Mattie Capps, married Ervin Randall in 1884 joining together the two oldest of our American family lines. Ervin's ancestor, Elizabeth Brown Randall, and possibly her husband, John Randall, came to Massachusetts about ten years after the Mayflower landed. Mattie's ancestors, William and Catherine Jernagin Capps, nearly failed to arrive at all. When they did, it was 1610 and the place was Jamestown, Virginia. But instead of finding a settlement of 500 countrymen, the new arrivals found 60 survivors of the bitter winter historians call "the starving time."
Out of England
William
Capps was from Norfolk, England. He married Catherine Jernagin (alternately
Jerningham) in Norwich, England at St. Michael at Plea on the 11th of
December in 1596. Their five children were Henry, Frances, Willoughby, Anne,
and William. It is not clear whether the other children travelled with their
parents or stayed in England. William was born in the colony in 1612 and others
may also have been. The Capps were in the famous flotilla of ships, called the
“third provisioning” led by the ill-fated Sea Venture. The flotilla was to
bring 500 new settlers and provisions to Jamestown.
The Sea Venture
Most
researchers agree that William and Catherine were on the Sea Venture
itself. When a tremendous hurricane separated the ships, seven made it to
Jamestown, one went down and the Sea Venture wrecked off the coast of
Bermuda. The 150 survivors
spent nine months on the island building two ships, the Patience and Deliverance, from the
wreckage of the Sea Venture and cedar wood found on the island. Aboard these
ships they sailed on to Virginia and found the remnants of the decimated
colony. With no other hope in sight, the Patience and Deliverance took on the survivors
and set sail for England. Before they made the open sea, they were met by the
“fourth provisioning,” led by Thomas West, Baron De La Warr. The reinforcements
allowed the colonists to stay in Virginia and begin again to build the colony.
Keocoughtan
William and Catherine settled
in the place where the Jamestown English first met the native
Americans, Kecoughtan, now Hampton, Virginia. In the summer of 1610
the new governor, Thomas Gates, led colonists to massacre many of the
indigenous Kechoughtans living in the village and drive the rest to seek refuge
among the Powhatans. William began to clear land
and set up his plantation.In 1612, Catherine gave birth to William Capps, our
first American-born ancestor.
Politics
The
Virginia colony established its House of Burgesses in 1619. It was the first
representative legislative assembly in the colonies. William Capps was sent to
represent Kecoughtan, one of the eleven settlements gathered in the
assembly. One of his concerns there was to have the name of the village
changed from Kecoughtan to the less native and more English name of Elizabeth
City, a goal he accomplished.
Ancient Planter
The year 1619 saw the first
official division of land in the Virginia colony. It was determined that the settlers
who had arrived before 1616 and stayed deserved special recognition. They were
designated “ancient planters.” This erstwhile title went to planters such as
William Capps who had paid their own passage to the colony, owned at least one
share in the Virginia Company and had developed land for planting. The reward
was 100 acres for each share owned. I don’t know how many shares Capps owned at
the time. Beyond the land bonus, ancient planters and their descendants were
deemed exempt from paying taxes or going to war.
Massacre
The
family scarcely had time to enjoy their bounty in land and William's status as
burgess before tragedy stuck the colony and the family. United Indian groups
attacked in 1622 and massacred 347 settlers. Catherine Capps has been named as
one of the dead.
Discontent
William
found himself critical of the Virginia government and especially of governor
George Yeardly and expressed his dissatisfaction regularly. He was also
litigious, often seeking redress in the courts or legislature. He sued to be
compensated for land seized by the Virginia Company. He sued to be awarded
passage of five men in compensation for the land. He petitioned to be allowed
to build guest houses for incoming settlers. Capps joined others in asking the
English government to pay higher prices for tobacco. He sought recognition as
an Indian fighter and asked the English to send more armed men to wage war
against local tribes.
Councillor
and Complainer to the Crown
William Capps was appointed to an advisory council called the Virginia Council. Its purpose was to advise the Virginia governors on issues important to planters. It served as an upper house to the colonial legislature and acted as the highest judicial authority. In this position Capps continued his criticism of the Virginia government. He sought permission to travel to England and was denied. Our ancestor went anyway and won enough influence with the tobacco-hating King Charles that the ruler granted Capps rights to develop salt works to extract salt from sea water on the Eastern Shore.
