Blog Some Genealogy

James Branch Cabell (1879-1958) was a prolific author of fiction, history, criticism, and genealogy. “Let Me Lie” is a carefully researched historical narrative of Virginia from 1559 to 1946–focusing on Tidewater, Richmond, and the Northern Neck. Virginia’s story of itself, Cabell claimed, depends on illusion and myth, and in this work the author constructs and deflates these myths simultaneously, from Don Luis de Velasco and Captain John Smith to Edgar Allan Poe and Ellen Glasgow, from Confederate heroes to the oddities of the post-bellum era.

A very interesting piece of Virginia history was discovered when reading a book “Let Me Lie” by James Branch Cabell (copyright 1947). According to James Cabell, in either 1569 or 1560, a party of Spanish explorers returned to the harbor of Vera Cruz bringing with them the Prince of Ajacan. These Spaniards had entered Chesapeake Bay and sailed some slight distance up the Potomac under the belief that the broad Stream of Swans (Potomac) was also an arm of the ocean. They landed upon its south bank which was inhabited by the Ajacan Indians. The Ajacan Indians entertained them for some two to three weeks and when they were ready to leave, a young chieftain of the Ajacans wished to go with them to become familiar with Christian customs. The Indian Prince was baptized in the Cathedral of the city of Mexico and the Viceroy of New Spain served as godfather and gave him his own name - Luis de Velasco.

Apparently Luis de Velasco was quite a liar and told of twenty noble cities and seventy-two main towns of Ajacan, none of which was built wholly of gold because they found metallic architecture to become monotonous. The buildings were said to be varied with sardonyx, ivory, crystal and jasper. Don Luis convinced others that the northern neck of Virginia was an opulent, vast, pagan earthly paradise which might be persuaded to form an alliance with Spain.

The Prince was next found near Madrid in the King’s private chamber at the Escorial lying to King Phillip II about Ajacan. Don Luis ingratiated himself to such an extent into the good will of Phillip II that he lived at the royal expense during all his stay. The King granted to his cousin of Ajacan the rank of a grandee of Spain with a pension befitting that high estate. He prospered as a well-to-do nobleman in and about the most splendid court in Europe.

Some part of his time was spent in Havana, then to Cuba into Florida, during the same year that Pedro Menendez invaded the peninsula. He is reported to have shared in the founding of St. Augustine as the friend and confidant of Menendez. Through the efforts of Menendez, he was sent back into the northern neck of Virginia in the autumn of 1570 at the head of a Spanish colony consisting of two priests, three brothers and three scholastics of the Society of Jesus, as well as four attendants. By the plan of Menendez, these staunch churchmen during the winter months, would subdue the fierce hearts of the native Indians to the mild tenets of Christianity. Then, when spring returned, Menendez would come with enough soldiers and firearms to take care of their bodies and to put ashore new settlers. The Prince accepted this mission with seeming joy now that he was privileged to go back into his native land as a Paul of the Holy Faith to carry the Gospel to Ajacan.

His expedition reached Don Luis’ former home at the mouth of the Potomac. The caravel left them and returned to Mexico. Don Luis was received with delight and his Spanish friends were greeted with politeness. All Ajacan, after hearing Don Luis’ advice, thronged gladly toward Christian instruction. The Jesuits, for their greater comfort, now that winter approached, were removed yet further up the Coan River and then overland to the shores of the Rappahannock. The Indians aided their spiritual fathers in building a trim chapel so that all offices of the Catholic Church might be conducted suitably. The Ajacans were converted by scores and hundreds.

When winter closed in and there remained no chance of a Spanish ship’s reaching Ajacan until late in the following spring, Don Luis commanded his people to scalp and disembowel the white men. The remnants were buried courteously before Don Luis set fire to the chapel. When the Spaniards sent provisions and reinforcements in the spring of 1571, they could not find any trace of the Jesuits or Don Luis because he had withdrawn his people out of the northern neck going up into the Blue Ridge Mountains beyond reach of the Spaniards’ anger. After hanging the few available Indians, Menendez sailed southward. Spain gave up the notion of settling that territory which is now Virginia and did not renew the attempt after this setback. But for Don Luis de Velasco, the Spanish reinforcements would have landed unopposed in the spring of 1571 and yet further military forces and more settlers would have followed them during the summer as was planned. Virginia and the entire Atlantic seaboard between the Potomac and Florida would have become a Spanish province. (Livingstone Family)

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The Encylopedia of Chicago is a great resource for those with family roots in that area of Illinois. It is searchable on line.

