John Earle – The Virginia / South Carolina Branch

Wikitree Profile: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Earle-800

There were Earles in Virginia as early as 1622 when the colony was under the control of the Virginia Company of London, directed among others by Sir Walter Earle and his brother, Mr. Christopher Earle. A Nathaniel Earle was killed during the Indian uprisings in Virginia in 1622.

The records of the Virginia Company of London show the names of Yeardley and Earley or Early are the same. The arms of Earley of England are nearly the same as those of Earle.

Captain John Martin, royal councilor of state for Virginia, was an intimate friend of, and contemporary in the council with, Sir George Yeardley, who was appointed to his position by, among others, Sir Walter and Mr. Christopher Earle of the Virginia Company. Martin Earle was a member of the Virginia Company of London. John Martin married Mary Earle at Bexhill, Sussex Co., England, in 1648. There were other Earles and Martins who married in London also.

Mr. Burke of England, son of the authoritative Burke of English genealogy’, has officially recognized the Earles of South Carolina as entitled to bear the arms of the Earles of the west of England. This Mr. Burke is preparing (1906) an authoritative volume of American pedigrees.

Although there were earlier Earle men in the area it was John Earle, who founded the family in Virginia.

There is proof that John himself was in America as early as 1649, for in the Maryland Archives, in a list of court cases dated that year, is one against John Earle. It is possible, and Mr. Richard H. Earle thinks it probable, that he made a trip to England between 1649 and 1652.

In 1652 his wife, Mary, and children, Samuel, John, and Mary, with Rachel Holden and Mary Willis, arrived.

He was evidently a man of some means and social position in England; for in the fragments of his will and inventory of his estate, on record in the Clerk’s office at Heathville, Northumberland Co., in a dilapidated old book of records, mention is made of a man-servant and a Bible, and he signs his own name to the will. The ability to read and write in those days was generally only among the better classes. On the margin of the record book, he is designated as “Mr. John Earle.” The title “Mr.” was never officially ascribed in colonial times except for those in good social positions. Recent inquiry concerning the will has resulted in the reply that it was mutilated, but parts are still legible and contain the same facts known to us through the research of R. H. Earle.

He emigrated to St. Mary’s County, Md., and later to that part of Northumberland County, Va., which was subsequently erected into Westmoreland county. The date of his arrival in America was in 1649, a few months after the execution of Charles I, and it is a safe conjecture that his emigration was due to his connection with or sympathy for the Royalist cause, not only for the reason that most who came to Virginia at this time came for this reason, but also from the fact that his descendants were adherents of the Established Church, and that as late as 1752 his grandson, Samuel, was a magistrate in Frederick county, sitting with Lord Fairfax and others and passing judgment on dissenters. The son of Samuel III, however, Judge Baylis Earle, who removed to S. C., was a Baptist, and this characteristic doctrine held the majority of his descendants, most of them cleaving to the Primitive branch of that church.

John Earle received patents aggregating 1,700 acres of land, all lying in Northumberland and Westmoreland counties, for paying the passage of thirty-four persons to Virginia. The various patents awarded him are in the Land Office at Richmond. Hotten, in his Land Grants Index, also assigns 1,000 acres to John Earle, in Isle of Wight County, in 1653. Some of this land is described as lying on “Earle’s Creek and Potomac River.”

In the will of John Earle, already referred to, his son, John, Jr., is directed to live with his mother or stepmother (probably the latter, as she is named Elizabeth) during her widowhood. This widow, Elizabeth, is given all the property she brought unto John, and the two sons, Samuel and John, are given all the land which their father had acquired with his own means, Mary receiving only personal property as her portion.

Research Notes:

Born in Nye Sommerset?
John is believed to have been born in Nye, Wimscombe, Somerset, England based on a “Chancery Record” from 1652 named a John Earle from Nye, Wimscombe, Somerset.

A copy of this Chancery record was held by the American descendants of John Earle in the late 1800s and was provided as evidence of the birthplace of John Earle as Nye, Wimscombe, Somerset to the eminent English genealogist Arthur Meredyth Burke sometime before 1908 when he published his book called “Prominent Families of the United States of America” (published in 1908).

This Chancery record was accepted by Burke, and Nye was listed as the home of John Earle of Virginia in his book. Burke only published a birthplace but no birth year. ^[2].

The “Nye” in Wimscombe, Somerset, is the name of an estate where this John was supposedly living, not the name of a town. John could have been baptized in Nye, as it was the name of the manner house, not the name of a parish. He would have been baptized in a Church in another parish. Based on his death date of 1660, John could have been born sometime between 1590 and 1615 (see Additional Research Notes below).

First Arrived in Maryland
In 1649, John Earle first arrived in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, with a man named Francis Symons (probably his brother-in-law). Members of the Symons family had already been in Virginia for a decade. Francis Symons may have traveled back to England to “recruit” settlers to come to Maryland in order to receive “headrights” for land grants.

Returned to England?
Because the “Chancery Record” that the family held was dated 1652, which is after he arrives in Maryland, the family believed John may have returned to England sometime after 1649, coming back to Virginia in the latter part of 1652.

There are no records that show that he left Maryland, went back to England, and then returned to Virginia.

As already mentioned, Burke in his geneaolgy states that a John Earle of Wimscombe, Somerset was a platiff in a Chancery suit dated 17 Nov 1652 ^[2].

The John in the Chancery suit is “presumed” (Burke’s word) to be the same as the John who left England in 1649 and returned to England in 1652 after the suit was settled. This information was speculation given to Burke by the American family.

Some old patents are described as having reverted to the colony because John Earle failed to occupy them.^[3] This is thought to be evidence that he returned to England and lost his land patents due to his absence.

The reality is that he may or may not have been from Nye, Somerset. Many John Earle sons from all over England are the right age to have been this John Earle who settled in Virginia.

In Virginia, by 1650
John’s wife, Mary, and three children, Samuel, John, and Mary, settled in Virginia. In 1650, John Earle was granted a 100-acre land patent in Northumberland County, Virginia.

Other Earles in Virginia – Gamaliel Earle