The Early Fly Family of Virginia: Part I |
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Bonnie Flythe ©1999
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This is a description of the Fly family in early Southside Virginia based on a careful examination of court and church documents available for the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Thousands of people scattered throughout the United States can claim descent from this early Virginia family. The Fly name occurs in the records of England as early as the 11th century and it appears that members of the family settled in Maine, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Virginia during the colonial era each founding separate branches. This is an account of the Virginia family. Overwhelming reliance is placed on primary evidence i.e. information recorded at or very near the time of the event by those who were in a position to be familiar with events. Family stories are viewed with a great deal of skepticism for several reasons. This time period is very distant and stories have the potential of being changed with each generation as misunderstanding occurs and memory fails. The stories themselves often conflict and in some cases have demonstrable errors. It would be quite arbitrary to select one or two and treat them as absolute fact. To quote Thomas Rhodes Lincoln, another Fly family researcher, "One must be guarded in accepting family tradition as historic fact. Traditions should be evaluated, used as possible guideposts leading to undisputed history, but rejected if they are impossible to prove." Any family story needs validation by supporting evidence such as deeds, wills, tax lists, etc. The guidelines of the National Genealogical Society, published by the Society on the Internet, urge the researcher to accept statements about the family which are best supported by the evidence. Fly or Flythe family researchers are strongly urged to examine records to verify, if possible, any and all claims made about the history of the family. Corrections of the information presented here will be very welcome. Southside Virginia is that area in Virginia south of the James River extending to the North Carolina border. It includes the counties of Norfolk, Nancemond, Isle of Wight, Surry, Sussex, Prince George, Princess Anne, Southampton, and Greensville as well as others further west. The early family line there is simple. William Fly was father of Jeremiah Fly who was father of John Fly. Because of the fragmentary nature of the data, each person's documentation will be listed at the beginning of their section for quick reference. Fly family relationships in Southside Virginia 1677-1736: William Fly (b.bef.1656-d.ca.1679 Isle of Wight Co., Va.)
William Fly (b. bef. 1656-d. 1679)
The first appearance in the records of a member of the Fly family in Southside Virginia occurs in October of 1677 in Isle of Wight county when a William (O) Fly makes his mark on a petition. The petition asked for mercy to be shown to William West, a rebel who participated in Bacon's Rebellion1. There is no indication that William was a part of the rebellion, but his signature on the petition indicates that he was probably born before 1656 possibly in England. In the absence of church registers or family Bibles, rough estimates of adulthood are made by subtracting 21 from the first appearance on an individual in the records. About a year later, William purchased 100 acres of land adjoining Wm. Oldis from Christopher Blythe2. Exactly when he married cannot be known because there are no surviving church records, but he did apparently marry well. His wife, Mary, was daughter and granddaughter of two members of the House of Burgesses, Arthur Smith and his son col. Arthur Smith II. According to Boddie in Seventeenth Century Isle of Wight, the first Arthur Smith in Virginia was thought to be a younger son of Arthur Smith of Blackmore, Essex, England. The manor house and former priory were on the Blackwater River. The Arthur Smith of Virginia owned at least 1450 acres of land and in future years the town of Smithfield, Virginia would be founded on a portion of that land along Pagan Creek in Isle of Wight. By Dec. 6, 1679, William Fly pronounced a nuncupative or spoken will and appointed his wife to be executrix. His estate was appraised the same year in Jan. 1679.3 The old calendar was in effect then and Jan.1 was not the beginning of a New Year for official records. The British government used March 25th as New Year's Day. The inventory shows that he owned one horse, three cows and calves, five shoats, one gunn, some pewter spoons, two feather beds and other assorted household items. While not a large estate, it seems to be typical of a pioneer household. Mary Smith Fly was probably pregnant or had an infant at the time of her husband's death. He left everything to her and some time before 1688 she had married her second husband John Hole. John Hole's estate was probated in Isle of Wight4 that year and Mary was appointed administratrix. Then the will of Mary's father Arthur Smith, dated 16965 mentions a daughter Mary Pitt and her son John Hole. Mary's third husband was obviously a member of the Pitt family.