Charles wanted to develop
industries other than tobacco growing in Virginia and Capps played into that
desire. Once source said that Capps started an altercation with the settlers on
the Eastern Shore and the animosity prevented William from continuing the
project. Another source says he did develop a profitable salt works.
A Biographical Sketch
A biographical sketch of
William Capps* appears in Lyon Gardiner Tyler’s “Encyclopedia of Virginia
Biography”
“During many years Capps
took an active part in the affairs of the colony. On Jan. 26, 1621, the company
granted him a patent for land in consideration of his undertaking to transport
100 persons to Virginia, and on Feb. 22, upon his humble request, the court (of
the Virginia Company) ordered a certificate to be drawn up by the secretary to
testify to the good esteem in which he was held, "as well in the Colony of
Virginia, and may appear by the rewards of his good service under them, as also
of what ability he is reported to be there in respect of the great supplys
[sic] he had sent there." On May 2, it was ordered that he should receive
as a reward "five men's passage free at the Company's charge, in
consideration of his many years service of the Company in Virginia, with the
hazard of his live among the Indians." "Upon October 7, 1622,"
"Mr. William Capps, an ancient planter in Virginia," made the
following requests of the company: (1), that Sir William Newce be required to
deliver him the five men for whose transportation he had paid that gentleman
thirty pounds here in town (London); (2), that Sir George Yeardley restore him
a chest of goods he detained from him; (3), that he might have satisfaction for
that land in Virginia taken from him by Yeardley. Two letters written by Capps
in 1623, one to John Ferrar, and the other to Dr. Wynston, are preserved among
the Duke of Manchester's manuscripts. The first of these letters has been
published in full in "Virginia Vetusta." The writer seems to have
been zealous for the welfare of the colony, but was evidently of a grumbling
and fault-finding disposition. One fact connected with him should not be
omitted. After the revocation of the charter in 1624 there was no regular
general assembly of representatives of the people. The Virginia authorities
sent over a memorial in 1627 on the subject, and by William Capps, who was in
England, King Charles sent instructions allowing a general assembly and urging
the cultivation of staple commodities, as heretofore they had depended too much
"upon smoke." To Capps was given the privilege of erecting salt
works. He arrived in Virginia Feb. 22, 1628 and on the 26th of the next month
the colonial assembly met. He was a member of the council in 1627.” [Page 99]
Family
What is known of William
Capps’ family life is little. He married again after Catherine’s death to a
Frances with whom he had a second family. Young William married a woman called
Margaret (possibly Woodhouse). When widowed she married Dennis Dawley. Margaret
and William’s son Henry named his son Dennis after Dawley. Dennis was Mattie
Capps’ third great grandfather. The Capps descendants lived in Virginia and
North Carolina for centuries and many still do. The first of our line to head
to the Midwest was Dennis’ grandson, Dempsey after whom Bill Randall was named.
When I began my genealogy
research I was afraid to find Indian killers and slave owners among our
ancestors. Some of the New England Yankee ancestors held a few slaves or bought
shares of ships transporting human trade. The Capps family helped build the
system of wage bondage in the colonies and when that did not prove practical
for large tobacco farming they began, as did most planters, to trade in slaves.
The family owned large tobacco farms, held significant real estate and shipping
interests and bought and sold enslaved Africans as laborers and commodities.
Make of this what you will. It is hard to imagine, but unfortunately a sad fact
of American history.
There is much more to the
Capps story. The College of William and Mary library is a good source of
Jamestown and Capps history. It can be easily accessed online. I have scarcely
mentioned the generations that followed William. If I begin to talk of them
this blog will never end. But I hope you have had a look at our first ancestor,
the irascible William Capps.
*"Encyclopedia
of Virginia Biography," Lyon Gardiner Tyler
**"Virginia immigrants and
adventurers, 1607-1635: a biographical dictionary," Martha W.
McCartney
Photo:
The marker stands at the sight of Capps Point in Hampton, Virginia. It was
later called Little England. This was the original homestead of William and
Catherine Capps.
