'The VIRGINIA CARYS ~11, essay in qenealogy PRIVATELY PRINTED THE DEVINNE PRESS NEW YORK 1919 Copyright, 1919, by THE DEVINNE PRESS THE VIRGINIA CARYS TO TWO CARY WOMEN i\1Y MOTHER AND MY WIFE CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION . XIII CHAPTER I THE ORIGINS 3 II THE BRISTOL FOREBEARS • I I III CHARACTERISTICS IN VIRGINIA . 24 IV WINDMILL POINT AND PEARTREE HALL 32 V THE FOREST AND AMPTHILL VI RICHNECK, CEELYS, CARYSBROOK AND OAKHILL • . • • 96 VII SKIFFS CREEK AND PRINCE EDWARD . 128 VIII OTHER CARYS IN VIRGINIA . • APPENDIX I: CALENDAR OF WILLS PROVING PEDIGREE . • I 59 APPENDIX II: 'CONFIRMATION OF ARMS ·oF CARY OF DEVON TO CAR¥ OF BRISTOL, 1699 182 KEY INDEX . lLLUSTRATIONS NoTE. The eighteenth century portraits here reproduced a,·e heirlooms and are given the names attribi,ted to them by tradition; evidence for critical iden­ tification of either subjects or painters is not available to the present editor. Col. Archibald Cary, of Ampthill . Frontispiec·e From a copy, at Belvofr House, of the portrait formerly in the possession of John Cary Page, Esq., of Cumberland County, Pa. · FAClNGPAGE The Cary House on Bristol Back . · 11 From a sketch made I8I7 when the house was pulled down. St. Nicholas Church, Bristol • • 15 From an old print. Autographs of the Immigrant's Sons From surviving public records. Map of Warwick and Elizabeth City Countie·s, Virginia • . ·· . 3 2 From a sketch made to indicate locali-ties herein mentioned. Cary Graveyards in \Varwick County, Virginia 36 From photographs, April, I(}I9. Autographs of the_Peartre~ Hall Carys 49 From surviving public records and family papers. Col. Gill Armistead Cary, of Elmwood 73 From a portrait in the possession of T. Archibald Cary, Esq., of Richmond. CoL John Baytop Cary, _C. S. A ... ·. •. 74 From a photograph. [IX_] FACING PAGE I.Jieutenant George Cary, U. S. A. 77 From a photograph. Map of the Upper James River Counties . 8 5 An enlargement of a part of Jefferson's· A-lap of Firgi,nia, I787. Autographs of the Ampthill Carys . 88 From family papers. Ampthill House . • • • From a photograph, April, r9I9. Judith Cary ( Mrs. David Bell} . - 94 From the portrait in the possession of Major Gist Blair, Washington, D. C. Col. Miles Cary, of Richneck . 1 oo From the portrait in the possession of Mrs. Burton Harri• son, Washington, D. C. Autographs of the Richneck Carys . • . 103 From family papers. The Ceelys Plate . 105 From a photograph of the originals in the possession of Miss J.M. Cary, of Baltimore. Sally Cary ( Mrs. G. W. Fairfax) . 106 From the portrait at Belvoir House. Col. Wilson-Miles Cary, of Ceelys From the portrait at Belvoir House. Wilson Jefferson Cary, of Carysbrook . I IO From the miniature at Belvoir House. Private Randolph Fairfax, C. S. A. 112 From the portrait at the Episcopal High School, Alexandria, Fa. [xJ FACING PAGE Wilson Miles Cary, of Baltimore . r I 5 From the portrait in the possession of Miss J. M. Cary, of Baltimore. Hetty Cary, Richmond, r 86 5 . r I 6 From a daguerreotype in the possession of l\liss J. M. Cary, of Baltimore. Capt. W. M. Cary, C. S. A. r r 8 From the portrait in the possession of /Pilson Miles Cary, Esq., of Baltimore. Archibald Cary, of Cumberland, Md. ~ 120 From the portrait at Belvoir House. Autographs of the Oakhill Carys . I 2J From family papers. Constance Cary, Paris, 1867 . 124 From the portrait at Belvoir House. Midshipman Clarence Cary, C. S. N. 126 From the portrait in the possession of Guy Cary1 Esq.1 of New York. Martha Cary (Mrs. Edward Jaquelin) . 129 From the portrait at Glen Ambler, Amherst County, Fa. Pedigree Chart-- . 1 94 [XI] INTRODUCTION N the summer of 1843, Rumor took wing I f ram Ovid's House of Fame and flew about Virginia, spreading · a report that there was a fortune in England waiting to be claimed by the common l~w heirs of the Virginia i111migrant Miles Cary. No one knew who was responsible for the story, but it profoundly affected . the peace of mind of a wide-spread family c9nnec­ tion; not Carys only, but the nearer- kin of their several branches-Randolphs, Pages, Nicho­ lases, Seldens, Peachys, Hays, Leighs, Skipwiths and Eggl.estons. Lawyers and family Bibles were diligently -consulted, heirlooms were fur­ bished forth and a vast deal of traditional misin­ formation was distributed and recorded in the form of pedigrees. The excitement was fed by highly colored specifications in great variety, dis­ regarding geography as much as probability. An age-old leasehold in ·London had f alien in, the property it had covered having an a~tual wlue of from six to eighteen millions of dollars, with no one in England to claim the reversion; Lord [XIII] Brougham had moved a parliamentary commis­ sion to inve,stigate such hoary eleemosynary trusts as had outlived their usefulness, and a report had come in