Gloucester County, Virginia
This is what the official website of Gloucester County has to say about its history (https://www.gloucesterva.info/151/History-of-Gloucester-County ):
“The history of Gloucester County began soon after the settlement of Jamestown in 1607. Named for Henry, Duke of Gloucester, third son of Charles I, Gloucester County figured prominently in the history of the colony and the Commonwealth of Virginia. When English settlers arrived at Jamestown in 1607, the Indian stronghold of Chief Powhatan was located on the north side of the river in Gloucester. It was here that Powhatan built his home, Werowocomoco. According to legend, his daughter, the Princess Pocahontas saved the gallant Captain John Smith from a tragic death at the hands of the Indians, and thus, entered the pages of Virginia’s history.
“Early land patents were granted in 1639, but it was not until after 1644 that Gloucester was considered safe for settlement. George Washington’s great grandfather received a Gloucester County land patent in 1650. Gloucester County was formed from York County in 1651, and consisted of four parishes: Abingdon, Kingston, Petsworth and Ware. Kingston parish became Mathews County in 1791.
“In the 1600s and 1700s, Gloucester was a tobacco producing area, and many old plantation homes and magnificent private estates remain today in perfect condition. In the seventeenth century, the tip of land protruding into the York River, across from Yorktown, was named Tyndall’s Point by Robert Tyndall, mapmaker for Captain John Smith. Later named Gloucester Point, fortifications were built here in 1667, and were rebuilt and strengthened may times from colonial days through the Civil War. This site is also known as the “Second Surrender” by General Charles Lord Cornwallis to General George Washington at Yorktown.”
Evolution of Boundaries of Gloucester County
The boundaries of Gloucester County have not changed dramatically over the 400 years of its existence. Because of its location on the Chesapeake Bay, and because it was settled and organized early during Virginia’s colonial era, it was not impacted by the western expansion, both within Virginia and beyond, that forced many boundary changes. The following maps illustrate how the boundaries of Gloucester County have changed over the years. (These maps are taken from https://www.mapofus.org).
A (Very) Little History
The history of Gloucester County in the 17th century is indistinguishable from the course of Virginia history at that time. The seat of power in the colony was at Jamestown, across the York River and 20 miles away from Gloucester.
Gloucester was too far from Jamestown for landowners to make a daily trek to Jamestown – as a rule of thumb, a trip that takes an hour today would have taken a day in the 17th century, and Gloucester is about a 30-minute drive from Jamestown. Abingdon Episcopal Church in Gloucester County was established in 1650 as one of only eight churches in colonial Virginia, and it is still a vibrant church today. Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson almost certainly worshipped here, probably at the same service.
Warner Hall, a plantation home established in 1642 by George Washington’s 2nd great-grandfather, Augustine Warner, operates today as a country inn in Gloucester County. This is where Washington’s great-grandmother Mildred Warner grew up. Jefferson spent many nights in Gloucester at Rosewell, the home of his friend John Page; this house burned in 1916 but its ruins are the site of ongoing archeological research.
As an agricultural colony whose economic well-being was based on the successful export of its cash crop, tobacco, the first century of Virginia’s existence was characterized by constant efforts to balance the economic interests of the wealthy landowners, the desire for independence of the indentured servants, and the continued growth of a slave-based workforce. These tensions came to a head in the 1660s and 1670s, and these events impacted Gloucester County and the rest of Tidewater Virginia.
Following an unsuccessful uprising of indentured servants in York County (across the York River from Gloucester) in 1661, similar unrest led to The Gloucester County Conspiracy, also known as the Servants’ Plot or Birkenhead’s Rebellion, in 1663. What follows is based on a summary from the Encyclopedia of Virginia: https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Gloucester_County_Conspiracy_1663#start_entry.
In September of 1663, a group of nine indentured servants in Gloucester hatched a plan to recruit more men to their ranks and find weapons to challenge the power of the landowners. Their ultimate goal was to attack the mansion of Governor Sir William Berkeley – Green Spring (near Jamestown and less than a mile from my house) and to demand that the terms of their indentures be reduced and that they would be free to get land of their own. However, their plot was betrayed by a servant, and Berkeley arranged for the conspirators to be ambushed at their meeting place. Four of the plotters were hanged for their activities.
To understand what happened next, it is important to see how the expanding demand for land among English indentured servants impacted the Native populations in Virginia and throughout many other colonies as well. King Philip’s War (1675-1676) in New England provided a warning to the leaders of colonial Virginia. Coupled with the restlessness of the indentured servants, the threat of attacks from hostile native tribes unsettled Virginia’s leaders. The 1663 Gloucester County Conspiracy was followed a decade later by a more famous plot, which came to be called Bacon’s Rebellion. Nathaniel Bacon, a relative newcomer to the colony, was an overseer on a James River plantation in Henrico county, near Richmond at the falls of the James River. He became the leader of a rebel group demanding better treatment of indentured servants and better protection against Indians on the frontier, which is what Richmond was at the time. When Berkeley refused to meet these demands, violence ensued.
