​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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​Twenty-seventh in a series of biographical sketches whose descendants belong to the First Mississippi Company; in honor of the 400th anniversary of the July 30, 1619, meeting of the first representative governmental body in America at the 1617 Church on Jamestown Island

Twenty-sixth in a series of biographical sketches whose descendants belong to the First Mississippi Company; in honor of the 400th anniversary of the July 30, 1619, meeting of the first representative governmental body in America at the 1617 Church on Jamestown Island
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Born in Henrico County about 1647, Peter Field married Judith Soane Randolph, the widow of Henry Randolph, on 21 Oct 1678 in Charles City County, VA.  Judith, born about 1646 in England, was the daughter of Henry Soane II and Judith Fuller who emigrated to Virginia about 1651. 

Peter named his home in Henrico County Curtis Plantation, located on the James River.  According to the 1678 levy, he was assessed with seven tithables. The children of Peter and Judith Soane Field were Mary Field Jefferson (1679-1715) and Martha Field Archer (1680/81-1776). Peter became the Justice of the Peace in Henrico County (1683-85, 1688, 1691, 1692, 1695, 1696, 1699, 1704, 1705) and also served as a major in the colonial militia, as the High Sheriff of Henrico in 1682, and as a Burgess from Henrico in 1688 and 1693.

Peter was the guardian of Henry Randolph II, child born to Henry Randolph I and Judith Soane Randolph, now wife of Peter Field.  On 1 Apr 1681, Peter Field entered into a law suit with Robert Marr and Evan Bellenger concerning land boundaries as the guardian of Henry Randolph II.

​In a letter dated 1 Aug 1694, Peter refers to William Soane has his “brother,” meaning brother-in-law.  Peter Field moved to New Kent County shortly before he died, where his death was recorded as 24 July 1707 in the New Kent Parish Register with his burial on 29 July.

On 1 Mar 1708/09 there is a deed recorded from Thomas Jefferson and his wife Mary, daughter of Major Peter Field, late of New Kent.  And in August 1711, there is a deed from John Archer and Martha, his wife, to William Randolph for 961 acres left to Martha by the will of Peter Field, gentleman.

First Mississippi Company Descendant of Peter Field: Charles David Hill