MY REVOLUTIONARY FAMILY

On this eve of the 250th Fourth of July, I beg your leave to tell you about my family’s involvement in the Declaration of Independence.  Of course, I do realize that tomorrow is not the Semiquincentennial, which will be on July 4, 2026.  When you realize that the first “Fourth of July” occurred on July 4, 1776, Friday will be the 250th time that the patriots among us celebrate the freedoms that everyone enjoys a quarter of a millennium later.

My family’s connection to this story begins in the colonial capital of Virginia, Williamsburg on June 15, 1707 with the birth of Lane Jones, son of Williamsburg lawyer Orlando Jones [7thggf] and his wife, Martha Macon, [7thggm,] daughter of Guideon Macon, {8th ggf] a New Kent County attorney and former secretary to Virginia Governor, Sir William Berkley. Orlando Jones was the son of the Rev. Rowland Jones [8ggf], the founding rector of Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg, one of the nation’s oldest existing churches.   Lane Jones’ baby sister, Frances, was born three years after Lane and grew up in Williamsburg’s society.

Lane Jones [6ggf] married Ann Barber, [6ggm] daughter of William Barber, a large landowner in Yorktown, where the Revolutionary War would practically come to an end in October 1781.  Frances married Col. John Dandridge, Jr.  Their first child, a girl, was born in 1731.  The little girl was christened Martha Dandridge.  Martha attended church at St. Peter’s Church in New Kent County, which is still in existence and was the church of my Scott family for more than forty years.  

Saint Peter's Church

Martha’s first husband, Daniel Parke Custis, died and left Martha alone with four children.  Tragically, all of Martha’s children died before their 22nd birthdays.  One son, John Parke Custis, had descendants.  His son, George Washington Park Custis, married Mary Fitzhugh.  Their daughter, Mary, inherited the Custis property at Arlington, Virginia, and played a pivotal role with her husband, General Robert E. Lee, in another iconic American War.

Martha Dandridge Custis Washington

On January 6, 1759, Martha Custis [1stC7tr]  returned to St. Peter’s Church to marry her second husband, a tall,  handsome, wealthy officer, planter, and surveyor.  Of course, the groom’s name was Col. George Washington, [1st C, 6 TR] the father of our country. 

Lane Jones’s daughter, Ann Jones, [5thggm]  married John Hudson, Jr. [5th ggf] of Albemarle County (Charlottesville), Virginia. Their son, Capt. John Hudson, Jr. (4th ggf) was a Captain of the local militia regiment of Albemarle County, and a close neighbor and friend of Thomas Jefferson, [1st C6TR] the Governor of Virginia from 1779-1781 and the primary author of the Declaration of Independence.  It will be noted that the third, fourth, and fifth American presidents hailed from Albemarle and its neighbor, Orange County. 

In early June 1781, British General Cornwallis began moving his troops from the area of Petersburg, Virginia, northwest to Goochland County, Virginia, some fifty miles southeast of Charlottesville on the James River.  Cornwallis had intelligence reports that the Virginia House of Burgesses had removed to the haven of Charlottesville after the British had gotten a strong foothold in Richmond, which became the colony’s capital in 1780 after Williamsburg had been abandoned.

Jack Jouett, a 27-year-old contemporary of Gov. Jefferson and Captain Hudson, learned of the British move against Charlottesville and Jefferson’s seat of Monticello.  

Jack Jouett 

Jouett figured that the Red Coat Cavalry, under the nation’s most infamous traitor, Benedict Arnold, and the maniacal cavalry commander, Banastre Tarleton, was descending upon  Charlottesville to capture the members of Virginia's government.   Jouett raced through the back roads to get ahead of the British and warn Jefferson and his colleagues. 

Jouett arrived early in the morning before sunrise on June 4, 1781, at Little Mountain, or Monticello, where he woke Jefferson and his usual host of guests.  Jefferson gifted Jouett with his finest bottle of Madeira wine, and Jouett resumed his legendary ride, for which he became known as “The Paul Revere of Virginia.”    Jefferson’s family hid out at the Coles plantation.  Jefferson, constantly looking through his telescope for a sign of the British approach, escaped at the last minute, just as the British were entering his plantation.  

Two of Jouett’s fellow officers, Capt John Hudson and his younger brother, Christopher, took up Jouett’s mission to warn the countryside.  One of the brothers left their home on the Lower Hardware River to ascertain if the British had captured Scott’s Landing, or Scottsville, where his friend John Scott [4thggf,] a close neighbor and business associate of Jefferson, lived.  Scott’s father, Edward, had founded the river port at the sharp Horseshoe Bend, where the north-flowing James River turned right and flowed eastward to the Atlantic.  Scottsville was the county seat of Albemarle County while Jefferson was a youth.  The Hudsons also notified Randolph Jefferson, a brother of Thomas, who lived at Snowden at the interior bend of the James opposite Scottsville.  

    As it turned out, Captain Hudson's daughter, Elizabeth, married  Charles Alexander Scott, Sr. [3ggf] Scott built his commodious Fluvanna County home (Melrose - left)  at Virginia Mills on the James River, less than fifteen miles from Monticello.  Scott became one of the primary millers of Jefferson’s wheat crops. The men often stayed at each other’s homes to talk business. 

Thomas Jefferson 

The family connections continued.  General Washington was a third cousin to one of my wife’s fifth great-grandfathers, Washington.  John Scott’s wife, Jane Fry [4th ggm], was the daughter of Col. Joshua Fry,[5th ggg],  a William & Mary Professor of Mathematics and surveyor.  Fry moved to the area in 1744.  Six years later, Fry was commissioned to survey and complete the “First True Map” of the Colony of Virginia.  Fry chose his trusted friend and neighbor, Peter Jefferson, to aid him in the monumental task.    It was this partnership that made me wonder when the partners were working on their maps, if their children, Thomas, then seven, and Jane, then six, played together in the background.  This one coincidence led to my lifelong and ardent determination to determine who I am and where I came from. 

Three years later, Col. Fry (left) was appointed by Governor Robert Dinwiddie to command the Virginia Militia at the opening of the French and Indian War in 1754.  Fry and his command moved northwest to accomplish the arduous task of capturing Fort Duquesene, a seemingly unconquerable fortress at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers and the beginning of the Ohio River in a city today known as Pittsburgh.  On the last day of May 1754, the fifty-three-year-old Fry was thrown from his horse and died at Fort Cumberland, Maryland.  

    Several days later, his successor and lieutenant colonel, George Washington (left)  arrived on the scene, where he walked over to Fry’s grave next to a shady, old oak tree and carved his epitaph of his only commanding officer, “Here lies the just and the noble, Col. Fry.”  Washington led the British army to victory in seven-year-long war, preserving the northwest for the new country to control some twenty years later.  

    Finally, my deep appreciation goes to my distant cousins William Williams and Oliver Wolcott, of Connecticut, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Nelson, of Virginia, and Lyman Hall, of Georgia, who pledged to each other their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. 

    I also salute my direct ancestors, John Thompson, David Braswell, Col. Robert Patton, Colesby Smith, Ozias McCall, Archippus McCall, and countless others who fought and sacrificed their lives for our freedoms.

    The relationships to those named in this article are bracketed, not for heaping any accolades upon myself, but as a reminder to my descendants of what role their ancestors played in America’s freedom.  So on this 4th of July, it is critical that my family, your family, and everyone’s family focus on eternal gratitude for all of those who came before us and pray for those who come after us to maintain and strengthen the precious ideals of freedom.