The Death of Adam Thorowgood and His Gifts of Goats

Adam Thorowgood’s luck finally ran out in the winter of 1639/40.  For 19 years, he had prospered in Virginia, skirting fatal fevers, salt poisoning, Powhatan attacks, trans-Atlantic mishaps, and political intrigues.  When Adam  accepted the prestigious appointment as a member of the Governor’s Council in 1637, he surely thought it would open greater opportunities, not lead to his death. Adam’s will was dated February 17, 1639/40 and was entered into probate at the Quarter Court held in James City on April 27, 1640. As the Julian Calendar was still in use in England, the year did not end until March 25th  which created confusions even at that time, as most of Europe had already changed to the Gregorian Calendar which began with January 1.  Thus, Adam’s will was probated 8 weeks after being written, not a year and eight weeks later.  The original copy of Adam’s will as recorded in James City no longer exists, but fortunately the content was preserved when it was printed in The Richmond Standard by one of his descendants in 1881. [1]

Adam had presided at the Lower Norfolk County Court on October 18, 1639.   He likely passed the Christmas season at home with his family, although being of a Puritan  persuasion, there would have been little celebration.  Adam and several of his servants then traveled to James City to attend the General Assembly convened on January 6, 1639/40 by Governor Francis Wyatt who had just replaced the disgraced Gov. Harvey.  Under the new leadership, it was a busy and productive session with 34 Acts passed. [2]  We do not know when it concluded, but somehow and sometime in that period, Adam Thorowgood and his accompanying servants took ill.  Within weeks, Adam died.

Treatment by Dr. George Calvert

Historic Jamestowne, NPS

Killing fevers were the scourge of Jamestown, but they could result from many disorders.  Adam Thorowgood had been fortunate to spend his “seasoning” period in the vicinity of Elizabeth City and the rest of his time in Virginia mostly away from the disease-ridden Jamestown.  It is not known what killed Adam.  It was not the season for malaria, and “remittent fevers” were more likely in the spring and fall, although scarlatine fever was found year round. Contaminated food and water were common and could lead to typhoid fever or bloody flux (dysentery) at any season. Influenza,  more typical in the fall or winter, was also a common cause of fever deaths.  [3]

In 1610, Dr Lawrence Bohune was the first English physician sent to the Virginia Colony. Dr. John Pott was sent to replace him in 1620, but few trained doctors followed in subsequent years. Physician services were so expensive that the General Assembly noted in 1639 the “immoderate and excessive rates and prices exacted by practitioners in physick and chyrurgery.”.  Most Virginians tried herbs and remedies on their own, sometimes seeking out a surgeon instead of a physician as they were cheaper, though not as well regarded or trained.  Despite their political differences, Gov. John Harvey even asked the English courts to overturn a 1630 Virginia court conviction of Dr. Pott because he was “the only physician in Virginia skilled in epidemical diseases” at the time.  In 1639/40 when Adam became ill,  Dr. Pott had moved to the area that would become Williamsburg, but a new physician, Dr. George Calvert, had arrived who was acquiring land using his headrights in the Buckroe area of Elizabeth City. Dr. Calvert was called upon to treat Adam. [4]  When Adam’s estate was being settled in April 1641, it was noted in the James City Quarter Court that

the estate of Adam Thorowgood, deceased, stands indebted to the estate of George Calvert, physician, in the sum of  £ 20:16.6 sterling for physics administered to the sd. Capt. Adam Thorowgood and his servants in the time of their sickness. [5]

The Four Humors

The “physics” or treatments would likely have followed the popular theory of Galen’s system of four bodily “humors” with the heat of a fever being thought to be too much hot blood in the system.  According to Dr. Sequeyra of early Williamsburg, the diseases of winter and spring were “generally of the Inflammatory kind; require plentiful bleeding…and sometimes blisters.” This, as well as the popular purges, left many patients in a more weakened and dehydrated state which exacerbated the course of diseases.  William Harvey, an English physician, challenged that thinking with his 1629  book On the Motion of Heart and Blood, and treatments began to include more chemical and metallic remedies.  It is not known if English-trained Dr. Calvert tried any of these new ideas or treatments on Adam.  Sadly, Dr. Calvert himself did not survive long in Virginia. [6]

The Burial

No one is certain whether Adam Thorowgood was treated by Dr. Calvert and died at James City or  in Elizabeth City on transit to his home or if he was able to make it back to Lynnhaven before he died. All three of those sites were easily connected by water. Wherever, he had sufficient strength and awareness to prepare a comprehensive will in which he left instructions for his burial:  “I bequeath my soul into the hands of my Creator and Redeemer and my body to the earth from which it was taken, to be buried in the Parish Churchyard near my children….” Adam was leaving behind four young children who were very much on his mind in his will, and he would have wanted them to remember him.  Some have speculated that Adam might have been referring to unknown buried children.  As happened to many settlers, Adam and Sarah likely had other children born to them in their earlier years of marriage who died young, but there is no record of them.

                 Church Point on Lynnhaven River                                       Photo by Wayne Reynolds

Adam had given land for the Lynnhaven Parish church to be built on the Lynnhaven River near his home.  It must have been at least started by the time of his death when he willed “to the Parish Church of Lynnhaven one thousand pounds of tobacco in leaf, to be disbursed for some necessary and decent ornament.” While the lot where that  church stood has now been reclaimed by the river, a visitor there in 1819 recorded that the black marble tombstones for Sarah and her second husband John Gookin were still partly above water and readable.  However, by 1853, another visitor, William Forrest, noted “the old church has long since fallen to ruins; indeed no vestige remains to mark the identical spot which it occupied …and  the old graveyard has also disappeared!”  However, he knew of a tall man who had walked out into the river up to his chin and stood on the church gravestones. The first Lynnhaven Church is now memorialized as Church Point in Virginia Beach.  There has been discussion of doing underwater archaeology, but nothing has been done yet to explore that site. [7]

“My Dearly Beloved Wife”

While it was common in a will in those times to refer to one’s wife as “beloved,” the conditions of Adam’s will indicate genuine love, respect, and confidence in his wife of just over 12 years.  He perceived the feelings to be mutual as he also referred to her as “my loving wife.”  He made her not only his sole executrix, but also stated that “she shall have the guardianship of all of my children and their estates, until my daughters come to the age of sixteen years, and my son Adam to the age of one and twenty.” In that era, children were considered orphans when their fathers died, and they were typically appointed male guardians who were relatives or men of standing in the community.  With his position and status, there were many Adam could have chosen as suitable guardians for his children, especially for his son who stood to inherit so much, but he unequivocally chose Sarah.  In addition to the other bequests Adam had made to her, he added, “and for my wife’s care and pains in bringing up the children in good virtue and training, and likewise for handling and looking after their stocks of cattle, my will and desire is that she shall have all the male increase during the time of their guardianship.”  He recognized her efforts as a mother and that his death would increase that burden.  The term “cattle” was sometimes used to refer generically to livestock. [8]

Widows were entitled to a portion of their husband’s estate to enjoy during their lifetime.  Adam gave Sarah “all the houses and the orchard with the plantation at Lynnhaven… and the ground called by the name of the Quarter during her lifetime.” as well as one of the best sows and calves, a half dozen breeding goats, four breeding sows, and, remarkably, “one mare and one foal, she to take her choice of which she pleaseth…all of which I give her as a memorial of my love.”  In accordance with the custom of primogeniture, their only son, Adam II, was to  receive “all the rest of his father’s houses and lands in Virginia and elsewhere” when he turned 21  as well as the property willed to his mother after her death.  “In Virginia” would have referred to the properties Adam owned in the area of Elizabeth City.  “Elsewhere” probably referred to the small land holdings in England Adam had inherited in his father’s will.  Adam Thorowgood provided for his daughters Ann, Sarah, and Elizabeth by dividing among his wife, daughters, and son the remaining cows, goats, hogs, mares and horses, servants, crops, and the rest of his estate (excluding his other bequests).  Adam and Sarah had at least three enslaved servants at that time, but also had indentured servants under time-limited contracts that would have  been passed on.  In 1645,  his wife Sarah designated Mary as her chosen enslaved servant. [9]

While there are not exact birthdates for any of their four children, they were all young at the time of Adam’s death.  When Sarah Thorowgood Gookin, once again a widow, submitted a letter to the Lower Norfolk Court on July 13, 1647 regarding her children’s inheritances,  she indicated none had yet reached majority.  Adam II may have been the youngest as he was not 21 when his mother died in 1657, so he requested his brother-in-law (his sister Sarah’s husband) Simon Overzee as his guardian. Thus, daughters Ann, Sarah, and Elizabeth would have been born after 1630 and Adam II after 1636. [10]

Goat Gifts

Photo by Mark Driggs

What would be an appropriate token to show appreciation to those outside one’s immediate family?  How about a goat?  Living in a tobacco economy with no banks or accounting houses in Virginia to hold cash, the gift of a breeding goat was  like giving away stocks today.  If one cared properly for the gift, it would increase and bring returns for many years to come.  The raising of livestock was profitable in 17th century Virginia.  The most common animals to raise were hogs, cows, and goats that could be left to roam and forage for themselves rather than being wholly dependent on cleared pastures and crops raised for their feed.  This practice led to some contention between neighbors over damaged gardens, and in 1631-32, a statute was passed requiring landowners to fence in their crops if they wanted them protected from hungry and destructive livestock.  It was during that busy 1639/40 Assembly session that the law changed to required settlers to pen in their hogs, but that was later repealed in 1642. [11]

Few sheep were raised in Virginia until the second half of the century when fenced green pastures became more available and wolves somewhat less abundant.  However, for many years the most valuable of the animals was the prized, but scarce, horse.  In 1649, there were only 300 horses in Virginia.  Even as late as 1688, a mare and a foal, such as Sarah received, were worth eight cows. In the Lower Norfolk County area, the numerous streams and rivers served as natural fencing which helped to contain livestock. However, Adam Thorowgood had had both a cow keeper and a goat keeper to look after his animals.  In a 1642-43 accounting of Adam’s estate, there were 63 cows and steers, 107 goats, 58 of which were breeders, and 7 horses as well as an undetermined number of hogs.  So who got Adam’s goats? [12]

Edward Windham

Photo by Mark Driggs

In his will, Adam Thorowgood referred to Edward as his “well beloved brother,” but used the term “brother” in a broader kinship relationship.  Edward was actually the brother of his sister-in-law, Ann Wyndham, who had married his older brother Rev. Thomas Thorowgood.  Adam had brought Edward to Virginia as a headright in 1634, and by 1637, Edward was serving as a justice with Adam in the Lower Norfolk Court.  He also served as a Burgess.  Edward received a cow calf and a breeding goat. [13]

Robert Hayes

Photo by Mark Driggs

“My brother, Robert Hayes,” was actually Adam’s brother-in-law who had married Sarah’s older widowed sister Ann Offley Workman.  At age 44 in 1637,  Robert claimed a certificate for the transportation of eight people to the Colony, consisting of him and his wife;  Amos, Mary, Thomas, and John Wortman/ Workman; and Alexander and Nathaniel Hayes.  Robert purchased land around Little Creek in Lower Norfolk,  represented Lower Norfolk as a Burgess in the Assembly, and was a vestryman for the Lynnhaven Parish.  This Robert Hayes was not the son Robert of Sir Thomas Hayes, a Lord Mayor, but may have been kin as Sir Thomas moved in many of the same merchant circles as the Offleys.  Adam willed a breeding goat to Robert and one “to each of Robert Hayes’ three sons.”  Ann Hayes who survived her husband Robert by a few months, mentioned  four sons, Nathaniel and Adam Hayes and Thomas and John Workman, in her 1650 will, leaving one to wonder which one did not get one of Adam’s goats and why.  Amos Workman signed the codicil to Ann’s will, but his relationship to Ann Hayes was not explained. [14]

Adam Keeling

The entry “To my godson, Adam Keeling, one breeding goat,” explicitly stated Adam K.’s relationship to Adam T. who was his godfather and namesake.  Thomas Keeling,  Adam K.’s father, had been been brought to Virginia as a headright by Adam Thorowgood in 1628 aboard the Hopewell.  In 1634, Thomas himself transported four headrights to the Colony, including his wife Anne. In 1637, he was an agent for Adam Thorowgood, and in 1640 he was appointed a vestryman for the parish.  Thomas became an Ensign and then a Lieutenant in the militia.  He acquired property across the Lynnhaven River from the Thorowgoods, and their descendants were neighbors and friends for many years.  Like the later brick Thoroughgood House, there is a privately-owned brick ancestral home of the Keelings from that same era that gained the name “Ye Dudleys.” When Thomas died, Ann Keeling married Robert Bray.  [15]

Because of the many close connections between those two families, some online family trees have claimed that Thomas’s wife was an Anne Thorowgood and the sister or niece of Adam Thorowgood.  However,  Adam’s only sister was Frances who married and stayed in England.  Neither was Ann Keeling the daughter of his brother Sir John Thorowgood of Kensington as has also been suggested, because Sir John had no surviving descendants as confirmed in his will.  If she were a Thorowgood,  there were multiple other families of that name in England. However,  no 17th century documents have been provided by those making the claim to verify Ann’s maiden name or ancestry. If Anne Keeling had been a relative, Adam Thorowgood surely would have acknowledged that relationship in his will as he did with Windham and Hayes.  [16]

Jane Wheeler and William Stephens

Jane Wheeler and William Stephens each received both a breeding goat and a shoat (young pig).  However, there are no records of any connection they had to Adam Thorowgood.  Neither Jane nor William appear in court or land records with the Thorowgoods or their associates nor were they prominent in the Colony.  Ann Hayes included a kinswoman named Jane Needham in her will, which might lead one to speculate a re-marriage or transcription error, but Adam Thorowgood gave no relationship to this Jane.  Perhaps Jane Wheeler and William Stephens had rendered special services or assisted in the time of Adam’s illness.  Whatever, they were both recipients of a generous gift. [17]

Overseers of the Will

In that era, overseers were sometimes appointed to assist and supervise the work of the executor of a will.   To assist with the Virginia affairs, Adam Thorowgood selected his “well beloved friends” Capt. Thomas Willoughby and Henry Seawell who both served as justices at the Lower Norfolk Court like Adam.  However, sometimes one can be wrong on how “beloved” friends might be.  After Adam’s death, both declined to serve in that capacity without explanation, so it is not known if they did not have the time,  did not want to be entangled in Adam’s affairs,  did not want to work with his wife Sarah, were encouraged to withdraw by Sarah, or thought everything was in order.  Adam had planned that each overseer would receive a gold ring of 20 schillings value as “a pledge of my love,” which hopefully they did not accept as they did not do the work. [18]

For the English affairs, Adam appointed his “dearly beloved brother Sir John Thorowgood of Kensington” and  Mr. Alexander Harris whom Adam identified as his wife’s uncle living on Tower Hill.  It was logical that Adam would rely on his brother Sir John who was a Gentleman of the Bed Chamber of Charles I and with whom Adam had been involved with tobacco shipments. However, the identity and involvement of Mr. Alexander Harris is a mystery.  Sarah did not have an “Uncle Alexander,” and there is no Harris to be found in the extensive official Offley Pedigree or known of in the Osbourne line.   Even if  Harris were extended kin to Sarah Offley Thorowgood, she had several wealthy and influential brothers living in London who could have handled any claims.  Perhaps, Harris worked for or with one of her uncles. In that era, Tower Hill was still the main place for executions, but, according to the London tithable list for 1638, Alexander Harris was one of  the wealthy living there amongst the almshouses, foundry, small shops, and housing for foreigners. Was he the Alexander Harris who was the former warden of Fleet Prison or the one involved with shipping to Virginia?  How Adam connected to Alexander is still a puzzle.  [19]

Adam’s older brother Sir John Thorowgood of Kensington was not all that some have claimed.  Fortunately, Adam used the designation “of Kensington'” because there were two Sir John Thorowgoods in London at the time.  Unfortunately, their identities were merged in mid-19th century publications in America, and many historians and genealogists have since perpetuated the claim that Adam’s brother had been a secretary for the Earl of Pembroke who had close ties to the Virginia Company.  However, Pembroke’s secretary was Sir John Thorowgood of Charing Cross who served as a Minister of Parliament.  Likewise, the 17th century portrait of “Sir John Thorowgood” often seen today is most likely of this other Sir John. Adam’s brother was never in Parliament, but remarkably managed to go from the court of Charles I to a responsible trustee position in the Interregnum government back to an honored position in the court of Charles II in the Restoration.  More relevant to this post, though, Sir John lived comfortably in England to the age of 80.  Adam achieved success, but the New World adventurer was dead at 36.

