys who controlled the company at that time had been an outspoken critic of the King. Despite lengthy protests and rebuttals by the Virginia Governor and Councilors, the Crown dissolved the Virginia Company and made Virginia a Royal Colony on May 24, 1624. This was a hostile “take-over,” not a “buyout,” of the investors who had initially provided the capital and absorbed all the risk. In the Company’s dying gasp in 1625, Governor Wyatt protested: “…the business of Virginia, so foiled and wronged by the party opposite and now reduced to extreme terms…wherein our former labors, cares, and expenses had received … the undeserved reward of rebuke and disgrace.”
There were around 40 major outbreaks of plague in London over the next three hundred years, occurring approximately e
Unfortunately, it was not just church bells in London that tolled in mourning that year. Without adequate finances, planning, preparation, provisions, or training of its troops, England agreed to join the fight with the Dutch (Protestant) Republic to lift the siege of the City of Breda by the (Catholic) Army of Flanders/ Hapsburg. When the lengthy siege finally ended and the Dutch were forced to sign articles of capitulation on June 2, 1625, fewer than 600 of the 7,000 (less than 9%) of the English troops had survived. Rather than blaming the commander Mansfield, most put the blame on the Duke of Buckingham “whose military enthusiasm did not include attention to the details of policy or planning.” 
Shakespeare, himself, had his heroine Juliette pose the question, “What is in a name?” (Romeo and Juliette) In this case, the name seems to be the issue on which the verdict hangs. Everyone basically agreed that the sailor Edward Samuel was killed with a shovel by another sailor with the last name of Waters in a dispute shortly after the shipwreck on Bermuda. He then hid on the island and refused to join the other passengers when they finally sailed to Virginia in 1610. 
In the Muster, Edward Waters was living in Elizabeth Cittie and listed as the head of the household. He was reported to have 37 barrels of corn and 1500 dry fish (far more than his neighbors); no livestock (very few had any); 1 boat, 4 houses/buildings, and 1 palisade; 10 pounds of powder, 100 pounds of lead, 11″pieces” (muskets?), 1 pistol, 6 swords, and 4 “armors and coates.” Edward Waters gave his age as 40 and stated he had arrived in Virginia on the Patience, having left England in 1608. He had actually embarked on the SeaVenture in 1609, but with the Julian calendar still in use in England, it would have been only a few months into that new year. 
That does not mean that Edward Waters’ conduct was spotless. He was ready to resort to violence with Edward Chard over disputes regarding the ambergris. He also chose to join the shady voyage to the West Indies for “supplies” which Richard Norwood refused to be part of. That group of 32 from Bermuda were never designated as pirates or privateers, although they did attack and capture a Portuguese vessel while they were “off-course” in the Canary Islands, had an encounter with a French pirate, and later were rescued after another shipwreck on a deserted isle by an unnamed English pirate.
