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John Thomas, of Queen's Creek
Objectives
- To reconcile the Geni presentation and pedigree with "other documented resources"
- Document & supplement any corrections needed to the geni tree
Conclusions
- The traditional pedigree and geni tree seemed valid, other source documents pose questions to validity
- The geni tree will be corrected to conform to other valid sources, if data proves valid
The traditional pedigree:
From http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/NCBERTIE/2000-05/0957...
JOHN THOMAS was born Abt. 1585 in Carmarthenshire, Wales,England/Carmarthenshire Co., Wales, and died Bef. 1653 in York County,
Virginia. He married DOROTHY. She was born in Carmarthenshire, Wales,England/Carmarthenshire Co., Wales.
Children of JOHN THOMAS and DOROTHY are:
- Mark
- John
- William
- Phillip
- Richard
Quick reference:
John Thomas, of Queen's Creek born between 1585 and 1590 in Caramarthenshire, Wales
and died 1653 in Queen's York, Virginia.
He married Dorothy Thomas 1620 in Virginia. She was born c1585 in Carmarthenshire, Wales and died C1653 in probably Queen's Creek, York, Virginia.
Children of John Thomas and Dorothy:
Summary
From Geni member Sean Thomas:
One of the earliest immigrants to North America with the last name Thomas was one John Thomas of Virginia Colony, whose homestead and main plantation was on Queen's Creek, just outside of James City.
While certain historical records about John Thomas of Queen's Creek are accepted, his origin is not well understood. The most common narrative is that John Thomas was an indentured servant to Samuel Sharpe, and that he immigrated from London to America with Sharpe on the Sea Venture in 1609-10.
Recent research provides clear documentation that John Thomas was actually a servant to Captain Samuel Matthews of the Matthews Plantation in James City, before later becoming a free man and a landowner. This research further reveals errors by previous researchers in linking John Thomas to Samuel Sharpe, and provides further documentation that Thomas was the servant and protege of Captain Samuel Matthews.
The objective of this project is to study the first generation immigrants of this Thomas Family of Virginia Colony, including John Thomas, William Thomas, Richard Thomas, Robert Thomas, and others, and to clarify their relationship to the second generation and subsequent generations. There is substantial documentation in the public domain for Captain Matthews and his achievements. Matthews numerous connections to the Thomas clan provide insight into these people and their history.
notes
IN 1609 JOHN THOMAS embarked on the Sea Venture in England, bound for the new colony overseas, with SIR THOMAS
GATES. The ship sailed from Plymouth, England, on 2 June that year. It was the flagship of a fleet of seven vessels and two pinnaces, a fleet called the "Third Supply" by the Virginia Company. On 24 July, about eight days from Virginia, the fleet encountered a hurricane. In his book on the family Edison H. Thomas quotes an account of the journey written by WILLIAM STRACHEY, secretary-elect of the new Virginia colony.
"A dreadful storme and hideous began to blow from out of the north-east, which swelling, and roaring as it were by fits, some houres with more violence than others, at length did bete all light from heaven, which like an hell of darkenesse turned blacke upon us, so much the more fuller of horror ... Waters like whole rivers did flood in the ayre..."
STRACHEY sent a copy of his journal back to England to his friend WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, who wrote a play titled The Tempest, using much of the journal in the play's dialogue.
The Sea Venture floundered off the coast of Isle of Bermuda, washing ashore there three days later. Nothing daunted the victims of this disaster who rallied and built two pinnacles capable of withstanding the rough seas, which they named Deliverance and Patience, and on the 24th of May 1610 they came sailing up the James River to the headquarters of the new colony with all safe on board, save LIEUT. EDWARD WATTERS and one other, who had elected to remain in the Bermudas to which they had taken a fancy. Another member of this fateful journey was JOHN ROLFE who later would marry the Indian princess POCOHONTAS.
Queen's Creek, Virginia
Dr. John Potts blazed the way by obtaining on July 12, 1632 a patent for 1,200 acres (4.9 km2) at the head of Archer's Hope Creek (later renamed College Creek), midway between the James River at Archer's Hope and the former Native American village of Chiskiack near the York River. On September 4, 1632, the General Assembly directed that the encouragement of land offered two years before to inhabitants at Chiskiack, should also be granted to all persons settling between Queen's Creek and Archer's Hope Creek.
