RLP 280: Colonial Emigrant Ancestor: Thomas Royston

Nicole (0s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 280 Colonial Immigrant Ancestor Thomas Royston Welcome to research Like a Pro a genealogy podcast about taking your research to the next level. Hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder Accredited genealogist Professional Diana and Nicole are the mother daughter team at family Locket dot com and the authors of Research Like, a Pro A Genealogist Guide with Robin Wirthlin. They also co-authored the Companion Volume Research Like a Pro with DNA, join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research, and solve difficult cases. Let’s go the sponsor of today’s episode of Research Like a Pro is newspapers.com, the largest online newspaper archive.

Nicole (49s):
Hi everybody. Welcome to research. Like a Pro today.

Diana (52s):
Hi Nicole. How. Are you

Nicole (53s):
Really good? Hey, I’d learned something cool about writing research reports as you go along.

Diana (60s):
Okay, what was it?

Nicole (1m 1s):
Well, I was writing my report. And I had finished gathering some data from tax records. And I was kind of frustrated ’cause I couldn’t find my research subject and the next year of the tax records. And then I was like, wait, maybe he got too old. Maybe he aged out. so I decided to write up what I had found, correlate with what I knew about how old he was. And I kind of started writing the section in my report about tax records. And as I went along and correlated that with the 1850 census, I realized, oh yeah, the year that I couldn’t find him in tax records, he turned 50. And the cool thing about that is that his birth year was kind of under question because 18 50, 18 60, 18 70 and 1880 all gave different birth years based on his age.

Nicole (1m 47s):
But 1850 and 1860 said he was born about 1803 and 1804. And if he was born in about eighteen oh three, eighteen oh four, he would’ve turned 50 in the year that he disappeared from the tax list, which was 1853. So that was cool to see. Okay, correlating and writing the research report as you go along can help you so much just to guide you and not help you not to be frustrated and to kind of figure out the meaning of what you’re finding.

Diana (2m 13s):
I agree, especially when you’re doing complicated things like tax research and land research like I’ve been doing in mine as well.

Nicole (2m 22s):
It’s so true. Well, let’s do our announcements. I know we always talk about this, but if you’ve heard of us talk about Airtable and you want to try it, then you should try our Airtable research guide. It’s a quick reference guide you can download as APDF if you purchase it from our website. Well, next month we have a new Research Like, a Pro Webinar by candy Richer, one of our study group graduates and peer group leaders. It will be December 19th, and the title is Proving the Mother of Cornelia Roberson Hickerson ADNA case study. So this will be a fun one because Kenny’s gonna talk about a case where only two documents connected Cornelia to her mother and her descendants believed that she made the journey from Tennessee to Texas alone to start a new life as a teacher at 16.

Nicole (3m 12s):
So that makes it hard to locate her parents, but DNA evidence was used to help figure that out and not even that, but find siblings, her grandmother and her mother of course. So come watch that Webinar. If you haven’t purchased the Webinar series for 2023, you can do so and watch all the previous recordings and you can also watch this one on Zoom and the recording of it afterward. We are starting our next Research Like a Pro with DNA study group in February. So if you’ve been thinking about learning the DNA research process with us, we urge you to get ready to register. That will open up December 1st to become a peer group leader. We just are looking for people who have experience using DNA and writing a report.

Nicole (3m 55s):
And so let us know if you have that experience and you want to do that because then you get to participate for free. And also a plug for our newsletter, if you would like to receive an update from us every week on our new podcast episodes and our new Blog posts, then sign up for our newsletter. And sometimes we have special deals that we give just to our newsletter people. If you would like to come meet us at a conference, we will be at Roots Tech in 2024. So registration is $109 for three days of the conference, so make sure you get registered and we will see you there.

