Excerpts
from " The Virginia Carys : An Essay in Genealogy. " by Fairfax Harrison.
Published New York. Publisher: De Vinne. 1919.
Transcribed by Cynthia Swope for Within the Vines.
Characteristics
of the Carys in Virginia and the
first home of the Carys
ìChapter
Three: Characteristics in Virginia
"The immigrant Miles Cary flourished in Virginia
in the second consulship of Sir William Berkeley. After a busy career in
trade and politics in which he attained prosperity and a seat in the Council,
he was ëkilled by ye Dutchí during their foray upon Hampton Roads in June,
1667. He left four sons, who , we gather from the surviving records, began
life respectively as a merchant, a builder, a surveyor, and a miller;
all were considerable landowners and all took part in public life, the
third with the largest measure of success. Each of these sons founded a
family; by intermarriage their descendants allied themselves with other
ëPeninsulaí families of their own kind and similar origin, and so established
a wide connection of Virginia cousins. We have noted that the English
Carys have maintained throughout their history relatively the same
place in the world with which they started, that by their marriages in
the early generations in Devon they acquired with their lands a local self-conscious
clan sense: but they did not become great nobles or compelling popular
leaders. Such, precisely, is the family history in Virginia also. During
the 18th century they were leading public men in their several communities,
magistrates and legislators. Their official vocations were practically
hereditary. Most of them were in the commission of the peace and took their
turns as High Sheriff; actively serving in the militia as well, they were,
after the Virginia fashion, always designated by military titles.
In one branch they produced six successive clerks of the old County Court,
most of whom served also in the important function of permanent clerks
of legislative committees; another branch produced four successive Naval
officers in the revenue service, a lucrative and much sought office in
18th century Virginia; among the several burgesses at least three(the immigrant,
Miles2 of Richneck and Archibald of Ampthill) were of first rate importance
in the General Assembly and they claim one member of the Council
and one of the Judges of the first Supremem Court of Virginia. One of them
was an original trustee named in the royal charter of William and
Mary College of 1691, who later served also as Recor; following him there
was an uninterrupted identification of the name with that ancient and honoragle
institution for six successive generations , including 18 students whose
names appear ont he incomplete surviving records, and three Visitors. Two
of them were educated in England, one at Trinity College, Cambridge. Throughout
the colonial period they were steadfast adherents of the Established Church,
usually serviing in this respective vestries, though two of them were affiliated
for a time with the Quakers.
"1. The Old Virginia Clerks. In the Virginia Law
Journal (1880), iv, 381, is a just tribute to a class of men of the old
time Virginia Civilization:
" 'The body of men which once filled the offices
of clerks of courts in Virginia have left as decided impressions upon the
history and tradtions of the State as any other class that have lived in
it. They exerted possibly more influence than any other men in the communitites
and times in which they lived, and their influence was always for good.
They were the general advisers of the people; their advice was generally
followed and in nine cases out of ten it was good, whether viewed from
a financial, moral or legal standpoint. The race of these valuable members
of society, which gave it a tone peculiar to Virginia, has almost become
extinct, but those who remember them still love to dwell on the characters
of such men, who were universally regarded as having been the most exemplary
that any people were ever blessed wtih.í
"In the course of some interesting observations
upon the historical changes in the status of occupations, in which he cites
the reversal of the social position of merchants and physicians in the
17th and 19th centuries, the Rev H E Hayden (Virginia Gealogies, 1890,
Preface, xviii) says: ìthe offices of High Sheriff and of County Clerk
are slowly losing their ancient honour. Until reconstruction days these
two offices were filled by the best blood and brains of the colony and
State...descendants of such men ...will feel ashamed in the atmosphere
of sheriffs and clerks, who can do little more than read and write, to
speak of their gentle ancestors as haviing held such positions.í
"The office of County Court Clerk came to be
almost hereditary in some families in Virginia during the 18th and the
first half of th 19th century. We have seen how a succession of Carys held
it during the colonial period. In his valuable Memorials of Old Virginia
Clerks (1888), Mr Frederick Johnston, sometime clerk of Roanoke, shows
from the surviving records accessible to him (which in few cases went far
back into th 18th century) that the following families were clerks of court
for several generations, vix.: James Steptoe of B Bedford and his
descenatn of other names, the Millers of Goochland, the Wallers of Spotsylvania,
the Chews of Fredericksburg, the Pollards of Hanover, Kng WIlliam and King
and Queen, The Youngs of Isle of Wight, and the Christians fo Charles city.
If this was true of the 19th century, the list could doubtless be considerably
extended in the 18th century when there was a general recognition of an
hereditary claim to office. The record of the Carys, of whom Mr Johnston
had not trace, is evidence for this assumption."