Special thanks to Jorja Jean for sharing her insights and research.

Next Post: Sarah Offley Thorowgood Gookin Yeardley,  A Formidable Woman of the 17th Century

Footnotes

[1]  “The Thorowgood Family of Princess Anne County, Va, ” The Richmond Standard, 4:13 (26 November 1881).  Dorman, John Frederick, Adventurers of Purse and Person, Volume Three Families R-Z, 4th ed. (Baltimore:Genealogical Publishing Co., 2007), 326-328. Turner, Florence Kimberly, Gateway to the New World: A History of Princess Anne County, Virginia, 1607-1824 (Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1984), 37-38.

[2]  Walter, Alice Granbery, Lower Norfolk County, Virginia, Court Records : Book “A,” 1637-1646 (Baltimore: Clearfield, 2009), 20.   Hening, William Waller, The Statutes at Large Being a Collection of  all the Laws of Virginia from the First Session of the Legislature in the Year 1619, vol. I (New York: R.W. & G. Bartow, 1823), 254. Accessed online at books. google on 10/5/2021.

[3] Gill, Harold B,, Jr.,  “Dr. Sequeyra’s ‘Diseases of Virginia,'” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 86:3 (July 1978),  296-297.  Mires, Peter B., “Contact and Contagion: The Roanoke Colony and Influenza,” Historical Archaeology, 28:3 (1994) 30-38. Accessed online through JSTOR 25616316. on 9/28/2021. Savitt, Todd L., Fevers, Agues, and Cures: Medical Life in Old Virginia (Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, 1990), 21-24.

[4]  Savitt, 29-30. Ehrhardt, John D., Jr., and Patrick O’Leary, “The Rise of the Surgeon in the Seventeenth Century Virginia Colony,” American Surgery, 84:6 (Jun 1, 2018), 763-765.  Accessed online at the National Library of Medicine at PubMed.gov on 10/1/21.  Magruder, Caleb Clarke, Jr., “American Medical Biographies/Pott, John,” Interstate Medical Journal, 17 (St. Louis 1910), 126-128.  Accessed  10/9/21 at wikisource.org.  Nugent, Nell Marion. Cavaliers and Pioneers: Abstracts of Virginia Land Patents and Grants, 1623-1800  (Richmond: Dietz Printing Co., 1934), 135, 146, 157.

[5]  Turner, 37. “The Thorowgood Family,” The Richmond Standard.

[6] Gill, 296-7.  Savitt, 12-14, 29-30.

[7]”The Thorowgood Family,” The Richmond Standard. Forrest, William S. Historical and Descriptive Sketches in Norfolk and Vicinity (Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1853), 459-460.  Mansfield, Stephen S., Princess Anne County and Virginia Beach: A Pictorial History (Norfolk: The Donning Company, 1989), 12.  Turner, 17.

[8]”The Thorowgood Family,” The Richmond Standard.

[9]  Walter,  Book A, 176. “The Thorowgood Family,” The Richmond Standard.  Brayton, John Anderson, “The Ancestry of Mrs. Anne (Thoroughgood) Chandler-Fowke,” The Virginia Genealogist, 48:4 (October-December 2004), 246-249.

[10] Walter, Alice Granbery, Lower Norfolk County, Virginia, Court Records : Book “B,” 1646-1651/2 (Baltimore: Clearfield, 2009), 48.  Brayton, John A.,  Transcription of Lower Norfolk County, Virginia Records, Volume One: Wills and Deeds, Book D 1656-1666 (Jackson, Mississippi: Cain Lithographers, Inc., 2007), 190.  Dorman, 328-333.

[11] Hening, 228. Bruce, Philip Alexander, Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century, Volume 1, (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1907), 314-316.  Horn, James, Adapting to a New World, (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 777-778.

[12] Bruce, 298-299, 334-336, 373-374.  Walter, Book A, 120, 150-151, 178.

[13] Walter, Book A, 1-2.  McCartney, Martha W., Jamestown People to 1800 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2012), 452. “The Thorowgood Family,” The Richmond Standard.

[14]  Walter, Book A, 3,6,137. McCartney, 200. Turner, 41. “The Thorowgood Family,” The Richmond Standard.

[15]   Kellam, Sadie Scott and V. Hope Kellam, Old Houses in Princess Anne Virginia  (Portsmouth, VA: Printcraft Press, 1931), 56-59.  Turner, 48-50.  Walter, Book A, 1, 3, 40.

[16] Brayton, 246-249.  Matthew, H. C. G.,  and Brian Harrison ed., “Thoroughgood, John” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 54 (London: Oxford University Press, 2004), 660-662. Will of Sir John Thorowgood of Kensington, 1675, Catalogue Reference Prob /11/349, Public Records Office:  The National Archives (UK). 

[17]  “The Thorowgood Family,” The Richmond Standard.  Walter, Book B, 137

[18] “The Thorowgood Family,” The Richmond Standard.  Turner, 51.

[19]  Bower, G.C. and  H.W.F. Harwood, “Pedigree of Offley,” The Genealogist: A Quarterly Magazine of Genealogical, Antiquarian, Topographical, and Heraldic Research, XIX, 1903, 217-231. Garner-Biggs Bulletin, 30:1, self published.  Clayton, Rev. P.B. and B.R. Leftwich, The Pageant of Tower Hill (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1933), 128, 133, 147-148.  Harris, Alexander, The oeconomy of the Fleeete, of An Apologeticall Answere of Alexander Harris (late warden there) unto XIX Articles set forth against him by the prisoners, Augustus Jessopp, ed., (London: Camden Society, 1879).

[20] Will of Sir John.  Matthew,  660-662.  Thrush, Andrew and John P. Ferris, ed.,  Thorowgood, John (1588-1657), of Brewer’s Lane, Charing Cross, Westminster; later of Billingbear, Berks. and Clerkenwell, Mdx.  accessed 7/7/2018 at   history of parliament online. 

Fraud and Piracy in the Virginia Tobacco Trade: The Thorowgood Brothers vs. Captain John Paine

After returning from England with his headrights on the John and Dorothy in 1634, Adam Thorowgood shipped 9,000 pounds of tobacco to his brothers in England for sale.  That same year Maurice Thomson shipped 155,000 pounds. ¹ Neither shipment ever made it to England.  What happened?

Tobacco was Virginia’s colonial gold.  Digging and planting, harvesting and exporting tobacco provided Virginia’s wealth, not her yet undiscovered mountain gold mines.  Once John Rolfe introduced a strain of sweet tobacco in 1614, almost anyone with a good plot of ground could grow it as a cash crop.  Yet, tobacco cultivation was demanding–its planting and harvesting seasons were particular and limited; it required intensive, back-breaking labor to tend, weed, de-worm, and harvest its leaves; it quickly depleted soil nutrients and required new or replenished land; its drying leaves were susceptible to rot in the humid climate.²

The tobacco cycle impacted the schedule of ships arriving from and returning to England.  Planters worried whether their  hogsheads would make it safely across the ocean and then whether English merchants would give them a fair price. Tobacco credit notes became the very currency for purchases and payments in the colony, but one’s profits depended on a fluctuating English market.  Neither Thorowgood nor Thomson could afford to lose a shipment.

The London Companies

Obviously, the greatest rewards for growing tobacco ended up with those who acquired the most land.  A new landed “aristocracy” was born in the New World, not based on formal titles, lineage, or Old World wealth, but on careful planning, grasped opportunities, and survivor’s luck.  Soon Virginia’s tobacco commerce also upended the merchant community of London.

In the 16th century the great English trading companies opened trade markets for exporting English goods and importing needed and exotic wares.  Most notable were the Merchant Adventurers;  the Muscovy Company for Russia; the Levant Company for Turkey and the Middle East; and the East India Company for India and the Far East. Select groups of merchants were granted trading monopolies by the crown, and membership was limited to those who met strict criteria and abided by their restrictions.  As colonization began, many members of these wealthy and powerful companies contributed to and became part of the joint stock companies such as the Virginia Company of London and later, Bermuda. ³

Virginia Company Seal

Sir Edward Osborne, the grandfather of Adam Thorowgood’s wife, Sarah Offley, was the first Governor of the Levant Company, but with his death in 1591, he was not part of the Virginia projects.  However, Sarah’s father, Robert Offley, was a Levant trader and invested in both the Virginia Company of London and Bermuda.  Much of her family was involved with the Levant and/or East India Company. While such Company involvements would have given the Thorowgood couple added prestige, it did not necessarily translate to New World power and wealth. ⁴

The New Planter-Merchants

Historic Jamestowne

When King James I dissolved the Virginia Company in 1624 and made Virginia a royal colony, there was little incentive for Company investors to continue to support a venture which had brought them little profit and over which they no longer had preferential status or authority.  Although a few Levant traders stayed involved, most Company men were not interested in owning and managing actual plantations, preferring to operate around the world as trading merchants.  This opened the door for the “new planter-merchants” who  established their own connections between the colonies and English ship captains and merchants. Those who rose under this system were often from modest backgrounds who had settled in the colonies, developed successful plantations, used the headright system to acquire land, and connected with good selling markets in England.  A few started out as ship captains or shopkeepers in London. They were adaptable, open to flexible partnerships, and willing to take risks that many Company traders were not.⁵

From obscure and unimpressive beginnings, they altered their own economic activities and condition, while they worked a fundamental transformation of the English  commercial world.

The Thomson Connection

Drying Tobacco

One of the most successful of the early new planter-merchants was Maurice Thomson who settled in Virginia in 1617, but soon became a transatlantic ship captain, helping to provision Virginia.   Maurice was joined by family in Virginia and  partnered with his brother-in-law, William Tucker, another important planter-merchant and  political leader in the Colony.  Tucker then joined with his good friend, Ralph Hamor,  sharing commercial ventures and as well as powerful political positions as Councilors on the Governor’s Council.  Maurice Thomson returned to England to further their commercial transatlantic trade, while William Tucker handled affairs in Virginia.  They collaborated with William Claiborne, another large plantation owner who had first arrived in 1621 as a surveyor to the Colony, but rose to ultimately become its Secretary of State and Treasurer. ⁶

Fur Trade

Other partners, such as William Cloberry and Thomas Combes, worked with Thomson to expand trade to include furs from New England and sending African slaves to their  West Indies plantation at St. Kitts as early as 1626.  They helped establish the “triangle trade” across the Atlantic.   While all this might be viewed as “success for the little guys” operating outside the system, the Thomson conglomerate itself became very powerful in controlling trade and commodity prices.  In their governmental positions, they worked for Virginia laws to favor merchants and large land owners which often squeezed out the simple and small farmers.  These and other networks of merchants and planters brought great economic expansion to the colonies, but they also planted seeds that would later erupt in Bacon’s Rebellion and lead to the entrenchment of a slave society. ⁷

Adam Thorowgood also was a successful planter-merchant.  He acquired large tracks of land; recruited and imported servants; was directly involved in the tobacco trade; held governmental responsibilities as a Burgess,  justice of the peace, and ultimately a Councillor;  had English connections, including his brother Sir John Thorowgood of Kensington in the court of Charles I as well as relatives in the Levant trade; and even received a recommendation from the King’s Privy Council.  Yet, there appeared to be a certain independence in the paths and associates he chose, and he was not part of the Thomson network.  As Adam died at age 36, one can only speculate what might have been. ⁸

Perils at Sea: Dunkirker Privateers or Pirates? 

El Galeon, a replica ship sailed from Spain

In 1634 when Maurice Thomson sent 155,000 pounds of tobacco from Virginia, it was the largest amount anyone had shipped that year.  When the ship neared the English coast, however, it was seized by the Spanish Dunkirker privateers.  Since 1583, when Spain made claim to Flanders and the Dutch lowlands, Spain had provided “letters of marque” (permission to engage in piracy against the state’s enemies) to encourage private raiders to take Protestant Dutch and English  ships.  The Protestant Dutch and English, of course, declared these Dunkirkers  (named for the prominent lowland city of Dunkirk) to be pirates. By 1628, over 522 English ships and fishing boats had been seized. This loose network of Dunkirkers continued to harass shipping off the English, German, and even Danish coasts up until 1712. ⁹

Spanish Galleon Ship

Predictably, Thomson was upset by the loss.  The English, however, were no strangers to privateering, as they had  been engaged in it for years against the Spanish in the West Indies and off the coast of South America.  Thomson and Clement, thus, received permission from King Charles I to engage in their own privateering ventures against the Spanish which continued into the 1640s.  In addition to revenge, this allowed them to further expand their collaborations in the transatlantic trade. ¹⁰

Thorowgoods and a Crafty Captain

Hogsheads and Barrels

After spending about a year in England recruiting additional headrights, Adam set sail on the John and Dorthy on September 2, 1634 from Gravesend to return to Virginia, three ordinance being shot to announce their departure. ¹¹  During that year, Adam’s indentured servants, likely under the supervision of his capable wife Sarah and an overseer, would have been busy with the cultivation of tobacco.   Upon his return, Adam arranged for  9 hogshead (about 1,000 pounds each) to be shipped on the return voyage of the  John and Dorothy to London.  At least two of his  brothers, Sir John and Edmund Thorowgood, were involved with him in the tobacco trade and were expecting this shipment. That year London received at least 388,000 pounds of tobacco from the Chesapeake area.  ¹²  Adam’s shipment was comparatively small, but at that time, he only owned several hundred acres.  Once he received his new land grant,  his shipments and income increased considerably.

Ireland

Although headed for London, the John and the Dorothy made an unscheduled stop in Galway, Ireland.  According to Captain John Paine,  he “was forced by a leak to put into Galway” and was “forced to sell some of the cargo to raise money to pay for repairs to the ship and for provisions.”  However, the Captain’s account was disputed in two law suits brought for recovery of the stolen tobacco.

On February 2, 1636/7, Sir John and Edmund Thorowgood made a Bill of Complaint against Samuel Weale, the agent of Captain Paine who purchased the tobacco, in the Court of Chancery, which at that time handled equity and business matters.  Mr. Weale was arrested in London pending trial.  From January 23, 1635/36 until 7 December 1638, the same matter was brought before the Admiralty Court by Henry Fabian and Philip White against John Payne, Joseph Hawes, and John Beale, owners of the John and Dorothy. According to a composite of witnesses, this is what really occurred:¹³

Samuel Leigh, mariner, declared that the ship was at anchor on the James River in April 1635, being “laden” and in good condition.  The voyage went well “without any stress of weather or contrary winds.”  The ship put in to the Port of Galway, which was considered dangerous to shipping, by order of Paine where he sold much of the tobacco to buy vituals despite “orders to the contrary.”

John Flood, seaman, reported no problems on the voyage and that they were “well able to get to London and there was no need to call in at Ireland.”  The rest of the crew were against the selling of tobacco.

Hugh Bullock, Esq., passenger,  had paid the bond to the London Custom House that the John and Dorothy would be returned to London. Contrary to his wishes, Captain Paine had ordered her to Galway.

Christopher Boyes, passenger from Blunt Point, Virginia, understood that Mr. Bullock was in danger of imprisonment if the ship did not return to England according to his bond.

