Thirty-fifth in a series of biographical sketches of qualifying ancestors of the Jamestowne Society whose descendants belong to the First Mississippi Company
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Lewis’s father, Edward Burwell, was born and died in England; but he was interested in the Virginia settlement and was a member of the Virginia Company and a subscriber of the Second Charter.  He married Dorothy Bedell; the couple had five sons and two daughters, but only one of the Burwell sons lived to have children: Lewis.  After Edward died, his widow married Roger Wingate, who was also involved in the affairs of the Virginia settlement and served as a member of the Council and the Treasurer of Virginia. Dorothy and Roger Wingate sailed to Virginia to settle there with the Burwell children when Lewis was a young boy. 

​As an adult Lewis Burwell settled on the north side of the York River on Rosewell Creek in an area that later became Gloucester County.  He named his 2350-acre plantation “Fairfield,” which later became known as “Carter’s Creek.”

Lewis’s step-father, Roger Wingate, died in VA in 1641; and in 1648 his widow Dorothy deeded all of Wingate’s rents to Lewis, an act confirmed by King James.  In the deed, Dorothy refers to Lewis as “my only and wellbeloved sonn Lewis Burwell,” indicating that her other four sons had already died.
Lewis died 18 Nov 1653 at the young age of thirty-two, and the inscription on his tombstone says he was a Major of Gloucester County and states that he is a descendent of the ancient Burwell family of Bedford and Northampton Counties in England.

Lewis married Lucy Higginson, daughter of Captain Robert Higginson and his wife Joanna Tokesey.  The only issue from this union was a son named Lewis, who inherited all of his father’s land and holdings.  Lewis II married twice.  His first wife, Abigail Smith, brought a large estate of her own into the marriage called “King’s Creek.”

By 1704 Lewis II owned 26,650 acres in Gloucester, King William, Charles City, New Kent, James City, Yok and Isle of Wight Counties.  He was a member of the Council and a governor of William and Mary College.  His second wife was the widow of William Cole: Martha Lear Cole. 

​Lewis had a total of 15 children with his two wives, all named on his tombstone.  Although some of the children died young before marrying, it is Lewis II whose three sons and four daughters carried the Burwell legacy into the 18th Century.
 
Ancestor of First Mississippi Company member Stewart Holder Bridgforth, Jr.

 


Thirty-fourth in a series of biographical sketches of qualifying ancestors of the Jamestowne Society whose descendants belong to the First Mississippi Company
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William Anderson was born in Accomack County, Virginia in 1625 as the son of Scottish immigrants Garret and Amey Anderson.  William lived for thirty years on his estate called “Occoconson,” located on the Pocomoke Sound in Accomack County, where he owned a fine house and 900 acres.

In 1681, he built another house in Onancock on Accomack Island.  He patented 1,000 acres lying between Onancock Creek and Matchatank and another large estate on the seaside.  Anderson served as a Burgess from Accomack in 1685-86.

In 1678, he married Mary Wise, the daughter of his neighbor Colonel John Wise and granddaughter of Captain Edmund Scarburgh. He and Mary  had two daughters, Comfort and Naomi. Although Comfort predeceased her father, William Anderson named and left bequests to her children in his will, probated in 1698.

William Anderson was an ardent Royalist and an Anglican.  He himself performed his daughter Naomi’s marriage to Francis Makemie, a Presbyterian minister who is today called the father of Presbyterianism in America. William Anderson died in 1698 and was buried on his estate at Pocomoke.
 
First Mississippi Company ancestor of William Anderson: Donna Davis Lane
 

​Thirty-third in a series of biographical sketches of qualifying ancestors of the Jamestowne Society whose descendants belong to the First Mississippi Company
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​Thirty-second in a series of biographical sketches of qualifying ancestors of the Jamestowne Society whose descendants belong to the First Mississippi Company
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Thomas Savage arrived in Jamestown in 1608 at the age of 13 on the John and Francis; soon thereafter, Captain Newport gave him to Chief Powhatan to learn the Algonquin language and promote trade between the English and the Indians. Powhatan was fond of Savage, and he lived at Werowocomoco among the Indians for nearly three years until the First Anglo-Powhatan War (1609-1614) broke out. In 1610, aware that he might be in danger, Savage invented an excuse to go to Jamestown on an errand and stayed there.

Peace then prevailed after the 1614 marriage of John Rolfe and Pocahontas. Savage returned to Werowocomoco to try, with Ralph Hamor, to help arrange a marriage between Powhatan’s youngest daughter and Sir Thomas Dale. When Powhatan saw Savage again, he scolded Savage for escaping: “My childe you are welcome, you have bin a straunger to me these foure yeers, at what time I gave you to go to Paspahae [Jamestown] . . . to see your friends, and till now you never returned.”

What Savage did between 1614 and 1619 is unknown, but by 1619 he was living on the John Martin plantation. In 1621 Savage and John Pory went to the Eastern Shore where the Occohannock and Accomack Indians lived on two trading expeditions. The tribes were friendly to the English and Savage became good friends with Esmy Shichans, the Laughing King of the Eastern Shore.