Diana (4m 27s):
All right, well let’s talk today about our subject, which is standing on the ground where your Colonial immigrant lived. And this is so fun. I was able to visit the land of Colonial immigrant Ancestor Thomas Royston, and this was one of my pet projects. You know we all have those, and this was one of the first ones that I worked on. It’s really, really difficult to trace a family line to the original immigrant and then across the pond, it’s even more difficult when we are talking Colonial America. And so we have a lot of problems that happen.

Diana (5m 9s):
We have record loss, poor record keeping, and then we have those people of the same name. And these are all challenges that can make it really difficult to make a positive identification. How do You know this? Colonial Ancestor is yours or not? So for my Royston line, I was lucky because it is a more unusual surname. And I have original Virginia land grants and a surviving parish vestry book. And those three things really combined to help those of us who are researching the Royston family out of Virginia to connect to Thomas Royston of England.

Diana (5m 49s):
And it was so fun. Earlier this year I was able to go to Virginia. I was there for the National Genealogical Society Conference and we drove out to see some other sites and we were right by Gloucester County, and that was the land that could have been part of the thousands of acres granted to Thomas. I haven’t actually mapped his land exactly yet. And I, don’t know if I can do that with with the information I have. But You know thousands of acres. There’s probably a good chance that we at least drove across some of the land as we were traversing that county where he might have patented some land.

Diana (6m 33s):
So in this podcast, we’ll talk about what I gleaned from those records, a little bit of history of this early Colonial ancestor.

Nicole (6m 43s):
That’s so fun that you got to go there. And You know, having worked with deeded mapper a bit, I’m thinking there’s probably subsequent deeds from him to others after he got that grant that would help you map the land. So that could be a fun project sometime.

Diana (6m 58s):
Yeah, it absolutely would.

Nicole (7m 0s):
Well, let’s dive into Virginia Colonial history to understand more about the background behind the monumental task of settling the new world. Spain and France had already sent a lot of settlers to North America, and at this time, James, the first king of England was interested in the benefits that could come from colonization. The land was rich with natural resources, and if populated could provide a market for English goods with population density becoming a problem in England’s largest cities, sending colonists to America certainly seemed like a good idea and would probably help solve that problem. King James, I first entered into a partnership with the London Company to establish the colony, and in 1607, the first ships landed at Jamestown.

Nicole (7m 46s):
By 1618, the London company had found a way to fund itself and offered land to settlers through the new head right system for the purpose of stimulating immigration. And the settlement of the colony of the London Company ordained that any person who paid his own way to Virginia should be assigned 50 acres of land for his own personal adventure. And if he transported at his own cost, one or more persons, he should, for each person whose passage he paid be awarded 50 acres of land. Wow, that’s so cool. And Thomas Royston would benefit from that cool new law, as did many other Virginia settlers in a 60 and 76 map of Virginia and Maryland. Gloucester County is shown just above the Chesapeake Bay on the Virginia side to the right of the York River.

Diana (8m 32s):
Well, Thomas Royston received six separate land grants from 1662 to 1693, and this totaled about 17,000 acres of land, so much land. Some grants were given to more than one man. So his actual land holdings would have been less. He is listed as transporting himself as well as many others in the 1669 grant and again in 1673. So that helps us understand that he made the journey from Virginia to England at least twice after his initial immigration. So in 16 62, 67, 69, 71 and 73, he was granted different amounts of land and he was able to transport six persons in one, 12 in another, and 20 in another grant and then 201 and another grant.

Diana (9m 38s):
So You know, compiling all of that information into the research log really helped me see what was going on here. And it’s interesting that some of these were in Gloucester County, some were in Rappahannock County and one was in New Kent County. So these were all neighboring counties in Virginia, all in the same basic area, if not touching one another. So he was getting a lot of land. And I noticed that the same people were involved with him in getting land. So there was a Thomas Buckner in 1669 and there was a John Buckner in 1671 and then John Buckner again in 1673.

Diana (10m 24s):
So it seemed like they were pooling resources, somehow they were joining together to bring over more people or to get more land. Now, I do need to do more research and see what happened to that land, but I know that a lot of the land just went to his son and there’s a John Royston who is living on that land and is mentioned in the parish records. So this is a time where we don’t have all the records we wish we had. And so we have to work with just what we do have. So we are lucky that we do have those original land grants.

