In an earlier message [log in to unmask] wrote:

> I have in my notes somewhere that Adam (or his father Argall) Thorowgood
> originated in Lynn, England. I believe that is in Kent.
>
> The spelling of the name Thorowgood is corrupted in every way
> possible.

I certainly agree with the latter statement. But Adam Thoroughgood
came from Norfolk.

_Virginia Heraldica_, edited by Wm. Armstrong Crozier (Baltimore,
1978, originally published 1908), p. 60: "Thoroughgood. Elizabeth
City.
"Arms: Sable on a chief argent, three buckles lozengy of the
first. . . .
"The pedigree of the Virginia family is contained in the Visitation of
Essex (Harleian Society Pub.). They descended originally from John
Thorogood of Chelston Temple, county Herts. Capt. Adam Thoroughgood,
son of William of Norwich and Anne Edwards, his wife, was born in 1602
and came to Virginia in 1621. He was Commissioner and Burgess for
Elizabeth City in 1629. In 1634 he removed to Lynnhaven Bay, in the
Present Princess Anne county, and was a member of the Council from
there in 1637. He died in 1640. He married Sarah Offley of London, and
by her had issue: Adam, Ann, Sarah, and Elizabeth. The son, Adam, was
Lieut.-Col. and Burgess for Lower Norfolk in 1666 and Justice and
Sheriff in 1669. He married a daughter of Col. Argall Yeardley of
Northampton county, and had issue: Argall, John, Adam, Robert,
Francis, and Ann."

Richmond Times-Dispatch, 10 Mar 1997: "VIRGINIA BEACH -- The remains
of  Capt. Adam Thoroughgood, the 17th-century founding father of
Virginia Beach, lie deep and nearly forgotten in the muck of the
Lynnhaven River, in the shadow of an expensive new subdivision. . . .
"The seventh son of an Anglican vicar, he first sailed from England to
Virginia in 1621 as an indentured servant. After fulfilling his
duties, he returned to England and set out recruiting people to help
colonize the New World.
"He delivered 105 colonists to the frontier zone that's now Virginia
Beach.
"Thoroughgood was rewarded by the government of England with a grant
of 5,350 choice acres -- 50 acres per recruit, including himself and
his wife -- which made him one of the largest landowners in the
Tidewater area.
"He went on to hold virtually every important local public office
before dying in 1640 at age 36. He was buried, as he had requested, in
the cemetery of Lynnhaven Parish Church, which he helped establish on
a peninsula jutting into the Lynnhaven River. . . .
"Dr. Stephen Mansfield, president of the Princess Anne Historical
Society and dean of Virginia Wesleyan College in Virginia Beach,
. . . said the graves of Thoroughgood and others lie in the submerged
churchyard off Church Point, on the western side of the Lynnhaven's
Western Branch. There are unconfirmed accounts in history books of
swimmers in the river in the early 1800s reading the words on
submerged tombstones by running their toes across them. . . .
"Some of the people Thoroughgood brought to America are ancestors of
George Washington, George Mason, and Robert E. Lee."

He must have died by 1639, as Norfolk Deed Book A, Mar. 4, 1639, 12,
gives an inventory of his livestock. Probably the actual date was
1639/40.

_Genealogies of Virginia Families from the Virginia Magazine of
History and Biography_ (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1981),
vol. 5, p. 543: "[Augustine Warner's] transportation into Virginia by
Adam Thoroughgood was due to his Norfolk County origin; for Adam
Thoroughgood, gentleman, was baptized in 1603 at St. Botolph's, the
parish church of Grimston, County of Norfolk, England, of which his
father had been appointed vicar in 1581. [_Adventurers of Purse and
Person_]. Their two families may well have been acquainted before
Warner came to Virginia with Thoroughgood in the _Hopewell_ in 1628,
the year that Thoroughgood returned from England with a wife and 33
other passengers whom he claimed as headrights along with others in
1635 [Land Office records at Richmond and _Cavaliers and Pioneers_]."

Many Thorogoods were born in London in the appropriate time frame,
some in the same parish as Offleys. They may be children of Adam's
possible brother Sir John, of Kensington.

Can anyone give me documentation of the relationship between Sir John
Thorowgood, claimed by Paul Nagel to be "a personal attendant upon
King Charles I", and Adam the immigrant? Nagel says in _The Lees of
Virginia_, p. 9, "Perhaps because of her father's connections, Anne
[Constable] became a ward of Sir John Thorowgood, a personal attendant
upon King Charles I. This affiliation would have made it easy for her
to know the family of Sir Francis Wyatt and to accompany them to North
America."

I have been unable to find any proof that the Constables and
Thoroughgoods were connected in any way. Nagel says his source was the
Lee Society (an undocumented paper delivered as a lecture by the
society's genealogist some years ago); the society says the lecture
did not cite a source for that datum. Can anyone help?

Kathleen Much
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