The Queen of Great Britain has been targeted by al-Qaeda as “one of the severest enemies of Islam”. Yet, Elizabeth II is a living descendant of the Prophet Muhammed.

Al Qaeda calls British queen “enemy of Islam”
13 Nov 2005 12:35:10 GMT
LONDON, Nov 13 (Reuters) - Al Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahri has called Britain’s Queen Elizabeth “one of the severest enemies of Islam” in a video message after July’s deadly bombings in London, the Sunday Times reported.

The paper said the reference to the queen was part of a videotaped statement released in September after the July 7 suicide bombing attacks in which al Qaeda’s number two praises the bombings and denounces the queen.

Queen Elizabeth II descends from the Muslims who created the Arab Andalusian civilization of Spain. Those people descended from the family of the Prophet Mohammed, therefore the Queen herself is one of his direct living descendants. When Queen Elizabeth visited Morocco in 1980, the Moroccan media pointed out this Islamic ancestry of the British Queen.

Altogether the British royals have five lines of direct descent from the Prophet Muhammed. They are descended from Queen Isabella I, of Castile (1451-1504) and King Fernando who were descendants of the prophet Muhammed. They descend from the Kings of Portugal and Castile from the 1300s who were also in Muhammed’s line. Another of their lines from Muhammed comes from the King(s) of Pamplona and Navarre in the middle ages. Here is a Pedigree Of the Prophet Mohammed which refers to him as the 30th great grandfather of King George I of England. Quite interesting.

German hyphen war reaches European court

From The Independent Online:

Although you can hyphenate your name after marriage, you cannot pass it on to your children. “It makes things too complicated,” said Karin Eichhoff-Cyrus, director of Germany’s language and name enforcers, … . German bureaucrats fear a hyphen pandemic. A child with a double-barrelled name, they point out, could go on to marry someone with a double-barrelled name. Their children would have four linked-up surnames, and the next generation might have eight.

I admire the Iberian Naming Customs as explained by Wikipedia:

In most Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan speaking regions of the world, people have at least two surnames. One is inherited from the father, the other from the mother. Parents pass on to their children the name they inherited from their father.

In most Spanish speaking countries, the father’s surname is written before the mother’s surname, although there are occasional exceptions to this rule. Thus, for instance, Vicente Fox Quesada is Señor Fox (Mr. Fox in English), not Señor Quesada, and “Fox” is not his middle name.

In Portuguese speaking countries, the father’s surname is in most cases after the mother’s surname. In these countries, it is very frequent that children get two surnames from each of their parents, thus having usually the last surname of each of their grandparents.

The traditional naming conventions are now changing as attitudes toward gender equality evolve. In Portugal, since 1977, the child’s last name can come either from the father or from the mother, but the latter is still very uncommon.

Genealogists Beware. From DeseretNews.com we learn:

A software company is marketing a new program to Internet advertisers that could quickly generate Web sites full of extensive, but fake, family trees.
Critics say the approach appears to be part of a new money-making scheme to lure people who search for family names on Google, Yahoo or other search engines to Web sites that use bogus data to help ensure they appear high on “hit lists.” They then make money if visitors click on advertisers’ links.
They worry that novices might download false information that is designed to look real, and then corrupt others’ family trees if they share that bad data online or through family history databases such as those offered by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or the commercial Utah-based Ancestry.com

The PEYTON Book is a well documented genealogy that includes the history and heritage of the PEYTON/PAYTON family. It spans two generations of English PEYTON forebears, and nine generations of the Virginia descendants of Henry PEYTON of Lincoln’s Inn. His sons were among the Cavaliers of the Northern Neck of Colonial Virginia. After the Restoration of King Charles II, some returned to England. Of the two who remained, Colonel Valentine PEYTON and Gentleman Henry PEYTON, only the latter left PEYTON descendants. The brothers were seated at Stony Hill, their plantation along Aquia Creek, in what is now Stafford County. Included is an ancient PEYTON pedigree beginning with Robert PEYTON (circa 1640-1694) of Gloucester, Virginia and continuing back twenty-nine generations to the Vikings. The book details the PEYTON line from Henry PEYTON, circa 1560, to Martha Ann Elizabeth PEYTON (1844-1927). It is indexed. The free Preview includes the entire index.
From: $25.00

Fredericksburg, Virginia - This is a great source for Virginia researchers, not only for the city of Fredericksburg, but the neighboring counties. Historic Court Records