Thomas Reade

Other Events and Attributes:

• Arrival: 1623, , , Virginia, USA

Notes:

George Reade, a native of London, came to Virginia 1637 in Sir John Harvey's party. Harvey was returning to Virginia to assume the office of Governor of the Colony. Reade was appointed Secretary of State, pro tem of the colony in 1640 and served as Acting Governor in the absence of Governor Harvey. He was a member of the House of Burgesses and a member of the Colonial Council until his death. His will, no longer extant, is documented in a York County 18th century land transaction.
York Co, VA Deeds & Bonds Book 5 pp 3 - 6This Indenture made the sixteenth day of May in the fortieth year of the Reign of our Sovernge Lord George the Second King of Great Britain and in the year of our Lord Christ one thousand seven hundred & forty one between James Mitchell of the Town & County of York and Janet his wife of the one part and Richard Ambler of the same Town & county aforesaid . Whereas George Reade late of the sd county of York Esq decd being siezed in fee of a certain tract or parcel of land lying & being in the said County of York containing by Estimation Eight hundred & fifty acres did by his last Will and Testament in writing bearing date the twenty ninth day of September in the Year of our Lord One thousand six hundred & Seventy devise the same by the name of all that Tract of Land wherein he lived to his wife during life and after her decease to be equally divided between his sons, George & Robert and the heirs of their bodies but and fault of such heirs in either or both of them or in case either or both of them should dye during their minority then he gave and devises his and their parts of the land aforesaid to his sons Francis and Benjamin and the heirs of their bodies with other remainders over as by the said Will duly proved in the General Court of this Colony being thereunto had may more at large appear and whereas the said George Reade one of the sons of the Testator dyed many years ago without issue and after his death the said Francis & Benjamin Reade intend into one ninety or half part of this premises to as afore devised and afterwards the said Robert Reade, Francis Reade & Benjamin Reade by Deed bearing date the twelfth day of November in the Year of our Lord one thousand and six hundred & eighty eight made partition of the premises aforesaid .........
George Reade married Elizabeth Martiau, daughter of Nicolas Martiau (Father of Yorktown). Their daughter Mildred, wife of Col. Augustine Warner, was the g-grandmother of George Washington.
George Read, the son of Robert Read of London and his wife Mildred Windebank, was one of the about one hundred colonists, who emigrated to the colonies from England and Wales before the end of the 17th century, known to have legitimate descent from a Plantagenet King of England.
The illustrious ancestry of George Reade is documented nicely in Colonial Records during the period of 18 January 1638/9 - 11 December 1641. The file includes letters from the Colonial Governor, Secretary of State and George Reade to Sir Francis Windebank and/or Windebank's personal secretary Robert Reade (George Reade's brother.) The correspondence file is quite interesting, alluding to the politics behind George Reade's appointment as Secretary of State during Richard Kemp's sojourn in England. It also includes personal requests from George Reade to his brother for servants and money. Earlier correspondence puts a personal face on George Reade's life. "Sir John Harvey to Robert Reade, 17 Nov. 1637. Hopes to employ Reade's brother against the Indians. He is well and stays at the writer's house." "George Reade to Robert Reade, his brother, 26 Febr. 1637/8. Does not think much of Mr. Hawley. Thanks to the support of the Governor and Mr. Kemp, the writer has survived. Mr. Menephe has brought many servants. Mr. Hawley has promised the writer that the next lot of servants coming to Virginia would be for him but he does not believe it as Hawley is in Maryland."
"Adventurers of Purse and Person 1607 - 1624/5 and Their Families" published by the Order of First Families of Virginia, indicates in a footnote (pp. 419-420) the discrepancy between the dates inscribed on his Grace Church tablets and the filing of the wills for George Read and his wife Elizabeth as follows: "His and his wife's gravestones were discovered during street excavations in Yorktown in 1931. The inscriptions on both were recut with errors. George Reade's stone now states he died Oct. 1674, "he being in the 66th yr of his age." Since the date should be 1671 (per his will), either the age shown, or his year of birth, is in error as well....The gravestone of Elizabeth (Martiau) Read now states she was born in 1625 and died in 1696, "being in ye 71st yeare of her age." Since the year of death should be 1686 (per her will), again the age or year of birth is in error. Since Nicholas Martiau claimed...his daughter Elizabeth as headrights...it would appear Elizabeth was born prior to his arrival in Virginia in 1620...and that Elizabeth's birth occurred in 1615 rather than 1625."
The graves of George Reade and his wife Elizabeth were discovered while excavating on Buckner Street in Yorktown. In 1931, descendant Letitia Pate Evans had the tablets restored and moved to the church yard of Grace Episcopal Church. The Reade tablets sit adjacent to the plots of Gov. Thomas Nelson (Declaration of Independence signer), his father, and grandfather (who married a George Reade descendant.)