Nicole (11m 6s):
Those are really neat land grants. And it’s so great that you could notice the connection with the Buckner family. And I. Almost wonder if that could have been like a relative too, like an in-law or something. Do You know his wife’s name? Thomas’s?

Diana (11m 19s):
Nope. We do not have any of the women until our John and Mary’s Poly Cessna out in Georgia. Yeah, in 1803. Wow. Do we have any of the females? And part of the problem is that Gloucester is a severely burned county. And so now that I say that, I remember that is why we don’t have hardly anything. We have no probate, we have no marriage, we have no deeds, which is why those church records the parish book. That’s such an important record because that wasn’t destroyed. And so You know. That’s why I’m grateful we do have these land grants because Gloucester was so severely damaged with the records.

Nicole (12m 1s):
Oh, it’s so frustrating when that happens. But it’s just such a good reminder that various substitute records can help. Because You know if the county courthouse burned church records are kept in a church, they’re not in the courthouse. So it’s a great example of substitute records.

Diana (12m 15s):
Exactly. We just have to use what we have and we can’t make up records. We can’t bring ’em back, but we can use what we have and we gather all these little pieces together to become a body of evidence and tell the story of our Ancestors. Well, let’s take a break and do a word from our sponsor, newspapers.com. newspapers.com is your ultimate resource for discovering your family’s history. Explore more than 800 million newspaper pages in their vast collection spanning three centuries. newspapers.com is your gateway to exploring the past with papers from the us, uk, Canada, Australia, and beyond. Trace your family’s journey and uncover the extraordinary tales of your Ancestors through newspaper stories, birth and marriage announcements, obituaries, photos, and much more.

Diana (13m 4s):
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Nicole (13m 19s):
Well, we just heard about how Thomas Royston received a lot of land grants in the 1660s all the way through 1693. So what was going on in Virginia around that time? Well, Nathaniel Bacon’s rebellion took place in Virginia from 1675 to 76. So in those two years there were Indian uprisings and then the colonists, subsequent reactions to that, that caused an uproar. Many of the plantation owners fought with bacon against the Indians without the English governor’s consent. And the English governor was very concerned with keeping peace with the Indians.

Nicole (13m 59s):
The colonists suffered a lot during this time. They were afraid of the Indians and they were afraid of appraisal from the English government for their actions. So they kind of weren’t kind of caught in between. Thomas Royston, along with Richard Whitehead, Edmund Quinn and Dr. kms were all listed as having suffered from plundering and imprisonment during this time period when Thomas Royston originally immigrated to Virginia is uncertain at this point because he’s not listed in the 1662 Land Grant as a person being transported, it seems likely that he was already in the colony of Virginia Thomas Royston is listed as a passenger on August 1st, 1635 at age 25.

Nicole (14m 44s):
The document says these underwritten names are to be transported to Virginia embarked in the Elizabeth Delo London, Christopher Brown master examined by the Minister of Gravesend touching their conformities to the order and discipline of the Church of England. The men have taken oath of allege and supremacists. Wow, that’s just so interesting to hear the old English on that passenger list.

Diana (15m 13s):
Yeah, it really is. And that is so early 1635.

Nicole (15m 17s):
Wow. Yeah, that’s really cool. Going back, I had a question for you about the Nathaniel Bacon’s Rebellion. What kind of record did you find that showed that Thomas Royston was listed as having suffered from the plundering?

Diana (15m 35s):
The source for that is the book English Duplicates of Lost Virginia Records by Louis Decon Jr. And so that’s put out by Genealogical Publishing Company. And a lot of the, the records or the sources we have for this time are books like that that are abstracts or perhaps full transcriptions because the records are just so old or they’re crumbling. And so you can’t actually see originals. This was published in 1958, And I. Think it’s really interesting that it’s an English duplicate of lost Virginia records.

