Manakin Town, Virginia

It's a marker

I'm continuing to work on the Hancock line and uncovering a number of family ties to the French Huguenot settlement of Manakin (or Manakin Town), Virginia.

Huguenots were French protestants. They had been persecuted in France since the Reformation, but in 1685, when Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had granted rights to protestants, a large number of Huguenots immigrated to England or other protestant nations. As many as 500,000 Huguenots fled France. (Incidentally, some of these Huguenots, especially those from La Rochelle, went to Quebec, where they became some of my maternal ancestors).

Many Huguenots in England supported William III in his wars in Ireland and abroad. In gratitude, the king offered his support for a Huguenot colony in Virginia. A total of five ships sailed with his blessing to Jamestown in 1700-1701. The first of these was the The Mary and Ann, which arrived in Jamestown on July 31, 1700, with 205 passengers. Pierre Chastain, one of the leaders of the community and my 7xgreat-grandfather, was on board with his family.

The colonists weren't planning to join the English, but rather to found their own village of Huguenots. They were settled northwest of Richmond, where they found an "abandoned" Monacan village. (I use the term "abandoned" because that's the one you see in the histories. A better term would be "destroyed".) They named the new town Manakin, for the previous inhabitants. The English colonial authorities thought this location would provide a useful buffer between Jamestown and the Native communities farther inland.

The original 1704 land grant

In 1704, the Virginia House of Burgesses granted 10,000 acres to the community. (Interestingly, one of our Hancock relatives was the surveyor for the land grant.) About 390 French Huguenots moved to Manakin, although fewer than 200 remained after 1705. The town itself was abandoned by 1750, as the French assimilated into the English colony.

The Hancocks have multiple ties to Manakin. Charlotte Hewitt, the wife of Ammon Goode Hancock, was the daughter of Jane Chastain, Pierre's great-granddaughter (and, of course, also a direct descendant of his wife, Susanne Reynaud, and his son, Jean, who accompanied him on the first Manakin ship). Jean Chastain's wife, Marianne David, was also a Manakin Huguenot, the daughter of Pierre David (still looking for documentation on that). 

Charlotte Hewitt Hancock, therefore, was the descendant of six of the original colonists of Manakin. Charlotte's husband, Ammon, was himself a Manakin descendant. Ammon Hancock's great-grandmother, Jane Flournoy, was the daughter of Francois Flournoy, who, along with his father, Jacob, and mother, Martha Morel, arrived in Jamestown in October of 1700 on The Peter and Anthony, only a few months after the Chastains. Ammon's mother, Harriet Walden, was the great-grandaughter of Mary Dismukes. William Dismukes (or desMeaux), Mary's grandfather, was another of the original Manakin settlers. 

Finally, there are two potential, but far from proven, connections to the Manakin settlement in the Hancock family: 1) Ann Ammon, wife of Samuel Hancock, was the daughter of Christopher Ammon. Nothing is known about the Ammon family. They appear out of nowhere with Christopher's birth in 1715. It is possible that Ammon was a corruption of Amonet. There was a Jacob Amonet who sailed to Virginia on the Nassau in 1701. His daughter, Charlotte, was the second wife of Jean Chastain, who was Charlotte Hewitt's great-grandfather; 2) Harriet Walden, mentioned above as Ammon's mother and the great-great-grandaughter of the Dismukes colonist, was the grand-daughter of Richard and Candace Walden (Richard's mother was Mary Dismukes). Richard and Candace had a daughter named Mourning. The name is unusual. Charlotte Hewitt, Ammon's wife, had a grandmother whose name was Mourning. Mourning Hewitt was her married name, but her maiden name is unknown. It is possible  Mourning Hewitt was actually Mourning Walden, and therefore also a descendant of the Dismukes.

In sum, my great-great-grandfather, Ernest Justus Hancock, as the product of Charlotte and Ammon's ancestry, was at least 1/8 Manakin French Huguenot, and may have been nearly 1/3 French, if all of the possible connections played out. I'll keep looking!

For an easier-to-understand visual of the Hancock Manakin ancestry, here are the ancestor charts for Ammon and Charlotte Hancock, with the known Manakin ancestors circled in red, and the suspected Manakin ancestors circled in blue. Note that Mary Dismukes is circled, but it's actually her father who is the Manakin colonist. Click for a larger picture.