Shirley,

I don't know if there is a "connection" or not, but a James Chowning married 
(as his second or third...and last...wife) a woman named Elizabeth Hancock 
Whiting in Lancaster Co., VA (they married in the 1820s or 1830s).  The 
Chowning family owned land in both Middlesex Co., VA and Lancaster Co., VA. 
Elizabeth Hancock Whiting was a descendant of the Lee family that traces 
back to a John Lee who married a Jane Hancock, and who were both born in 
England in the late-1500s (the same overall Lee family as General Robert E. 
Lee).  Members of this Lee family were in York and Lancaster/Middlesex Co., 
VA (and surrounding areas of VA), but many of them migrated up to MD. 
Perhaps your Nancy Mitchell Hancock was a member of that same overall 
Hancock family.  The given name of "Hancock" was used several times in 
subsequent generations in the Lee family, as well as in the families into 
which the Lee family married.

See 
http://awt.ancestrylibrary.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=flakey&id=I517307227&ti=5542 
for this John Lee and Jane Hancock and 
http://awt.ancestrylibrary.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=flakey&id=I517307477&ti=5542 
for Elizabeth Hancock Whiting (as you will see, her parents were John 
Whiting and Lettice Lee....and the father of Lettice Lee was John Lee, 
Junior of Charles Co., MD).  Maybe the Hancock family was also living in MD 
at that time.

Best regards,

Bill Davidson 

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