Manlove Origins, Part 2 - The Chesapeake Bay

Pocomoke lies on the peninsula that forms the Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay. It is shaped like a hand in profile with the index finger pointing toward Virginia Beach and Norfolk. The peninsula is divided among three states -Virginia occupies the southern tip (Accomack and Northampton Counties), while Maryland and Delaware share the northern part.
The Chesapeake Bay was a center of early Colonial development. Jamestown, considered the first permanent English settlement (1607), lay just south of Williamsburg and west of Yorktown. The three made up what is called the Historic Triangle. Washington D.C. and Mount Vernon, George Washington’s estate, are on the Potomac River which flows into the bay.

Jamestown was established as a business adventure not forty years before Mark Manlove moved onto the Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay. The Virginia Company financed the passage of 144 men and boys to the New World. The area was hostile wilderness, and the settlement nearly failed during its first years. Forty died on the voyage and many more from starvation and disease that winter. More colonists were brought in each year, but life was tough, and the colony’s survival was tenuous for several years. They were on the verge of abandoning the settlement in 1610 when supply ships saved it.

I find it curious that Mark Manlove would bring his whole family over. He was definitely not alone. Migration had been heavy in the years since Jamestown, and the population had grown. He no doubt came over with associates, a group that could share the work. Like most, he was most certainly a farmer. The group probably built small shelters that first year. They cleared fields and planted crops - hoping to survive till the following spring.
Marks’s sons, William and Thomas, moved 90 miles north, settling in Kent County Delaware, near present day Dover. William died there in 1694. The next three generations of Manlove’s were born and died in Kent County. The family was there for nearly a hundred years, and then William L. Manlove, of the 6th generation, and his adult son, George, left sometime after 1782.

They made the move after Cornwallis surrendered to Washington at Yorktown in October of 1781. That was the decisive event of the American Revolution, and hostilities ended by the spring of 1783. George Manlove was 29 years old at the end of the war so he might very well have participated in the Revolution. He was listed as having served in the War of 1812, so he very likely fought in the Revolution too. I’m guessing they left Delaware in the summer of 1783.

I don’t know why they left a place that had been home so long. There seemed to have been only one male child to survive in each of the preceding generations, so George was going to inherit the farm - if they had one. But, for what ever reason, they pulled up stakes and headed south. William L Manlove’s wife, Hannah (Robinson), had died fifteen years before, so there were only five in the family group: William L, his son George, George’s wife Rachel (Dunning), their daughter Hannah (2 or 3 years) and son William (1 or 2 years). It is likely that other families accompanied them. That was common practice in those days - extended families and neighbors migrated together.
GO TO: Part 3

The Will of Mark Manlove, September 1666

Somerset County, Maryland

In the name of God, Amen. I Mark Manlove of Pocomoke in the County of Somerset in the Province of Maryland, Planter, being weak in body but of good memory, blessed be God, do make this my last will & testament. My soul I commit to God who gave it and my body to be buried according as my executors think fit. As for my outward estate, my debts being first paid, I give and bequeath at followeth: first, to my loving wife Elizabeth and to the children I have lawfully begotten of her and to their heirs forever, five hundred acres of land lying upon the north side of Pocomoke River, beginning at a little branch on the south side of my new dwelling house, being at my first bounder and so running northerly up the river. All the rest of my land I give and bequeath to my sons Mark, William, and Christopher and to their heirs forever to be equally divided as they come of age, each child to have his portion. To Hannah Gilley, Richard Hackworth, and to his next son born, being three of my grandchildren, each of them a cow calf. I bequeath unto my sons John and Thomas one hundred pounds of tobacco, a piece.. The rest of my estate, after my debts are paid, besides the legacies already given and bequeathed, I give one third to my wife and two thirds to be equally divided unto my sons Mark, William, Christopher, George, and Luke and to my daughters Hannah, Abia, and Persey Manlove, and I do appoint my wife Eliz and my son in law Richard Hackworth to be the executors of my last will and testament, and William Stevens Horsey and Wm. Jarnes Meedon overseers of the sane, and this I publish and declare to be my last will and testament the 14tth day of September anno Domini 1666.


Mark Manlove made his mark. MM


Witnesses: William Green --- Will.


