A Long Time Ago/12 Flowerdew
Flowerdew
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: Flowerdew
- Page range in the book: 102-104
- Chunk order: 12 of 36
This section has been lightly cleaned and reconstructed from the working transcript. It preserves the strongest readable Flowerdew material, especially where the line joins the Yeardley branch and the earliest Jamestown world.
Source note
- Book: A Long Time Ago: A History of the Atkins-Paynter and Allied Families
- Transcript source: `011-flowerdew.md`
- Editorial note: the surviving transcript centers heavily on Sir George Yeardley's will and probate, but the Flowerdew relevance is clear through Temperance Flowerdew and the early colony context
Cleaned import
The Flowerdew line matters in this book through Temperance Flowerdew, whose marriage to Sir George Yeardley ties the family into one of the earliest and most consequential circles of Jamestown-era Virginia.
Temperance Flowerdew
The family history identifies Temperance Flowerdew as the daughter of William Flowerdew. It says she was born in 1587 and came to Virginia in 1609 on the Falcon, one of the nine ships of the third supply.
Unlike the Sea Venture, the Falcon survived the storm that wrecked part of the fleet near Bermuda. Temperance and her brother Stanley Flowerdew reached Jamestown on August 11, 1609, during one of the bleakest periods in the life of the colony.
The chapter and related notes say that Temperance later married Sir George Yeardley in 1618. Through that marriage the Flowerdew line enters the same network already seen in Yeardley, Thorowgood, and later the Lawson branch.
The Yeardley connection
The surviving transcript preserves the will and codicil of Sir George Yeardley, dated in 1627, together with the later probate record. This material matters to the Flowerdew chapter because it shows the family structure after George's death and confirms that Lady Temperance Yeardley had died before full execution of the will was completed.
This is important because, as the book notes elsewhere, some later accounts had suggested she remarried and lived longer, but the probate evidence indicates that she had already died by the time later administration was granted.
Why Flowerdew matters
The Flowerdew branch matters because it places the later family story inside the hardest early years of the colony and ties it to one of the best-known women of the Jamestown era. Through Temperance Flowerdew, the family web reaches into:
- the third supply to Virginia
- the crisis period around 1609
- the Yeardley governorship
- the later kinship lines that lead into Thorowgood and Lawson
In that sense, Flowerdew is a compact but very important chapter. It helps explain how the later family lines were already bound into the earliest colonial world.
Context notes
- Flowerdew works best when read together with A Long Time Ago/11 Yeardley and A Long Time Ago/29 Arrivals in Virginia.
- The central figure here is Temperance Flowerdew rather than a long independent pedigree.
- The will/probate material is especially useful because it sharpens chronology around the Yeardley household.
Related pages
- A Long Time Ago/11 Yeardley
- A Long Time Ago/29 Arrivals in Virginia
- A Long Time Ago/03 Bucke
- A Long Time Ago: A History of the Atkins-Paynter and Allied Families
