FOX-L Archives

From: "Judith Ancell" <>
Subject: [FOX] Helpful data for the website
Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2000 08:11:57 -0700

Don and All,
Here are some Fox transcriptions that I thought might be helpful for the FoxHounds pages.
Judith
GENEALOGIES OF VIRGINIA FAMILIES From the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography; pages 158-159 and 476-478.
page 158 see footnote under Bowler Cocke*
*The FOXES of King William, are a very old family. Henry Fox married Anne West daughter of Governor John West, son of Thomas, second Lord de la War. Captain David FOX was a Burgess from Lancaster in 1692, and William FOX represented the county in 1702.


Meade, Bishop William, Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia; Philadelphia, 1857; Vol I:

Page 328-29: ARTICLE XXVIII. Gloucester County, Abington, and Ware. __ No. 2.
"I take these two together, since they have so long been identified in the public mind, so long under one minister, and so little to be said of them, though so much might be said, had we any ancient records. The following letter from the Rev. Mr. Mann, the present rector, forbids the hope of ever recovering what is lost in regard to these parishes: --
'My Dear Bishop: -- Nothing has astonished me more in this county than the utter ignorance of the people as to the early history of the Church. All our records of former times are lost, -- the church registers, with the county records, by the burning of the court-house many years since. The late Dr. Taliafero told me that the first church in Ware parish stood on Mr. William P. Smith's land, where there is an old graveyard, and near to which was the gleb. The parish church of Ware is built on lands granted to the parish by the Throckmorton family, -- the female ancestors of the Taliaferos; when erected no one knows. On the outside of the church is the tombstone of the Rev. James Black, a native of England, and many years minister of Ware parish. He died in 1723. On the inside near the chancel, are the tombstones of the Rev. John Richards and his wife, and their beloved servant Amy. Mr. Richards died was once rector of Ware in 1735. Adjoining these is a stone erected by!
the Rev. John Fox over his wife, who died in 1742, and two of his children, who died in 1742 and 1743. The Rev. James Maury Fontaine was once minister of this parish and kept a school near it. [Note: There is no mention of this minister in the history of the Maury and Fontaine families by Dr. Hawks and Miss Ann Maury; but we doubt not he was one of them, --probably the son of Mr. James Fontaine, one of the five brothers, and who settled in King William.] The Rev. Mr. Smith, father of Mr. W. P. Smith and colonel Thomas Smith, and of the first Mrs. Colonel Tompkins and the First Mrs. Tom Tabb, held the church, I believe, until his death, preaching in all the churches of this county and Mathews. Then came a vacancy, and with it the desolation and destruction of the building, which continued until Rev. Mr. Carnes took charge of it, when it was repaired by the exertions of Colonel Thomas Smith, Mr. Tom Tabb, Dr. Taliafero, and others, and remained as they left it until last yea!
r, (1854,) when a new roof was put upon it, and the inside altered and improved......
In the year of 1754 and 1758 the Rev. William Gates was minister of Abington, and the Rev. John FOX of Ware parish. In the years 1773-4 and 1776 the Rev. Thomas Price was minister of Abington, and the Rev. James M. Fontaine of Ware.
..... In the absence of all records from which to draw the names of vestrymen, and thus ascertain who have been the leading families, from the earliest to the present times, in the parishes of Abington and Ware, we furnish the following imperfect list of families known to us, or mentioned to us by one who is better acquainted with the history of the old settlers."

Page 352-353: Gloucester. -- No. 4. Supplement to the Articles on Gloucester.
"The Tombs at Carter's Creek, or Fairfield.
My next visit was to the old seat of the Burwells, about two miles from Rosewell, on Carter's Creek, and in full view of York River. It was formerly called Fairfield, and is so marked on Bishop Madison's map of Virginia. It has for sometime past been Called Carter's Creek only. The house, as appears by figures on one of the walls, was built either in 1684 or 1694. A portion of it has been taken down: the rest is still strong and likely to endure for no little time to come. The graveyard is in a pasture-lot not far from the house. Being unenclosed, it is free to all the various animals which belong to a Virginia farm. Hogs, sheep, cows, and horses, have free access to it; and as there is a grove of a few old trees overshadowing it, the place is a favourite resort in summer. The tombs are very massive. The slabs on which the inscriptions are engraved are of the same heavy ironstone or black marble with those at Rosewell, Timberneck, and Bellfield, of which we have spok!
en. The framework underneath them has generally given way, and they lie in various positions about the ground. A large honey-locust, around which several of them were placed, having attained its maturity, was either blown down by the wind or struck by lightning, and fell across them, breaking one of the largest into pieces. The young shoots of the tree, springing up, have now themselves become trees of considerable size, and afford shade for inanimate tombs and living beasts. None of the family have for a long time owned this ancient seat........
Copies of inscriptions on the tombstones of Ware Church, which stones were covered by the erection of a new chancel-floor in said church in June, 1854.
.......
IV
"Here lyeth the body of Isabel, daughter of Mr. Thomas Booth, wife of Rev. John FOX, minister of this parish; who with exemplary patience having borne various afflictions, and with equal piety discharged her several duties on earth, cheerfully yielded to mortality, exchanging the miseries of this life for the joys of a glorious eternity, on the 13th day of June, in the year of our Lord MDCCXLII., of her age 38." [Note: 1742. Also, the above mentioned Mr. Thomas Booth appears to be the same as the Thomas Booth (Sr./Jr.?), of Petsworth parish, Gloucester Co., VA.]