In February, 1633, it was enacted that a fortieth part of the men in "the compasse of the forest" east of Archer's Hope and Queen's Creek to Chesapeake Bay (essentially all of the lower peninsula) should be present "before the first day of March next" at Dr. John Potts' plantation, "newlie built," to erect houses and secure the land in that quarter. Work on the palisade commenced by March 1, 1633.
comments
From Geni member Daniel Thomas Jan 2016:
"I believe John Thomas Jr's mother was named Dorothy, but he was married to Elinor Montague. Most sources list
their marriage as having taken place in 1647. John Jr's son, Richard, was born in 1629 so it is possible John Jr's first wife was Dorothy Jordan, but I think more research is required to determine the birth and death dates for Dorothy Jordan to cast her definitively as either a mother or wife to John Thomas Jr. The problem has more to do with two John Thomas names showing up in most ancestry.com trees without distinctions between John Thomas Sr and John Thomas Jr and Dorothy gets passed back and forth between the two John's. Many trees list John Thomas Sr as John David Thomas Sr which should make his son John David Thomas Jr. In any case, I feel Dorothy of Cymru no last name in Wales) may have been Dorothy Jordan through a marriage prior to her marriage with John Thomas Sr. As the story goes (as told by Rev William Thomas in "Virginia Gold"), John Thomas Sr may have fathered John Jr before leaving on the ill-fated Sea Venture that floundered onto Bermuda and was feared missing from September 1609 through May 1610. Dorothy married a British sailor who was lost, himself, at sea, leaving Dorothy widowed for a time."
From Geni user Sean Thomas March 2016:
I have been wanting to find fellow genealogists to support the review of this information, and I agree with your proposal to use this forum.
I am new to Geni and can use your assistance as a moderator.
I agree with your proposal to start a public discussion. I suggest that we title this John Thomas of Queens Creek and the Thomas clan of Virginia Colony, and some version of this.
While John Thomas of Queen's Creek is a central topic of this research, his presumed relative William Thomas and other relatives are part of this research. It is believed that my line is descended from first generation immigrant William Thomas, who is probably a cousin of John Thomas of QC.
As I looked back last night at Worth Ray's analysis of the first generation immigrants, I wondered why he had focused on the one land patent associated with the Sharpe widow. The answer is that this is the first land patent in Nugent (Cavaliers and Pioneers) that mentions John Thomas.
However, there are about a dozen headrights with the name John Thomas, and I believe that probability suggests that the majority of these headrights were generated by John Thomas Sr during return trips between Britain and Virginia. There is much circumstantial evidence to validate the narrative and timeline that I have developed, and significant published documentation.
I can provide citations and references for all of my data, and most is very readily available. A lot I can recall from memory, but in a few cases I will have to dig up the original source of my information from my digital library.
As Daniel Thomas has mentioned, there are a lot of speculative dates and places for the Thomas clan for the period 1600-1700. Unfortunately, I believe that many dates have been invented by various genealogists to justify a narrative promoted by that researcher.
I prefer to start with a clean sheet of paper and rely strictly on published records to develop a timeline for the first and second generation Thomas clan in Virginia. No names or dates or places should come directly from any family tree, though family trees may be used to find source records that can provide this information.
In this manner, I suggest that we attempt to build a detailed timeline for the Thomas clan for the period 1600-1700 based on solid documentation. I have a great deal of this accumulated already in my research, which I am happy to share with fellow researchers.
I have struggled for some time about how to document this effort. We all get so wrapped up in our family trees, that it is hard to start with a fresh sheet of paper. More importantly, there is so much information about this Thomas clan to document and connect, that it ends up being a very detailed, multi-page document.
After some thought, I remember an academic paper I have read many times about pioneer settlements in North Carolina in the 1700s, and I believe that this provides a good model for this type of documentation. This paper and other, similar genealogical works are good go-bys.
Resources
- 456. Worth S. Ray, “The Lost Tribes of North Carolina, Part IV. Old Albemarle and Its Absentee Landlords,” 1947, Reprinted for the Clearfield Co., Inc., The Genealogical Publishing Company, Baltimore, MD, 1993, pages 623-638.