Diana (16m 15s):
so I think we sometimes forget that these were colonies and that England was keeping records of their colonies and the people over there. So there are records perhaps in England that we could also be searching. And that’s another avenue for some of these early Colonial times. If you have a name for an ancestor and You know they were going back and forth, that perhaps there would be an original record in England. So You know, the more we know about them here in this country, the more we can perhaps research in their country of origin.

Nicole (16m 50s):
Wow, that is so true that there were records in England regarding the colonists. And what a great way to find those other records at different jurisdictional levels than just the county courthouse.

Diana (17m 3s):
Right.

Nicole (17m 4s):
Alright, well, whether this to Thomas Royston on the 1635 passenger list is the same man who received the land grants has yet to be proven. However, if it were the same man, Thomas would’ve worked for 27 years before he acquired enough wealth to pay for the transport of multiple people. He would’ve been 52 years old and continued transporting people until 1693, the date of his last land grant, putting him at about 80 years old. So who knows if that was the same man. Thomas Royston is listed numerous times in the vestry book of Petworth Parish, Gloucester County Virginia. He’s listed from 1677 to 1698.

Nicole (17m 47s):
His death presumably occurring around 1699. If he is the same Thomas Royston who immigrated in 1635, this would put him at approximately age 90 when he died.

Diana (17m 60s):
I remember when I first saw that vestry book of Pets Worth parish that was up at the Family History Library And. I’d started working on the Royston And I was so excited to see all these different Royston entries. And so I carefully went through and found all of them and put together this genealogy of this family. It was a Thomas Royston and then a John Royston, and then I believe another John Royston that I was able to connect through all the different years. And as I’ve thought about whether this Thomas Royston is the same man who appeared on that immigration list in 1635, I’ve really kind of come to the conclusion that I think he probably was, because if you could imagine he was coming over 1635, was very much wilderness there in Virginia, and he would’ve had to clear land.

Diana (18m 57s):
He would’ve had to start growing tobacco, which was the crop of the time. It would take a while to build up wealth. And so it really makes sense that he had to work for a while. But it’s also entirely possible that he had a son named Thomas and that his son inherited everything that his father had worked for and he was the one. And so there are different thoughts on this. You know some recent researchers think there were two Thomases the original, and then his son was the one that brought in all the extra people. And it’s in the vestry book. But You know I’m not opposed to the thought of it being him and that he lived to the rip old age of 90.

Nicole (19m 37s):
Could it also be possible they were just unrelated Roy Duns and that the first one came and just died in ign me?

Diana (19m 45s):
It could be absolutely. It could be possible. You know, it is just so early and we really are working with just a few records and it’s pretty nebulous. But what we do have for sure are all of those land grants. And then we have him in the vestry book of Pets Worth Parish in in Gloucester County. So those records are all definitely for the same man. And I love the Vestry book because they talk about such interesting things. You know a vestry book is a church record, sort of the business dealings of the church. So they’ll talk about You know when somebody’s died because they are pitting some money forth to have it buried.

Diana (20m 25s):
You know some, somebody in the family paid so much money to have so and so buried or to purchase the coffin. You get just this really good insight into the actual group of people that are all living in this area. So I loved, loved working with that and learning more about this family. But it was really fun when I went to Gloucester County Virginia to just see what the land was like. And it was still very heavily forested in some of the areas that hadn’t been cleared for planting And I. Imagine when he first viewed the land, it was was heavily forested and it was probably hard for him to imagine how much land he had acquired.

Diana (21m 7s):
I grew up on 40 acres and that seemed like a pretty nice spread of land. And then my dad had another farm of 500 acres. And so if you were standing in the middle of that You know you owned all the land that you could see. so I can’t even imagine You know a land grant of a thousand acres or 2000 acres. So yeah, a lot of land. So as I mentioned before, the land was passed down through the family. And his son, John Royston, has various records also showing his involvement in pets worth parishes of Vestry Man and paying taxes on the Gloucester and Essex County land. so I was hoping I could maybe see the original Petworth Church when I was there in Virginia, but it no longer is standing.

