Family History: Jamestown 3

Continued from last post

10. In 1640, Thomas and Elizabeth were married. That same year, they had their son, Augustine I, the first of the Shelburnes to be born in America. 

As I mentioned, Thomas died in 1676, the year of Bacon's Rebellion. Here's the story.

In that year, Nathaniel Bacon led an armed uprising against the colonial government of Virginia. The settlers on the frontier were upset that Native American tribes would conduct raids on "their" land. (Of course, it was only their land because England had said so. No one had asked the Native Americans.)

But the Governor of Virginia -- who was actually related to Bacon by marriage -- would not authorize agressive military action against the Native Americans.

But the rebellion quickly became about more than that. It became about ordinary people versus the elites. Bacon's rebellion swept in small farmers, indentured servants, and even black Virginians -- both enslaved and free. In September, they marched on Jamestown and burned the colonial capital to the ground.

But Bacon would die of dysentery, and the rebellion would collapse. The governor, a man named Berkeley, would hang 23 of the rebels. Then he was recalled to England in disgrace by the king.

Virginia's elite were shaken. The rebel army had united white and black, free and enslaved Virginians. It was a reminder of what always happens when the "little people" have had enough.

Many think 1676 was a hinge point. Distinctions between white indentured servants and black slaves became tightened legally. Those of dark skin were increasingly treated as slaves by nature rather than individuals who might work their way to freedom. The children of Africans were now born into slavery, owned by those whom their parents worked for. 

To be sure, this process had already been under way. In 1662, the slavery of a child was connected to the status of a mother rather than a father. In 1667, Christian baptism no longer implied freedom. Tobacco needed workers. This was the solution.

In 1670, roughly 80% of Virginia's unfree laborers were white indentured servants. By 1700, roughly 80% were enslaved Africans.

11. Augustine I was born in Jamestown (1640-1725). He would see the death of his father Thomas in 1676 and the death of his mother in 1702. 

From what we can tell, his wife was named Mary Mansfield (1656-1729). They would have a son named Augustine II in 1698. If these dates are correct, Augustine Sr. was 58 when Augustine Jr. was born. His mother would have been 42.

Jamestown never fully recovered from its burning during Bacon's rebellion. After the capital building burned again in 1698, the capital of Virginia was moved the next year to Williamsburg.

It is thus probably no coincidence that Augustine and Mary would move further inland about 15 miles to Blissland Parish in 1699. His mother Elizabeth would die in Williamsburg, about 10 miles east of where she had lived most of her life. 

Thus the 1600s came to an end for the Shelburnes. The oldest part of my American lineage had lived in Virginia for most of the century.

The Dutch Schencks (1500s-1600s)

About ten years ago I blogged through my family history.  Whether I will finish self-publishing it, I enjoyed writing up chapter 2 so much, I thought I'd post it here.

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1. In 1620, Roelof Martense Schenck was born in what would become the Dutch Republic. In 1650, the year that his father died, he left for America.

He was from a prominent family in the land we now call the Netherlands, with a story that we can trace back at least to the 1400s. We have sometimes assumed in the past that Schenck is German. If it were really pronounced “shank,” German would make sense.

However, as we know within the family, it should be pronounced “skank.” The skank pronunciation reflects its Dutch origins. My wife Angie married a skank. One day in our early marriage, we were watching Saturday Night Live, and in one skit Mike Myers said, “Look at those two skanks.” We looked at each other with surprise. Let’s just say she didn’t want Tom and Sophie (or her as a teacher) being skanks in the public schools. I do hope to die a skank, however.

2. There is evidence of a Wynant Schenck living in the Bleijenbeek Castle in the Netherlands in 1405. The castle was built about fifty years earlier and would generally be in Schenck possession for the next couple hundred years.