V
"Here also lie the bodies of Mary and Susannah, daughters of the above mentioned John and Isabel. The one departed this life on the 5th day of September 1742, in the 4th year of her age; the other on the 8th of October, in the 3d year of her age, MDCCXLII." [Note: 1742]"

Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia; Bishop William Meade; Philadelphia, 1857; Genealogical Publishing Company Reprint (1995);
Vol II:
ARTICLE XLVIII. Parishes in Amelia, Nottoway, and Prince Edward.
Notes on Joseph Eggleston, Sen.
"Joseph Eggleston, Sen. moved to Amelia county in 1758 or '59, as shown by the baptism of his third child by the Rev. John FOX, in Ware parish, Gloucester county in 1758, and of his forth child by the Rev. John Brunskill, in Raleigh parish, Amelia county in 1759, as recorded in his Bible, now in the posession of his family......."

Page 126-127:
"....... The coat of arms of Colonel William Ball, who came from England with his family about the year 1650, and settled at the mouth of Corotoman River, in Lancaster county, Virginia, and died in 1669, leaving two sons, William and Joseph, and one daughter Hannah, who married Daniel FOX.......
P.S. -- Since the above was written I have received a communication from a friend who has looked into the earliest records of Lancaster county, when Middlesex and Lancaster were one. They go back to 1650. A few years after this the court appointed the Rev. Samuel Cole the minister of the whole county on both sides of the river. This is the same minister who appears on the vestry-book for Middlesex in the year 1664. The court also appointed churchwardens and sidesmen, as in the English Church, on both sides of the river. They were John Taylor, William Clapham, John Merryman, Edmund Lurin, George Kibble, and William Leech. other names also appear on the records, as Thomas Powell, Cuthbert Powell, Edward Digges, W. Berkeley, Robert Chewning, Henry Corbyn, David FOX, John Washington, of Westmoreland. In the year 1661, a general vestry is formed and Mr. John Carter, Henry Corbyn, David FOX, and William Leech are appointed to take up subscriptions for the support of the minis!
ter. They were chosen from each side of the river. An instance is recorded at this early period of a man being fined five thousand pounds of tobacco by the court for profane swearing."

Page 496: Appendix: No. XXV. Blissland Parish, New Kent County.
"Since the first edition of this book I have received a fragment of the vestry-book of this parish, beginning in the year 1721, and ending in 1786. During this period of sixty-five years, there were only three ministers: the Rev. Daniel Taylor, who continued from 1721 to 1729; the Rev. Chickerley Thacker, from 1729 to 1763; the Rev. Price Davies, from 1763 to 1786. Their continuance in office for such periods speaks well for their character. The Rev. Mr. Davies was one selected by the House of Burgesses to take part in the services at Williamsburg, at the beginning of the Revolutionary struggle, -- which indicates his patriotic principles. The services of the ministers of this parish are supposed to have been divided between Warren Church, so called from the swamp of that name about ten miles below New Kent Court-House, which has entirely disappeared, and Hickory Neck Church, in James City county, which is still standing though no used by Episcopalians. We hear of some m!
ovement towards the re-establishment of Episcopal worship there. It is about ten miles distant from Williamsburg, and was sometimes visited by Bishop Madison. Eltham, the seat of the Bassetts, in New Kent, was within this parish, and the Honourable Burwell Bassett, as well as his father, William Bassett, were long the vestrymen of it. The following is a list of names of the vestry men from 1721 to 1786: -- Bassett, Thornton, Slater, Cox, Morris, Richardson, Alderley, Armstead, Keeling, Holdcroft, Kenney, Hockaday, Doran, Williams, Woodward, Dickson, Allen, Mackain, Sherman, Clough, Henley, RADCLIFFE, Terrell, James Hogg, Power, Goddin, Macon, Dandridge, Hankin, Prince, Russell, Timberlake, Bridges, Lewis Baker. In the above, how many of the families in Virginia and elsewhere may find the names of their ancestors!"

Judith Weeks Ancell
1810 Edgecliff Terrace
Boise, ID 83702-2911

This thread:

• [FOX] Helpful data for the website by "Judith Ancell" <>