George married Elizabeth Martiau in 1641 in Yorktown, York, Virginia, USA. Elizabeth (daughter of Nicholas Martiau and Jane De Berkeley) was born on 12 Dec 1615 in , Yorkshire, England; died on 10 Feb 1686 in Yorktown, York, Virginia, USA. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Robert married Mildred Windebank on 31 Jul 1600 in Westminster, Middlesex, London, England. Mildred was born on 21 Jul 1585 in Hurst, Berkshire, England; died on 15 Aug 1656 in Yorktown, York, Virginia, USA. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Arrival: 1620, , , Virginia, USA
• Residence: 1624, , Elizabeth City, Virginia, USA

Notes:

Martiau was a French Huguenot refugee, educated as a military engineer. He was in the service of the Earl of Huntingdon, one of the Virginia Company, and was sent to America in 1620 aboard the ship "Francis Bonaventure." He led a raid against the Indians at Falling Creek after the 1622 massacre. He was instrumental in securing the removal of Governor Harvey. Harvey returned to England to plead his case. He later returned briefly to Virginia, bringing with him the young George Reade, who later became Acting Governor of the colony and married Martiau's daughter, Elizabeth. In 1627 Martiau defended the French king in an argument with Thomas Mayhew and this forced him to take a loyalty oath (he had previously been made an English citizen). His grandaughter, Mildred Reade, married Augustin Warner and George Washington was their descendant. His youngest daughter, Sarah, married Capt. William Fuller, who became the Puritan Governor of Maryland.
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There is some controversy about the date of birth of Martiau's daughter, Elizabeth, which also casts some doubt about the identity of her mother. While there is much evidence that Elizabeth was born in Virginia, the daughter of Martiau and Jane Berkeley, who he married in about ***. However, on his arrival in Virginia in 1620, he claimed his daughter Elizabeth as a headright, meaning she would have been born before 1620. It is likely that his first wife was named Elizabeth, and she died before 1620. He married Jane, who was the widow of Lt. Edward Berkeley in 1624 or 1625. On December 12, 1625 Martiau wrote his sponsor, the Earl of Huntingdon, saying "I am now both a husband and a father." Martiau had three daughters, and this was likely the middle one, Mary. His third daughter was Sarah. In 1645 he married Isabella Beech.
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Nicholas Martiau (1597-1657)

A French Huguenot, he lived some period of time in England before being naturalized as an Englishman and sailing for Virginia. He had been born in France according to his own statement in the records of the General Court of Virginia and is believed to have been a protestant as the records of the French Huguenot congregation in London show him to have been a godfather at a baptism there in May 1615. Martiau arrived in Virginia in 1620. The records of the Virginia Company show that by February 1620 the colony had requested that engineers be sent out who were capable of raising fortifications. The Earl of Huntington, who had an interest in lands in the colony, engaged at his own expense two engineers, one a captain from the low countries named Benjamin Blewitt and the other a reputedly skilled French captain who had been long in England, Nicholas Martiau. Huntington specifically engaged them to act as his attorneys in establishing his lands in Virginia. To that end he saw that Martiau was naturalized, a necessary qualification to own land, vote, or hold office in the colony, and he also provided him with a life interest in some lands of the Huntington estate. Martiau arrived on the Francis Bona Ventura in August 1620. After the Indian massacre in March 1622 he commanded a company which sought out and fought the Indians. For a while after that he was at Falling Creek where the colony's iron works had been destroyed and the population devastated in the massacre. From there in 1623 he testified to the exemplary services of Doctor Ed Giften. In 1623 he was a member of the House of Burgesses that signed the completed draft of the First Laws made by the Assembly in Virginia. By the time of the census of 1624, Blewitt was no longer in the Virginia records and Capt Nicholas Martiau of Elizabeth City was the Earl's sole attorney in Virginia. In 1625 he appears in the muster as Captain Martiau, age 33. In March 1623, the Commissioners sent from London to investigate conditions in Virginia questioned where the colony should be fortified, and received from the Assembly the answer that the best defense against Indians would be a 6 mile palisade from Martin's Hundred to Chiskiacke, the future site of Yorktown. In 1630 Governor Harvey and the council voted lands for those who would settle in the first two years in Chiskiacke and upon completion of the palisade Martiau was among those who moved their families to Chiskiacke. In 1632 as a burgess from Chiskiacke and the Isle of Kent, he signed the petition to the crown for confirmation of the title to all of the colonists' lands. Martiau's plantation eventually included 1300 acres among which is the site of Yorktown today. As a prominent public figure Martiau appears frequently in the records thereafter. He was elected burgess from Chiskiacke and the Isle of Kent in 1632 and was a justice of York County from 1633 until his death, often holding meetings of the court in his home. In the prelude to the famous "Thrusting out of Sir John Harvey", a challenge to autocratic rule, Nicholas Martiau was one of three speakers who by their opposition forced the governor to return to London to report to the king. At two other times occasions arose requiring Martiau to prove his loyalty to the crown: in 1627 he was required by the General Court to take the "Oath of Supremacy", and in 1656 it was recorded in Northampton County that "Captain Nicholas Martiau obtained his denizenation in England and could hold any office or employment in Virginia." Little is known about Martiau's wife. In a letter dated December 1625 written in Elizabeth City and addressed to the Earl of Huntington Martiau announces himself as a husband and a father of "little ones". His wife, Jane, of unknown surname had apparently arrived on the Sea Flower in 1621, then been married to Lieutenant Bartley, and widowed by 1625. She in turn appears to have died before 1640. There is some supposition that there had been a first wife before Mrs. Bartley. There was a third marriage before November 1646 to a widow, Isabella Beech, who apparently died before Martiau died about 1657. Nicholas Martiau was survived by three daughters of his second marriage: Elizabeth married to Colonel George Read, Mary married to Colonel John Scasbrook, and Sarah married to Captain William Fuller, the Puritan Governor of Maryland under the Commonwealth.