John Turnor and John Johnson:  stated that the ship arrived in Galway July 1635 carrying black walnut, butter, and Virginia tobacco.  The Mayor of Galway had the ship and cargo impounded because it had not been entered in the Customs House, but some of the tobacco had already been sold to Mr. Preston and Mr. Weale.

Lawrence Allen: Noted the entry and sale of 29 hogsheads of tobacco to Weale and Preston for £219. 6 shillings.

Thomas Taylor of Bristol: Had loaded tobacco for himself and Christopher Carew on the ship in January 1634/5 while it was on the James River.  In June 1636, he went to Galway in search of his tobacco and, after litigation, he finally received possession of it, “much of which was by then rotten.”

Sir John Thorowgood:  declared that Adam Thorowgood had shipped 9 hogsheads of tobacco to him, but Paine took the ship to Ireland for some “fraudulent purpose and not through necessity he being only three days out of London.”  Paine sold the tobacco far under market price.  Weale fully knew that the tobacco did not belong to Paine and “has refused to restore the tobacco or pay any compensation.”

Dublin

It was a rather “water-tight” case against Paine.  Unfortunately, fraud by captains, clerks and merchants was a problem in the shipping trade.  On July 2, 1634, several months before the John and Dorothy set sail for Virginia, the Privy Council dealt with the problem of Virginia tobacco being taken and sold to the United Provinces and other foreign countries.  The Council required a bond be posted “that they will return with the tobacco to the Port of London without unloading any part of it before that time.”  The Privy Council records of 1634-1635 recorded other incidents of interference by the Dunkirker pirates and the selling of tobacco in other lands.

Mr. Bullock had paid that bond for the John and Dorothy, so Captain Paine would have been fully aware of the requirement.  Also, it is never a good idea to cheat a knight who is in the daily service of the King.  In 1637, Captain John Paine was a prisoner in Dublin and Mr. Samuel Weale was arrested and awaiting his trial, but the John and the Dorothy was back in service under a new captain, transporting 56 Puritans to New England. ¹⁴

Next Posts:  English Settlers to Virginia Beach: Who Really Was First?; Adam Thorowgood, Slavery, and 17th Century Racism

Footnotes:

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1. Billings, Warren M., The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century: A Documentary History of Virginia, 1607-1700 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007),  209-211. ↩
2. Brenner, Robert, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London’s Overseas Traders, 1550-1653 (London: Verso, 2003), 135.  Virginia Colonial Record Project (VCRP), Survey Report 12530  (London Public Record Office: Court of Chancery Bills and Answers Series I Charles I,  1636/7).   Accessed online at Library of Virginia website on June 30, 2020. ↩
3.   Hewins, William Albert Samuel,  English Trade and Finance Chiefly in the Seventeenth Century (London: Methuen & Co., 1892), 24-30, 44-47. Gray, Stanley and V. J. Wyckoff, “The International Tobacco Trade in the Seventeenth Century,” The Southern Economic Journal, VII:1 (July 1940), 1-26. ↩
4. Harwood, “Pedigree of Offley,” The Genealogist: A Quarterly Magazine of Genealogical, Antiquarian, Topographical, and Heraldic Research, XIX, 1903, 217-231. ↩
5. Billings, 212-214.  Brenner, 103- 107, 111-114. ↩
6. Brenner, 115-124.  McCartney, Martha W., Virginia Immigrants and Adventurers 1607-1635: A Biographical Dictionary (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2007), 689-690; 702-703. ↩
7. Brenner, 122-132. ↩
8.   McCartney, 691-692. Horn, James, Adapting to a New World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 423. ↩
9. Brenner, 134-135; Dunkirkers, Wikipedia, accessed online on July 8, 2020 at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkirkers. ↩
10. Brenner, 135. ↩
11.   Coldham, Peter Wilson, English Adventurers and Emigrants, 1609-1660:  Abstracts of Examinations in the High Court of Admiralty with Reference to Colonial America (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1984), 60-62. ↩
12.   Clemens, Paul G.E., The Atlantic Economy and Colonial Maryland’s Eastern Shore: From Tobacco to Grain (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980), 34.  Virginia Colonial Records Project (VCRP), Survey Report 12530. VCRP, Survey Report 9985. ↩
13. VCRP, Survey Record 12530. VCRP, Survey Record 13852. VCRP, Survey Record 09977. Coldman, 60. ↩
14. VCRP,  Survey Report 4764 and 04539: Privy Council Register 1634. 1635. Stephens, W.B. , The Seventeenth Century Customs Service Surveyed (New York: Ashgate Publishing, 2012). “John and Dorothy, 1637,” Great Migration Ships: 1630 Sailings, accessed online at WikiTree on July 10, 2020. ↩

Thorowgood’s Return: Competing for Emigrants for 17th Century Virginia

Puritan Great Migration to Massachusetts Bay Colony

Why did Adam Thorowgood decide to go back to England in 1633?  Having completed his indentureship followed by a visit to England in 1626, Adam now had land, a family, indentured servants, and prestige as a Burgess in Virginia.  What else did he want?

The Indentured Dilemma

The headright system that had been established to encourage English men and women to come to Virginia as indentured servants worked relatively well for immigrants and investors in the second quarter of the 17th century.  However, one of the problems was that even when indentured servants managed to survive 4-7 years  in Virginia,  the planter had to find a replacement when the time was over, unless they entered into a tenancy arrangement.  A successful landowner had to deal with constant turnover.  Virginia had an insatiable need for workers. (See Indentured: The Gamble of a Lifetime)

In 1633, many of the 51 headrights  whose passage was paid for by Adam Thorowgood during 1628-29 would have been close to completing their indentureships.  While most likely Adam would have initially sold some of those contracts  to other planters for a profit, his personal need for workers was now increasing.  In addition to replacing expiring indentureships, he had purchased more land to be worked and had desires for a very large land grant. As before, Adam chose to do his own recruiting in England rather than to go through others. Also, he likely wanted to follow up on some family connections. (See Pied Pipers to Virginia: The Recruitment of 17th Century Headrights)

City on a Hill

Puritans to Massachusetts

Choices and opportunities had increased in those intervening years for persons who wanted to emigrate from England.   In the summer of 1630, 11 ships had brought around 700 Puritan passengers to form the  Massachusetts Bay Colony.  It was early in the Great Migration which eventually resulted in about 20,000 Puritans coming to Massachusetts. Many of these came from the area of East Anglia which included the Thorowgood’s County Norfolk as well as Suffolk and part of  Cambridgeshire.  East Anglia was noted for its religious nonconformity.  The Puritans were reformers of the Anglican Church, not Separatists like the earlier Pilgrim colonists.¹

Gov. John Winthrop

Governor John Winthrop from Suffolk led this first fleet of Puritans and desired for their New England colony to become a righteous beacon or “a city on a hill” for those willing to abide by their Puritan code.  They were not interested in offering religious freedom to others or in setting up a democracy.  In fact, Winthrop said “a democracy is …accounted the meanest and worst of all forms of government.” ²

This ongoing mass migration likely reduced the number of Norfolk residents who might have considered going to Virginia, but those who chose to go with Winthrop were not necessarily the type Adam Thorowgood would have been seeking.  Adam was primarily looking for healthy, young men interested in Virginia tobacco farming.  The Great Migration Puritans tended to migrate as families, and there was nearly an equal ratio of men to women. Only about a quarter of the men were in their twenties.  In contrast, the usual Virginia emigrants were single males in their twenties. ³

Gov. Leonard Calvert

Catholics to Maryland

In 1633 when Adam arrived in England, another group based on religious identity was preparing to leave for the Americas.   Whereas the Puritans were dissatisfied because they felt the Anglican church retained too much of the Catholic ceremony, English Catholics were hoping to have a place where they could freely practice their Catholicism.  George Calvert, 1st Baron of Baltimore,  had announced his conversion to Catholicism in 1625 and was able to obtain a charter from King Charles I to establish a colony initially in Newfoundland, later renegotiated for “Maryland,” where Catholics could settle.  They named it for the Catholic wife of Charles I, Henrietta Maria.  When George Calvert died suddenly in 1632, his son Cecil Calvert proceeded with the charter and appointed his brother Leonard Calvert as Maryland’s first governor.  On November 22, 1633, the ships the Ark and the Dove were ready to leave with 140 settlers bound for this new colony. ⁴

The Ark, a “Super-Sized” Ship at 400 tons

Whereas the Puritans wanted only Puritans in their settlement, the Calverts were willing to allow Protestants to join them.  Based on those whose faith is known through records of The Ark and the Dove Society, at least a quarter of the settlers may have been Protestant.  Some have estimated it could have been as much as half, so, by necessity, religious tolerance was practiced.  The Calverts came from Yorkshire, but their emigrants were from a variety of counties, including Essex, Middlesex, Kent, Gloustershire and Lancastershire.  In this first group, at least 35 were identified as gentlemen, 14 as servants to the gentlemen, and 5 in the trades.  There were only 3 women, one identified as a servant.  The situations of the others onboard are unknown. ⁵

St. Mary’s City, Maryland

Interestingly, one of the gentlemen on the Ark was Cyprian Thorowgood, a twenty-seven year old Catholic from Wenden, Essex.  Cyprian would go on to distinguish himself as  a fur trader, explorer of the Chesapeake Bay, member of the Maryland Assembly, and Sheriff.  Adam Thorowgood’s ancestors were known to have lived in Hertfordshire, England during the 15th century and  in Felsted, Essex in the 16th century.  Adam’s father, William Thorowgood was born in Essex. It is possible that these families were related, but no connection has yet been identified.  Clearly, there was a religious difference between these Thorowgood families. William Thorowgood moved to Grimston, Norfolk in 1585 as the Anglican rector of St. Botolph’s and became Commissary to the Anglican Bishop of Norwich.   There is no evidence that Cyprian  and Adam ever connected.  Cyprian had no known descendants. ⁶

St. Mary’s City 1685 by Walter Crowe

In February 1634, the Ark and the Dove arrived at Port Comfort in Elizabeth City, Virginia.  After resting about a week, they sailed up the Chesapeake to St. Clement’s Island and then established their first settlement at St. Mary’s City, Maryland. This all occurred around the very time Adam Thorowgood was also recruiting.  Adam managed, however, to quickly find a group of Virginia hopefuls.  While we do not know where or how he recruited them, Adam contracted to pay the passage for 11  headrights in 1633 on the Hopewell, the same ship that had brought him and his new bride, Sarah Offley, to Virginia in 1628.⁷

Holyroodhouse Palace where Charles I had his Scottish Coronation

A Brother Knighted

Among those in England that Adam would have been eager to see was his brother, Sir John Thorowgood of Kensington, who was knighted at the Scottish coronation of Charles I in Edinburgh in June 1633. It would have been an exciting time for the family. (Do not confuse Adam’s brother with the other Sir John Thorowgood).  Sir John’s duties as a Gentleman of the Bedchamber of Charles I were focused on his daily attendance on the King. Still, he and another of their brothers, Edmund Thorowgood, were involved with Adam in the tobacco trade. (next post)  Edmund, a gentleman, and his wife, Frances Smith, the daughter of Edward Smith of Chelston Temple, Essex, were living in Markham, Norfolk, just a few miles from Grimston, Norfolk where Adam and his six older brothers and one sister had grown up. ⁸ (See Untangling 17th Century Genealogies: Thoroughly Confusing Thorowgoods)

Family Supports

John Speed’s 1610 Map of Norfolk, England

Another of these brothers, Thomas Thorowgood, married to Anne Windham, was the rector in nearby Little Massingham, Norfolk at that time.  Anne’s brother, Edward Windham, must have been enthused by Adam’s adventures and success, and he agreed to go to Virginia as one of Adam’s headrights.   Due to their relationship, Edward may not have been an indentured servant, as only four years after his voyage, he was serving as a Justice on the Lower County of New Norfolk (VA) Court under Adam.  In his will, Adam Thorowgood referred to Edward Windham as his “brother,” although he was technically Adam’s brother’s brother-in-law. ⁹

Claes Visscher 1616 Panorama of London

Adam also made contact with his wife, Sarah Offley’s, London-based family while he was in England.  Sarah’s older widowed sister, Ann Offley Workman, had remarried Robert Hayes.  As they had sufficient funds, they did not need to come as headrights, but they did soon follow Adam to Virginia and purchased land near him in Lower Norfolk, Virginia in 1637.  By 1638, Robert Hayes was serving as a Burgess from that county. Adam also called Robert his “brother” (brother-in-law) in his will.  In addition, Adam had involvement with Sarah’s uncle Alexander Harris of Tower Hill, London, whom he would name along with his “dearly beloved brother” Sir John Thorowgood of Kensington as executors of his will in England. ¹⁰(See A “Big Bang” Marriage: How Sarah (Offley) met Adam (Thorowgood) in London 1627)

Perhaps with some help from his family connections, Adam Thorowgood arranged for an even larger group of emigrants for 1634.  He paid for 5 on the Bonadventure, 1 on Merchant’s Hope, and 1 on Mr. Middleton, and then arranged passage for 30 individuals to accompany him back to Virginia on the John and Dorothy.  One of Adam’s headrights on the Bonadventure was Patrick Blacock (or Blalocke), the only known instance of Adam transporting someone who had been detained at the famous Bridewell Prison, known to include many vagrants with minor infractions who were shipped to Virginia. Adam transported  at least 3 women and a child in 1634. There are an additional 4 women for whom we do not have a date or ship. In a little over a year in England, Adam Thorowgood had managed to recruit and fund at least 48 headrights.  He was entitled to 50 acres of land for each person he paid for and then 50 more acres for himself just for returning to Virginia.¹¹

Recommended by the Privy Council

The Old Whitehall Palace from the River

Adam’s  greatest prize, though, was a letter from Whitehall on August 6, 1634 in which the King’s Privy Council  informed the Governor and Council of Virginia that they “recommend Adam Thorowgood, Esquire, and wish that he be given land in Chesapahack [now Lynnhaven] River to the Southward of the Bay.” ¹² Land grants were usually just matters for the local county courts in Virginia.  A Privy Council recommendation gave Adam considerable status.  A brother at Court was indeed useful.  However, all was not “smooth sailing.”  Although the voyages to Virginia had gone well, Adam and his brothers were about to be cheated by a ship’s captain.

