Tag: patrick-henry

First Families of Virginia – The Carys

Published on by Robert Van NessLeave a comment

The Cary name signifies strength as it originated from those living near fortresses. As time progressed through the Middle Ages, those fortress dwellers often moved into positions of power through newly created connections. By the early modern era, Cary branches found themselves linked with England’s greatest power-brokers, for good or for ill. Arguably, their most important connection came through the Boleyn line, thus bringing the Cary name in front of English Royalty.

Though the Cary’s had such importance in England, a few of their descendants migrated across the Atlantic by the 1600s. Some went to Massachusetts, while others preferred Virginia. The Virginia Cary’s quickly planted themselves into Virginia’s elite.

They might not have always been in favor among that elite, but the Cary’s proved to be indispensable. They were builders, planners, and leaders, especially during the War for Independence. Without the Cary’s Virginia’s soldiers might not have been provisioned to fight the Redcoats. The British knew this, which is why they targeted the Cary’s mills providing the Colonial Army.

The Cary’s survived the War, but debts after the war, poor soil, and an ever expanding lineage saw the main Cary lines fall into extinction, move out of the Commonwealth, or integrate into other families. They may have disappeared in some circumstances, but they left their mark, and their names still dot Virginia’s landscape today.

LINKS TO THE PODCAST:

SOURCES:

  1. Bergstrom, Peter & Dictionary of Virginia Biography. Miles Cary (d. 1709). (2020, December 07).
  2. Billings, Warren M.; Selby, John E.; and Tate, Thad W. Colonial Virginia: A History. White Plains, NY: KTO Press. 1986.
  3. Billings, Warren M. Sir William Berkeley and the Forging of Colonial Virginia. Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 2004.
  4. Billings, Warren. A Little Parliament: The Virginia General Assembly in the Seventeenth Century. Richmond, VA: Library of Virginia, 2004.
  5. Bruce, Phillip Alexander. Social Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century: An Inquiry into the Origin of the Higher Planting Class. New York: JP Bell Company, 1927.
  6. Dabney, Virginius. Virginia: The New Dominion, A History from 1607 to the Present. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1971.
  7. Dowdey, Clifford. The Virginia Dynasties: The Emergence of “King” Carter and the Golden Age. New York: Bonanza Books, 1969.
  8. Dowdey, Clifford. The Golden Age: A Climate for Greatness, 1732-1775. New York: Little Brown, 1970.
  9. Evans, Emory G. A “Topping People”: The Rise and Decline of Virginia’s Old Political Elite, 1680-1790. Charlottesville, VA: UVA Press, 2009.
  10. Fischer, David Hackett. Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: a cultural history). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
  11. Freeman, Douglas Southall. George Washington: A Biography. New York: Charles Scribners, 1957. (Specifically Volume 1).
  12. Harbury, Katharine & Dictionary of Virginia Biography. Miles Cary (bap. 1623–1667). (2020, December 07).
  13. Harrison, Fairfax. The Virginia Carys: An Essay in Genealogy. New York: The Devine Press, 1919.
  14. Horn, James. Adapting to A New World: English Society in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
  15. Isaac, Rhys. The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790. Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press, 1999.
  16. Lounsbury, Carl & Dictionary of Virginia Biography. Henry Cary (ca. 1650–by 1720). (2020, December 07).
  17. Lounsbury, Carl & Dictionary of Virginia Biography. Henry Cary (d. by 1750). (2020, December 07).
  18. Mapp, Alfred J. Virginia Experiment: The Old Dominion’s Role in the Making of America, 1607-1781. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, Inc., 2006.
  19. McCartney, Martha W. Virginia Immigrants and Adventurers: A Biographical Dictionary, 1607-1635. Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2007.
  20. Meade, William. Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia. in Two Volumes. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1891.
  21. Neill, Edward D. Virginia Carolorum: The Colony under the Rule of Charles The First and Second, A.D. 1625-A.D. 1685. Albany, NY: Joel Munsell’s and Sons, 1886.
  22. Pecquet du Bellet, Louise. Some Prominent Virginia Families, 4 Volumes. Lynchburg, VA:  J.P. Bell Company, 1907.
  23. Rothbard, Murray N. Conceived in Liberty. Auburn, AL: Ludwig Von Mises Institute, 1999.
  24. Stauffer, W. T. “The Old Farms out of Which the City of Newport News Was Erected with Some Account of the Families Which Dwelt Thereon.” The William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine 15, no. 3 (1935): 250–66. https://doi.org/10.2307/1923180.
  25. Tarter, Brent & Dictionary of Virginia Biography. Archibald Cary (1721–1787). (2020, December 07).
  26. Tarter, Brent. The Virginia Revolutionary Conventions (1774–1776). (2025, July 11).
  27. Tyler, Lyon Gardiner. The Cradle of the Republic: Jamestown and the James River. Richmond, VA: The Hermitage Press, 1906.
  28. Walsh, Lorena S. Motives of Honor, Pleasure, and Profit: Plantation Management in the Colonial Chesapeake, 1607-1763. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
  29. Washburn, Wilcomb E. Virginia Under Charles I and Cromwell 1625-1660. Kindle Edition.
  30. Wertenbaker, Thomas Jefferson. Virginia Under the Stuarts: 1607-1688. New York: Russell and Russell, 1959.
  31. Wertenbaker, Thomas Jefferson. The Planters of Colonial Virginia. Kindle Edition.
  32. Cary, Wilson Miles. “Wilson Cary of Ceelys, and His Family.” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 9, no. 1, 1901, pp. 104–11. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4242411.
  33. “Will of Wilson Cary, 1772.” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 10, no. 2 (1902): 189–93. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4242511.
  34. [Review of Sally Cary, a Long Hidden Romance of Washington’s Life, by W. M. Cary]. (1917). The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 25(2), 223–223. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4243602
  35. Cary, Rachel, Cary, George, and Cary family. Cary Family Letters. Letters (Correspondence). Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives, 1865. https://jstor.org/stable/community.31563589.
  36. Cary, Rachel, Cary, George, and Cary family. Cary Family Letters. Letters (Correspondence). Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives, 1864. https://jstor.org/stable/community.31563593.
  37. Cary, Rachel, Cary, George, and Cary family. Cary Family Letters. Letters (Correspondence). Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives, 1864. https://jstor.org/stable/community.31563739.
  38. Stauffer, W. T. “The Old Farms out of Which the City of Newport News Was Erected with Some Account of the Families Which Dwelt Thereon.” The William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine 15, no. 3 (1935): 250–66. https://doi.org/10.2307/1923180.
  39. Letter from George Washington to Bryan Fairfax, 6 April, 1789. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-02-02-0027

SPECIAL LINKS:




All photography used on this site is owned and copyrighted by the author unless otherwise noted. The featured image is the Cary Family Crest.

Music used for this episode – Louis Armstrong and the Mills Brothers,”Carry Me Back to Old Virginia” available on Apple Music, and “Lion’s Den” by Little Chief, also available on Apple Music.