Follow Us
Like Us
Historical records matching Colonel William Fitzhugh, "The Immigrant"
view all
Immediate Family
-
wife -
-
daughter
-
-
son
-
-
son
-
mother -
father -
sister
About Colonel William Fitzhugh, "The Immigrant"
"William (The Immigrant) Fitzhugh came to America about 1674 (or 1670 depending on who you believe). He was well educated, a shrewd businessman, a lawyer, and was religious. His church was the established church of England. The only thing he regretted about America was the lack of good schools. He wrote: "Good education of children is almost impossible and better be never born than ill bred." He owned 54,000 acres or more of land with four big houses on them. The houses were Eagle's Nest, Bedford, Bellaire, and Boscobel. (I need to look up the documentation for this.) William Fitzhugh came to Westmoreland County, a young lawyer whose family may have been descended from the Fitzhughs, barons of Ravensworth. The family coat of arms had been recorded in 1566 and if his view of life was thus somewhat baronial there was nothing in the new world to stand in the way of achieving his ideal. Lord Culpepper before him had laid claim to all of the Northern Neck of Virgina and had proved his claim and Robert Carter after him was to carve an actual Kingdom from the new territory. (We now know that it's the wrong coat of arms and have no proof that he was descended from the barons of Ravensworth.) William Fitzhugh married Sarah Tucker of Westmoreland and moved to Stafford County where he built Bedford on the Potomac. He practiced law, served in the House of Burgesses and was a Lt. Col. in the Stafford militia. He was also agent for the Fairfaxes who inherited the Northern Neck from Lord Culpeper. It was during this tenure that he confirmed the grant of Ravensworth in what was then upper Stafford County. He had bought the grant from a man named John Matthews in 1685 and had it re granted and finally confirmed by 1694. His was 21,996 acres paralleling the (John) Alexander grant, later Alexandria, and covering the approximate territory from what is now part of Falls Church to Pohink Church and from the present Fairfax Court House almost to Alexandria. Colonel Fitzhugh was not, as some of the historical novelists would have us believe our forefathers were, unscrupulous, brash, and fascinatingly immoral. The records indicate that he was religious, honest, and a fine lawyer, quoted the Scriptures while pleading a case. He was very sympathetic to French Huguenots who fled France when the Edict of Nantes was revoked by Louis XIV. Unlike the Sun King, he looked upon them as the most desirable of citizens and offered them land to settle."
At his death Colonel Fitzhugh left approximately 50,000 acres of land in Virginia besides property in Maryland and England to his five sons and one daughter. The Ravensworth tract was divided between two sons, Henry and William, Henry receiving 12,585 acres to the north and William a little over 9,000 to the south.
In addition to serving in the House of Burgesses, he managed his own estate, was a leading lawyer and Queen's Counsel, a Lieutenant Colonel of the Stafford Militia, a tobacco planter, politician, and a Justice of Stafford County Court.
Arrived in Virginia 1670
“The Stronghold" by Miriam Haynie. This is about the Northern Neck of Virginia:
“William Fitzhugh, the owner of Bedford, came to Virginia in 1670.He secured a grant of land in the upper Neck, in what later became King George County. He married 'little Sarah Tucker' of Tucker Hill when she was only eleven years old, and then sent her to England to be educated. Sarah and William reared a family of five sons. Colonel Fitzhugh became one of the largest landowners in the Northern Neck. At the time of his death in 1701 he owned 54,054 acres of land."
Fitzhugh genealogy site claims William the Immigrant married an eleven year old girl in Virginia, even though as recently as eight months earlier he had a wife in England named Elizabeth. Careful research shows that she died on the sea crossing, like many others before her. William married an eleven year old girl, Sarah Tucker, with whom he had an affectionate, loving, and respectful relationship for the rest of their lives. They had seven children, of whom four sons, Thomas, Henry, George, and John left descendants living today with the name Fitzhugh.
Slaveowner
Owned at least 51 slaves at the time of his death.
From the Will of William Fitzhugh, The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Volume 2, pg 278
"The inventory of Colonel William Fitzhugh's estate includes 51 negroes and mulattoes, and 6 English servants."
Family
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/37485058/william-fitzhugh
William Fitzhugh married Sarah Tucker on 01 May 1674 in Westmoreland Co, Virginia. William and Sarah had SEVEN children (that are known of):
- A daughter who died in infancy,
- William Fitzhugh (1677-1713), married Anne Lee; born 1683; died 1732.
- Rosamond "Rose" Fitzhugh (1680 - )
- Henry Fitzhugh (1686-1758), married Susannah Cooke
- Thomas Fitzhugh (1689-1719),
- George Fitzhugh (1690-1722),
- John Fitzhugh (1692-1733)
Sons William (eldest), Henry, Thomas, George, and John are mentioned in William Fitzhugh’s 1700 will (in that order, clearly by age), as well as wife Sarah, but no daughters are named. The younger sons had not yet reached 18 by the date of a 20 Oct 1701 codicil.
References
- Colonial Virginians and Their Maryland Relatives: A Genealogy of the Tucker Family and Also the Families of Allen, Blackistone, Chandler, Ford, Gerard, Harmor, Hume, Monroe, Skaggs, Smith, Stevesson, Stone, Sturman, Thompson, Ward, Yowell, and Others. Norma Tucker. (2009) GoogleBooks page 40
- Book Title: The ancestors and descendants of Colonel David Funsten and his wife Susan Everard Meade. Page 34. AncestryImage
- https://www.colonial-settlers-md-va.us/getperson.php?personID=I2390...
- Historical Society of Fairfax Co., VA Vol. 3 1954)
- http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=37485058
- https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Fitzhugh-325
- http://www.fitzhugh-genealogy.com/?page_id=74
- https://vahistorypodcast.com/2021/03/28/first-families-of-virginia-...
- C. A. FitzHugh. “The Fitzhugh Family.” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 40(2), 187-204. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4244454
- “The Fitzhugh Family.” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 7, no. 2 (1899): 196–99. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4242247.
- The Fitzhugh Family (Continued).” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 7, no. 3, 1900, pp. 317–319. JSTOR, http:// www.jstor.org/stable/4242268.
- The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Volume 2, pg 278 [https://books.google.com/books?id=ftZGKjweBUgC]
view all 11
Colonel William Fitzhugh, "The Immigrant"'s Timeline
| 10 |
10
|
Bedford, England
|
|
| 1651 |
January 9, 1651
|
Bedford, Bedford, England (United Kingdom)
|
|
| 1679 |
1679
|
Eagles Nest, Stafford, Virginia, USA
|
|
| 1680 |
1680
|
“Eagle’s Nest”, Stafford County, Virginia, United States
|
|
| 1687 |
January 15, 1687
|
Eagles Nest, King George, Virginia, USA
|
|
| 1688 |
1688
|
Stafford, Virginia, USA
|
|
| 1690 |
1690
|
Stafford County, Province of Virginia
|
|
|
1690
|
Bedford, Stafford, Virginia, United States
|
||
| 1701 |
October 21, 1701
Age 50
|
Bedford, Stafford County, Virginia, British Colonial America
|