| Notes |
- IN 1608 there came to Jamestown, Virginia, with Captain Newport, one Thomas Forrest, with his wife, and his wife's maid, Anne Buras. Mrs. Forrest was the first English gentlewoman to come to America, and her maid was the first English woman to marry in America. Thomas Forrest was the uncle of Sir Anthony Forrest, and both were members of the Second London Company for the colonization of VirginiaThe Forrest family is a very ancient one in England. There were two parent branches of the Forrest stock— one at Troutbeck, County Westmoreland; and the other in their own manor house at Morborne, County Huntingdon, England. How long they had been settled at Morborne is unknown, but it was an old family when the Forrest coat-armor "argent, a chevron between three hinds' heads erased gules; crest, three oak trees all proper," was recorded in the Herald's College of England, which was in the times of Miles Forrest, who died in 1558 and was in occupation of the old home and a purchaser of adjoining church lands when the monasteries were dissolved by Henry VIII. During Cromwell's "reign of terror" in Henry's days, Father John Forrest, an observant friar, was burned as a heretic, for denying the King's supremacy in the church. He is celebrated in Foxe's Acts and Monuments and recorded in the family genealogy as the "Blessed John."
It was to this branch of the Forrest family that Thomas Forrest, founder of the Virginia and Maryland families, belonged. The American family, founded by Thomas Forrest through his son Peter and the five sons of the latter, has contributed many useful citizens to our republic and, in the person of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, one of the greatest soldiers of any age.
By reason of their prominence, in the early days in Virginia,the Forrests were very conspicuous, and in a notable painting, which now hangs in the Capitol at Washington, known as "The Baptism of Pocahontas," Thomas Forrest, with his wife and young son Peter are all portrayed— Mrs. Forrest acting as godmother (the family can easily be identified by key).
The descendants of Thomas Forrest living in Virginia became involved in what was known as the Bacon Rebellion in 1676, and the family left Jamestown, some of them settling in Mathews County, Virginia, then a part of Gloucester, and some going to St. Mary's, Maryland, where they prospered and became men of wealth and prominence.
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- (Research):"Colonial Families of the United States of America" (edited by George Norbury MacKensie 1912, Genealogical Publishing Co. 1995) states on Pg: 229-232, "Thomas Forrest and his wife, "Mistress" Forrest, came from England to Jamestown, VA., with their only child, Peter, aged seven years, in 1608, with Capt. Newport. It is stated that Mistress Forrest was the first gentlewoman to arrive in the Colony. The marriage of her maid, Ann Burras, to John Laydon is said to be the first marriage to take place in Virginia. The Forrests, with other Virginia families, removed to St. Mary's Co., MD., in 1635. Their only child Peter Forrest, b. circa 1601; d. 1665; m. and left issue...Patrick, William, James, John, and Thomas." Peter's name does not appear on the ship's manifest. Jamestown Archaeologists found that Mistress Forrest did not remove to St. Mary's County in 1635, because she died within months of arriving in Jamestown in 1608. English records show that Peter's son Patrick married in England. Thus,either the family travelled back to England, or that Thomas Forrest's children did not come over to the colonies until later. At this time, it appears that Peter came over later, perhaps as a married man with his family to St. Mary's County, Maryland. Peter and his son Patrick is a direct ancestor of Uriah Forrest.
As is law in England at the time, Thomas's elder brother Miles inherited the title to their father's estates and the younger Thomas set out for the adventure of securing new land in a new colony. Thomas was a member of the Virginia Company (also known as the Charter of the Virginia Company of London or the London Company that established the colony. According to Seven Hundred Years of the Beville Family ISBN 0788413295[11] Thomas' grandmother, Katherine Beville (wife of Miles Forrest) was descended from, among others, William De Beville (Le Sire [lord] de Beville], who came to England with William the Conqueror in 1066 and fought in the Battle of Hastings. In this pivotal time in English history, the power of the landed gentry for whom wealth was land, was giving way to the rising class of merchants, for whom wealth was trade in shippable goods, such as gold, tea and tobacco. Thomas was one of the gentry who made the transition from the old to the new.
In the 1990s archaeologists found the grave of Margaret Forrest. Dr. Douglas Owsley, forensic anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution Museum of Natural History, oversaw the testing. As noted in volume 257 Number 48 ~ © 1998, The Salt Lake Tribune, "The identification of Forrest, officially known as archaeological object "JR156C," was made by dating artifacts at the gravesite to the year 1608. The woman's social rank was clear from the elaborate pinewood coffin she was buried in, which would not have been used for a servant. No remnants of clothing were found. The early colonists were buried either naked or wrapped in shrouds. "Clothing then was too valuable to bury with the dead," Luccketti (Nicholas Luccketti, senior archaeologist for the preservation association's "Jamestown Rediscovery Project.") said. Smithsonian isotope analysis also determined her diet was wheat rather than corn, which marked her as a woman high on the food chain and a recent arrival from England, he said. According to Owsley's analysis, she was Caucasian, 4 feet (1.2 m), 8 inches tall and about 35 years old. "That was very old in those days," Luccketti said."[12]
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1572 - 1641 (68 years)