As far as our direct lineage, I can go back to the mid-1400s:

Dederick Schenck van Nydeck
Dederick II Schenck van Nydeck (1481-1525)
Dederick III Schenck van Nydeck (1514-1560)
Pieter VII Schenck van Nydeck (1547-1580)
Maarten Schenck van Nydeck (1584-1650)
Roelof Schenck van Nydeck (1620-1704)

The “van Nydeck” or “van Nydeggen” part indicates the origins of the family in Nideggen, which is currently in western Germany. This is where the family was located when they took on the last name (or surname) Schenck. At some point in the Middle Ages, people began to take on surnames. Schenck has the sense of a cupbearer or, perhaps more likely for this area, a tavern keeper. So perhaps our ancestors in 1000s Nydeggen ran a tavern, a place for food and fun.

We also must remember that the national boundaries that exist now did not exist in the late Middle Ages. The Netherlands was not a country then, nor was Germany. All this land was then part of the Holy Roman Empire, which was a vast collection of almost 2000 small states, each with a castle of its own. Although it seems crazy to us, this area of the Netherlands was even under Spanish control in the 1500s when most of the ancestors I mentioned above lived. The part of Germany in which Nideggen is located only really became German in 1713 when Prussia took it over.

This part of the Netherlands at that time was mostly the Duchy of Guelders, and most of it is still in the province of Gelderland today. If you look at where our ancestors were born, they are in this area, although Goch was in the nearby Dutchy of Cleves. This is, by the way, where the family of Vincent "van Gogh" traced back to.

Dederick II (1481-1525) – born in Bleijenbeck Castle
Dederick III (1514-1560) – Bleijenbeck Castle
Pieter VII (1547-1580) – Goch
Maarten (1584-1650) – Doesberg

3. A fun story relates to Pieter’s brother Maarten, also born in Goch (1540-1589). Like his brother, who was a general, Maarten was a military commander in the fightings of that era. He fought with the Dutch William of Orange in the fight for independence from Spain. This fight began in 1568 and would continue off and on until the Peace of Westphalia was signed in 1648 (sometimes called the Eighty Years War). At the end of that war, the Dutch Republic was finally born as an independent state. And our ancestor Roelof left for America two years after independence!

Back to Uncle Maarten. He wanted Bleijenbeek Castle for himself, so he physically took possession of it from his cousin. But the court of William of Orange legally favored his cousin. He became unpopular with William’s court. The last straw was the crushing Dutch defeat by the Spanish at the Battle of Gembloux in 1578. You can hear the Schenck in him. “Incompetent leaders. Ungrateful idiots. I want to be on the winning side.” He switched sides and fought in the Army of Flanders (Spanish side) for a few years before coming to his senses.

Whichever side he was on, he was known for daring, charisma, and occasionally, winning by cleverness and daring. It is said he could eat, drink, and sleep while riding on his horse, “and his men followed him like dogs.” Again, in good Schenck fashion, after a few years, he didn’t feel like the Spanish were treating him right and he returned to the Dutch side in 1585. He became Lieutenant Governor of Gelderland. In 1586 he was commissioned to build a fortress in a village that still exists today, Schenkenschanz.

Interestingly, my dad always thought of the plains of Westphalia, Germany, when we would drive south of Gainesville, Florida, coming home from Indiana. The land there comes down from higher ground into lowlands, and it reminded him of his time in Germany. It is interesting that he would have been that far north. The Allies took the north Rhineland and Westphalia back from the Nazis from March to May 1945. I knew he was stationed in Nancy, France, and then later in Manheim, Germany. But he must have crossed into Germany at some point in the north. He had no idea that he was not far from where his Schenck ancestors had once lived.

Maarten would seem to have been a tricky character. In a move not unlike the Trojan horse, he got into one city by disguising soldiers on a salt wagon. Maarten met an untimely death that, again, somehow seems quite appropriate for a Schenck. He was trying to take Nijmegen for the Dutch by entering the city through windows on the river Waal.