*********************************************

Mark Manlove's two Families

Mark Manlove___husband____b.1620 England____d.1666 MD

Hannah Williams___wife____b.1617or1625 Eng___d.1658 VA

John Manlove___son___b.1639 England____d.1694 MD

Mary Manlove__daughter_b.1641 England____d.1666 MD

Christopher Manlove_son__b.1642 England____d.1680 MD

Ann Manlove__daughter__b. 1645 England___n.d.

Thomas Manlove__son__b.1648 England___d.1709 DE

Hannah Manlove__daughter__b.1649 Eng or CT__d.1675 MD

Abijah Abia Manlove_daughter_ b.1653 MA or VA___n.d.

William Manlove__son__b.1655 VA or MD___d.1694 DE

Elizabeth Roberts__wife__ b.1632 England_______n.d.

George Manlove__son___b.1660 MD___________n.d.

Persey Manlove__daughter__b.1663 MD_____n.d.

Luke Manlove__son ___b.1666 MD__________ n.d.

Am=America, MA=Massachusetts, VA=Virginia,

MD=Maryland, DE=Delaware, CT=Connecticut

GO TO: Part 2

Manlove Origins, Part 1 - The Patriarch

My paternal grandmother‘s maiden name was Manlove. Twelve generations ago a guy named Mark Manlove got off a boat in America. I know only a few facts about Mark Manlove, enough to draw the sketchiest outline of his life. He was born in the English county of Shropshire in the vicinity of the villages of Wem and Aston around 1620. He married Hannah Williams, also of Shropshire, in 1637. I don’t know what he looked like, how he made a living, or when and why he came to America.

I hadn’t planned to put much time on the Manlove patriarch in America, but got obsessed with the family - a bit of an irony as Mark, Hannah and family have been dead and forgotten for more than three hundred years. The obsession started when I discovered Mark Manlove’s Last Will and Testament on a USGenWeb site. That web site gave names to his children, his son-in-laws, witnesses, etc. I had scanned hundreds of “Public Family Trees” in Ancestry.com trying to make sense of conflicting entries, but his Last Will made it possible to hazard some educated guesses.

I think Mark and Hannah probably arrived in the Chesapeake Bay area in about 1650. There is some evidence the family landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and spent some time in Stamford, Connecticut, before moving on to the lower Eastern Shore of present day Northampton County, Virginia (#1 on map).
The couple had eight or nine children - five sons and four daughters, but two of the daughters may be the same person. Their first child, John, was born in England, as were several others. The public trees differed as to where the children were born, most favored England on the older ones, but the youngest two were likely born in America. It seems possible that Mark and Hannah, along with their several children, left England in the late 1640’s to sail for the New World. I’ve always thought that immigrants in those days were single men, either adventurers or indentured poor. Mark Manlove must have been a man of some means to be able to bring his family over.

The English Civil War was raging through the 1640’s. Shropshire seems to have been a mix of loyalties between Royalist and Parliamentarians, but Wem/Aston favored the latter. The Royalists lost the war, and King Charles I lost his head in 1649. I can’t help to wonder if Mark Manlove’s migration to America was related to the Civil War. Was he a Royalist? I notice many of his associates on the Eastern Shore were also from Shropshire. Did they come over in the same boat? Why so many in one place?

Mark’s wife, Hannah, died in 1658 in Northampton County, Virginia. Most public trees put her age at 28 years, but she might have been as old as 37 - too young at either age. Mark Manlove remarried the year after Hannah’s death. His new wife, Elizabeth Roberts (also from Shropshire), had two sons and a daughter by him.

Somerset County, Maryland was opened for settlement in 1661 and Mark Manlove moved near Pocomoke (#2 on map), but died five years later at 46 years. Mark left the “new” house and five hundred acres to Elizabeth and her three children, and an unspecified amount to his three youngest sons by Hannah.

Elizabeth remarried a few months later to William Greene, who happened to be the witness to Mark’s Last Will and Testament. Many of Mark’s 11 (or 12) children lived their lives around Pocomoke, but two of them, Thomas and William, moved about 90 miles north into Delaware.
GO TO: The Will of Mark Manlove\
GO TO: Part 2