When Arthur Smith died between late 1696 and the spring of 1697, he also left land to Jeremy Fly and a relationship was implied by the specific wording in the will. He is not called a grandson in the will, but a deed of gift recorded at the courthouse in 1702 from Arthur Smith III, younger brother of Mary Smith, to Jeremiah Fly mentions setting aside for Mary Tyler for her lifetime 1/3 of the land given in the deed.6 After her death, the land would go to Jeremiah. This is the traditional and legally binding dower portion. At that time period in Virginia, a wife had a right to 1/3 of all her husband's property, real and personal. Real property was land and personal property included all else. By 1702, Mary had been widowed again and apparently married a Tyler. Jeremiah, the orphan son of William, was probably of age i.e. 21 for him to be deeded land in 1702. By 1706 and possibly before that, Jeremiah had married Mary the widow of Henry Bulls.7 Her surname is not known and no surviving church records record the marriage, but the records show that the estate of Henry Bulls was in the hands of Jeremy Fly between 1704 and 1706. Mary had a child, William Bulls, born before 1702 who was later mentioned in Jeremiah's will as a son-in-law. In those days, son-in-law could mean stepson. William Bulls purchased land in 1723 and must have been an adult to do that. In 1717, Jeremiah witnessed two court documents8 and in 1720 appraised the estate of John Duckes.9 On Nov. 19, 1733 in Newport Parish, Isle of Wight Co. Virginia, Jeremiah Fly had his will drawn up. In it he mentions wife Mary, son-in-law William Bulls, daughter Charity, daughter Rachel, daughter Mary and son John. This will was probated in 1736.10 There is no way of knowing when Jeremiah's children were born since there are no known surviving Bible records or church registries which mention them. William Bulls was obviously in his thirties when his stepfather died, but what about the other children? Because of the rule of primogeniture, Jeremiah did not have to mention his wife and oldest, or in this case, only son at all. They had an automatic right to his property. He does mention them though. John is the only Fly son mentioned and all the land is left to him after his mother's death. William Bulls, Charity, and Rachel were each left one shilling. He may not have wanted them to make any other legal claim on his estate so he left them something. This would have prevented a law suit challenging John and Mary's possession of the land.
It is interesting that he does not make the son John, his executor. The custom then was to name a son or sometimes a mother, son, and a friend as executor unless the son was underage. His sole executrix was his wife Mary. She was to possess the land and property for her life and then the land would go to son John and this John and the daughter Mary would share the personal property. The other children are excluded and it is possible that Charity and Rachel were not Jeremiah's children, but Henry Bulls' children. We cannot know. It is highly likely that the son John was underage when his father wrote the will and therefore was born after 1712, possibly as late as the 1720s although Mary would have been reaching the limits of her childbearing years. Jeremiah does not mention any of John's children in his will. The fate of the land that Johns inherited is also not known. Did John sell it and not record the deed? Did he lose it because of financial problems? Did he simply abandon it? Did Mary Bulls Fly marry again and somehow retain title to the land? No one knows. The land disappears from the record! What happened to John? Some Fly family genealogies claim that John was educated in England, married and the father of children by the mid-1720s. But there is no church or civil court evidence to that effect. Travel to England was, of course, very expensive and schools were few and far between in Virginia. No old family stories make this specific claim. Again we return to the need for primary sources to substantiate all of this. Research in English records is required. Some Fly family genealogies also state that John went to Pennsylvania, but there are, likewise, no primary sources which would support this claim. Many genealogical journals publish articles that include deed abstracts showing migration from state to state or county to county. The search for provable connections goes on in families other than this one. There are members of the Fly family in Pennsylvania, but they may descend from individuals who migrated separately from our William Fly. Tracing this John has been one of the most difficult challenges in investigating the Fly family. To the seasoned genealogist, primary sources are most important in tracing lines of descent. The difficulty with the Fly family is that the majority of the court records of Isle of Wight and Southampton Counties have been searched by the Rev. Norman Flythe and to a lesser extent by myself and solid proof of the fate of John has not been found. The problem now is to find unexamined records that would shed some light. Stories to the effect that John Fly married a Mary and lived to be 112 or 120 years old and died in Tennessee really need to be verified. This statement is to be found in some of the old family histories, but I have never seen any evidence to support it. There are enough Johns in the early years for people to have combined the life spans of two of them and passed on the story not realizing the merging of identities. The next section will discuss what we know about members of the Fly
family who appear in Southside Virginia between 1756 and 1791. Assumptions
are kept to a minimum. Footnotes1 John Bennett Boddie, Seventeenth Century Isle of Wight County Virginia, (Bowie, Md.: Heritage Books, Inc., 1993) pg. 162 3 Blanche Adams Chapman, Wills and Administrations of Isle of Wight County, Virginia 1647-1800, (Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1975) pg. 71 6 William Lindsay Hopkins Isle of Wight County Virginia Deeds 1647-1719, Court Orders 1693-1695 and Guardian Accounts 1740-1767 (Richmond, Va.: GEN-N-DEX, 1993), pg. 1702 |
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©1999
Bonnie Flythe
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