My 10x great grandfather, Robert Easley Sr was born about 1655 in England. He came with his father, Henry, to London from France after the St. Bartholomew Massacre had made France unsafe for Protestants. It’s believed other branches of the family went to Switzerland where they were silk merchants (there called Islyn). His grandfather, Claude Esleys was born in Angers, France in 1613. Claude died in Virginia in 1634. It’s possible Claude paved the way for his grandson to come to Virginia.
The St. Bartholomew Massacre was in 1572 France when King Charles IX ordered the killing of a group of Huguenot leaders (French Protestants who followed the teaching of John Calvin) and the slaughter spread throughout Paris. Lasting several weeks in all, the massacre expanded outward to the countryside and other urban centers. Modern estimates for the number of Huguenots murdered across France by Catholics vary widely, from 5,000 to 30,000.
As French Huguenot refugees, they were granted land in Virginia’s Jamestown colony on the James River in 1676. Robert married Anna Warham Parker, granddaughter of Jamestown Lt. Governor William Powell and his wife Katherine Warham, in Virginia and in 1704 he is listed with 315 acres in Henrico County on the east side of the Reedy Creek.
In 1718, Robert Easley received another land patent, apparently posthumous, together with Thomas Jefferson (grandfather of President Thomas Jefferson), Thomas Turpin, and John Archer, for bringing eighteen persons to the colony. This grant was for 1500 acres as a whole. If it were divided equally, Robert Easley’s share would have been 375 acres. This grant was in the area which subsequently became Goochland, Cumberland, and Powhatan Counties.
The son of Robert Easley Sr and Ann Parker is my 9x great grandfather, John Daniel Easley Sr. He was born in Fine Creek, Virginia in 1682 and married Hillary Mary Benskin in 1711. They had one daughter and 7 sons.
Their 5th son was Daniel Weldon Easley Sr who served in the 4th Regiment in the Revolutionary War in 1777. He was my 6x great grandfather.
These protestant refugees farmed in Henrico county Virginia where, from the founding of the county, they used slaves to grow their crops. About 30 percent of the county were slaves stolen from their homes in Africa and forced to work in their fields and homes. Daniel Weldon Easley’s will bequeaths to his wife “one negro woman named Biddy and her youngest child, Ned and also negro David” along with a feather bed and a mare “in the name of God Amen”. He left a few other slaves to his remaining children and ordered the rest be sold on his death except for “old Dick” he ordered be left on the plantation “to be used well as long as he lives”. WikiTree lists a daughter of Daniel named Judith who was black, presumably from one of his slaves.
His son, Daniel Robert Easley, was the first of the family to leave Virginia and move west to Harrison County, Ohio. He and his wife Edith Anderson moved to Freeport Ohio and were associated with a Quaker monthly meeting at Flushing established about 1818. As Quakers they would not have been allowed to have slaves and would have most likely been abolitionists and farmers. The Underground Railroad Museum of the Ohio Valley is located there today.
Daniel’s daughter, Mary Ann married Job Bogue, a shoemaker and a Quaker, in 1816 in Harrison County Ohio. Job and Mary Ann came further west to Fulton County Illinois and attended Quaker meetings at Freeport. They settled in Vermont, Illinois.
Their eldest daughter was Evaline Bogue, my 5x great grandmother and she married Thomas Jefferson Thompson in 1826 in Greene County, Illinois when she was just 14. Thomas had multiple wives and at least 14 children, many of whom I have DNA connections to.
Thomas and Evaline’s son William Franklin Thomas was born in 1830 and farmed in Greene County Illinois with his wife Lockey Bandy whom he married in 1852. They’re both buried in Thompson cemetery near Roodhouse, Illinois.
Their son Francis Marion Thompson is my 3x great grandfather. Marion was a painter in the boomtown Roodhouse, Illinois in 1882 when his son William Henry Thompson was born.
There William met and married 17 year old Margaret Lee “Maude” Hoots, my 2x great grandmother and fathered my great grandmother, Margaret Evelyn Thompson. He abandoned the family shortly after.