The List of Emigrants

Although I  listed those headrights brought by Adam Thorowgood in 1628-29 in a prior post, this list includes the entire group of his headrights by ship and date (when known) from 1628-1634. ¹³

The Hopewell, 1628:  Jno Barnards; Stephen Bernard; Margaret Bilbie; Thomas Boulton; Jon Bradston; Thomas Brooks; Thomas Chandler; Andrew Chant; Susan Colson; William Edwards; Robert Heasell; Richard Jego (Iego); Richard Jenerie; Thomas Johnson; Richard Johnson; Thomas Keeling; Rachel Lane; James Leading; Jos Leake; Thomas Melton; Jon Moyse (Moise); Jon Newarke; Francis Newton; Ed Parish; John Penton; Jno Percie; Edward Pitts; Jane Prosser; Dennis Russell; Ann Spark; Adam Thorowgood; Sarah Thorowgood; Thomas Thorowgood; Edmund Wallis; Augustine Warner; John Waters; Jane Westerfield

The True Love, 1628:  Andrew Boyer; Thomas Boyer; Jon Lock; John Harris

The Ark, 1628:  Francis Bramly

The Africa, 1628: Merciful Halle;  Ann Allerson;   Victo Fraford;   Ann Long;   Casander Underwood;  Dorothy Wheeler

The “French ship,” 1629:  John Dyer; William Hines; Edward Jones; Edward Palmer; Edward Reynolds

The Hopewell, 1633   John Enies;  William Fawne;  William Gastrock;  Gilbert Gye (Guy); Daniel Hutton;  George Mee;  Jon Reynolds;  William Speed;  William Was;  James Wilson; Jno Witt

The John and the Dorothy,  1634   Jon Alporte;  Thomas Atmore;  Jon Brewton;  Thomas Creasor;  Arthur Eggleston;  Henry Franklin;  Robert Gainie;  Humphrey Hayward;  Henry Hill;  Jon Hill;  Mary Hill;  Mary Hill (child);  John Holton;  William Hookes;  Cob Howell;  William Kempe;  Christopher Newgent;  Richard Poole;  Joseph Sedgwick;  Thomas Smith;  Robert Spring;  Symond Stanfield;  Adam Thorowgood; Roger Ward;  George Whitehead;  Ann Whithorne;  Edward Windham;  Jno Withers;  Stephen Withers;  and Henry Woods

The Bonadventure, 1634  James Belly; Patrick Blacock (Blalocke); Ann Boulton;  John Cowes;  Stephen Swaine;  John Wakefield

The Merchant’s Hope, 1634    Robert Westwell

Mr. Middleton, 1634    William Fletcher

The Christopher and Mary,  Date unknown  Eliza Gosmore

Unknown Ship and Date    William Atkins;  Ann Burroughs;  William Burroughs;  Elizabeth Creasor;  Eliza Custisse

Next Post:  The Thorowgood Brothers v. Captain Paine: Trouble in the Virginia Tobacco Trade

Footnotes

 

 

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1. Bailyn, Bernard, The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), 365-367.  Hopley, Claire, “The Puritan Migration–Albion’s Seed Sets Sail,” British Heritage Travel @ britishheritage.com/puritan-migration-albions-sets-sail, Mar. 06, 2020.  Accessed online on June 23, 2020.  “Puritan Migration to New England (1620-1640),” Wikipedia, edited  June 5, 2020. Accessed online June 23, 2020. ↩
2.  Ibid ↩
3. Betlock, Lynn, “New England’s Great Migration,” Great Migration.org: A Survey of New England 1620-1640 @ greatmigration.org.  Accessed online June 24, 2020. Horn, James, “Servant Emigration” in Tate and Ammerman, eds., The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century,  (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 61. ↩
4. Hammett, Regina Combs, History of St. Mary’s County, Maryland 1634-1990 (Ridge, Maryland: self published, 1991), 1-3. ↩
5. The Ark and the Dove Society, The Adventurer List. Accessed online June 26, 2020 at  http://www.thearkandthedove.com/passenger-list/ . Hammett, 3-5. ↩
6. Hammett, 19, 62.  “Cyprian Thoroughgood,” Archives of Maryland: Biographical Series MSASC 3520-2854 accessed online 3/15/2018.   Nugent, Nell Marion, Cavaliers and Pioneers: Abstracts of Virginia Land Patents (Richmond: VA State Library Archives, 1992), I:415.  The Gayton, Grimston, Great Massingham & District Team Benefice of the Diocese of Norwich, Grimston Church History: The Benefice and Rectors.  Accessed online on June 20, 2020 at ggmbenefice.uk. ↩
7. Hammett, 5-6.  Nugent, I: 22-23. ↩
8. Matthew, H. C. G.,  and Brian Harrison ed., “Thoroughgood, John” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 54 (London: Oxford University Press, 2004), 660-662.  Virginia Colonial Records Project, Survey Report No. 12530: Court of Chancery: Bills and Answers. Series I. Charles I. from Public Record Office Class C2 Charles I W49/3. Accessed online  at Library of Virginia on April 21, 2020. ↩
9. McCartney, Martha W., Jamestown People to 1800 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2012), 452. “The Thorowgood Family of Princess Anne County, Va.” The Richmond Standard.  26 November 1882.  Turner, Florence Kimberly, Gateway to the New World: A History of Princess Anne County, Virginia 1607-1824 (Easley, So. Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1984), 29, 38. ↩
10. McCartney, 200. Turner, 38. ↩
11. Nugent, Ibid. ↩
12. Virginia Colonial Record Project, Survey Report 4764 Privy Council Register Dates 1634, 1635.  Accessed online Library of Virginia (local call number SR 08781) on April 21, 2020. ↩
13. Nugent, Ibid. ↩

Becoming a Virginia Burgess in 1629: Representation,Voting, and the Commonwealth’s Urine Collection Act

Historic Jamestowne Reenactment of 1st General Assembly in 1619

Commemoration Program

Jamestown. October 16, 1629.  The General Assembly of the Colony of Virginia convened consisting of 46 elected representatives from 24 designated sites along with Governor John Pott and his  Councillors. It had been ten years since the House of Burgesses with its twenty-two representatives from 11 localities had met under the leadership of the newly appointed governor, Sir George Yeardley, becoming the first representative legislative assembly in the Americas.¹ In the intervening years, the Colony had pulled through the devastation of the Powhatan Uprising and the dissolution of its founding commercial Virginia Company of London.  The Colony had not only survived, but prospered.  In 2019, the Commonwealth of Virginia celebrated the 400th anniversary of the beginning of representative government in America.  Did the Burgesses in 1629 happen to pause to acknowledge its tenth anniversary?

King Charles I

The burgesses that year would have been aware that their situation was tenuous.  The election of representatives began while the Colony was under the private chartered Virginia Company of London.  After the Company was dissolved and Virginia was designated a Royal Colony in 1624, the House of Burgesses was neither sanctioned nor disallowed by King Charles I.  Virginians, though, had taken to the idea of elected representation, and, despite the uncertainty, the General Assembly still met. ² Still, continuation of a representative assembly was not assured.  Ironically, while the Virginia representatives met in 1629, Charles I, weary of not getting the monies and approvals he wanted, dissolved England’s Parliament.  He did not call it back into session until 1640, a time in English history known as “The Eleven Year Tyranny.” ³  The citizens in England in that period were denied their representative voice.

The Vision of a Commonwealth

Gov. Yeardley Reenactor

The commission that was carried to the Colony in 1619 by Governor Yeardley changed the course of Virginia’s government  and ultimately that of the United States of America.  It reflected an important step in the English philosophical debate about how nations and colonies should be governed.  In the 15th and 16th century, some judicial philosophers  put forward the idealized concept of a nation as a “common-weal” where a harmonious hierarchical balance would be maintained between the monarchy, the government, and the people in such a way that all would share in a common well-being. To achieve this would require an enlightened monarch, a responsive and responsible government, and a represented and diligent populace, all of them living in accordance with the righteous principles and laws of the Church.  ⁴

Seal of the Virginia Company of London

Although the basic components of a commonwealth existed in 17th century England (King, Parliament, Church, and the People), they were not harmoniously united, and the initial governments of Jamestown were chaotic and authoritarian.   The harsh implementation of the Company’s initial “Lawes Divine, Moral, and Martial” by its governors had not fostered shared prosperity or unity in Virginia.  With the Colony still struggling, the Virginia Company changed leadership, and Sir Edwin Sandys, a proponent of the commonwealth concept, was elected a director.

Sir Edwin Sandys

Sir Edwin Sandys, A Founding Father

Sandys and his supporters desired for Virginia to become a New World commonwealth that would benefit all those living there and involve them in their own public affairs.  He believed in  strengthening the economy by diversification of crops and production, increasing emigration through land incentives, allowing free trade, providing representation in  government, and converting the native peoples to Anglican Protestantism after which they surely would  happily assume their place in this harmonious, supportive hierarchy.  He saw Virginia as the opportunity to create “a perfected English society.”  However, Virginia was not a blank slate.   The Powhatan Indians were not interested in becoming loyal Protestant subjects of James I.  Colonists already had a taste of wealth through tobacco and did not want to diversify.  The offer of land ownership and a voice in one’s governance, though, were attractive incentives to increase emigration. ⁵

Sir Edwin Sandys also had his difficulties with the Crown.  Considered the most influential member of the House of Commons at the time, he was in frequent conflict with King James I.  In 1621, he was even placed under house arrest related to his contrary opinion on the “Spanish marriage” being considered for Prince Charles.   Sandys never proposed a commonwealth without a monarch, but he supported a powerful Parliament.  Perceiving his democratic tendencies, Capt. John Bargrave attacked the Virginia commonwealth project saying, “the mouth of equal liberty must be stopped.”  ⁶

Today,  while one of the fifty states, Virginia is still officially named The Commonwealth of Virginia.  The noted Jamestown historian, Dr. James Horn, summarized Sandys’s contribution as an unrecognized early Founding Father thus: ⁷

Sandys’s dream of creating a commonwealth in the interests of settlers and Indians proved short-lived.  But the twin-pillars of democracy–the rule of law and representative government–survived and flourished.  It was his greatest legacy to America.

Challenges of Creating a General Assembly

John Pory Reenactor

While the concept of an elected governmental body was exciting to the early colonists, there were challenges in its implementation.  It was easily decided that the Assembly would meet in the choir seats of the largest and finest  building in Jamestown, its new church built in 1617, but how to conduct the meeting was a greater challenge.  Only John Pory, the Secretary of the Colony, had ever had legislative experience as a member of the House of Commons in Parliament, so he was authorized as the Speaker of the House. Still, it was uncertain what a colonial legislative body of a private company could or should do.  Was it to be more of an advisory appendage to handle local matters for the Company or could it actually formulate laws for the Colony and become a type of “Little Parliament?”  ⁸

Church Choir Benches, Historic Jamestowne

Until 1643, the General Assembly was a unicameral body intended to convene annually with the Governor, his Councillors, and the elected Burgesses all meeting and working together.  According to the instructions, Sir George Yeardley was to establish ” a laudable form of Magistracy and just Laws…for the happy guiding and governing of the people.” With little direction from England, no experience in drafting laws, and a whole new set of circumstances to regulate, Virginians began to craft their own unique government, setting themselves on a twisting and rocky path that would ultimately lead to independence.⁹

17th Century Voting and Representation

Adam Thorowgood Thoroughgood House, Va. Beach

Among those newly elected Burgesses in 1629 was Adam Thorowgood of Elizabeth City, whose life regular readers of this blog know I am tracking through the 17th Century.  It is rather remarkable that he was elected at that point, for it was only four years since he had finished his indentureship to Edward Waters, and Elizabeth City was a large and important settlement.  However, much had transpired in those years to boost his prominence.  Likely using the £100 inheritance from his father, Adam purchased 150 acres and was recognized as a “gentleman of  Kikotan. ” He then returned to England and married into the influential and wealthy merchant families of the Osbournes and Offleys.  Around that time, his older brother, John Thorowgood, was appointed a Gentleman of the Bed Chamber for King Charles (like Ladies in Waiting for a Queen) and was anticipating knighthood.  Although only 24 years old when he returned to Virginia in 1628, Adam Thorowgood was a young man of which to take note. So, who would have been able to vote to elect him a Burgess? ¹⁰

In the beginning, to vote for a Burgess one had only to be a free man of age (21) who gave allegiance to England.  Today we equate representation with being able to cast a vote.  It was construed differently at that time.  The first Africans were brought to Virginia a month after the Burgesses first met in 1619, but their arrival was unanticipated. (future posts) The restriction on being free was not originally intended to exclude slaves, but to keep bound indentured servants from voting who might be unduly pressured by their temporary “owners.”   Masters were viewed as representing their bound and enslaved servants.¹¹

Sarah Thorowgood,  Thoroughgood House

Most adult women were considered under the concept of “feme covert.”  If unmarried and living at home, she was considered represented by her father.  If married, her husband was to represent her and their children.  Only widowed or independent single women (“feme sole”) had no “representation” in this system.  With men outnumbering women in the Colony for its first century, women were usually not single for long.  Adam Thorowgood’s wife, Sarah, though,  became a formidable widow even without the vote.  ¹²

Initially, it was easier for a man to qualify to vote in Virginia than in England.  Just as what was happening in England influenced Virginia, what Virginia did influenced the direction of events in England. There were efforts in the House of Commons during this same period to broaden England’s parliamentary franchise, but they were unsuccessful.  Unfortunately, with time, more restrictions were added to Virginia’s voting requirements.  In 1670, around the period the Assembly was passing restrictive race-related laws, they added the requirement that one had to to own land or property to vote.¹³

Anthony & Mary Johnson, Free Blacks in Virginia

Out of concern over the increasing number of free blacks within the Colony and fear they might join in a slave insurrection, the Assembly passed a law in 1723  “That no free negro, mulatto, or Indian whatsoever, hereafter have any vote at the election of burgesses, or any other election whatsoever.” Another right was curtailed.  After Bacon’s rebellion in 1676, the King had begun to exert more control over Virginia, so even the elected legislature began to lose some of its freedoms and independence.¹⁴

The Legislative Agendas  1629-1632

General Assembly Reenactment

During the years Adam Thorowgood participated as a Burgess, the Assembly dealt with some significant changes as well as rather provincial matters.  In his first session in 1629, the Burgesses considered the usual issues of  planting corn, going against the Indians, planting tobacco, penalties for not going to church, paying for tithables, and the refortification of Point Comfort.¹⁵

Discussions might have been a bit more interesting in the following session on March 24, 1629/30 (using the Julian calendar). Sir John Harvey had just been appointed governor to replace John Pott, who was accused of stealing cattle (he was convicted in July). The Assembly passed Acts prohibiting price gouging and defrauding by sea merchants and colonists, ordering farmers to grow at least 2 acres of corn per worker, forbidding the killing of female cows until they were post-breeding, and, as colonists had renewed attacks on the Indians, allowing “noe peace bee concluded with them.”  Act 5, though, was more unusual. After asking each household to preserve their wood ashes for the making of potash, the following was requested: ¹⁶

ACT V

…every master of a family shall have a special care…to preserve and keepe all their urine which shall be made…they shall receave directions the benefit whereof…shall redounde to those that shall make the experiment…

17th c. Chamber Pot

How the urine was to be collected and stored and the means of the Act’s enforcement were not explained. Indeed, there was much the Burgesses still needed to learn about the fine art of practical legislation. However, urine could be used as the source of potassium nitrate which, combined with manure and a few other ingredients and allowed to age for 10 months, could produce gunpowder.  Or you could just order more ready-made from England.

In contrast, the  sessions in 1631-32 were groundbreaking as the Assembly decided to review, consolidate, revise, void when needed, and reform the body of laws that had accumulated over the years.  This was their first attempt to develop and publish a consistent Code of Law for the Colony.  The first review appeared to have taken place by only a partial Assembly as it included  only 20 Burgesses representing 13 combined districts and started meeting on February 21, 1631/32.  They produced a document of 68 acts which included 15 related to Church matters.    Not surprisingly, the “urine collection” regulation did not survive the review. ¹⁷

While Adam Thorowgood was not in the February meetings, he was present a few months later on September 4, 1632 when the entire group of 37 Burgesses from all 25 sites met to consider the work that had been done.  With some changes to the earlier revision for clarity and convenience, the Assembly then issued 61 Acts.  The Preamble stated:  ¹⁸

we doe therefore herby ordeyne and establish that these acts and orders… be published in this colony and to be accounted and adjudged in force.  And all other acts and orders of any assembly heretofore holden to be voyd and of none effect.

While there would be many more revisions in the years to come, that year Virginians confidently took ownership of their legislative process.