Gloucester County was the location for some of this violence; Bacon focused his activities against the Pamunkey Indians in Dragon Swamp, which forms part of the border between the Virginia counties of King and Queen, Middlesex, and Gloucester. Bacon’s savage actions against the Pamunkey Indians there led Governor Berkeley to recruit an army of mercenaries on Virginia’s Eastern Shore (across the Chesapeake Bay from Gloucester County) to lead an attack against Bacon and his followers. Bacon’s forces then attacked Jamestown, burning it to the ground in September of 1676. However, Bacon died unexpectedly of dysentery just a month later, and the rebellion collapsed. In a final link to Gloucester County, Bacon died at Gloucester Hall, the home of colonial leader John Pate. John’s son, Thomas Pate, was an officer in the militia gathered by Bacon. Gloucester Hall is no longer standing, but it was near the current location of the county seat, Gloucester Courthouse.
My Ancestors in Gloucester County
At first glance, this small set of ancestors hardly merits attention. But these people provide me access to some of the most significant actors in colonial Virginia – the Madisons, Pendletons, and Gaineses – so I want to tell their story.
I’ll start with the story of my 10th great-grandfather Thomas Todd (1619-1675). Thomas was born in England and appears to have come to Virginia after the death of his father Geoffrey Todd (1589-1637) in 1637. Thomas is first mentioned in records in Virginia in 1642, when he was living in York County. By 1656, Thomas had purchased land in Gloucester County. His house, Toddsbury is still serving as a private home today. Thomas married Anne Gorsuch (1638-1695) in the early 1650s, and they went on to have 10 children in Gloucester County, including my 9th great-grandmother Isabella Minor Todd (1670-1706) (their youngest child), before moving to Maryland 1674. Thomas served as a Burgess in Baltimore County from 1674-1675.
In 1675, Thomas embarked on a trip to England on his ship Virginia. The route of this merchant trip went the “long way around” to get to England by way of Indonesia. Thomas died on board ship during this trip. The “Find-A-Grave” memorial for him notes the following:
“Died at sea. Near Sulawesi Tengah, Indonesia, aboard the “Virginia” (A ship that he owned) which was bound for London, England; Buried in Anne Arundel, North Parish, Patapsco River, Maryland, American Colonies.”
Anne Gorsuch has an interesting story as well. She was the eighth of 13 children born to John and Anne Bourne Lovelace Gorsuch in Walkern, Hertfordshire, England. John is always identified as “Reverend John Gorsuch,” and he served a church in Walkern. He was an ardent supporter of King Charles I in the growing tension between the King and the Church in the 1630s. Because of his beliefs, he was evicted from his church in the 1640s; he was killed in 1647 during the English Civil War. Anne’s mother, also named Anne, came to Virginia with seven of her children, including Anne 1638, in the early 1650s.
As a side note – if the “Gorsuch” name sounds familiar, that may be because Neil Gorsuch has been serving as a Supreme Court Justice since 2017. My 11th great-grandfather John Gorsuch was Neil’s 9th great-grandfather; that makes him my 10th cousin 2x removed. That probably doesn’t qualify me for a seat at the head table at any Gorsuch family wedding.
Although the rest of Anne’s story doesn’t have anything to do with Gloucester County, I want to write about it anyway. After Thomas’s death, Anne remarried in 1678, to David Jones, a well-known Welsh-born landowner in Baltimore. This marriage apparently served Anne well. She became the mistress of several properties, including the 550-acre property called Coles Harbor. This is the land currently occupied by the Inner Harbor commercial district in Baltimore. David died in Baltimore in 1686, and in his will he left his property to Anne and provided additional bequests to Anne’s children.
Anne married a third time after David’s death, this time to John Oldton. John was born in Walken, the ancestral home of the Gorsuch family, and apparently moved to Maryland sometime in the middle of the 17th century. I can’t find any indication that John married or had children before he married Anne.
The youngest child born to Thomas and Anne was Isabella Minor Todd (1670-1706), who was born at Toddsbury in Gloucester County, the home that Thomas built for his family in the 1660s before they moved to Maryland. As a side note, Toddsbury passed into the hands of Thomas’s oldest son, also named Thomas, and remained in the Todd family for more than 200 years, until the 1880s, when it was sold to the Mott family.
I need to add a caveat here – some researchers question whether Isabella was actually the child of Thomas and Anne. They note that middle names were uncommon at this time in Virginia, and that it is possible that Isabella’s maiden name was “Minor,” and that she had married once before, to a man with the surname “Todd” before she married John Madison Jr. I can only find one man with the surname “Minor” in 17th century colonial Virginia – an indentured servant names John Minor who was born in 1641. If Isabella is his daughter, I can’t find any evidence of it. I don’t have information to make sense of all of this, so I’ve decided to tell this story anyway. If Isabella’s not my direct ancestor, she’s probably an aunt or cousin of some kind, and I’m still connected to the original Thomas Todd and Anne Gorsuch.
Anyway, back to Isabella. She almost certainly relocated to Baltimore when her parents did – she would have been no more than a toddler at that time. However, the family retained ties to Gloucester County, as Toddsbury remained a family property and when Isabella married, she married John Madison, Jr. (1660-1728) from neighboring King and Queen County in Virginia. I am descended from John and Isabella’s daughter, Catherine Madison (168?-1760). I am uncertain of Catherine’s birth date; some records say it was as early as 1683, which would make her mother only 13 years old when she was born. Other records say her birth was as late as 1693, which would make her only 12 years old when her first son was born. Either way it’s a problem, and I have more research to do. Catherine’s brother, Ambrose Madison, was the grandfather of James Madison, fourth president of the United States. That makes James Madison my 1st cousin 9x removed. Again, no seat at the head table for a family wedding.