Abraham VENABLE

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  General Notes:

The migration to the Americas should be understood as a great set of varied movements, some free and some forced, that developed throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The first flows of indentured servants became less important as African slaves began to perform much of the most difficult labor in the American economy. In European migrants of the eighteenth century, skills such as ironworking, shipbuilding, homebuilding, and textile manufacturing became more important than they had been before. Thus, more and more artisans arrived throughout the eighteenth century to perform the work of building a new society, while more and more slaves flowed across the Atlantic to provide a large portion of the labor essential to this new society. While the earliest imperative had been to recruit laborers, preferably young men who would work under an indenture, as colonial society matured skilled men came to be valued by landowners and entrepreneurs. The use of slaves as a substitute for the earlier generations of indentured servants helped set a long-lived pattern in American race relations--prejudice against black people who were viewed as subsisting at the bottom of society. Black slaves, however, added more to colonial America than sheer labor. For instance, in South Carolina in the late seventeenth century, rice cultivation became profitable because white plantation owners relied on the knowledge of African slaves who had been born in a region where rice was grown. The migration of single men to British North America was quite different from the migration of families. Although both single men and families flowed from the British Isles to America and the Caribbean, there were two distinct migrations, differing in causes, experience, and effects. Single men were the typical migrants to the British settlements of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, Jamaica, and Barbados. These colonies were awarded by the British Crown to private investors who assumed the risks of settlement in exchange for great territories, ruling powers therein, and the opportunity to profit from trade between the settlement and the home country. The Southern and Caribbean colonies, moreover, were awarded to favorites of the Crown and religious conformists (Anglicans) as a reward for loyalty. Those colonies were believed in the early seventeenth century to be the most potentially profitable in British North America, since they were believed to be "mediterranean" in climate. Moreover, mercantilist economic theory suggested that mediterranean colonies would be the most profitable to conjoin with the British Isles, since the northern temperate zones and the southern temperate zones were believed to complement each other in products grown. Settlement in the Southern and Caribbean colonies was an investment, and migration there was greatest in good times for the British economy. Although the laboring classes were suffering hard times in the seventeenth century, entrepreneurs found good reason to expand in better-than-usual times. Prosperity pulled labor migration to the Southern and Caribbean colonies, although it was a prosperity that few of the migrants themselves enjoyed. Once such labor migrants were in the Southern and Caribbean colonies, their circumstances came greatly to effect the development of their society and its future immigration and emigration. British laborers proved to be a not-entirely-reliable source of labor, since they had little resistance to the tropical diseases they encountered in swampy and hot areas. The high mortality among British migrants caused investors to turn their attention to African slaves. British laborers who arrived as single men also displayed only a truncated set of economic needs, all of which were satisfied by the owners of their indentures. One prominent result of this situation was the absence of cities in the South and the Caribbean, for no complex social and economic institutions needed to develop to meet the needs of single laboring men, many of whom died young. British laborers worked in the production of staple goods, first as indentured servants and then, they hoped, as freeholders. The land available along the coast and on islands was quickly monopolized by early settlers, so that men who successfully worked through their indentures and assumed their own production of staple goods were led to migrate with at least a few slaves in their possession. Family migration occurred most often among dissenters (Puritans and Quakers) and in the periodic depressions that hit the British economy in the seventeenth century. Dissenters were not Crown favorites and thus were awarded northern territories for development. These territories were believed to be redundant of the British Isles, thus less potentially profitable. The migration to these territories is best characterized as free-family migration, a movement of the middling classes that increased in times of severe depression and religious persecution. Free-family migration fostered the growth of towns and cities for several reasons. First, the initial provisioning of families was accomplished by local merchants, not by holders of indentures. British families had often liquidated all their goods as part of preparing to migrate and spent their money in establishing new households. Free-family migration made Boston and Philadelphia, for instance, seventeenth-century boomtowns as immigrants funnelled their capital to local merchants. As they established themselves in a new land, immigrant families of the middling class played a major role in creating American cities. Since the immigrants outnumbered the urban dwellers (by a ratio of eight to one in Massachusetts in the 1630s, for example) even modest expenditure on the part of each family could enrich urban merchants. Much less capital was spent in Southern and Caribbean towns, which failed to develop the numbers or the vibrancy of the Northern cities. After the initial waves of migration, urban merchants turned their attention to marketing the produce of the family farms of the migrants to the Atlantic community. Boston and Philadelphia became great American entrepots, despite the early plans of the British colonizers.