References: 1. "Nicholas Martiau: The Adventurous Huguenot, The Military Engineer and The Earliest American Ancestor of George Washington", by John Baer Stoudt, Norristown, PA, 1932 http://mediasvc.ancestry.com/image/5153c7b0-cdb3-4a08-8c7d-c81b9dcb3a33.jpg?Client=Trees&NamespaceID=1093

Nicholas Martiau, wives and children.

Nicholas Martiau was a French Huguenot and came to Virginia in the "Francis Bonaventure" as a personal representative of the 5th Earl of Huntington, a member of the Virginia Company, a Capt. A Huguenot was a Calvinist Protestant against the Catholic Church. Military Engineer. His plantation comprised of 1,300 acres and included the site of the Battle of Yorktown. His wife, Jane Berkley, was a widow of Lieutenant Edward Berkley.

He was the first to patent the site of Yorktown, and to represent Kent Island, York and Chiskiack in the House of Burgresses (1632). He was a settler of Elizabeth City, Charles City and York Counties, VA. He was a Justice of York County and also a Burgess there. In Volume IV of "Genealogies of Virginia Families" we read " Nicholas Martian's name is rendered variously in the records, Marlier, Martue, Martin, Martain. In 1621 a large party of French Walloons applied to the London Company
for leave to settle in Virginia. Permission was granted, but as they received more favorable terms from the Dutch, they sailed to New York in 1622 and constituted the first Dutch colony in America. Some few, nevertheless came to Virginia, and amoung them was Nicolas Martain, who received his denization in England. In the list of Walloons presented in 1621 to the London Company, there is entered "Nicholas de la Marlier, his wife and two children;" and in the census of 1625 "Capt. Nicholas Martue" is named as living in Elizabeth City.
(Hotten, List of Emigrants to America, 99,176,249.)

When Chiskiack, on York River, was opened in 1630 for settlement he obtained the land at Yorktown and was the first representative in the Assembly for Chiskiack and Kent Island. He was one of the first justices of York County, and in 1639 obtained a patent for land at Yorktown due him on account of importing himself, Nicholas Marlier, wife, Jane, Nicholas, his son, Elizabeth Marlier, his daughter, and Jane Berkeley her daughter and several others "the first year to Chiskiack." In 1625 Lt. Edward Berkeley had living with him his wife Jane Berkeley, and daughter Jane. It seems that Martian married his widow.

In 1635 he took a leading part in protesting against the tyranny of Governor Sir John Harvey, and the loss of Kent Island to Lord Baltimore, and was arrested and confined. But Sir John Harvey was deposed by the council and Martian and his friend were released. In the records of York he is mentioned in 1645 as married to Puritan governor of Maryland. These daughters were probably by the second wife Jane, the widow of Edward Berkeley, and Col. Scasbrook had a daughter named Jane. Martain's French wife and children probably did not survie the "seasoning period." He was the commom ancestor of George Washington, Robert E. Lee and many eminent Virginians.

Nicholas married Jane De Berkeley. Jane was born in 1593 in , , , France; died on 12 Dec 1686 in Hampton, Independent Cities, Virginia, USA. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Nicholas married Éléonore de Sormiers. Éléonore was born in 1560 in , , , France; died in 1610 in York, Yorkshire, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]