- 1225. http://www.geocities.ws/guinnal/Jamestown.html
- 1192. The THOMAS and BRIDGES Story 1540 - 1840, by Edison H. Thomas. This book is out of print but much of its content, through numerous family trees, can be found on the website of the Thomas and Bridges Families History site; http://thomasandbridges.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=466.
References
- North Carolina Historical and Genealogical Register, by J. R. B. Hathaway, volumes 1, 2 1901, Edenton NC, and 3, 1965, 1970-71, 1879, 1998, 2002, Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., Baltimore MD
- Lost Tribes of North Carolina, by Worth S. Ray, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 (Old Albemarle and It's Absentee Landlords), 1947, Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., Baltimore MD
- Ray's Index and Digest to Hathaway's North Carolina Historical and Genealogical Register, by Worth S. Ray, 1956, Southern Book Company, Baltimore MD
- Cavaliers and Pioneers, by Nugent
Links
Coordinates: 37°17′44″N 76°40′0.0″W Queen's Creek is located in York County in the Virginia Peninsula area of the
Hampton Roads region of southeastern Virginia in the United States. From a point of origin near the Waller Mill Reservoir in western York County it flows northeasterly across the northern half of the Peninsula as a tributary of the York River.
As Jamestown in the Colony of Virginia was first settled by English colonists beginning in 1607 along the James River, the colonists had frequent and violent encounters with the Native Americans who had long lived there, and were increasingly squeezed out by the every-growing number of colonists, exacerbated by their cultivation of land-hungry tobacco as a cash crop to export after 1612.
Queen's Creek first came into a significant role in the colony as an important part of an important fortification in the 1630s. The idea of a palisade or fortification across the peninsula was discussed as early as 1611. But, during the era of the marriage of colonist John Rolfe and Native Princess Pocahontas, who were married in 1614, there was a period of peaceful relations with the Natives, and nothing was immediately done in furtherance of the suggestion.
The idea of building a palisade was renewed around 1623, following the Indian Massacre of 1622. At that time, of the settlers in Martin's Hundred at Wolstenholme Towne, situated on the James about 6 miles (9.7 km) below Jamestown, seventy-three were slain, and the survivors were so alarmed and weakened that the settlement was temporarily abandoned. Governor Francis Wyatt and his Council wrote to the Earl of Southampton that they had under consideration a plan of "winning the forest" by running a pale between the James and York.
- http://heathcock.org/genealogy/ps10/ps10_208.html
- http://members.tripod.com/randy_t/johnthomas.html
- http://queenslake.net/our-community/history/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen%27s_Creek#17th_century:_anchori...
- http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cotton_Ann_fl_1650s-1670s#start... "Anne Cotton of Queen's Creek"
- https://dcms.lds.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE9515...
- https://dcms.lds.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE934210
- https://archive.org/details/cavalierspioneer00nuge
- https://dcms.lds.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE2063...
- http://www.virtualjamestown.org/Muster/search.muster.cgi?start_page...
- http://www.packrat-pro.com/ships/southampton.htm
- https://archive.org/stream/cavalierspioneer00nuge/cavalierspioneer0... shows William Sharpe paid for fare for John Thomas
Timeline
- 1585-1590 Birth of John Thomas and Dorothy of Cymru in Caramarthenshire, Wales
- 1609- John Thomas embarked on Sea Venture in England
- 6/2/1609 Sea Venture set sail from Plymouth, England
- 7/24/1609 Sea Venture encounters hurricane
- 7/25/1609 Sea Venture washes ashore in Bermuda
- 5/10/1610 Survivors of the Sea Venture boarded the Deliverance and Patience
- 5/23/1610 Arrival of Deliverance and Patience in Virginia
- c 1611 Birth of John Thomas, Jr.
- c 1612 Birth of Phillip Thomas
- c 1614 Birth of Richard Thomas
- c 1617 Birth of Mark Thomas
- c 1625 Birth of William Thomas
- 1653 Death of John Thomas and Dorothy of Cymru
this project is a HistoryLink project