"Chapter
Four: Windmill Point and Peartree Hall [See MAP
for the Cary plantation locations]
The first home of the Warwick Carys in Viginia
was the high bluff which divides Warwick River and Potash Creek at their
confluence, facing Mulberry Island (or, as it is locally called, 'Mulbri'
land'). Here in 1643, on a plantation known as Windmill Point 1 , a Bristol
merchantman, Captain Thomas Taylor, found a snug harbor, safe from the
privateers of the Parliament (cf. Neill, Virginia Carolorum, 178), and
here he was succeeded by his son-in-laaw Col Miles Cary; here in turn succeded
the eldest son of our immigrant. This Major Thomas Cary, 'the merchant
is, on the surviving records, a somewhat shadowy person after his earliest
youth, but he became the fertile progenitor of more of his race than any
of his brothers and is still numerously represented. From him descended
during the 18th century the neighboring households at Windmill Point and
Peartree Hall, 2 with the branches of the latter which were maintained
for several generations in Chesterfield, in Southampton and at Elmwood
3 on Back River in Elizabeth City, whose descendants have since spread
far and wide.
1. THE WINDMILL POINT PROPERTY: The first
settlements on Warwick (then known as Blunt's Point) River, below Martins
Hundred, were made after the Indian massacre of 1622. From the patents
it appears that John Baynham (spelled also Bainham and Burnham) had an
'ancient patent' dated Dec 1, 1624, for 300 acres 'adjoining the lands
of Captain Samuel Matthews and William Claiborne, gentlemen' (Va. Mag.,
i, 91. ) This was Windmill Point and there John Baynham was living in 1625.
(Brown, First Republic, 622) A Richard Baynham 'of London, goldsmith,'
was a shareholder in the London Company in 1623 and one of the Warwick
faction, Brown, Genesis, ii, 904, 982, and an Alexander Baynham was burgess
for Westmoreland in 1654.) This John Baynham's daughter, Mary, married
Richard Tisdale, who succeeded to the property, and from him Captain
Thomas Taylor purchased it, taking out on Oct 23, 1643 {Va Land Register,
i) , two patents, one calling for 350 acres known as Magpy Swamp. In the
first of these patents Windmill Point is described as butting upon Warwick
River, vounded on the S side with Potash Quarter Creeke and on the N side
with Samuell Stephens his land'. The Stephens place (patented 1636 'adjoining
the land of John Bainham,' Va Mag, v, 455) was "bolthrope," which passed
through the hands of the governors Harvey and Berkely (Va. Mag., i, 83)
was afterwards long the home of the Coles (Hening, ii, 321), and eventually
the property of Judge Richard Cary5. In his will the immigrant Miles Cary
describes Windmill Point as 'the tract of land which I now reside upon,'
refers to Thomas Taylor's patent, and says that a resurvey shows it to
include 688 acres, exclusive of the Magpy Swamp. We trace the title through
eight Carys to 1837, when the senior line became extinct and Windmill Point
passed to the Lucas descendants of the youngest daughter of Captain Thomas
Cary5, one of whom Mr G. D. Eggleston found in possession in 1851. In 1919
the site of the original house is marked by a grassy cavity. A modern
house stands nearby, the residence of J.B. Nettles, who is now the owner
of the small surrounding farm. the property is sometimes referred to as
'Cary's Quarter.' This Windmill Point must be distinguished from Sir George
Yeardley's Windmill Point 9originallly Tobacco Point) on the south side
of James River in Prince George, where, it is supposed, the first windmill
in the United States was erected.
2. PEARTREE HALL. It appears from the will of
his son Miles4 that Miles, Jr., 3 dwelt on Potash Creek, a description
which is persuasive that he established the house which in the next generation
and thenceforth was known as Peartree Hall. That house stood on the
bluff over Potash Creek, about a mile above Windmill Point. It was
destroyed by fire about the beginning of the 19th century, when the land
was sold, Richard Cary6 being the last Cary of Peartree Hall. The bricks
from the older house were used int he construction of the dwelling now
standing on the property, which for two generations past has been occupied
by a branch of the Tabb family, who represent also the Cary tradition.
See B. W. Green in W & M Quar, xv, 52. Miss Frances Tabb is the present
gracious chatelaine.
3. ELMWOOD, which harbored three generations of
the Back River Carys, and later belonged to the Jones family, now of Hampton,
lies in the midst of a land which reminds one of Holland, low rich fields
between iked hedgerows in which the elm predominates. It adjoins the U
S aviation station known as Langley Field and is now (1919) included in
the prosperous farms of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute.
The original house, a modest but comfortable abode, still stands in the
shelter of an ancient grove to testify to the tradition of the abundant
hospitatiliy there practised. "
Harrison, Fairfax, The Virginia Carys : an essay
in genealogy. New York: De Vinne, 1919. Transcribed by C Swope and Within
the Vines
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