A Long Time Ago/08 Thorowgood

From Wally Atkins Family Wiki

Thorowgood

This page is part of A Long Time Ago: A History of the Atkins-Paynter and Allied Families, the chunked book edition on the Wally Atkins Family Wiki.

  • Book section: Thorowgood
  • Page range in the book: 60-75
  • Chunk order: 8 of 36

This section has been lightly cleaned and reconstructed from the working transcript and related extracted notes. It preserves the strongest readable Thorowgood material, especially where the line crosses into Offley, Yeardley, Lawson, Gookin, Custis, and the early Virginia landscape around Lynnhaven.

Source note

  • Book: A Long Time Ago: A History of the Atkins-Paynter and Allied Families
  • Transcript sources: `007-thorowgood.md` and supporting crossover material in `008-offley.md`
  • Companion extracted material used: `arrivals-in-virginia-context-notes.md`
  • Editorial note: the surviving transcript mixes narrative, chart, and neighboring-family carryover, so this page emphasizes the clearest Thorowgood-centered material first

Cleaned import

The Thorowgood branch is one of the most important structural lines in the book because it helps explain how the later Lawson and Atkins story emerges from a deeply entangled early Virginia kinship network.

Captain Adam Thorowgood

The chapter identifies Adam Thorowgood as the seventh son of the Reverend William Thorowgood of Grimston Parish in England. He was baptized on July 5, 1604, at the church of St. Botolph.

Knowing that there was little inheritance for him in England, he came to Virginia as a young man, first connected with Captain Edward Waters in Elizabeth City Shire. After his period of service ended, he returned to England for a wife and later came back to Virginia with much larger ambitions for settlement and land.

On July 18, 1624, he married Sarah Offley at St. Anne's, Blackfriars, in London. The chapter says Sarah was only fifteen years old at the time and came from a distinguished London family with mayors, merchants, and knights among its ancestors.

The younger Thorowgoods, together with more than one hundred other settlers, sailed for Virginia in 1628 aboard Ye Hopewell. In less than a year after his return, Adam was elected to the House of Burgesses from Elizabeth City Shire.

Lynnhaven and the Adam Thorowgood House

The chapter says Adam eventually made his home near the mouth of a river the Indians called Chesapean, which he renamed Lynnhaven in memory of his homeland. His grant of approximately 5,350 acres was confirmed in 1637. The text says he later held enormous acreage in the area that became part of modern Virginia Beach.

The book identifies the Adam Thorowgood House on the shores of Lynnhaven Bay as having been built by him around 1636, and describes it as the oldest brick house in America and the oldest dwelling still standing in Virginia. It also says that Adam gave land for the glebe and helped establish the first Anglican church in Lynnhaven Parish.

The chapter repeatedly portrays him as one of the formative figures of the region, a man often remembered as "Good Adam Thorowgood".

Sarah Offley and the tangled web of descent

The chapter spends a great deal of time explaining how the descendants of Sarah Offley and her three marriages created a web of relationships that crosses the Thorowgood, Lawson, Gookin, Yeardley, Custis, Bray, and Keeling lines.

It identifies the children of Captain Adam Thorowgood and Sarah Offley as including:

  • Ann
  • Sarah
  • Elizabeth
  • Adam

The chapter and related crossover pages say that after Adam's death, Sarah married John Gookin, and after Gookin's death, married Francis Yeardley, son of Sir George Yeardley.

Through these marriages, Sarah became one of the great hinge figures in the family network. The book even pauses to explain that the line-crossings created by her marriages are so tangled that they require repeated reading to follow clearly.

How the Lawson line emerges from Thorowgood

One of the most important passages in the chapter explains how the Lawson line descends through the Thorowgood family web.

The book says:

  • Ann Thorowgood, daughter of Adam and Sarah, married Captain Thomas Keeling.
  • Their daughter Ann Keeling first married John Martin Jr. of Martin's Brandon and later Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Lawson.
  • Colonel Adam Thorowgood, son of Adam and Sarah, married Frances Yeardley, daughter of Argoll Yeardley.
  • Their children included John and Rose.
  • John Thorowgood married Margaret Lawson.
  • Rose Thorowgood married Thomas Lawson.

The chapter says that it is through the marriage of Thomas Lawson and Rose Thorowgood that the line descends through the Lawson branch to Dosha Lawson and Paulina Sue Lawson, and eventually into the later Atkins line.

Sarah Offley's burial memory

Supporting crossover material says that Sarah Offley Thorowgood Gookin Yeardley was buried at the old parish church site on Church Point, along with her husbands. The text preserves a remembered epitaph recording her as the wife successively of Captain Adam Thorowgood, Captain John Gookin, and Colonel Francis Yeardley, and says she died in August 1657.

That burial memory is one of the reasons the Thorowgood-Offley line feels especially vivid in the book.

Context notes

  • Thorowgood is one of the key structural chapters for understanding how the Lawson branch is woven into the older Virginia lines.
  • This chapter works best when read together with A Long Time Ago/11 Yeardley, A Long Time Ago/05 Lawson, and the Offley crossover material.
  • Its greatest value lies not only in Adam Thorowgood himself, but in the network of marriages that shape the later family story.

Related pages

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