Thanks for all your replies about transporting, and yes, this
magazine article sounds like an excellent idea. I think there is also
a need to go more into the "middling" planters, merchants and
craftsmen, how they arrived, how they lived. There was a huge class
of modestly wealthy, intelligent, hard working and successful people
in Virginia that has been pretty much ignored, at least in the more
popular sources. So much of Virginia history seems to be about the
wealthiest landowners (the "FFVs"), or more recently the slaves. I
have more to say on this later, and why I am trying to get the facts
straight. A teaser, my own ancestor seems to have been a Catholic
recusant from a very strongly Catholic family in Britain, who came to
Virginia in 1636; I am currently working on the family history in
Lancashire with a distant cousin, and it is quite interesting (and
surprising). Virginia seems to have been a destination for many
dissenters- Quakers, French Huguenots and others. In my family there
were several priests who were executed, houses of some in the family
who were spied on by agents of the crown as being meeting places for
Catholics. My distant cousin says the family was quite prominent in
the area and then... nothing. They seemed to disappear. Did the bulk
of them come to Virginia? So I wonder if the immigrant came over, and
then sent for those 11 other settlers, who would have been other
Catholic friends or family members. His son is the one who got the
550 acres, and it was about the time his father died, so he might
have been using the headrights his father earned and didn't bring
over the 11 people himself. As there are such gaps in early Henrico
records, I haven't been able to find out who the people were or
exactly when they came over. His son is the one who bought the 17
acres from Byrd on what is now the crest of Church hill, Richmond,
and named it Farrington. Which, probably not coincidentally, is the
name of a place in Lancashire, where the family came from. It would
be interesting to find out if the names for the other large
properties on that first Richmond map were also named for places the
new owners came from.

Nancy (in Orange County!)

-------
I was never lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.

--Daniel Boone



On Jan 2, 2007, at 12:23 PM, Barbara Vines Little, CG wrote:

> Would you be interested in writing an article on headrights for the
> /Magazine of Virginia Genealogy/? There is so much misinformation out
> there, I would really love to have a single defining article.
>
> Thank you for your previous kind words. I was in the middle of two
> projects, but just couldn't stand the question going unanswered. We
> really do need an article by someone who can take a reasoned and
> knowledgeable approach which you obviously can.
>
> Barbara Vines Little, CG
> Dominion Research Services
> PO Box 1273
> Orange, VA 22960
>
> 540-832-3473 (7-10 p.m.; all day Sunday)
> [log in to unmask]
>
> CG, Certified Genealogist, is a service mark of the Board for
> Certification of Genealogists, used under
> license by board certified genealogists after periodic evaluation,
> and the board name is registered in the
> US Patent & Trademark Office.
>
>
>
> Joe Chandler wrote:
>> To the previous information I would add the following:
>>
>> (1) A headright does not necessarily mean that the
>> person for whose passage was paid was an indentured
>> servant. I seriously doubt that Adam Thorowgood was an
>> "indentured servant," although he is described as a
>> "servant" in the muster of Edward Waters in Jan-Feb
>> 1624/5, having arrived in the "Charles" in 1621.
>> Indeed, he was described as a "gentleman" when he
>> bought 150A on the north side of Hampton Roads on
>> December 30, 1626. His status was such that he married
>> Sarah Offley, who was (as has been noted) the daughter
>> of one Lord Mayor of London and granddaughter of
>> another. Her father invested more than L100 in the
>> Virginia Company ca. 1618/19, perhaps in response to
>> the major change of administration of the Company that
>> occurred then. I suspect Adam's status was akin to a
>> clerk or aide-de-camp to Waters while Adam got
>> acclimated to Virginia (going through one full year's
>> cycle and surviving the climate and other threats to
>> life).
>>
>> (2) Headrights were also awarded for persons merely
>> visiting in the colonies -- it was the transit for
>> which the headright was earned, even though not
>> everyone transported stayed.
>>
>> (3) Headrights were also fungible, much like bearer
>> bonds are today. They could be sold (and often were)
>> by simple endorsement on the face or the back and
>> sometimes passed through several hands before being
>> redeemed. Ship captains also acquired headrights for
>> transporting individuals for free, often to fill out
>> the passenger spaces on their ships for later
>> redemption (investments) and/or to provide a
>> sufficient number of souls to meet contract
>> requirements for which the captain had been advanced
>> funds by a planter in Virginia.
>>
>> jc
>>
>>
>>
>> --- Douglas Deal <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Barbara's response nicely summarizes the
>>> difficulties inherent in using
>>> land patents and headrights for genealogical
>>> purposes. The larger
>>> historical significance of the system is pretty
>>> clear, though. The idea
>>> was to reward--with land grants--those immigrants
>>> who paid for their own
>>> passage to the colony and for that of others,
>>> whether family members,
>>> servants, or (for several decades, at least) slaves,
>>> at the rate of 50
>>> acres per person transported (self plus others).
>>> Those whose passage was
>>> thus paid did not get the land, except for a spell
>>> in certain other
>>> colonies, such as Maryland where it was part of a
>>> servant's freedom dues
>>> (until 1683, if I remember correctly). For most of
>>> the colonies,
>>> including Virginia, the headright system rewarded
>>> the wealthiest with
>>> even more wealth. In Virginia, it helped build a
>>> landed elite that,
>>> conveniently, was rewarded for bringing more labor
>>> into the colony.
>>> Political conflict in the decades before and after
>>> 1700 revolved, much
>>> of the time, around the abuses and inequalities that
>>> the practices of
>>> land distribution entailed. Anthony Parent's recent
>>> book, Foul Means,
>>> treats some of this story in detail.
>>>
>>> Doug Deal
>>> History/SUNY-Oswego
>>>
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>>>
>>
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>>
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