Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, Hurst Family
In his 1950s book Hursts of Shenandoah, J.C. Hurst, based partly on discussions his father had with B.F. Hurst, related that our branch of the Hurst family was founded by three brothers, William, James, and John, who came from Buckinghamshire, England, in about 1730. He said they were married before they came to America. According to J.C., their father was Henry Hurst, born in 1679, who perhaps came to America with his sons. J.C. then listed Henry’s ancestors back three generations to a William Hurst born in 1550.
J.C. Hurst also stated that soon after arriving “the brothers settled on the South branch of the Shenandoah river, in what is now Page County, Virginia.” The first land record listed by J.C. was a tract bought by brother William, known as “Brindle Bill,” on the Shenandoah “near the mouth of Hawksbill creek.” Hawksbill Creek is indeed in Page County; however, Brindle Bill’s land was actually in what is now Warren County, one county north of Page, near the mouth of Gooney Run. That area changed county names often during that period of time – Orange to Augusta to Frederick to Dunmore to Shenandoah before becoming the present counties.
After quickly passing by brother James, J.C. said that brother John Hurst lived near William by “1748 and later.” J.C. stated “We once saw an old letter written many years ago, by a member of the family, who lived in Missouri, in which the writer claimed that he had understood from his ancestors that John had lived on the Shenandoah River in Shenandoah County and that he had a number of sons, among whom were a John and an Absalom.” Brother John was traditionally born in England “about the year 1700 or a little later.”
J.C. said there were other Hursts in Virginia, including some in Fairfax and Northumberland counties. He allowed that the Fairfax group may have been connected with the three brothers, but did not discuss the Northumberland ones further.
J.C. correctly identified “Capt.” John and William as sons of Brindle Bill. He then stated that “We also know that Thomas, Absalom, “Mill Creek” John, Elijah and William were the sons of either the original James or John, or perhaps both.”
Out of the above “facts” from the first two pages of J.C. Hurst’s book, there are probably hundreds of Hursts who have constructed genealogies of their families which they are reluctant to change. Never mind that this part of the book is based mainly on stories related to his father by a cousin, B.F. Hurst.
However, other genealogists have done original research since the 1950s which casts doubt on many of J.C.’s “facts.” First of all, research in England has shown that Henry did not have three sons named William, James, and John. See: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~hurstpage/henryhurst.htmhttp://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~hurstpage/henryhurst.htm.
Dennis Hurst has accumulated a great deal of evidence about the marriage of Brindle Bill and Judith Calfee (J.C.’s Caffrey). Instead of having been married in England, they were actually married near Rappahannock Falls near Fredericksburg, Virginia, in about 1732. The Rappahannock River at that point separates Stafford and Spotsylvania counties. The Calfee family lived in King George County, Virginia, which is between Northumberland and Stafford counties, at least from 1721. Brindle Bill and his wife Judith moved to the Shenandoah Valley in about 1735-1737.
J.C. Hurst apparently did not know about the Overwharton Parish Register of Stafford County. This Register listed births, marriages, and deaths in Stafford from about 1720 to 1760, although there are few entries from the early years. The Hurst entries run from 1739 to 1758. Many of the names that J.C. listed for brother John Hurst’s family show up in the Register. John himself died on 6 Dec 1747. Thomas and his wife Mary are shown with the births of several children, including Absalom, born 15 May 1750.It is not as if the Register was only recently discovered in some dusty drawer at the Library of Virginia in Richmond. At the parish church, the Aquia Church in Stafford, there are two handwritten copies, one dating from 1894. There are now two printed versions for sale. The Register is also now on the web at http://www.rootsweb.com/~vastaffo/registerindex.htmhttp://www.rootsweb.com/~vastaffo/registerindex.htm.
When reviewing Dennis Hurst’s research material recently, I noticed a reference to an article about John Hurst of Stafford. I tracked down the original article in Tyler’s Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January, 1920, edited by Lyon G. Tyler. Beginning on p. 162 is the article “A Group of Northern Neck Families: Daniel, Moxley, Gunnell, Bowling, Hurst,” contributed by Fairfax Harrison, who wrote many articles about land grants and the Northern Neck. (J.C. Hurst did not know about, or at least did not refer to, this article.) Starting on p. 170 is Section E. on the Hurst family:
“I. John Hurst (d. 1747), undoubtedly a representative of the family of that name which is found also in Wicomico Parish in Northumberland (Bishop Meade, ii, 132), secured in 1719 from the Proprietors of the Northern Neck a grant of 312 acres on the head branches of Accotink Run adjoining lands of Thomas Norman, Robert Carter, Esq., and Capt. Edward Mountjoy (Northern Neck Land Grants, v. 200), and there he died in 1747. (Overwharton Parish Register.) Doubtless he was the voter at the Fairfax election of 1744, but it may have been his son. He was, apparently, the father of the Thomas and James Hurst who from 1740 to 1757 register their marriages and the births of their children in Overwharton Parish, and, by family tradition, certainly the father of
II. John Hurst (d. 1789) of Accotink….”
The article continues with further genealogy of the Hurst family in Fairfax County, but I’ll leave that to another day or to someone else. Let’s look closer at the first paragraph. An important revelation in the article is that the Overwharton Parish Register was clearly known in 1920, more than thirty years before J.C. Hurst wrote. John Hurst’s 1747 date of death was taken from the Register. Harrison made one mistake in the article; John’s Northern Neck Land Grant was actually on Accokeek Run, which is in Stafford County, rather than Accotink Run, which is in Fairfax County. (See Virginia Northern Neck Land Grants: 1694-1742, compiled by Gertrude E. Gray, p. 68, citing original book 5, p. 200.) The grant itself clarifies its location; it’s for “John Hurst of Stafford Co….in said Co.” (It is not important for our purposes, but it was probably John Hurst’s son John, who lived in Fairfax, who voted in the Fairfax County election of 1744. The election is discussed earlier in the article and is interesting because John voted against Lawrence Washington, George’s brother.)