that, among others, a property known as "Cary's Rents" should revert to the heirs of the founder; this was described as lying, forsooth, on the Thames opposite Windsor, but. already swallowed by the growth of London: the Lord Chancellor, clearing his docket, had exhumed an estate which had remained in chancery until the direct representatives of the original liti­ gants had become extinct; a new interpretation of a Tudor marriage settletnent had overturned long established property rights. It was even averred positively that the British Government had asked the State Department at Washington to produce the Cary heir. In due time, when re­ plies to frantic inquiries in England came in, there was found to be no foundation whatever for the story: it was a purely American inven­ tion; no one had heard of it in England. The bubble was pricked. Although sensible people then put away the visions of Alnaschar in which the soberest of them had indulged for a time, the agitation per­ sisted for the ensuing ten years, reappearing at intervals ~s more "Cary heirs" were heard from in the West and Southwest. As late as 1852 a "Colonel Mulberry Sellers" from Georgia, then [XIV] shepherding the sheep of Fortune in New Yark, advertised in the Richmond newspapers that he had new and mysterious information on the sub­ ject. "\Vhen interviewed he offered to sell his proofs, or, _if the inquirer preferred and could produce legal evidence of his descent from Miles Cary, he was ready to buy out the claim: a modest sum, say $100,000, was proposed as the consideration either way. 1 The suggestion of the need of proof had brought home to some among the Carys a dis­ agreeable realization that they had no such evi­ dence of their breeding as could stand the test of the law. While they might no longer have any belief in the existence of the visionary fortune, they did still cherish vaguely a traditional confi- · dence that among theµi was the heir to the Hunsdon peerage which had been in abeyance­ for a century. There was, in fact, no more foundation for this dream than for that of 1 This was one of the earliest instances of a traffic which after­ wards became an industry, the exploiting in America of imagi­ nary claims to English estates. The most conspicuous case, in which some Virginians were involved, was that of the Jennings claim to the property of Earl Howe:-this had some merit, but when it was finally quashed by the English Court of Chancery in 1878 and several merely fraudulent promoters of syndicates of American "heirs" of other names were jailed in the United States, the industry languished and died. The epidemic is historically interesting as one of the last symptoms of colonialism: the toll which, with curious manifestations, the present generation takes from its ancestors is membership in a patriotic society. The seri­ ous study of genealogy has profited by both. [xv] the fortune, but it was not pleasant to have to forego it. 1 This lack of documentary evidence of origin, while conspicuous in the Cary family in the mid­ dle of the nineteenth century, was not peculiar to them: other Virginia families shared a like des­ titution. The explanation is not far to seek.' After the Revolution and Mr. Jefferson's level- 1 The descendants of Miles Cary, sprung from Cary of Bristol, are the same relation to the Hunsdons that they are to the Falk­ lands, namely, all three are derived from ~adets of the same De­ von stock: but the cadet who founded Hunsdon and Falkland left home generations after the ancestor of the Virginia Carys was es­ tablished in trade at Bristol. Not even when the lion and the unicorn were fighting for the crown could a serious claim of in­ heritance be made out on such facts: but it was not until 1868 that the Hunsdon ghost was finally laid in Virginia. In 1866 Colonel Joseph L. Chester drew the attention of Captain W. M. Cary to the Hera.Id;' College pedigree of 1699, which established the origin of the immigrant Miles Cary among the Bristol merchants ; and two years later Mr. Robert Dymond, of Exeter, told him of the record (Harleian MS., 6694) of the Hunsdon pee-rage case in 1707, from which it appeared that the Virginia Carys were then, by name, considered by the House of Lords only to be eliminated from the Hunsdon pedigree. On the authority of Richard Randolph, "the antiquary," Hugh Blair Grigsby had meanwhile given the myth a literary currency in his Pirginia Convention of z776 (1855), p. 91. Speaking of Colonel Archibald Cary, he said: "He was a descendant of Henry Lord Hunsdon and was himself at the time of his death the heir apparent to the barony." Grigsby repeated the statement, again without qualification, in 1858, in his Pirginia Convention of z788, ii, 302, and it was thence taken over as recently as 1883 into John Esten Cooke's romantic Pirginia, p.