I recently wrote about the DNA results that proved the Brantley branches of my family tree began in America with Edward Brantly, an English immigrant who arrived in Virginia in 1638 as an indentured servant. According to many online family trees, he was born around 1615, came from London and worked seven years for the man who paid for his passage.
In Memoriam Edward Brantley, Father of Edward Jr., Grandfather of Phillip,, John and William Brantley; The first of his name in America; Arrived from London in Isle of Wight Parish, Virginia Colony, on June 18, 1638.
A memorial, with the name changed to Brantley, to the settler stands in the Weathersby-Bunn Cemetery near Daddysville in Franklin County, North Carolina. The stone identifies him as the first Brantley in America and says he arrived from London in the Virginia colony on June 18, 1638.1
Since Edward lived and died in Virginia, the marker is not his gravestone, but a monument placed there by later descendants to preserve the family’s connection to him.
Rather than an actual memorial, I’ve done a little digging to see what I could discover so I could create for him a digital memorial. One thing is for certain; generations of family researchers have spent a lot of time trying to figure out as much as they could about Edward Brantly “The Immigrant.”
A name in a land patent
The earliest known Virginia record containing the Brantley name does date to June 18, 1638.
On that date, John Seaward received a patent for 400 acres in Isle of Wight County along the Warresquike River, then also called New Towne Haven. The land stood across from property belonging to Nathaniel Floyd and near land Seaward already owned.
Under Virginia’s headright system, a person generally received 50 acres for each immigrant whose transportation to the colony he financed. Seaward claimed credit for transporting eight people, including himself, John Williams, William Winfrye, Anthony Mathews, Gersion Gromwell, John Lippett, Phillip Plumblye and a man recorded as Edward Brantly.2
That document is the foundation for almost everything later written about Edward’s arrival in America. There is no doubt that someone named Edward Brantly was used as a headright in a Virginia land claim.
It does not prove that Edward arrived June 18, 1638. That was the date of the patent, not necessarily the date he stepped off a ship. Virginia officials sometimes issued patents years or even decades after the people named as headrights arrived. Headright certificates could also be sold or transferred from one landowner to another, so we know he arrived. We just don’t know exsactly when or on what ship.
Seaward may have paid Edward’s passage in exchange for a period of labor. That was a common arrangement in colonial Virginia and may well explain their connection. However, the record itself does not say so.3
It is impossible to know for sure that “my” Edward Brantly named in 1638 was the same Edward Brantley who later owned land and raised a family in Isle of Wight County. Since there is a gap of nearly 29 years between the headright record and the next document that unquestionably concerns the Edward who wrote a will. All the details do make it very likely that they were the same man and that is the most reasonable conclusion. .
Edward becomes a landowner
On Feb. 8, 1667, published abstracts of Isle of Wight County records show Francis Hobbs and his wife, Mary, conveyed 675 acres to Edward Brantley. The property was in a neighborhood associated with the England, Tooke, Bacon and Murray families.4
Two years later, on Oct. 30, 1669, Virginia issued Edward a patent for 675 acres adjoining land owned by men identified as Mr. England and Mr. Tooke. The full description refers to two marked pine trees, a swamp, a meadow, a place called the Dancing Place and an old cart path leading to Henry White’s mill.5
Those descriptions place Edward’s plantation in the Upper Parish of Isle of Wight County, probably in the broader Blackwater River region.
Whether Edward had once arrived as an impoverished servant or not, he had become a substantial landowner by the late 1660s. A 675-acre plantation did not make him one of Virginia’s richest men, but it placed him as a planter who was comfortably above the many colonists who owned little or no land.
Edward almost certainly grew crops, raised livestock and participated in the tobacco economy that dominated colonial Virginia. His later possessions included cattle, horses, beds and pewter tableware, suggesting a well-established agricultural household.
Other county abstracts place him in estate and legal matters involving his neighbors. Serving as an appraiser or providing security for an estate required property and the confidence of the local court. Although the records reveal little about his personality, they suggest that Edward had become an accepted member of the community.
Edward’s will
On March 30, 1688, Edward described himself as “Edward Brantley Senior of the upper parish of the Isle of Wight.”
He declared that he was of sound mind and wrote a will dividing his property among his children and grandchildren. The document was proved in court Jan. 9, 1688/89, meaning he died sometime during the intervening months.6 That will provides the clearest surviving picture of his family.