Coming Post:  Thorowgood’s Return: Competing for Emigrants for 17th Century Virginia

Footnotes:

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1. Hening, William Waller, The Statutes at Large Being a Collection of  all the Laws of Virginia from the First Session of the Legislature in the Year 1619, vol. I (New York: R.W. & G. Bartow, 1823), 132-33. Accessed online at books. google on May 15, 2020.  McIlwaine, H.R. and J.P. Kennedy, eds.,  Journal of the House of Burgesses of Virginia I: 1619-1658-59. (Virginia, General Assembly, 1915), 2-3; 52 137. Accessed online at books.google on May 15, 2020. ↩
2. Billings, Warren M., The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century: A Documentary History of Virginia, 1607-1700 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 52. ↩
3. Crofton, Ian, The Kings and Queens of England (London: Quercus, 2006), 162-163. ↩
4. Horn, James, 1619: Jamestown and the Forging of American Democracy (New York: Basic Books, 2018), 121-123. ↩
5. Ibid., 127-131, 153.  Rabb, Theodore K. “Sir Edwin Sandys (1561–1629).” Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, 18 Feb. 2014. Web. 18 May. 2020. ↩
6. Horn, 8. ↩
7. Ibid., 217. ↩
8. Ibid., 68-69. Billings, Warren M.,  A Little Parliament: The Virginia General Assembly in the Seventeenth Century (Richmond: The Library of Virginia, 2004), xvi-xix, 160. ↩
9. Billings, Little Parliament, 16-17.  Horn, 60, 67-68, 81, 160. ↩
10. McCartney, Martha W., Virginia Immigrants and Adventurers 1607-1635 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 2007), 168.  Matthew, H. C. G.,  and Brian Harrison ed., “Thoroughgood, John” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 54 (London: Oxford University Press, 2004), 660-662. ↩
11. Billings, Little Parliament, 18, 55, 160. ↩
12. Billings, Old Dominion, 360-361. Parramore, Thomas C., Peter C. Stewart, and Tommy L. Bogger, Norfolk: The First Four Centuries (Charlottesville: Univeristy Press of Virginia, 1994), 26-28, 39-42. ↩
13. Horn, 208. Bushman, Richard, “English Franchise Reform in the Seventeenth Century,” The Journal of British Studies, III (November 1963), 36-38.  Accessed online on May 10, 2020 at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/175047.pdf.  Requirements for Voting in Virginia, 1670-1850 from Virginia Places.   Accessed online May 2, 2020 at  http://www.virginiaplaces.org/government/voteproperty.html    ↩
14. Wolfe, Brendan. “Free Blacks in Colonial Virginia.” Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, 13 May. 2019. Web. 19 May. 2020. ↩
15. Hening, 145. ↩
16. Ibid., 149-152 ↩
17. Ibid., 153. ↩
18.  Ibid., 178-180. Billings, Little Parliament, 193-194. ↩

A “Big Bang” Marriage: How Sarah (Offley) met Adam (Thorowgood) in London 1627

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.

Jamestown Brides

In the Tenacity: Women in Jamestown and Early Virginia exhibit at Jamestown, it is noted that there was a “poor marriage market” in London in the 1620s.  That may have influenced the decision of some proper maids to accept the Virginia Company’s initiative to provide brides to the settlers at a substantial cost.  Those daring young women retained their right to refuse proposals, but many must have accepted, for it turned out to have been one of the Company’s few lucrative ventures. ¹  However, considering that fewer than 6,000 total men, women, and children migrated to Virginia over 17 years (1607-1624), that could not have been solely responsible for the decrease in marriageable men in England’s population of about 4 million. Certainly, the 1625 plague and disastrous military campaign at Breda would have affected the London “marriage market” the year Adam returned.² So, how then did Sarah manage to find and catch Adam or was it the other way around? Some possibilities to consider include:

“They Were Childhood Friends”

Wrong.  As noted in prior posts, Adam grew up in Grimston, near Kings Lynn, in Norfolk. Having left for Virginia as an indentured servant in 1621 when only 17 years old, there is no evidence that he had spent any significant time in London or met the Offleys (or Offlys) before leaving.  Sarah would have only been 12 years old at that time, so even if they had a chance meeting before the sailing, it is unlikely either would have thought of courtship.

Survivor of the London Fire  Photo by Maren Mecham

Sarah Offley  grew up at her father’s home on Gracechurch Street in London.  At that time, Gracechurch Street connected to the south with Fish Street Hill which extended over the Old London Bridge where her grandparents once lived. To the north, the street headed through town to join Bishopgate Street.   Sarah’s neighborhood was later consumed by the Great Fire of 1666, but houses which survived near St. Bartholomew’s Church give a sense of  London streets of that era. With her family’s success as merchants, Sarah would have enjoyed a very comfortable life in London. ³

“Dad Made Me Do It”

Wrong again.  Since the 12th century, English parents could arrange and recommend marriages, but not legally force or disallow a marriage of children who were of age. For girls, that was age 12; for boys,  it was 14. Few married that young, and many in that time married in their 20s. Especially if there was property involved, parents worked to arrange advantageous marriages for their children, and,  if those children hoped for a dowry or an inheritance, they would have complied with parental preferences.  ⁴  While both William Thorowgood and Robert Offley were distinguished in their own spheres and probably would have approved the union of their children, there is no evidence they ever encountered or had dealings with each other.

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. ⁵  While theirs was a legitimate claim, attempts to raise money without Parliament during the reigns of James I and Charles I included expected “loans” from gentry and the selling of knighthoods.⁶ The crest “confirmation” may have come with a fee, but was probably helpful to his son John who was beginning to move in courtly circles. William Thorowgood sent his son Adam to Virginia, but neither William nor his other sons contributed to or were involved with the Virginia Company or other merchant companies as far as is presently known.

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).  ⁷  Robert II was a member of the Virginia Company of London and invested over £100 there.   He was nominated by James I in 1622 as a Deputy to the General Court, but was not elected by the Company.  He  was also one of the Original Adventurers (investors) of the Somers Islands (Bermuda) in 1615 and supported Bermuda tobacco . ⁸

Both Robert Offley  and William Thorowgood died in 1625, the year before Adam returned from Virginia.  These two deceased dads did not arrange this marriage.

“It Was Big Brother”

Possibly.  Adam and Sarah both had several older brothers who could have been looking out for them.  If so, the contacts would probably have taken place in London.  There are no reports of related Offleys moving to County Norfolk until some of Sarah’s nephews moved there in the second half of the 17th century. ⁹

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 previously noted, though, there were two Sir John Thorowgoods at this time. Pembroke helped his Sir John win a seat in Parliament in 1624, and  that Sir John later married the widow of Sir Henry Neville, III. ¹⁰ On the other hand, Adam’s brother Sir John Thorowgood of Kensington’s prior background is unclear, and he married Frances Meautys.  He likely came to the Court of Charles I around 1625 as a gentleman pensioner when Charles came to the throne.  However, as with others, he was not knighted until the king’s official coronation in Scotland in 1633.  ¹¹ The Levant Company of merchants held considerable influence during the reign of Charles I, so there might possibly have been some interaction between Sir John of Kensington and the Offleys, but it was more likely on business rather than personal matters. ¹²

At the time of Adam’s return to England, two of his older brothers, Thomas and Edmund, were preachers in Norfolk; Mourdant had died the previous year in the Siege of Breda; William had settled around Norfolk as had his sister Frances Thorowgood Griffith and his younger step-brother Robert.  Little is known of Edward, his eldest brother, although he might have resided in London.  If one of Adam’s brothers was not the match maker, there were other Thorowgoods in London, possibly cousins or uncles, who might have had dealings with the Offleys.  Thomas Thorowgood, a draper, who was noted to have rented a shop/residence outlined in Ralph Treswell’s survey of Pancras Lane, could have been a relative.¹³

Oldest House in London Photo by Maren Mecham

Sarah’s siblings might also have been likely players in this mutually advantageous match.  The Offley family had been interested in new settlements and trade and may have been anxious to have their own Virginia connection now that there would be no profits being returned from their father’s investment in the defunct Virginia Company. Adam Thorowgood could have been notable in the London “marriage market” because he had not only survived  disease and the Indian uprising in Virginia, but he also knew how to work tobacco, had just purchased 150 acres of good river land in Virginia, had an inheritance from his father, and was enthusiastically recruiting others to  join him in the Colony which would then grant him more land.  ¹⁴ He was a healthy (hopefully handsome-enough) young man who was poised to progress. Adam also would have benefitted greatly from the match with Sarah, as that would have likely resulted in a substantial dowry as well as connections to the commercial contacts of the Offley/ Osborne family.

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.  ¹⁵ Just as Adam had chosen a life of adventure in Virginia when he was 17, so Sarah at age 18 was also drawn to that life.

While her brothers continued their work in England, at least one of her sisters and spouse later followed Sarah and Adam and settled in Lower Norfolk, Virginia. Robert Hayes and Anne Offley Workman Hayes were there before 1638 when he was elected to the Assembly. There must have been comfort in having a sister nearby to help face the challenges of the New World.   Adam’s brother-in-law, Edward Windham, whose sister Ann Windham had married Adam’s brother Thomas in 1623 in Norfolk, England, also came to Virginia giving them more family connections  

“They Met at Church”

St. Bartholomew, London Fire Survivor  Photo by Maren Mecham

Intriguing Idea.  What church were Sarah and Adam attending?  Already in England, there were divisions over congregations and preachers with Puritan leanings and those with traditional/conservative Anglican practices. Probably, Adam’s brother, Sir John, newly come to Charles I’s Court, would have been involved with a conservative congregation at that point.  Just the year before, Sarah’s family had buried their father, Robert, at their neighborhood church, St. Benet’s of Gracechurch Street with its new steeple. Sarah and her siblings had been christened there, Sarah on April 16, 1609. Her grandparents were buried there.  Gracechurch was their family church, and it appeared to be a traditional congregation. ¹⁶

Blackfriars (Ireland Yard) Photo by Maren Mecham

So why then did Adam and Sarah choose to marry in St. Anne’s of Blackfriars, a strongly Puritan church? The Blackfriars area was an exciting and eclectic part of 17th century London.  The Dominican (Black Friars) monastery had been dissolved by Henry VIII around 1541.  Tennis courts were set up at the site as well as the church known as St. Anne’s.  Shakespeare owned a place close to the private, covered Blackfriars Theater that had been built on monastery lands. It could hold up to 700 people and was frequented by the wealthy and well educated. Being a favorite theater of King James, the actors there became known as the King’s Men. In addition, many artists, such as Anthony Van Dyke,  lived in the quarter and attended St. Anne’s. Unfortunately, St. Anne’s and the neighborhood were also destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666.  Only part of a wall remains. The church was never rebuilt, and the parish was incorporated into St. Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe.

William Gouge, a known Puritan, was a lecturer there by 1622.  For forty-six years, he would serve as the “laborious, the exemplary, the much-loved minister of St. Ann’s Blackfriars” who said his highest ambition was “to go from Blackfriars to Heaven.” ¹⁷  Later, in 1643, he would serve on the Westminster Assembly of Divines with Adam’s brother, Thomas Thorowgood, also a noted Puritan.  Might Thomas have heard about Reverend Gouge and recommended that congregation to Adam in 1626?  Norfolk was known for its Puritan leanings.  But as the wedding in London was probably planned by the bride and her family, what or who brought Sarah to Blackfriars?  Was it “in” to be married by Reverend Gouge? Were they both drawn to novelty and excitement in that lively part of town?  Was there a daring element of nonconformity and independence in them, a desire to be “on the cutting edge”?  Those kind of  traits would serve them well in the New World.

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.” ¹⁸  There are no records of Sarah ever being in conflict with the three spouses in her life.  However, she became a strong and forthright woman, not to be intimidated by other men she encountered.

“Cupid was the Culprit”  

Daniel Heinsius, Cupido, 1615

Surely.  Being the era of Shakespeare, when Cupid traveled with a full quiver of love’s arrows to send into the hearts of unsuspecting lovers, it is likely Cupid had some part in bringing Sarah and Adam together. Did their hearts flutter at a chance encounter at the market place, during a furtive glance in a church service, or at an introduction by family or friends?  Despite his restricted view on a woman’s place, even Reverend  William Gough encouraged “love matches.” Hopefully, that’s what Sarah and Adam had found. No matter how this match was made, the Thorowgood-Offley alliance turned out to be a good one.

Special Thanks again to Maren Mecham for the use of her London photographs.

Footnotes:

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1.   Bruce, Philip Alexander, Social Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century. 2nd Edition.  (Lynchburg, Virginia: J.P. Bell Company, 1927), 233-4.  Potter, Jennifer, The Jamestown Brides: The Story of England’s Maids for Virginia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). ↩
2.  Population of Virginia. Accessed online 9/20/2019 at http://www/virginiaplaces.org/population. ↩
3. Bell, Walter George, The Great Fire of London in 1666 (New York: John Lane Company, 1920), 377.  Tinniswood, Adrian, By Permission of Heaven (New York: Riverhead Books, 2004). ↩
4.   Horn, James, Adapting to a New World:  English Society in the Seventeenth Century Chesapeake (Chapel Hill:  University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 206-207.   Walsh, Lorena S. “Till Death Us Do Part: Marriage and Family in Seventeenth Century Maryland,” in The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century, Thad W. Tate and David L. Ammerman, eds. (Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press, 1979) 126- 140. ↩
5.   Harrison, William Welsh, Harrison, Waples, and Allied Families (Philadelphia: Edward Stein & Co published for private circulation only, 1910) 131-132. Facsimile.  “Rev. William Thorowgood 1560-19 May 1625” Family Search (online database).  Accessed online 9/5/2019. ↩
6. ” Thirty-Pound Gentlemen and the Jacobean Inflation of Honours,” Map of Early Modern London (MoEML): Encyclopedia.  University of Victoria: MoEML v.6.3, svn rev. 12049 2018-06-19. Accessed online 9-18-2019. ↩
7.   Dorman, John Frederick, Adventurers of Purse and Person, Virginia, 1607-1624/5,  2,(Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co, 2004), 697-701.   Wood, Alfred C., A History of the Levant Company, New York:Barnes & Noble, Inc, 1935), 7-20.  Brenner, Robert, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London’s Overseas Traders 1550-1653 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 18-19.  Harwood, “Pedigree of Offley,” The Genealogist: A Quarterly Magazine of Genealogical, Antiquarian, Topographical, and Heraldic Research, XIX, 1903, 217-231. ↩
8.   Dorman., 697-8. Brenner, 18-19. Kingsley, Susan Myra (ed.), The Records of the Virginia Company of London, II (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1906), 28. Kingsley, Susan Myra (ed.), The Records of the Virginia Company of London, III (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1933), 86.  LeFroy, J. H., Memorials of the Discovery and Early Settlement of the Bermudas or Somers Islands, vol. I (London: Bermuda Government Library, reprinted 1932), 100. ↩
9.   “Norfolk Connections,”  The Offley Newsletter, Newsletter No. 11 (Cambridge, England: self published by The Offley Family Society, Spring 1989), 12-13. ↩
10. Thrush, Andrew and John P. Ferris, ed.,  Thorowgood, John (1588-1657), of Brewer’s Lane, Charing Cross, Westminster; later of Billingbear, Berks. and Clerkenwell, Mdx.  accessed 7/7/2018 at   history of parliament online ↩
11. Matthew, H. C. G.,  and Brian Harrison ed., “Thoroughgood, John” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 54 (London: Oxford University Press, 2004), 660-662. Will of Sir John Thorowgood of Kensington, 1675, Catalogue Reference Prob /11/349, Public Records Office:  The National Archives (UK). ↩
12.   Brenner, 281-283. ↩
13. Schofield, John, The London Surveys of Ralph Treswell  (Leeds, England:  W.S. Maney & Son, 1987), 106-107. ↩
14. McCartney, Martha W.  Jamestown People to 1800: Landowners, Public Officials, Minorities, and Native Leaders, (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2012), 403. ↩
15.   Potter, 7.  Horn, James, Mark Summers, and David Givens, 1619-2019 Democracy, Diversity, Discovery (Jamestown: The Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation and Preservation Virginia, 2019), 23. ↩
16. Harwood, “Pedigree of Offley,” The Genealogist: A Quarterly Magazine of Genealogical, Antiquarian, Topographical, and Heraldic Research, XIX, 1903, 217-231.  Ancestry.com London, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1518-1812 (database online). Provo, UT, USA.  Accessed online 12/5/2017. ↩
17.   White, James George, The Churches and Chapels of Old London: with a short account of those who have ministered in them, (London: C. E. Gray, Printer,  printed for private circulation, 1901), 33. Accessed online through andrea@archive. org  on 9/15/19. ↩
18. Horn, 205. ↩

1625 England: Thorowgoods, Plague, War, Death, and the Defunct Virginia Company

Granger, Plague of London 1666

For those in the Virginia Colony, life seemed to be improving in 1625.  For many in England, it would be a year of death.  Would that change life for the Virginia immigrant, Adam Thorowgood, or his older brother, Mordaunt, in England?