The river was flowing faster than expected because of rain, and they were not able to enter where they had planned. Half their barges overshot their goal. When they finally were able to get in some windows, they stumbled onto a wedding party that ended their hopes for a surprise attack. In a hasty retreat, he jumped into the river, where his armor and the swollenness of the river caused him to drown. When they found his body a few days later, he was decapitated, his head put on a pike, and his body quartered. He died August 10, 1589.

4. Our ancestor Roelof Schenck was Maarten’s great nephew, the grandson of Maarten’s less controversial brother Pieter. Pieter was also a general for the Dutch throughout those conflicts—the whole time. Roelof’s father married a woman in Amersfoort, Utrecht in 1619. The Dutchy of Utrecht was to the northwest of Guelders. And that is where Roelof was born in 1620.

My impression is that these Schencks were doers, not so much thinkers. Plenty of thinking was going on at the time in the Dutch region, but I’m not sure how much our ancestors paid attention. They seemed much more interested in fighting the war for independence from Spain. The parts of Dutch culture from this period that we prize today largely took place in the County of Holland to the west, where Amsterdam is located. This area was a distinct culture where the primary language spoken was Frisian.

The fight for independence put them on the Calvinist side, and the Schencks would be devoted to the Dutch Reformed Church after they arrived in America. We cannot know whether they even knew of Jacobus Arminius, who argued for the doctrine we twentieth and twenty-first-century Schencks espouse: Wesleyan-Arminianism. Arminius argued that God empowered our human wills to be able to choose or not choose God, not that God predetermined who would be saved. Arminius taught in Leiden until 1609, when he died. In the aftermath of his death, his view would be considered heresy at the Synod of Dort in 1619, where the Calvinist TULIP became the official position. Again, who knows whether our ancestors had strong opinions on such things. They might at first have mocked those silly Frisians to the west and their arguments over unimportant things.

The TULIP
Total depravity – Humans are thoroughly evil.
Unconditional Election – God chooses the saved.
Limited Atonement – Christ only died for the elect.
Irresistible Grace – You will be saved if God chooses.
Perseverance of the Saints – You will make it.

5. This was the time Rembrandt was painting, also in Leiden (1606-69). This was the age of Grotius (1583-1645), one of the greatest thinkers of the time. He was arrested and imprisoned in 1618 for being an Arminian. He escaped and finished out his life elsewhere. Baruch Spinoza was about 18 when Roelof left for America. Spinoza was an unorthodox Jewish philosopher who believed in pantheism and is often mentioned in the trio of rationalists from this time period: Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz.

Descartes himself, sometimes called the father of modernism, lived in Holland from 1629-1649. It was here that he published his famous, “I think; therefore, I am” (1637).

Our ancestor thus left the Dutch Republic for New Amsterdam in the prime of the Dutch Golden Age. If some of the greatest thinkers of the day were in Holland, Roelof headed for a new conquest in the New World. His family would prove to be foundational there as well.

Jamestown 4

continued from last week
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On June 22, 1607, a little over a month after the group had settled on the peninsula of Jamestown, Captain Newport returned to England to get more supplies and to take back some pyrite that they thought was gold. Since they left behind one of the ships, The Discovery, John Smith took it upon himself to explore the area. He found it difficult to stay put in the settlement with someone else in charge whom he didn't particularly think knew what he was doing.

On three trips in The Discovery, John Smith mapped out the area. His maps of what we call Chesapeake Bay were to serve generations to come. On one of these mapping ventures, he had his famous encounter with Powhatan. This was the incident when he said Pocahontas plead for his life. Of course he never even mentioned this version of the story until some time later. Some think he embellished the story after the fact.

While exploring a small tributary in a canoe, he and two others came under attack. He was hit by an arrow in the leg, but the natives lowered their bows when he lowered his pistol. The other two men with him were killed, as were most of those back at his main ship.

For many days, he was their prisoner. First of one of the lower kings, Opechancanough, kept him. Smith amazed them with his compass and with tales of the universe. “The earth is the center of a number of concentric circles,” he told them, “with the sun on one, the moon on another, Venus on yet another.” Either Smith had not yet heard of Copernicus or he did not believe him. The glass covering of his compass fascinated Opechancanough. The native king could see the compass needle but could not touch it. Glass was unknown to the native Americans.