By 1618 Powhatan was dead, and Opechancanough controlled the Powhatans. He then plotted to kill the English by poisoning them with a deadly plant found in Accomack and needed to obtain it from Esmy Schicans, who refused to give it to him.  Shichans warned Savage of the danger; Savage informed Governor Sir Francis Wyatt, who believed Opechancanough wanted peace and did not heed the warning.  On 22 March 1622, Opechancanough led the Powhatans in an attack that killed over 347 colonists, beginning the Second Anglo-Indian War (1622-1632).

Governor Yardley and William Eppes forced Savage to serve as the official interpreter of Accomack from 1625 to 1627.  In 1621 Esmy Shichans gave Savage 9,000 acres of land in Accomack that became and still is known as Savage’s Neck.  In 1623 Savage married Hannah (also called Ann) who had come to VA in 1621 on the Seaflower. Their son John, born in 1624, served in the House of Burgesses.  Savage prospered as a fur trader and established a plantation called Savage’s Choice, having been an Ancient Planter, as well as Indian Interpreter. He died before September 1633, when his son John inherited his land.  His wife Ann had remarried planter Daniel Cugley by 1638.
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Later John Pory wrote about Savage’s service as an Indian interpreter: “With much honestie and good successe hath [Savage] served the publicke without any publicke recompence; yet had an arrow shot through his body in their service.”  
                      
Thomas Savage is an ancestor of First Mississippi Company Member Rebecca Bryars Hayes

The Reverend Robert Bracewell, son of Richard Bracewell, Gentleman, of London, was christened 13 Oct 1611 at St. Andrew  Holborn, London and matriculated at Hart Hall, Oxford University on 22 February, 1628. On 3 November 1631, aged twenty, he was graduated from Oxford.  

He came to Isle of Wight, Virginia before 29 April 1650, when he was a documented witness to an agreement between Ambrose Bennett and Thomas Webb. He became Rector of St. Luke’s, Lower Parish, Smithfield, Isle of Wight. In July 1653, he was chosen Burgess from Isle of Wight County, but was asked to resign because of concerns for separation of church and state.

St. Luke’s, built in 1632, is the oldest brick church in Virginia (now known as the Old Brick Church) and British North America. It is the nation’s only original Gothic church and a National Historic Landmark and Patriotic Shrine. It was used as a model for Jamestown’s 1907 Memorial Church.

Rev. Bracewell made his will 15 Feb 1667/8, which was probated May 1668 and proved that he had a least five children, saying that, “…daughter Jane Stokes, Rebeca West - my daughter, my two sons, Robert and Richard, daughter Ann Bagnall… His Loveinge friends, Mr. Richard Izard and George Gwillim to be gaurdians unto my children, in the time of their Minoritie.”

Jane was born ca. 1645 and was married three times; first to Robert Stokes in 1667 (who participated in Bacon’s rebellion and was hung by the royal governor in 1677 for his involvement) and subsequently to Robert Eely and John Roberts. Her will was probated 24 Aug 1713 in Isle of Wight County. Rebecca was born ca. 1645, married by 15 Feb 1667 to William West and then to (unknown) Brinkley. She died ca. 1700 in Isle of Wight County (William also participated in Bacon’s rebellion but was pardoned.) Ann, born ca. 1647, married James Bagnall by 15 Feb 1667. Richard, born ca. 1649, married Sarah (unknown), 1672. He left a will dated 28 Jan 1724/5 in Isle of Wight County. Robert, born ca 1651, married Susannah Burgess.

The Reverend Robert Bracewell died in Isle of Wight county before 1 May 1668.
 
The Reverend Robert Bracewell is the paternal seventh great grandfather of Ella Margaret Cron, Member of the First Colorado Company

​Thirty-first in a series of biographical sketches of qualifying ancestors of the Jamestowne Society whose descendants belong to the First Mississippi Company
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William Ball was born in 1615, studied law in London and served in the Royal Army in the Civil Wars under Charles I.  With the regicide in 1650, he lost the greater part of his English estates and fled to Virginia. 

He had married Hannah Atherall (Atherold) 2 July 1638 in London and immigrated to Virginia with his wife and three children--Hannah, Joseph, and William. He did not apply for a land grant in Virginia for eight years, waiting for the restoration of the 1660 Stuart kings. He settled in Narrow Neck (now Ball Point) on the west side of the Corrotoman River in 1663.  Ball operated the vessel Merchant between England and Virginia as a tobacco merchant. 

He acquired 2000 acres in Virginia, served on an Indian peace-treaty council, and administered Lancaster County affairs as a Colonel.  He built a Georgian mansion, Millenbeck, and led the defense of the county to help quell Bacon’s Rebellion.  One of his land grants for 300 acres adjoined the land of Daniel Fox, who married his daughter Hannah. He was a Warden of Christ Church in Lancaster and also owned land in Rappahannock County. 

He served as a Burgess from 1699-1173 and was George Washington’s great grandfather.
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He died at Millenbeck in 1680 and left his estate to his wife and two sons. 
 
FMC Descendants of William Ball: Jane Tatum, Fredrick William Lewis III, and Fredrick William Lewis IV. 