The Death of the Virginia Company

Reenactment of the First General Assembly (House of Burgesses) of 1619 at  Historic Jamestowne

In 1624, The Virginia Company of London received its mortal wound.  Chartered in 1606 by King James I as a commercial venture of a joint stock company of “adventurers” (investors and settlers), the Company had attempted to establish a profitable colony in the Americas.  However, the anticipated wealth was not found, the native people were hostile, and the chosen location was unhealthy.  Yet, the Virginia Colony somehow survived and slowly grew stronger despite starvation, Indian attacks, and internal dissension.  In 1619, the positive changes of representative government through the House of Burgesses and private ownership of land made settlement more attractive.

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.”¹

However, in May 1625, the new King Charles I wrote to reassure the colonists that it “…was not intended … to take away or impeach the particular interest of any private planter or adventurer….Our full resolution is that there may be one uniform course of government in and through the whole Monarchy….”²  Private property and representative government would stay.

George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham

It may seem surprising that anyone thought the King’s men could manage the Colony better, for the royal coffers were nearly empty, and King James I was frequently at odds with Parliament over money.  That same year, the Lord Treasurer (Sir Lionel Cranfield) was impeached by Parliament.  The King’s powerful favorite, the Duke of Buckingham, was distrusted and disliked, and Prince Charles and Buckingham were more focused on raising money for their desired war with Spain than the  troubles of Virginia. ³

English Cheviot Sheep

The English economy was sick. Rather than Virginia being the cause, it was hoped revenues from the tobacco trade could help. Since the 16th century, much of England’s export wealth had come from selling woolen cloth, particularly heavy broadcloth, to the continent.   However, there was rising competition from German, Dutch, and even Spanish weavers who produced a less expensive cloth.  By 1624, England was dealing with an economic crisis over the falling demand for and price of their woolen cloth.  Some cloth merchants, like the Custis brothers, left for Rotterdam and the continent.  The Custis brothers will be part of a later story.⁴

The Death of a King

A Sickly King James I

King James I  was one of the early casualties of 1625.  For several years his health had been deteriorating.  At age fifty-eight, he had lost all his teeth, and he reportedly suffered from diarrhea, arthritis, nephritis, colic, and gout “which he tried vainly to cure by standing in the bellies of bucks freshly slaughtered in the hunting fields.”⁵ He was frequently scratching himself, hiccuping, and belching and had stones in his bladder, sores on his lips and disease in his liver.  “It was difficult not to be repelled by him in his illness, but impossible not to feel pity for him. “⁶ The King died on March 24, 1625.

King James Version

King James had been a king of contradictions.  Remembered for bringing together scholars to create the King James Bible and supporting the Protestant cause,  his court was also known for excesses and debauchery. ⁷ Despite success in uniting England and Scotland and establishing an uneasy peace with Spain, he waffled on foreign policy and did not give adequate support to other Protestant rulers.  However, James I had managed to maintain relative peace within the kingdom, avoiding the prior excesses of  religious purges. Despite James being  honored with a funeral “the greatest indeed that ever was known in England”  at the cost of L 50,000, the people quickly refocused on the newly energized King Charles I and the still powerful Duke of Buckingham.⁸ Within the next twenty-five years, however, the fickle public would rejoice when Buckingham was murdered, and the King, beheaded.

The Great Plague of 1625

A Plague Doctor

 “The Great Plague” of London usually refers to 1665-66 when over 100,000 died.  However, not able to foresee this future calamity,  that was also the name of the horrific outbreak of the plague in 1625 that claimed 41,313 lives in London.   The plague (probably bubonic) had targeted London and its crowded, dirty streets since the “Great Pestilence” arrived on trading vessels from China and Asia in 1348.  

There were around 40 major outbreaks of plague in London over the next three hundred years, occurring approximately every 20-30 years.  Although there were cases of the plague in intervening years,  it is still a mystery as to why an outbreak would suddenly stop and a new one not start up until years later. It was estimated that nearly a quarter of the London population died from the plague in 1563, whereas, with the increase in population a hundred years later, “The Great Plague” of 1666 killed about 20%. ⁹ 

St. Batholomew’s, a Rare Survivor of the London Fire  Photo by Maren Mecham

The healthy fled London; the sickly were shut up in their homes to die; parliament was postponed; entertainments were closed; dead bodies were piled into plague mounds and ditches, such as one next to St Bartholomew’s Church. Compassion was in short supply.  Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary, “The plague (is) making us cruel as dogs to one another.” ¹⁰ While the London fire of 1666 destroyed all but a few corners of the old city, it also eliminated  lurking causes of  plague: flea-infested rats.  After the fire, there were no more serious outbreaks in London.

Death at the Siege of Breda

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.” ¹¹

Entrance to Cambridge  Photo by Maren Mecham

Among the thousands of  young English recruits who died at Breda was Mordaunt Thorowgood.  He had been baptized July 27, 1601 as  “Mordautus” by his father, William Thorowgood, who was the Vicar of St. Botolph’s Church in Grimston, Norfolk.  Mordaunt was the sixth of seven sons born to William Thorowgood and his wife, Anne Edwards, of Norwich:  Edward, (Sir) John, Thomas, Edmond, William, Mordaunt, and Adam.  They also had one daughter Frances, and William had another son, Robert, by his second wife, Mary Dodge.  Mordaunt must have been a promising young man with a bright future ahead as he had enrolled at the  Gonville and Caius College of Cambridge University in 1617.  His untimely death at age 24 during the siege of Breda was noted in the history of the college.  ¹²

Death in the Family

Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey

Not all deaths that year were untimely or unanticipated.  Robert Offley, having lived an abundant life for about 60 years, passed away and was buried at St. Benet’s Church in London on May 16, 1625.   His widow, Anne Osborne, was the daughter of Sir Edward Osborne, a Lord Mayor of London, the first Governor of the Levant Company, and, yes, the one who had notably jumped into the River Thames as a young apprentice to rescue an infant daughter (Ann Hewitt) who later became his wife.  (More on that famous story in later posts).  Robert Offley  not only was a Levant Company “Turkey Merchant” (one of few able to trade with the Ottomans), he was also an investor in both the Virginia Company of London and the Bermuda Company as well as a merchant with the East India Company.  His family was well cared for, but his younger daughters were still unmarried at his death.  As fathers often arranged marriages for their daughters, perhaps, in spite of sadness,  Elizabeth (age 18) and Sarah (age 16) wondered what the future would hold for them. ¹³

Adam Thorowgood, who was completing his indentureship in Elizabeth Cittie, Virginia, must have been saddened when he received news both of his father’s and his brother’s deaths that year. Being only a few years apart, Mourdant and Adam likely would have done much together. Perhaps Adam reflected  on how fortunate he was to have evaded death and disease in Virginia when he had seen so much around him.  With over 46,000 dead of disease and warfare in England that year, it was evident that Virginia was not the only risky place to live.   Nonetheless, after Adam finished his indentureship to Edward Waters, acquired 150 acres of land in Virginia,  and become recognized as a Gentleman of Kecoughtan,  he decided in 1626 to take the chance and return to England to see family, receive his inheritance, recruit other settlers, and find himself a suitable wife.¹⁴

Next post: How Sarah Met Adam or Finding a Spouse in 17th Century London

Special Thanks to Maren Mecham for permission to use her English photos and for going out of her way to take them.

Footnotes

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1. Kingsbury, Susan Myra, The Records of the Virginia Company of London, vol. IV (Washington , DC: Government Printing Office, 1935), 519-523. Wolfe, Brendan, “Virginia Company of London.” Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, 10 Nov. 2016. Web. Accessed online 8 Aug. 2019. ↩
2. Neill, Edward D., Virginia Carolorum: The Colony Under the Rule of Charles the First and Second, originally published as part of Neill’s Series of Virginia History (Albany, New York: Joel Munsell’s Sons, 1886), 9-12.  Reproduced from original in public domain by Scholar Select. ↩
3. Ackroyd, Peter,  Rebellion: The History of England from James I to the Glorious Revolution (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2014)  85-88.  Hibbert, Christopher, Charles I: A Life of Religion, War and Treason (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2014),  63-64.    Willson, David Harris, King James VI and I (New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1956), 442-444. ↩
4. Lynch, James B.,Jr., The Custis Chronicles: The Years of Migration (Camden, Maine: Picton Press, 1992), 36-37. ↩
5. Hibbert, 81-82. ↩
6. Ibid. ↩
7. Ackroyd, 18. Willson, 446-447.  Underdown, David, Revel, Riot and Rebellion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 84, 120. ↩
8. Ackroyd, 92. Willson, 447. ↩
9. ” London plagues 1348-1665,”  Pocket Histories from Museum of London.org.uk .  2011.  Accessed online 8/11/19.  Ackroyd, 110.  Lynch, 36. ↩
10. Ibid. ↩
11. Ackroyd, 91. Swart, Erik, ” The siege of Breda, 1624-1625:  The last great victory of the Army of Flanders in the Eighty Year’s War,” Academia.edu, 1-8.  Accessed online 8/12/19.  “Siege of Breda 1624” Wikipedia.  Accessed online 8/12/19. ↩
12. Dorman, John Frederick, Adventurers of Purse and Person, Virginia, 1607-1624/5, vol 3 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co, 2004), 326.   Venn, John, Biographical History of  Gonville and Caius College 1349-1897, vol 1 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1897.  Accessed online through Internet Archive  on 8/18/2019. Baptismal record of Mordautus Thorowgood at   https://www.freereg.org.uk/search_records/58181f2ece93790eca321654c/show_print_version?search_id=58c87a57791e3b0d416c61b5 ↩
13. Dorman, John Frederick, Adventurers of Purse and Person, Virginia, 1607-1624/5, vol 2  (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co, 2004), 697.  Bower, G.C. and  H.W.F. Harwood, “Pedigree of Offley,” The Genealogist: A Quarterly Magazine of Genealogical, Antiquarian, Topographical, and Heraldic Research, XIX, 1903, 217-231. Garner-Biggs Bulletin, 30:1, self published. ↩
14. Dorman, vol. 3, 326. ↩

Indentured: The Gamble of a Lifetime

Historic Jamestowne, National Park Service

So said John Pory, the Secretary of the Colony, in 1619.  If you signed an indentureship contract in the 17th century for Virginia, you were gambling with your own life.  This sign at Historic Jamestowne states that an estimated 80% of Virginia colonists who arrived in the 17th century came as indentured servants of which 60% did not survive to fulfill their contracts. Other researchers have estimated that about half to a third of indentured servants who came to the Chesapeake region in the 17th century died within a few years of arrival. ¹ The disparity in numbers reflects differences in calculations of the population and the area and years covered.  Still, the loss of life was significant. Of those who did survive their “seasoning” and the conditions of their indentureships, few went on to realize their dreams of prosperity.  Adam Thorowgood, though, was one who “made it.”  Why was he a lucky one?  While it is important to study majorities and determine what was typical, Adam’s story illustrates the range of 17th century experiences.

Indentureships were usually pre-arranged through a contract with set terms signed before the voyage between the potential servant and the ship’s captain or a merchant  paying for the voyage.  Usual terms were for 4-5 years, but it could be more for younger servants.  Those contracts would then be sold to the planters when the ship arrived.  Persons who arrived without a prior contract, but who wanted to be in service, might find their terms longer or less desirable, as their services were sold in the “custom of  the country.”  I will focus on Virginia in this post, but indentured servants were also heading to the West Indies, Barbados, Ireland, and other British colonies. ²

Adam Thorowgood had the unusual experience of both coming as a servant and later of bringing more than a hundred indentured servants to Virginia.  This post will focus mostly on the period of 1621-1626 when he served his indentureship.  Future posts will look at his experience as a master.

Those who have researched surviving records of  17th century indentured servants find the scope of their conclusions limited by the incomplete data available. Unfortunately, many important early records in Virginia have been lost, including the response to the order issued by the first House of Burgesses convened under Governor Yeardley in July 1619 that “all living in the Colony,”  provide “his own and all his servants’ names and for what terms or upon what conditions they are to serve.” ³ While some passenger lists still exist, the earliest systematic collection of information from the servants who emigrated that  is still available was collected  in Bristol (a major port for emigration) in 1654.  Limited records are also available from Liverpool,  London, and a few other ports in the last half of the 17th century. ⁴  Thus, to understand the period I am investigating, much must be inferred from this later data or gleaned through anecdotal records.

                                               Diversity of Indentured Servants

Jamestown Settlers     Historic Jamestowne, National Park Service

The indentured servants who came to Virginia have often been portrayed as young, single, poor, illiterate, irresponsible males who had no job or opportunities in England.   Even during their time period, those who went to the colonies as servants were regarded as “idle, lazie, simple people” or even as rogues and undesirables. However, there was considerable diversity in their circumstances and characteristics.  In the early 20th century, Philip Bruce challenged notions that indentured servants were just menials of humble origin and noted they included artisans and those seeking professional training.  This idea was further expanded by Mildred Campbell in the 1950s whose study concluded indentured servants were mostly from the “middling classes” and included productive farmers and skilled workers. ⁵

Using the available emigration records, James Horn conducted a comprehensive study which confirmed that about half the servants came from families in the “middle ranks of English society.” At least 66 trades were represented just in the Bristol group, and almost half of those were yeomen with agricultural experience, not unskilled laborers.  Dr. Horn summarized the complexities of looking at this diverse group: ⁶

Emigration was not a single, concentrated outpouring of people united by a common vision…but, rather, a multilayered, multi-textured phenomenon comprising wave upon wave of colonists who found their way to the Chesapeake from very different backgrounds and for very different reasons. 

Indentured servants varied in age.  The typical age range was 15-24 with most immigrating in their early twenties. ⁷ The younger servants, more likely to be orphaned, poor, and/or unskilled, were less likely to survive or succeed.  In an effort to reduce the large number of homeless children on the streets of  London, there were several shipments of “children” to the Colony, but no records of how young these children were.  The Company of Virginia in November 1619 expressed gratitude to the (London) City for “advancing the Plantation of Virginia and …furnishing one hundred children this last year which by the goodness of God there safely arrived.”⁸

King James’ Bible at Henrico Fort, VA

Adam Thorowgood, being 17 when he arrived, was in the younger age range for indentured servants. He was single, but his family in Norfolk, England was a family of moderate wealth and at least five of his brothers had attended college:   Sir John Thorowgood of Kensington, Thomas Thorowgood (Doctor of Divinity) , Mordaunt Thorowgood (Gonville & Caius College), Edmund Thorowgood (Christ’s College), and Robert Thorowgood (Mayor of King’s Lynn).   In fulfilling later responsibilities, Adam showed that he also was literate.  Considering that his siblings held respectable positions in England, it seems likely Adam also could have provided for a family there if he had wanted. (See prior post) Adam, though, was not unique in his circumstances in the Colony.

Some have questioned whether Adam Thorowgood would truly have been an indentured servant to Edward Waters because of his family and education.  They  have suggested that Adam might have been a clerk or secretary or a “ward.” This conclusion seems based on the misunderstanding that Adam’s brother was the Secretary to the Earl of Pembroke at the time. There were actually two Sir John Thorowgoods whose life stories have been entangled. Adam’s brother had not yet come to the court of Charles I. (See prior post)

Drying Tobacco Jamestown Settlement

Still, it is interesting that there is no record of Adam being claimed as a headright by Waters or any other settler, even though Waters claimed land for others he paid for.  Perhaps, Adam had signed his indentureship with someone else and Waters later took it over, or Adam’s family could have paid the passage with him coming in the “custom of the country,” but with connections or arrangements for a good placement.  Up until 1626, servants in Virginia had the added incentive of being promised 50 acres of land when they finished their indentureship.