On another occasion, Smith convinced them to send two natives with a notepad back to James Towne. The message was that he was being well treated and they should not launch any attacks. When the messengers returned with the things Smith had written down, Openchancanough was amazed, since he did not understand how writing worked.

Eventually, Smith was able to meet the great king of the Powhatan nation, Powhatan himself. Before then, he was taken from one group to the next, one house to the next. They were showing him off to the whole nation, bit by bit.

Powhatan, whose actual name was Wahunsunacock, treated Smith with honor. When asked why the English had come, Smith created an elaborate lie about fleeing the Spanish and the settlement only being temporary.

It was on this occasion that he said they seized him and took him to a rock, as if they were going to bash his head repeatedly into it. It was at this point that Pocahontas was said to rush over and put his head in her hands, putting her cheek against his, pleading for mercy from her father.

So Powhatan spared him and made him a chief. Some think the event might have been some sort of ritual.

For the next few months, the settlement had more and more direct interaction with the Native Americans. Every few days, Pocahontas would bring supplies to the fort. Sometimes the English and the natives got along well. At other times it was rough.

Neither trusted the other. From time to time one side would seize a couple people from the other. Then they would negotiate their return. The natives seemed to respect Smith the most.

Captain Christopher Newport returned with the First Supply on January 8, 1608 and brought 120 more people to add to the mere 38 who had survived the winter. When he arrived, he found that the fort had just burned to the ground...

Jamestown 3

From last post
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The Second Supply of 1608 mentions that there were "some others" on the trip. Could Thomas Shelburne have been one of these others? A Welsh boy of 13 as cabin boy to the Welsh Captain Peter Wynne? Wynne would die the next year.

The first women at Jamestown came on that Second Supply trip as well. The wife of Thomas Forrest and her maid, Anne Burras, made their way on that third installment. Anne would be the first of the English to marry in the New World--to John Laydon. And she would be the first to give birth in Jamestown, although the first English baby born was Virginia Dare in the Roanoke Colony. Born in 1587, her eventual fate is unknown.

Those first few years of the Jamestown settlement were brutal. Because of the poor conditions, someone died almost every day. The swampy water around the peninsula where they built their fort was arguably part of the problem. It was unsuitable for drinking. The immediately surrounding land was unsuitable for farming. Almost two thirds of the first group to arrive would be dead less than five months after their first landing.

They arrived in one of the worst droughts the region had seen in seven hundred years. They had run out of supplies and it was too late for planting. In part that was why the Native Americans had not used it. Facing drought themselves, the surrounding peoples had less to give than they might have in another decade.

Within days of settling on the peninsula, they would be attacked for a couple months by some of the surrounding tribes, although they were initially greeted by the Powhatan Nation. The interaction of the settlement with the Native Americans must have been puzzling. At times some were friendly enough and traded for food. At other times some attacked.

Most of those who came were not prone to work. They were gentlemen who had little practical knowledge and expected others to work for them. The first President of the settlement was Edward Wingfield, but when the First Supply returned, he was in the brig for hoarding food.  He was sent back to England with Captain Newport.

The second President was John Ratcliffe. He also was ousted, leaving Captain John Smith as the third president of the colony. John was a hard man for hard times. His motto was based on 2 Thessalonians 3:10: "He who does not work, shall not eat." Smith was the one in charge when Newport arrived with the Second Supply...

Jamestown 2

From last week
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4. In December of 1606, three ships set sail from Blackwall, at that time just outside of London to the east, on the north side of the River Thames. These were the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery. Christopher Newport captained the largest of the ships, the Susan Constant. Captain John Smith was also on board. John Ratcliffe captained captained the Discovery.