Diana (21m 53s):
But there was, there is a memorial and find a grave that has a photo of the site of the Poplar Spring Church. And the sign says, this is the site of popular spring Church of Petworth Parish In 1694. Old Petworth Church was abandoned in favor of this church. It was considered the finest church of Colonial Virginia in 1678. The followers of Bacon, the rebel in turd here, a casket supposed to contain his remains, but in reality filled with stones, the body was buried secretly. So that’s another fun little fact, harkening back to the Bacon rebellion.

Nicole (22m 31s):
Oh my goodness.

Diana (22m 34s):
So supposedly he was buried there, but in reality it was filled with stones. This is just a fascinating era and it’s fun to have our ancestor be all caught up in it.

Nicole (22m 46s):
Yeah. You found some neat historical context to weave into this story about Thomas Royston.

Diana (22m 52s):
Well, You know we don’t have a story unless we figure out the history, until we learn and think about what it would’ve been like for them. Yeah,

Nicole (22m 60s):
The story would’ve been very short without it.

Diana (23m 3s):
We can’t end this podcast without talking about the YDNA project, because I was having such a wonderful time researching the Royans And I had put this family tree, And I had made all these connections from our line all the way back to this Thomas And I put it out on Roots Web and was contacted by another Roy and researcher who said, well, your research matches most of what other Roy and researchers have discovered. But there are a few differences. And I was so taken aback. I thought to myself, what other people have researched this too? I’m not the first person You know. I was new in genealogy, let’s just put it that way.

Diana (23m 45s):
And had no idea that, oh yeah, people had been researching this line for years. But it was really fun because I did my own research. And I verified everything myself, which I actually love doing. But this other researcher had started A-Y-D-N-A ROIs and surname project. And so I found ADNA tester, a direct line of the royans coming down. He was my dad’s second cousin. And we got his sample and sent it off to Sorenson Labs, which was doing the testing at the time. And we matched these other royans who were out of Virginia. And so that was just such a great validation to me that my Royce in line that had come all the way to California via Georgia and Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma, and California was a match to the royans.

Diana (24m 33s):
Some of them had stayed behind in Virginia. So that was great. And one of the things that happened though, because sorts and labs, it’s no longer a company that we can get our results from. And. I had to go and recreate all those kits. And I used the mitt o yd.org website to recreate that. And so I had all the information from the YDNA project. And. I was able to go recreate the kits from the different test takers who had all passed away except for one man. so I now have that saved out there and that’s, that’s really great.

Nicole (25m 12s):
I’m so happy that you did that. I know we talked a lot about what to do with those YDNA results. And I just love that there’s a way to preserve them for the future and to use that as evidence, even though Sorenson went away.

Diana (25m 25s):
Yeah, I am really happy about that as well. And I love, just the idea being able to use Y-A-D-N-A to connect to very, very far back. And one of the parts of this project was to see if the Royans of Virginia were connected to the Royans of Maryland. And part of this project was a direct descendant of a Maryland Royston and his YDNA was vastly different than the Virginia group. And so that was really fascinating to see that. Nope, this branch of the family, I mean they weren’t even the same family, not even the same HAPPLE group. The Marylands and Virginians were two different groups of Royans And I had run across these other royans before that came from the Maryland group.

Diana (26m 11s):
So that was fun to see through YDNA. We were able to show a difference there.

Nicole (26m 16s):
I love that. It’s really cool to be able to separate out these groups of people in early history to try to figure out where they originated. It’s so interesting. Well Thank you for sharing this research with us today. It’s fun to talk about our Ancestor, Thomas Royston and early Colonial times, which we don’t always talk about. So we hope you enjoyed that and we will talk to you all again next week. Bye.

Diana (26m 40s):
All right. Bye-Bye everyone.

Nicole (26m 41s):
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