Adam Thorowgood House

The Adam Thorowgood House is a historic 17th-century brick dwelling situated on the Western Branch of the Lynnhaven River in present-day Virginia Beach, Virginia.

According to A Long Time Ago: A History of the Atkins-Paynter and Allied Families, the original plantation seat was established by Adam Thorowgood following his colonial land patents in the 1630s. Long celebrated in family tradition as one of the oldest brick houses in America, modern architectural investigations (including dendrochronological analysis) date the present surviving brick structure to ca. 1719, built by his great-grandson Argoll Thorowgood on the site of Adam's original 1635 homestead.

The property remains a foundational landmark for the Thorowgood-Lawson-Atkins branch, embodying the family's deep roots in the Tidewater maritime and agricultural landscape.

Colonial Plantation Map

The map below marks the Adam Thorowgood House and key 17th-century Lynnhaven Parish landmarks:

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Lineage & Allied Connections

The diagram below illustrates how the Thorowgood family connects into the Lawson and Atkins lines:

graph TD WT["Rev. William Thorowgood<br/>(King's Lynn, Norfolk)"] --> AT["Capt. Adam Thorowgood<br/>(1604–1640)<br/>Builder of Plantation"] SO["Sarah Offley<br/>(1609–1657)"] --> AT AT --- SO AT --> AT2["Lt. Col. Adam Thorowgood II"] AT --> ET["Elizabeth Thorowgood"] ET --> LAW["Lawson Allied Branch<br/>(Lawson Hall / Princess Anne)"] LAW --> PSL["Paulina Sue Lawson<br/>(1838–1915)"] PSL --> JHA["Joseph Henry Atkins<br/>(1866–1912)"] JHA --> RAA["Robert Alexander Atkins<br/>(1891–1968)"]

Thorowgood Lineage Tree

• Rev. William Thorowgood (King's Lynn, England)
  • Adam Thorowgood (1604–1640) m. Sarah Offley (1609–1657)
    • Lt. Col. Adam Thorowgood II
    • Ann Thorowgood
    • Sarah Thorowgood
    • Elizabeth Thorowgood m. Lawson lineage
      • Allied lines leading to Paulina Sue Lawson & Wally Atkins direct line

Related People & Places

• Adam Thorowgood, builder and colonial burgess
• Sarah Offley, wife of Adam Thorowgood
• Lawson Hall, neighboring colonial seat in Princess Anne County
• A Long Time Ago/08 Thorowgood
• A Long Time Ago/32 Old Homes in Virginia

External References

• Adam Thorowgood House on Wikipedia (external reference)
• Virginia Beach Historic Houses / Colonial Williamsburg Foundation