Whichever, there is no evidence Adam functioned as anything other than a regular servant on a tobacco farm at Water’s Creek (27 miles from Jamestown), doing whatsoever the other servants did.  In the 1624 Muster of Inhabitants of Virginia,  those listed as  working for Edward Water’s family included five individuals not listed as servants: William (age 40) and Joane (25) Hampton;  Thomas (30) and Alice (24) Lane, (both women having arrived with  1620-21 “bride ships”) and Thomas Thornebury (20) who had come in 1616; and four listed specifically as servants: Adam Thorogood (18), Nicholas Browne (18), Paule Harwood,(20) and Stephen Reed (17). ⁹

An oft-quoted letter from Adam’s time period was written by Richard Frethorne who was indentured in the vicinity of Martin’s Hundred. This letter is remembered most for his description of  the horrific conditions in 1623 shortly after the Powhatan Uprising and his pitiful pleading for his parents to end his indentureship and bring him home. ¹⁰

Loving and kind father and mother, …the Country is such that it Causeth much sickness, as the scurvy and the bloody flux, and divers other diseases, which maketh the body very poor, and Weak, and when we are sick there is nothing to Comfort us; for since I came out of the ship, I never ate anything but peas, and loblolly (that is water gruel)…. (We) must Work hard both early, and late for a mess of water gruel, and a mouthful of bread…. Oh that they were in England without their limbs and would not care to lose any limb to be in England again, yea….But I have nothing at all, no not a shirt to my back, but two Rags nor no Clothes, but one poor suit, nor but one pair of shoes, but one pair of stockings, but one Cap… my Cloke is stollen by one of my own fellows…. we live in fear of the Enemy…. for we are in great danger, for our Plantation is very weak, by reason of the death, and sickness….Therefore if you love or respect me, as your Child, release me from this bondage, and save my life…” (spelling corrections by blog author)

What is striking, though, is that Richard, like Adam, was a literate lad (albeit desperate and whiny), writing to his literate parents, while working hard in the fields.  In a study,  Galenson, who evaluated literacy by whether the servant could sign the indenture agreement, found: ¹¹

literacy rates for the servants included in the 17th century lists are comparable with a regional sample for England in the 1680s.  The servants were no less literate by occupation than their counterparts elsewhere in England.

The Bride Ships

It was exciting when 50 women arrived in 1619 to be brides and/or servants. However,  women servants had been in Jamestown almost from the beginning.  Mrs. Foster and her maid servant, Anne Burras, arrived with the Second Supply in 1608.  It is likely that “Jane Doe,” the young woman whose skull was recently found with butcher marks of survival cannibalism (using bodies already deceased) from the 1610 Starving Time, would have been a servant girl.  Such early arriving maids may not have served under an indentured contract, but they were an important part of the diverse servant community. *See Addendum at end of post.

Later, there would be restrictions on servants marrying during their indentureships, but  flexibility existed in the early years.  There was even an early indentureship set up with some English owners to pay the transportation and housing for two couples, one with sons,  to be paid back through their prescribed labor on the tobacco farm.   In that first meeting of the House of Burgesses in 1619, they allowed servants to marry with the proper permissions: ¹²

No maide or woman servant either now resident in the Colonie or hereafter to come, shall contract herself in marriage without the consent of her parents, or of her Mr or Mris, or of the magistrate and minister of the place both together.

Not all indentured servants were welcomed in Virginia.  England saw the Colony as a place to rid themselves of undesirables and to reduce their prison overcrowding.   As early as 1609, the Virginia Company  issued the True and Sincere Declaration, that “it would be a scandal and a peril to accept as settlers…idle and wicked persons…as they would act as poison in the body of a tender, feeble, and yet unformed colony.”  However, the Company’s desires were ignored, and a number of those of lesser crimes were sentenced to years of forced servitude in Virginia.  ¹³

Enslaved

There is still debate as to whether the first Africans brought to the Colony in 1619 were purchased as indentured or enslaved servants. Initially, the Africans worked and lived side by side under the same conditions as their English counterparts.  A few became free and even owned land, but most ended up as “servants for life. ”  As the 17th century progressed, more restrictive and differentiating laws were put in place separating the African enslaved from the English indentured, and the preference for using the available enslaved over the increasingly unavailable English servants soon turned Virginia into a slave society.

 Survival Guide for Indentured Servants

What seemed to make the difference between those who survived and those who did not? Among indentured servants, older ones with some education, skills, and/or connections fared better.  Outcomes were surely affected as well by individual personalities, self- advocacy skills, and work ethics.  Potential servants might have been able to choose a broad destination (Virginia v. West Indies),and those who sought advice and input in advance may have fared better. ¹⁴ However, once the contract was signed,  the servants were considered chattel or property of their masters, and their contracts could be sold or inherited until the terms were met.  Most determinants of their survival slipped beyond their control, such as

Jamestown Island Swamp

Water’s Creek  Elizabeth Cittie Parish

Location.  Location.  Location. Some locations were simply healthier than others.  The worst site seemed to be Jamestown itself with its mosquito-ridden swamps, brackish water, and ease in being cut off  by Indians which exacerbated the shortage of food. On the other hand, Kecoughtan (later called Elizabeth Cittie / today’s Hampton- Newport News) had better access to the Chesapeake Bay, a more available food supply, and disease did not seem as rampant there.  Adam Thorowgood had the good fortune to be indentured to Edward Waters near Blunt’s Point on the  Newport News side of Elizabeth Cittie Parish.

From the Chickahominy Tribe

Proximity to native tribes and the relationship with those tribes also impacted how likely one was to survive.  As colonists spread out and developed settlements up the James River, they became more vulnerable to Indian attacks.  These were prize lands for the Powhatans who, obviously, had been there first.  Attacks were less frequent in the Elizabeth Cittie area as the Chesapean tribe had already been destroyed by the Powhatans, the Kecoughtans were devastated by both Powhatan and English attacks, and the independent  Chickahominy tribe had agreed to an early treaty with the English.  During the brutal Powhatan Uprising of 1621/1622, the settlements along the James River from Jamestown to Fort Henrico  (near today’s Richmond) were the primary targets.

Richard Frethorne’s letter was written from Martin’s Hundred about a year after that prospering community was decimated during the Uprising.  Although around 80 people had been killed or wounded, a few survivors returned after fleeing to Jamestown. Others moved to the proximal Locust Grove site. ¹⁵  Richard’s concerns were well founded that they could not defend against additional Powhatan attacks and that their situation was desperate. The next year, Richard Frethorne was listed among the dead.

Reconstructed First Hospital, Henrico Fort

Timing was another factor in survival.  When John Smith left an improving Jamestown in the fall of 1609, no one predicted that the Starving Time was on the horizon. Fort Henrico seemed like the perfect progressive place to settle in 1621 with the first hospital in the colony and everything in place for the first college.  The English, including  George Thorpe , who had advocated for the education and conversion of Powhatan youth, had no suspicion of the pending Uprising.  In addition,  a bad winter, drought, or storms could leave settlers with little food or shelter.  Many servants were unfortunately just in the wrong place at the wrong time with little control over their fates.

Traits of the masters also affected the survival of indentured servants.  Some masters had been reduced to desperate means themselves, as in the case of Richard Frethorne.  Others were stingy and cruel.  Yet, some were kind and generous.  James Revel, who was indentured for 12 years in Virginia around 1680 for theft, experienced both the good and the bad.  In a lengthy poem he wrote as a warning to other wayward youth in England, he told how he barely survived his first “inhuman brutal master” who made them work six long days and spend their nights grinding corn and preparing food.  When this cruel master died, James had the happy circumstance to be sold to a kindly master for his remaining two years. When James finished his term, this master helped him fulfill his greatest wish– to return to England to his parents.  James’ poem ended with the following warning:¹⁶

Now young men with speed your lives amend,

Take my advice as one that is your friend:

For tho’ so slight you make of it while here,

Hard is your lot when once they get you there.

While indentured servants did have the right to challenge their treatment by their masters in court, they risked the situation becoming worse if they did not prevail.  From what we can tell, Edward Waters was a well supplied and reasonable master with a fascinating story to tell (future post).  He  later maintained a friendship with his former indentured servant, Adam Thorowgood.  Once again, Adam had been fortunate.

So why did Adam Thorowgood survive while so many indentured servants died?  Looking into his future, a fortune teller might have seen that his vision, connections, determination, and persistence would pay off, but clearly he had also had a lucky roll of life’s dice.

Upcoming posts: The Powhatan Uprising; Kecoughtan to Elizabeth Cittie– Life in the Second Settlement

2/09/2019 ADDENDUM ON STATUS OF WOMEN:  In 1616, John Rolfe, in writing to his Majesty, King James, to give him “a true relation” of the state of the Colony, noted there were 351 colonists at the time in Virginia, 65 of which were women or children, “in every place some.”  The 400th Anniversary this year of the arrival of the ships bringing 50 single women to became  brides and/or servants is helping to focus attention on the roles and importance of the early women settlers in Virginia, but the number that had already come is rarely acknowledged.  Three years before the 1619 ships, women and children were already 20% of the population.  (Rolfe, John, “A True Relation of the State of Virginia,” Edward Wright Haile, ed., Jamestown Narratives: Eyewitness Accounts of the Virginia Colony (Champlain, Virginia: Roundhouse, 1998) 874.

Footnotes:

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1. 1. Horn, James, Adapting to a New World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 420. ↩
   2. Morgan, Kenneth, Slavery and Servitude in Colonial North America: A Short History (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 8,17. ↩

1. 3. Kingsley, Susan Myra (ed.), The Records of the Virginia Company of London, III (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1933), 171. ↩

1. 4. Morgan, 14. ↩

1. 5. Bruce, Philip Alexander, Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century, I (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1907), 573-574. Horn, James, “Servant Emigration” in Tate and Ammerman, eds., The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century,  (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 57. ↩

1. 6. Horn, “Servant Emigration” in  Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century, 58.  Horn, Adapting to a New World, 48. ↩

1. 7. Horn, “Servant Emigration” in  Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century, 61. ↩

1. 8. Kingsley, Susan Myra (ed.), The Records of the Virginia Company of London, I (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1906), 270. ↩

1. 9. Hotten, John Camden, The Original Lists of Persons of Quality (Berryville, VA: Virginia Book Company, 1980), 253. ↩

1. 10. Frethorne, Richard, “Letter from Richard Frethorne to His Parents (March 20, April 2-3 1623)”, Encyclopedia Virginia. Accessed online December 10, 2018. ↩

1. 11. Morgan, 19. ↩

1. 12. Kingsley,  III, 173.  Billings, Warren M. The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century, revised edition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 146. ↩

1. 13. Bruce, 590-592.  Horn, Adapting to a New World, 63-64. ↩

1. 14. Menard, Russell R., “British Migration to the Chesapeake Colonies in the Seventeenth Century,” Lois Green Catt, Philip D. Morgan and Jean B. Russo, eds., Colonial Chesapeake Society (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 107-108. ↩

1. 15. Moodey, Meredith C., Phase II Archaeological Investigation of the Locust Grove Tract, Carter’s Grove Plantation (Williamsburg, VA: Department of Archaeological Research of Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, re-issued 2001), 13-16, 122-123. ↩

1. 16. Billings, 153-159. ↩

Untangling 17th Century Genealogies: Thoroughly Confusing Thorowgoods

Arriving from England in 1621, surely Adam Thorowgood was the first Thorowgood to settle in the New World, right?  WRONG.  Who could have beat him to Jamestown?  After all, Adam was one of the first English settlers in Lower Norfolk, Virginia.

Marye Thorowgood Bucke as interpreted by Rebecca Suerdieck

In May 1610, the Reverend Richard Bucke and his wife, Marye Thorowgood Bucke, arrived at Jamestown as survivors of the ill-fated Sea Venture which had wrecked in Bermuda.  Marye (or Marie), the daughter of  a Thomas Thorowgood, had married Rev. Bucke in London in 1608, so her maiden name was not widely known in Virginia.¹ Rev. Bucke was the minister at Jamestown at the time when Pocahontas and John Rolfe married in 1614 and when the House of Burgesses, the first representative government in Colonial British America, convened in 1619.  Were Adam and Marye related?  They could possibly have been cousins, but any familial relationship between them is speculative and unsubstantiated at this point.

Re-enactment of the 400th Anniversary of  the Marriage of Pocahontas and John Rolfe at the Site of the Original Church in Historic Jamestowne

Even before Mayre Thorowgood arrived, there was a unspecified Gentleman Thorowgood who was part of Sir Frances Drake’s West Indies Voyage (Raid) of 1585 that stopped at the Colony of Roanoke and brought the surviving settlers back to England, ending the first attempt to settle there. Who was this Thorowgood and where does he fit in?

It is impossible to deal with all the complexities of Thorowgood genealogy in a single post, so I am just highlighting a few items that are Known, Not Yet Known, and  Wrongly Known  (common errors).  Over the course of this blog, I will be searching for answers, and I hope that any readers who have relevant information will share with the rest of us.  I will give brief references here, but please contact me if you want or have more detailed information.  All of these individuals will be discussed in greater detail in subsequent posts.

Adam: The Father of All?

Representation of Adam at Thoroughgood House, VA Beach

There are more than 10,000 family trees in Ancestry that connect to Adam Thorowgood and numerous descendants attached to him through FamilySearch, two popular online genealogical sites. Adam and Sarah Thorowgood and Richard and Marye Bucke are qualifying ancestors for Colonial Dames of America,  The National Society of the Colonial Dames, and The Jamestown Society.  Although Adam clearly predated the American Revolution, the local Virginia Beach-Adam Thoroughgood Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) Chapter has incorporated his name.  

Adam and Sarah were ancestors of people as diverse as George Mason (primary author of Virginia Declaration of Rights), Daniel Parke Custis (first husband of Martha Dandridge Custis Washington), Mary Custis (wife of Robert E. Lee),  and Julia Dent (wife of Ulysses S. Grant). Their descendants fought on both sides of the Civil War, had diverse backgrounds and opinions, and spread throughout the United States.

It is wonderful that so many people these days are searching for ancestors and connecting to this couple.  While some family trees are carefully documented, others contain repeated errors.  One must be wary of attaching to undocumented trees or assuming that every Thorowgood/ Thoroughgood in the colonies was a descendant of Adam and Sarah.  Some enthusiasts  have changed names, used unsubstantiated dates and places, added extra children or siblings, or connected them to the wrong spouses.   

Adam’s Children

Adam Thorowgood and Sarah Offley had only four children who lived to maturity:  Ann, Sarah (who had no surviving children), Elizabeth, and Adam II. When Adam, their immigrant father, died at the age of 36 in 1640, his will specifically named these children and stated that they were all minors.  According to a letter written to the Lower Norfolk County Court in 1647 by his remarried widow, Sarah Thorowgood Gookin, they were still minors seven years later. In his will, Adam had said that the daughters would come of age at 16 and his son at 21.  As Adam II selected a guardian at the death of his mother in 1657, he clearly had not yet reached majority.²  Therefore, these four children would have been born between 1630 and 1640. None of these had double names or nobility titles in 17th century records.  Their children and spouses are known and documented. Despite the name having made its way into various family trees, “Ann Bray Thorowgood Keeling” was not a daughter or sister to Adam Thorowgood. ³

Which Sir John?