Edward named three sons: Edward Brantley Jr., Phillip Brantley and John Brantley. He also named a daughter, Mary Brantley, and three grandsons: James, the son of Edward Jr.; Edward, the son of Phillip; and John, the son of John. No wife appears in the will. She may have died before 1688, but no surviving record has conclusively identified her.
Edward left 165 acres to his son Edward and grandson James. Phillip and his son Edward were to share 200 acres, while John and his son John were to receive another 200 acres.
Mary received 100 acres beginning near a corner tree at what the will called Akin Swamp, extending toward a branch below Phillip’s house and along a place known as the meadow.
The will also provides a rare glimpse inside Edward’s household. He owned feather beds with curtains, blankets, pillows and sheets. He left pewter dishes, plates and porringers. His livestock included a black mare, a bay mare, steers and several young cattle. Mary received the remainder of his personal estate after the payment of debts and funeral expenses. Edward also named her sole executrix, placing her in charge of settling the estate. That suggests he trusted Mary’s judgment and ability. Its also possible that she remained in his household while her brothers had established homes and farms of their own.
The man named Peter
The most troubling part of Edward’s will concerns an Indigenous man named Peter. Edward described him as his “Indian slave” and directed that Peter serve each of his three sons for two years. After those six years, Peter was to pass to Mary for the remainder of her life. If Mary had children, they would inherit him. If she died without children, Peter would return to Edward’s sons or their descendants.
Virginia’s laws concerning Indigenous slaves shifted repeatedly during the late 1600s. Colonists acquired Indigenous captives through warfare, trade and trafficking networks that extended throughout the Southeast and into the Caribbean. A 1682 Virginia law recognized the enslavement of certain Indigenous people, although lawmakers continued changing the rules during the following years.7
Nothing in Edward’s will identifies Peter’s age, family, place of birth or Native nation. We do not know how Edward acquired him or what happened to him after the estate was divided.
The family remains in Isle of Wight County
The Brantley family continued owning land in Isle of Wight County after Edward’s death.
The county’s 1704 quitrent roll lists an Edward Brantly with 175 acres, John Brantly with 364 acres and Phillip Brantly with 200 acres. Those men were almost certainly Edward’s sons or immediate descendants.
The same list includes Peter Deberry with 100 acres. Later Brantley research identifies Edward’s daughter Mary as Peter Deberry’s wife. The matching 100 acres make that relationship especially likely because Edward left Mary exactly 100 acres in his will.
We may never know exactly where Edward was born, what brought him to Virginia or what he thought as he watched his children and grandchildren establish lives on the land he had acquired. But for now, thanks to the tools we have today, we can prove much more than those researchers who came before.
For more of my genealogy research, visit rscottwilliams.info.
Endnotes:
- “Weathersby/Bunn Cemetery,” Franklin County, North Carolina GenWeb, cemetery survey conducted April 21, 2004. ↩︎
- Nell Marion Nugent, ed., Cavaliers and Pioneers: Abstracts of Virginia Land Patents and Grants, 1623-1666, vol. 1 (Richmond, VA: Dietz Printing Co., 1934), 150. ↩︎
- Minor T. Weisiger, “The Virginia Land Office,” Research Notes No. 20 (Richmond: Library of Virginia, revised September 2009), 1-2. ↩︎
- “Isle of Wight County Records,” William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine 7, no. 4 (April 1899): 205-315; John Bennett Boddie, Seventeenth Century Isle of Wight County, Virginia (Chicago: Chicago Law Printing Co., 1938). ↩︎
- Virginia Land Office, Patent Book 6, 1666-1679, 261, patent to Edward Brantly, Oct. 30, 1669; “Isle of Wight County Records,” William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine 7, no. 4 (April 1899): 205-315. ↩︎
- Edward Brantley, last will and testament, March 30, 1688, proved Jan. 9, 1688/89, Isle of Wight County, Virginia, Will and Deed Book 2; abstracted in Blanche Adams Chapman, Wills and Administrations of Isle of Wight County, Virginia, 1647-1800 (Smithfield, VA, 1938). ↩︎
- Virginia General Assembly, “An Act to Repeale a Former Law Makeing Indians and Others Ffree,” November 1682, transcribed in Encyclopedia Virginia; “Indian Enslavement in Virginia,” Encyclopedia Virginia, Virginia Humanities. ↩︎
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