James Whitlock (1651-1716), Virginia Immigrant: Virginia Records

G.C. Chamberlayne, The Vestry Book and Register of St. Peter’s Parish, New Kent and James City Counties, Virginia, 1684-1786 (Richmond: Library of Virginia, 1937), p. 447

Or, Subtitled: Glimpsing Tidewater Virginia Immigrants in the 17th Century and Their English Roots

As the previous posting states, we first catch sight of the immigrant James Whitlock (1651-1716) in Virginia records in a 12 July 1680 power of attorney filed in an (Old) Rappahannock County will book, a power of attorney given by James’s cousin in England, Anthony Whitlock (born 1657), to empower James to act on behalf of the estate of Anthony’s uncle Thomas Whitlock (1615-1659), who had died in (Old) Rappahannock County in 1659.[1] Anthony Whitlock’s power of attorney, given in London with affidavits supporting it from James’s uncle John Whitlock (1625-1708) and Anthony’s aunt Johanna Whitlock Harris (1617-1684), states (as do the supporting affidavits) that James Whitlock was Anthony’s kinsman and was a Virginia planter.

James Whitlock (1651-1716), Virginia Immigrant: English Roots

Brightwell Baldwin parish register, 1546-1704, Oxfordshire, England, in Anglican Parish Registers, Oxfordshire Family History Society and Oxfordshire History Center, available digitally in Ancestry database Oxfordshire, England, Church of England Baptism, Marriages, and Burials, 1538-1812

Or, Subtitled: In Which We Connect James Whitlock, Virginia Immigrant, to His English Roots

My American ancestral roots run largely back to colonial Virginia and are largely English. I have a sprinkling of colonial immigrant ancestors who came to Maryland, the middle colonies, and the Carolinas. But the bulk of my colonial ancestors were English folks who came to Virginia in the 1600s. And the Whitlock line is one of my rare ancestral lines in which I can pinpoint this family’s place of origin in England — and trace it back with confidence into the 1400s (and, in the case of families married into the Whitlock line such as the de la Beches, to the 1100s).