One of the greatest confusions regarding Adam’s English family concerns his famous brother Sir John Thorowgood of Kensington.  There were actually two Sir John Thorowgoods at the time of Charles I. Unfortunately, their stories have become entangled, impacting assumptions regarding Adam.  The “of Kensington” seems to be the distinguishing designation between Adam’s brother who served in the courts of Charles I and Charles II and the other Sir John Thorowgood who was the secretary to the Earl of Pembroke and was put forward by that Earl to become a Minister of Parliament.⁴  This other Sir John married the widow of Sir Henry Neville III, retired to Berkshire, and died in 1657. ⁵ Sir John Thorowgood of Kensington’s will was proved after his death in 1675. He had outlived his siblings and had no surviving direct descendants.  ⁶

The erroneous idea that Adam’s brother was both at Court and the secretary to the Earl of Pembroke has been perpetuated at least since Adam’s story was published in the  Richmond paper The Critic on 21 September 1889  and has been repeated in numerous histories of Adam.  The two Sir Johns were distantly related. In his will, Adam specifically named his brother, Sir John Thorowgood of Kensington, as an executor.  ⁷  There will be much more on this and the English ancestry of Adam and Sarah in later posts.  This does caution, though, that not everything that has been written about Adam’s family is correct.

The Mystery of Thomas

Unfortunately, some relationships remain elusive.  In the 1624 Jamestown Muster, Thomas Thorowgood was listed as a 17 year-old servant to John Burrows.  It is unclear if that was his age at the time of the Muster or when he arrived, as no ship was listed.  There was also a Thomas Thorowgood who testified in the colony court on behalf of his “kinsman” Adam Thorowgood in 1628.  That same year Adam had returned from England to Jamestown with his bride of one year and 35 headrights, one of whom was listed as Thomas Thorowgood.⁸  Did these references refer to one or several persons?  We do know, though, that it was not Adam’s older brother Thomas, as he  started serving as the rector of the Little Massingham Parish in 1621  and later replaced his deceased father, William Thorowgood, as rector of the church in Grimston, Norfolk, England.

Other English Thorowgoods

Maryland Flag

Cyprian Thorowgood, a gentleman, was an early immigrant to Maryland and a successful fur trader and explorer of the Chesapeake Bay.  He received a land grant from Lord Baltimore but had no immediate connection to Adam. During this time period, there was also a  Lady Elizabeth Thorowgood Roydon (daughter of a Thomas Thorowgood), married to Sir Marmaduke Roydon (Rowdon) who helped fund the New England exploration of John Smith and was one of the early settlers of Barbados.  A different “poor” Elizabeth, widow of a John Thorowgood (neither Sir John), was  imprisoned and brought to trial because she spoke slanderously against Charles I and favorably about the earlier Gunpowder Plot.  Richard Thorowgood was also living in London at the time and was married to an Ann Culley.   Richard’s granddaughter Elizabeth Thorowgood Ashby immigrated to South Carolina; her father Sir Benjamin Thorowgood remained in England.⁹  By 1680, there was an Ann Thuragood living in Boston, Massachusetts.  There were other Thorowgood families in England also involved with the American colonies. There are many fascinating family lines to consider if one is seeking a Thorowgood ancestor.

The Search

Library of Virginia

I appreciate the historians and genealogists who for years have poured over courthouse and church records to trace family generations of Thorowgoods.  Creating confusion,  Thorowgood families reused many of the same names:  Adam, John, William, Francis, Thomas,  Frances, Ann, Sarah, Elizabeth, etc.  Unfortunately,  many important records were destroyed during Jamestown fires, the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the English and, later, American Civil War, and the Great Fire of London in 1666.  There were also incidental fires and floods of courthouses, churches, and homes.

Special Collections, Slover Library, Norfolk, VA

However, well-documented genealogical information on the early generations of Adam’s descendants and other early settlers can be found in  Adventurers of Purse and Person: Virginia 1607-1624/5 and in the books by Martha W. McCartney,  Virginia Immigrants and Adventurers 1607-1635: A Biographical Dictionary and Jamestown People to 1800: Landowners, Public Officials, Minorities and Native Leaders.   Land, probate, court, and church records are the most reliable for this time period, although many of those records are not indexed or available yet online.  More information on the keeping of early records can be found on “The History of Genealogy” Ben Franklin’s World: A Podcast About Early American History Episode 114  by Dr. Karin Wulf, Director of the Omohundro Institute.  Untangling 17th century genealogies is not for the faint-hearted or impatient, but it is well worth the effort.

Upcoming Posts: Archaeological Exploration of Thorowgood & Native American Sites in Virginia Beach: A Conversation with Nicholas Luccketti;  Buried Jamestown Dreams;  To Go or Not To Go–Early Immigrants from Norfolk, England

Special Thanks to Rebecca Suerdieck, Domestic Historian and Living History Interpreter of “Marye Bucke”;  Dr. Karin Wulf, Director, Omonhundro Institute of Early American History & Culture; Meredith Poole, Senior Staff Archaeologist, Colonial Williamsburg; Cathleen Carlson Reynolds, Independent Researcher.

Footnotes:

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1. McCartney, Martha W., Virginia Immigrants and Adventurers 1607-1635 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 2007), 168.  “English Marriages, 1538-1973” database FamilySearch.org; accessed online 7/8/2018. ↩
2. Walter, Alice Granbery, Harry Ed Walter, and Harry Ed Walter, Lower Norfolk County, Virginia, Court Records : “B,” 1646-1651/2 (Baltimore: Clearfield, 2009),  47. “The Thorowgood Family of Princess Anne County, Va, ” The Richmond Standard, 4: no. 13 (26 November 1882).  Florence Kimberly, Gateway to the New World: A History of Princess Anne County, Virginia, 1607-1824 (Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1984), 36-39. ↩
3.   Dorman, John Frederick, Adventurers of Purse and Person, Virginia, 1607-1624/5 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co, 2004), 326-393. ↩
4. Matthew, H. C. G.,  and Brian Harrison ed., “Thoroughgood, John” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 54 (London: Oxford University Press, 2004), 660-662. ↩
5. Thrush, Andrew and John P. Ferris, ed.,  Thorowgood, John (1588-1657), of Brewer’s Lane, Charing Cross, Westminster; later of Billingbear, Berks. and Clerkenwell, Mdx.  accessed 7/7/2018 at   history of parliament online ↩
6. Will of Sir John Thorowgood of Kensington, 1675, Catalogue Reference Prob /11/349, Public Records Office:  The National Archives (UK). ↩
7. “The Thorowgood Family of Princess Anne County, Va, ” The Richmond Standard, 4: no. 13 (26 November 1882). ↩
8. McCartney, 692;  Hotten, John Camden, The Original Lists of Persons of Quality 1600-1700 (reprinted Berryville, VA: Virginia Book Company, 1980), 226. ↩
9. “Cyprian Thoroughgood,” Archives of Maryland: Biographical Series MSASC 3520-2854 accessed online 3/15/2018.  Hamilton, William Douglas, ed., Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Charles I 1640 (London: Longsman & Co. and Turner & Co., 1880), 293.  Thrush, Andrew and John P. Ferris, ed., Rowdon, Marmaduke (1582-1646) of Water Lane, London and Hoddesdon, Herts., accessed 7/10/2018 at history of parliament online.  “Benjamin Thorowgood” and “Elizabeth Thorowgood (Ashby)”  Ancestry.com; accessed online 2/22/2018. ↩

Telling (& Spelling) the Thorowgood Story

At the end of Hamilton: An American Musical, the composer Lin-Manuel Miranda queries, “Who tells your story?” For those intrepid 17th century souls who boarded ships for an uncertain future in the Colony of Virginia, the question to be asked was not “who” would tell, but whether their personal stories would even survive and ever be told. Adam Thorowgood and his wife Sarah Offley were an intriguing and influential immigrant couple whose lives reflected and impacted important trends in the 17th century.  They were both typical and unique in their era. This blog intends to use their story and that of  those connected to them to provide greater insight into the development and transformation of early American society. 

McDonald Family Tree 1950

As a child in California, I ate dinner with Adam Thoroughgood and Sarah Offley almost every night.  On my dining room wall hung a detailed family tree with Adam and Sarah as the solid family trunk. I thought I knew their story.  It was an early version of “The American Dream” where the young immigrant indentured servant worked hard and rose to prominence in the colony.

Adam Thoroughgood House 1959

Thus, I was excited when my father transferred to Virginia and we visited the newly opened Adam Thoroughgood House in Virginia Beach. I  bragged that I had been to the oldest brick house  standing in Virginia– or so we had been told. In the years since, not only has the dating and history of the house been revised, but the story of Adam and Sarah has turned out to be more complex and fascinating than imagined. Adam Thorowgood is referenced as a primary settler in every history of Virginia Beach and is frequently mentioned in early histories of  Virginia and colonial society. Having arrived in Virginia in 1621, he is recognized as one of the official Jamestown settlers. 

Thorowgood v Thoroughgood

It is not in error that I wrote of my 1950 family tree ancestor as Adam Thoroughgood, but my blog refers to Adam Thorowgood.  While it is accepted that Thorowgood, Thorogood, and Thoroughgood (and a few more creative variants) are interchangeable spellings, there is significance to the spellings.  We now understand that Thorowgood was the preferred spelling used by Adam, his family, and descendants in the 17th century.  

Thorowgood or Thorogood was used on Adam’s  baptismal record, marriage record, court cases, and most land patents. ¹  That is also the spelling used in records of his siblings, including the will of Sir John Thorowgood of Kensington. ²  As the focus of this blog is on Adam and his family in the 17th century, I will be spelling their name Thorowgood.  That raises the question: When and how did Thoroughgood become today’s accepted spelling?

Caught in the Middle

As with most aspects of their story, there is no simple answer.  Adam and Sarah Thorowgood had three daughters, but only one son, Adam II, to carry on the family name. Thorowgood and Thorogood were the most prevalent spellings in the 17th and 18th centuries, but the use of Thoroughgood made an inconsistent appearance, especially in the 19th century.  While most others used the traditional spellings, T.  Thoroughgood and S. Thoroughgood  were recorded in the 1840 U.S. Census.  In The Richmond Enquirer on 30 March 1852, John Thoroughgood was listed as a member of the County Committees of Vigilance.  

A further example of the inconsistency was John Francis Thorogood who was born in 1817.  While Thorogood or Thorowgood were the spellings in the christenings for his children,  his military enlistment,  and in the 1850 and 1860 U.S. Census,  the spelling recorded by the census taker in 1870 was Thoroughgood.  When listed as the Father of the Bride in 1875, his name was spelled Thorowgood, but when a later daughter married in 1905, the name was spelled Thoroughgood. ³  While it is well known that census takers and clerks were not the most reliable spellers, these trends still show the change to Thoroughgood by the 20th century. 

Changing Adam’s Name

The Richmond Standard, a weekly paper, published a comprehensive and documented six part series from 26 November 1881 through 31 December 1881  entitled “The Thorowgood Family of Princess Anne County, Va.”  This series traced many of Adam’s descendants to 1874. The author and Thorowgood descendant, Thomas Harding Ellis used that spelling throughout the series.  At the conclusion, he stated “So far as I know, the name Thorowgood, in Virginia, is entirely extinct.”

Only eight years later, The Critic, a short-lived Richmond society newspaper which included genealogical reports, changed the spelling to Thoroughgood when it published a summary of Adam’s life on 21 September 1889. Thoroughgood was also the spelling used in the frequent references to Adam in the (Richmond) Times-Dispatch “Genealogical Column” from 1905-1913 and in articles in The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography starting in 1893.⁴ The Norfolk Branch of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities used that spelling when they placed this plaque at the old brick house in  Princess Anne County in 1917.⁵  A subsequent post will deal with the accuracy of the statement on the plaque.

Thoroughgood House Sign  2000

Why would Adam’s spelling be altered when the preponderance of historical records used Thorowgood and it was thought that there might not be any more descendants with that last name?  Who initiated or pushed for such a change?  It was not by those who still did bear his  name.  In 1955, J. Carlyle Stephens, a descendant of John Francis Thorowgood, also puzzled over the change in spelling. Although his relatives no longer lived in Virginia, they spelled their name Thorowgood.⁶  The major change  occurred around the turn of the last century at the same time that genealogical, historical, and preservation societies were being formed to preserve  early American heritage.  Perhaps those “telling the story” considered it a more dignified or prestigious spelling.

Recently, though, there has been a return to the original spelling.  In 2006, a Virginia State Highway marker was added in Virginia Beach for Adam Thorowgood.  If one searches the website for Historic Jamestowne, a biography can be found for Adam Thorowgood.

In addition, another historical marker in Virginia Beach was unveiled last year for his descendant Colonel John Thorowgood, a local Revolutionary War leader.

An Unexpected Twist

I searched for those who carried on the Thorowgood/ Thoroughgood name in the U.S. Census records for Virginia from 1840-1940 (latest released) and found that they did not spread throughout the state, but continued to live in the Princess Anne (Virginia Beach) or Norfolk area.  After the Civil War, there was an expected increase in numbers, as formerly enslaved African Americans were counted, many of whom took the last name of their former masters.   

Despite the claim noted above in The Richmond Standard (1881) that the name was extinct in Virginia by that date, I found 70 entries by that name or its variants in the 1880 U.S. Census in Virginia.  Of those, 63 were designated as Black or Mulatto.  By the 1910 U.S. Census, only 1 of the 47 Thorowgood entries or its variants listed in Virginia was designated as White. She was the widow of John Francis Thorowgood, living with her married daughter.⁷ The same diversity of spellings was found in the African American families. While there are still many descendants of Adam and Sarah, the use of the Thorowgood name has undergone significant change.  In Virginia, the last name Adam brought from England is now primarily passed on through African Americans.  Those of African American descent who acquired this name are also an important part of Adam’s story and legacy that will be examined in later posts.

The Rest of the Story

The Gust of Wind by  W. V. Velde

What else does this story contain?  There are  connections to Indian uprisings, civil war, courts of English kings and Ottoman emperors, mistaken identities, murders, shipwrecks, diamonds, ravenous wolves, Puritans, beheadings, daring rescues, treasure hunts,  enslavement, defiance of the courts, infanticide, unpaid debts, drownings, Dutch merchants, untimely deaths, and the  acquisition of wealth and prestige in the New World. I invite you to join this exciting quest to thoroughly explore the Truth of the Thorowgoods.

Special thanks to  Troy Valos, Special Collections Librarian, Sargeant Memorial Collection, Slover Library, Norfolk; Jay Gaidmore, Director,  Swem Library Special Collections, College of William and Mary; Ann Miller, Coordinator of History Museums, City of Virginia Beach;  Meredith Poole, Staff Archaeologist, Colonial Williamsburg; Cathleen Reynolds, archivist.

Coming in April:  The Identity Crisis of the “Adam Thoroughgood” House

Sources:

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1. “London, England, Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812.” Ancestry.com Accessed 1/15/2018.;  “The Thorowgood Family of Princess Anne County, Va.” The Richmond Standard.  26 November 1882;  Nugent, Nell Marion. Cavaliers and Pioneers: Abstracts of Virginia Land Patents and Grants, 1623-1800.  Richmond: Dietz Printing Co., 1934;  Walter, Alice Granbery and Harry Ed Walter.  Lower Norfolk County, Virginia, Court Records: Book “A” 1637-1646.  Baltimore:  Clearfield, 1994. ↩
2.  Will of Sir John Thorowgood of Kensington, 1675.  Catalogue Reference Prob/11/349. Public Records Office: The National Archives (UK). ↩
3. “United States Census: Virginia 1840-1940.”  FamilySearch, online databases. Accessed 1/18/2018. ↩
4. Stanard,  W. G. “Abstracts of Virginia Land Patents.” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography,  1, no. 1 (1893). ↩
5. Tucker, Beverly Dandridge.  Tercentenary of Adam Thoroughgood: An Address at the Thoroughgood House, Old Lynhaven Farms April 1921.  [Norfolk, VA] : [E.L. Graves 1921];  “To Mark the Oldest House in Virginia Tablet to be Placed on Adam Thoroughgood Home Thursday.” The Norfolk Ledger Dispatch.  28 April 1917. ↩
6. “More Thoroughgood Family Data Is Recalled.” Norfolk Virginian Pilot and Portsmouth Star.  15 May 1955. ↩
7. “United States Census: Virginia 1840-1940.”  FamilySearch,  online databases. Accessed 1/18/2018. ↩