For me, the major deduction in the article is that John was “apparently” the father of Thomas and James Hurst. “Apparently” is not proof, but even J.C. said that Thomas was the son of John or James. Thomas is clearly shown in the Overwharton Register as the father of Absalom and several other children. (That would make John Hurst of Stafford my 5th great grandfather.) I believe that the clear listing of Absalom as the son of Thomas in the Overwharton Register is far more authoritative than J.C.’s “old letter” from an unnamed Missouri family member who “understood from his ancestors” that Absalom was the son of John.
Fairfax Harrison’s assertion that James Hurst was the son of John of Stafford seems to agree with the views of many Hurst researchers, although J.C. Hurst did not list him as such. In contrast, J.C. Hurst’s book agreed with the idea that Thomas was the son of John, but it then assigns some of Thomas’s children directly to John. Thus Thomas was more or less ignored by many Hurst genealogists in the past.
John Hurst’s will is online, courtesy of Gwen Hurst, at http://searches.rootsweb.com/usgenweb/archives/va/stafford/wills/hurjowil.txthttp://searches.rootsweb.com/usgenweb/archives/va/stafford/wills/hurjowil.txt. The will specifically mentions his wife Jane, sons James and Henry, and daughter Mary. After his death, it was presented to the county court by his widow Jane and “John Hurst heir at law.” Gwen Hurst once told me she thought “heir at law” John was his grandson, the son of Thomas, better known (not by Gwen) as John “Mill Creek” Hurst. But if the Fairfax Harrison article is correct, that John might be his son “John of Accotink.”
Gwen Hurst has also transcribed Jane Hurst’s will at http://searches.rootsweb.com/usgenweb/archives/va/stafford/wills/hurjawil.txthttp://searches.rootsweb.com/usgenweb/archives/va/stafford/wills/hurjawil.txt. Jane only mentions son James.
Certainly it would have been nice if one or both of the wills had mentioned a son Thomas, but my experience is that all children don’t always get mentioned in wills. After all, neither will mentioned a son John either. (Another 3rd great grandfather of mine only mentioned three of eight children in his will, not, of course, including my 2nd great grandfather.)
Harrison’s other major assertion was that John was from the Hurst family in Northumberland County, which is not far from Stafford, at the tip of the Northern Neck. Gwen Hurst has discussed this possible relationship at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~hurstpage/henryorange.htmhttp://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~hurstpage/henryorange.htm. Gwen also has a chart showing a possible family tree at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~hurstpage/henrychart.txthttp://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~hurstpage/henrychart.txt. (Note that all these “hurstpage” URL’s are part of June Reed’s site, which also includes databases for all the major Hurst branches.)
I don’t intend this as a complete review of J.C. Hurst’s book, but I must point out that in his discussion of Absalom Hurst (who he was still not sure was a son of James or John, but “probably the latter”), he listed his children. Besides the correct John and William, he included Mark and Thomas, who every genealogist I know of list as sons of Absalom’s son John.
J.C. Hurst also said that Absalom’s sons John, William, and Mark moved to Claiborne County, Tennessee, and that William “may have later returned to the New river.” I’m not completely sure about son John, but William “Big Bill” Hurst, my 2nd great grandfather, never moved to Tennessee, but lived out his life on Little Reed Island Creek in the New River Valley in Wythe County, Virginia. Steve Hurst suggests that J.C. confused Absalom’s sons with his grandsons, sons of John, who were John “Squire,” William “Trigger Bill,” and Rev. Mark Hurst, who did move to Claiborne. This is yet another example of J.C.’s generational confusion. (A grandson of William “Big Bill” did later move to another county in Tennessee; otherwise, I wouldn’t be writing this!)
My main point, I guess, is that too much reliance has been given to a book which contains so much incorrect information. I don’t mean to criticize J.C. Hurst; he wrote an interesting and useful book with what material he had to work with. He and his main source, B.F. Hurst, obviously expended a lot of effort to collect information about our family. Copies of a reprinted version of the book are now available.
One type of information was not available to J.C. Hurst, Fairfax Harrison, or Gwen Hurst, but has recently become available and has to be considered. That information is the results from the Hurst Surname Y-Chromosome DNA Project. So far, seven American Hursts (all “Shenandoah Hursts”) and three English Hursts (at least two of whom are descendants of a brother of Henry Hurst, born 1679) have tested and received their results. The seven Americans have either perfect or near perfect DNA matches. Represented among the seven are those with clear paper trails back to Brindle Bill, John “Mill Creek,” and Absalom Hurst, demonstrating that those three were undoubtedly closely related, since they probably had exactly the same Y-chromosome DNA. In contrast, the three English Hursts have near perfect matches with each other, but their DNA pattern is significantly different from the Americans - different enough that my thought was that the common ancestor was “Adam’s grandfather.” Among the next steps would be to find and test some Hurst men from Northumberland and Fairfax counties. I assume that the more different Hurst branches that test, the better we will know the connections.
Besides the DNA testing, other areas that need study are the Northumberland County Hursts, the exact relationship of Brindle Bill and John of Stafford, and the “third brother” James.
J.C. Hurst set down to paper a tradition that the “Shenandoah Hurst” founders were first generation Americans descended from a line back to 16th century England. I rather think that the available evidence supports a theory that the Shenandoah Hursts came from Stafford County, Northumberland County before that, and only then from England. Their arrival in this country was about a full century earlier than J.C. believed. By the time they made their relatively brief stop in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, they were 3rd and 4th generation Americans from a family which was among the first in America.
William R. Hurst
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