I am constantly amazed at the diversity of mother’s ancestors. Arriving in America from as early as the early 1600s, they were English, Scottish, Scots-Irish, Dutch, German, French, Welsh, and maybe one Native American. They came together in what I’m calling Greater Virginia.1 The other colonies don’t seem to have had this much diversity, with Pennsylvania and little New Jersey may be being the most similar.
“The “melting pot” began to boil in the colonial period, so effectively that Gov. William Livingston, three-fourths Dutch and one-fourth Scottish, described himself as an Anglo-Saxon. As the other elements mingled with the English, they became increasingly like them; however, all tended to become different from the inhabitants of “the old country.” By 1763 the word “American” was commonly used on both sides of the Atlantic to designate the people of the 13 colonies.”2
A lot of these ancestors did not originally arrive in Virginia. Many, probably most, of the Scots-Irish arrived in Pennsylvania, as did a lot of the Quakers. My Dutch ancestors arrived in New York when it was a Dutch colony and then migrated to New Jersey, and finally to Virginia. The French Huguenots arrived in Virginia. Many, probably most, of the English and Welsh in Virginia originally arrived in Virginia or Maryland.
Why did they come to Virginia from Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey? Until the start of the American Revolution, settlers were not allowed to settle on the western side of the Appalachians so later settlers to these areas moved south for cheaper land. South was my Greater Virginia.
Many, probably most, of my ancestors moved during their lifetime. One reason was many had very large families, so they could not split up the land they had among all the children. Hence many of the children moved on. Sometimes still within what is now Virginia, but also to North Carolina and, later, Kentucky. They often seem to have moved in groups, both with and without the parents. I was at first surprised when a middle aged man’s family would move, for example, from Virginia to Kentucky, but I decided it was to give the children more opportunity, including the ones who were not yet of age. They could sell their land and buy more land for that same money on the frontier. Although they tended to move in family and community groups, they also found new friends and neighbors at their new homes, and they were often people who had a different background than themselves.
And now for our first example. Pierre Morriset was born in 1675 in LaRochelle, France. During that period the Protestants in France (called Huguenots) were being forced to convert to Catholicism. Many chose instead to leave the country. So Pierre arrives in Jamestown, Virginia, on The Mary and Ann on the 31st of July 1700. He marries another Huguenot in the Huguenot community in Virginia. In 1820 David Morriset Gordon, his second great grandson, marries Elizabeth Routt in Clark County, Kentucky. Elizabeth Routt is a descendant of Thomas Keene. Thomas Keene was born in 1593 in England and arrived at Kent Island, Maryland some time between 1618 and 1635.
Michael Daugherty was born in Northern Ireland of Scottish ancestry. In 1690 he immigrated to Pennsylvania. In Kentucky in 1798 his great granddaughter Elizabeth Daugherty married Joseph Robert Baber. The Babers were from England.
In 1756 in Frederick County, Virginia, my 6th great grandfather Thomas Doster married Mary Crumley. Both of them were born in Pennsylvania and both sets of families had moved to Virginia. The Doster family was from Germany and the Crumleys were Quakers from England.
Aaron Van Cleave’s ancestors included Vanderbilt and his wife’s ancestors included Cowenhowen (which later became Conover). The Van Cleaves arrived in New Amsterdam (now New York) in 1653 from Holland. Aaron was born about 1711 on Staten Island. He and a brother operated a shipping company, but the business got in trouble and they moved to North Carolina. There his son Ralph married Lydia Combs. Lydia’s grandfather was born in New York State, but her father and Lydia were born in New Jersey. The Combs family was probably from England. In North Carolina, Jane Van Cleave marries Nathan Chapman. This Chapman family was in Maryland in the early 1600s and probably was English.
Nathaniel Davis was believed to have been Quaker from Wales and believed to have married a half Native American woman. My line of Davis ancestors includes a Lewis (English), a Joplin (English), a Tyler (English), and we lose the Davis name when Delila Davis marries John Baber (also English) in 1822 in Kentucky.
The melting pot continued in Missouri. About 1851 George Washington Ratliff married Nancy McGee whose ancestors were Scotch-Irish. The Ratliffs were from England and although we don’t know the origins of most of the rest of George Washington’s ancestors, I think most of them were from England.
References:
● Migration Routes from Pennsylvania to Virginia
● Middle Colonies Form A Great Melting Pot
● Is America a Melting Pot or a Mixing Bowl?
● Colonial Virginia
- The area I’m including is sometimes called the Upper South: Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Tennessee. ↩︎
- American Colonies in Britannica ↩︎