Captain John Smith was one of those personalities who did not do well as a subordinate. Maybe he was smarter than everyone else or maybe he was not, but he certainly found himself repeatedly in trouble with his superiors. He was jailed on the trip over for mutiny, and scheduled to be hanged upon arrival. But when they arrived, instructions from Virginia Company were opened, and Smith was to be on the governing council.

Throughout his time he would repeatedly clash with the leadership of the colony. He probably also was a key player in keeping the colony alive, as opposed to the earlier attempt at Roanoke Island in 1587. When Governor John White returned in 1590, the colony was gone, leaving only the word "Croatoan." Many think the colony moved and, perhaps, blended into some of the surrounding native American groups.

On those first three ships to Jamestown, there were some 105 passengers and 39 crew, all men. Only 38 men were still alive when Captain Newport returned again from England with the "First Supply" in 1608.

5. The three ships made their "first landing" in what they called "Cape Henry" after the son of King James, April 26, 1607. Chaplain Robert Hunt offered a prayer and they set up a cross. He would be dead the next year. His remains have been found on the site of the first church in Jamestown, the first one to be buried in the new church--no coffin, only in a shroud.

On May 4, 1607. they settled on the spot up the "James River" that would become "Jamestown," both named after King James. They had the original triangular fort up and built by June 15.

Jamestown 1

I novelized my family history for a while a year ago.  It seemed like some people enjoyed it. In the end, I got tired of making stuff up. I've let it sit for about 9 months. Thought I'd try again with a factual approach.
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1. When I was a child, my grandmother passed on a tradition that had been passed down by her mother's family before her. The tradition was that we had an ancestor who had come over to America with Captain John Smith of Pocahontas fame. Such traditions are a matter of pride in a family.

As it is with most traditions, there would seem to be at least a kernel of truth in the story. My mother's mother's mother's mother's father's father's father's father's father's father seems to have settled in Jamestown in the early 1600s. That is my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather (8th great grandfather).

In this day when you can connect to other people's genealogical quest, I was intrigued to find another person out there relating a similar family tradition. "It is tradition among VA families that the first Shelburne, Thomas, came to Jamestown in 1607 and settled there." So we have a tradition I can trace to my great, great grandmother that her ancestor came over to Jamestown in 1607, and I have been able to connect it to the family traditions of others who claim the same thing about the same person.

2. So did Thomas Shelburne come over with Captain John Smith in 1607? It would be nice to think so. It is at least possible. The problem is that his name does not appear on any manifest in those early years. The lists were not exhaustive, especially if Thomas were a young cabin boy who was there only to play a subservient role.

Still, we know of other boys. There was a boy named Milman who was the cabin boy of Captain Newport. And another boy named Helyard was cabin boy to Captain Waldo. Both boys would be dead within a year.

According to some memory, Thomas was Welsh. There was a Welshman named Captain Peter Wynne on board. No doubt we could write a novel where a naive young Thomas Shelburne somehow ended up at the last minute serving as Wynne's cabin boy at the age of twelve.

But there is no record of it. There is no record of Thomas in those dark years of Jamestown where so many died. We have so many names from those early years, but Thomas' is not one of them.

So while I would like to think that he came over in 1607 and while it is indeed possible he slipped through the cracks, I have to consider another option as perhaps more likely for the time being. It seems more likely that, as another family's memory has it, he was born in Great Britain during the reign of King James (1603-25). He then emigrated at some point in the 1630s and married Elizabeth Augustine around 1640 in Jamestown.

3. My DNA supports an ancestry that is some 64% British. How a young Welshman found his way to Jamestown is lost to history. We do know that southern Wales faced significant flooding in 1607. If Thomas really was born in 1595 and came to America at the age of twelve, perhaps here was a possible cause.

The London of 1607 was the London of King James I. It was the London of Shakespeare. The King James Version was underway and would be published in 1611. London Bridge at the time not only had houses on it, but the heads of former enemies of kings, like William Wallace of Scotland fame, as well as Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell, both of whom were put to death by Henry VIII.

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