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.
John Earle, with his wife Mary and three English-born children, Samuel, John, and Mary, settled first in St. Mary’s Co., Md., and a little later in Northumberland Co., Va., giving rise to what is known as the Virginia Earles, sometimes called the South Carolina Earles. This important branch has spread extensively thru a number of southern states.
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.
Other Earles in Virginia – Gamaliel Earle
Contemporaneously with the preceding, there were several others of the surname name Earle in Virginia. Land patent records show that there was a William Earle, apparently a young unmarried man, in Northumberland Co., Va., in 1653. There were also James Earle, George Earle, and Gamaliel Earle in the same County.
The name Enoch Earle appears on the records of Frederick County., Va. and his will is on file there. He appears to have died unmarried. No Earle is mentioned in his will, nor is anyone of the name an executor. That part of Virginia was settled largely by immigrants from Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