Thomas Owsley, the fourth child and third son of Rev. John Owsley and his wife Dorothea Poyntz, was born 11 June 1658 at Stoke-Coursey (now Stogursey), Somersetshire, England and was baptized there at St. Andrew's Church on 11 July.  The entry of his baptism was written in the hand of his father who was serving as church rector.

Thomas had arrived in the Colony of Virginia by 1677. During the next three years he seems to have traveled several times between England and the Colonies.  It was during one such journey, in 1679, that he was taken prisoner by Algerian pirates and was ransomed by the villagers of Glooston, the parish in Leicestershire, England where his father was then serving as rector. This event was recorded in the Register of Glooston Parish which states "July 28, 1679:  To redeem Thomas, son of Mr. Owsley, Rector of Glooston, taken by the 'Algerines,' the sum of 1.11.3 was collected."

By 1680, at the age of only 22 years, he held the position of Clerk of the Stafford County Court, a position he held when he died in 1700. In 1681/82, he was authorized to traffic in a variety of commodities with the Nantecoke Indians of Maryland. In the next twenty years, Thomas would also serve as Justice of the Peace, a captain of the Potomac Rangers (1692), a major in the county militia (1698/99), Sheriff of Stafford County (1696) and was twice elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses (1692-1696 and 1698).

Thomas's land patents, totaling over 2000 acres, were in the Northern Neck of Virginia, including some on the shore of the Potomac River.

Major Thomas Owsley died 10 October 1700 in Stafford County and was buried there on his plantation, now located on the Fort Belvoir Military Reservation, in what is now Fairfax County. The exact date of his death is known from a 1748 survey map on which is noted his grave and the comment "Owsly buryd there, as by a tomb stone, he dyed October ye 10th 1700."

About 1680, Thomas married Ann Harris, apparently the only child of Lieutenant William Harris, a former British Army officer who was in Stafford County in the 1660s, and whose will of 1698 left all of his land to his Owsley grandchildren. About 1703, Ann was married to John West, by whom she had two sons (Hugh, John), and after his death, married for the third time in 1718 to John Wheeler. From the death of Thomas Owsley in 1700 until 1739, Ann Owsley West Wheeler is often mentioned in land records, indicating that Ann survived Thomas by many years.
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Thomas Owsley left six children:  Jane, who married James Gregg and had four sons (Thomas, James, Matthew, John) and four daughters (Lucy, Sarah, Lettice, Jemima); Ann, who married Isaac Kent and had at least one son (Isaac); Mary, of whom nothing is known; Thomas, who married 1) Ann, by whom he had one son (Thomas), and 2) Ann Hudson, by whom he had six sons (Thomas, John, William, Newdigate, Poyntz, Weldon) and four daughters (Sarah, Ann, Elizabeth, Jane); Poyntz, of whom nothing further is known; and Sarah, of whom nothing further is known.
 
First Mississippi Company Member: Susan Clark Slaymaker
    

Arthur, the son of William and Susannah (Burnet) Mosely, was born in about 1636 in Delft, Zuid-Holland, The Netherlands, and came to Virginia with his parents in 1649 at age 13. His portrait, painted when Arthur was age 10 or 11 by an unknown artist in Rotterdam, was brought to America by the family. The actual portrait, missing since the early 1900’s, shows him with dark eyes and hair.  His father, who owned a plantation on the Elizabeth River, died in 1655, leaving Arthur his plantation and property on Broad Creek, where Arthur lived until he moved to Norfolk town in 1690.

Arthur married twice and possibly a third time, and which of his eleven children belong to each wife is not known.  The children by his first wife, Sarah Joan Hancock, whom he married about 1600, may have been the mother of Arthur (c. 1661 - c. 1728), William (c. 1663 - c. 1714), Edward (c. 1667 -1715), George (c. 1671 - 1718), Susanna (c. 1673 - c. 1700), and Mary Ann (c. 1674 - c. 1722). When Sarah Moseley died between 1665 and 1677, Arthur married Anne Hargrave before June 5, 1678.  Anne Hargrave Moseley was probably the mother of five children: Joseph (1680 - 1712/13), Benjamin (1682 - 1717), Amos (c. 1685 - after 1746), Anthony (c. 1689 - c. 1735), and Luke (1690 - 1742).  Arthur Moseley’s will, dated 1 Feb 1700 and proved in 1702, mentions not only all the children above but also Benjamin, Arthur, George and Amos.  Arthur's damaged will does not list his children chronologically, making it difficult to place each wife with her children.

In 1676 at the time of Bacon’s Rebellion, Arthur became a Burgess for Lower Norfolk, was licensed to keep an Ordinary in Norfolk Town, and appears to have served intermittently as a justice of the peace for many years. Before 17 Sep 1692, he was forced to become a naturalized British citizen to make the titles for his land, originally purchased while he was an alien, official.

The Moseley's were one of the most prominent families in Virginia in the 17th century and owned what was, perhaps, the largest and most interesting collection of (family) portraits in Virginia.
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First Mississippi Company Descendant of Arthur Moseley: Charles David Hill
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