Connections and Transformations in the Atlantic World The greatest surge of migration to the Americas occurred between 1760 and 1776. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, about 700,000 people migrated to British North America. Most of these migrants came from the British isles, but a significant minority, about 75,000, were German or Swiss, while about 175,000 were enslaved Africans. A flood of migrants in the years between 1760 and 1776 increased the population of British North America by about ten percent. About 221,500 new arrivals appeared in American ports in this decade and a half. They were English (30,000), Scottish (40,000), Irish (55,000), German-speaking (12,000), and African (84,500). Migration to British North America was more black than white before 1800. About 900,000 Europeans migrated to North America and the Caribbean between 1600 and 1800, while about 2,300,000 Africans arrived in the same period. Most migrants, free and unfree, to British North America landed in the plantation colonies that produced tobacco and sugar. In the seventeenth century, about 400,000 British migrants went to America. Of these, about 225,000 went to the Caribbean, 125,000 to the southern colonies, and 40,000 to New England and the middle colonies. In the eighteenth century, Ulster became the major source of British migrants to the Americas, while migrants turned away from the Caribbean and settled in the Chesapeake Bay region, the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, and New York. In addition to this high rate of migration in the late eighteenth century, North Americans reproduced rapidly. Both the slave population and the free population began to grow from natural increase in the eighteenth century. Today the U.S.A. holds about one third of all people of African descent who live in the Americas, although only about one twentieth of those taken in the slave trade to the New World came to live in what is not the U.S.A. The reasons for this natural increase in population--unique in the New World--are probably a more even sex ratio found in North America in the colonial era, a relatively healthful climate in which tropical diseases might be endemic but not epidemic, and a slave-labor system in which most slaves worked in small groups and at a variety of tasks, not in the mass gangs and bone-breaking specialized labor of the tropical plantations and gold and silver mines.

VENABLES OF VIRGINIA

So far as the existing records of this country go, three Venables came to Virginia during Colonial times or were in some way associated with it then.
1. Richard Venables, who purchased land in Virginia from Alexander Stonar in 1635. See: Greer's Early Virginia Immigrants, p. 338.
2. Sara Venables, "late of Northwich, County Chester, (England), spinster," who, "being resolved for a voyage to the land of Virginia," made her will in England, Oct. 13, 1658. This will was proved, June 20, 1659, in Northwich.
3. Abraham Venables of New Kent Co., Va., 1687. See: St. Peter's Parish Register, New Kent Co., Va., which, on page 71, says: "Sarah, wife of Abraham Venables, deceased ye 13 day of Feb. 1687 -'8. Isaac deceased same day. Abraham, son of Abraham Venables, baptized the 27th April, 1701."
Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. XXI, records the following from The Quit Rent Rolls of New Kent Co., Va., 1704, now preserved in the British Museum in London, England:
Parish of St. Peter's and St. Paul, 1704.
Abraham Venables 100 A.
John Venables 200 A.
We have also from the Virginia Land office a letter relative to this matter, a portion of which we quote:
In accordance with your request of the 5th instant, I am sending you herewith a list of patents issued in the name of "Abraham Venable" ("Venables") and "Abraham Venable, Jr."
I have examined the New Kent County records of this office and find that no patents appear there to any Venable or Venables.
As this office contains records of original patents and grants only, these parties must have bought their land in New Kent County if they owned any there.

Patents of Record in Virginia Land Office to "Abraham Venable" ("Venables")
and "Abraham Venable, Jr."
Abraham Venable, Jr. 400 acres-Hanover County-issued September 27th, 1729
(Book 13: page 421);
Abraham Venables 1550 acres-Hanover County-issued September 28th, 1732
(Book 14: page 474);
Abraham Venable 1100 acres-Goochland County-issue June 20th, 1733
(Book 15: page 15);
Abraham Venable 1300 acres-Goochland County-issued June 20th, 1733
(Book 15: page 30);
Abraham Venables 780 acres-Goochland County-issued September 27th, 1734
(Book 15: page 303);
Abraham Venables 1500 acres-Goochland County-issued July 19th, 1735
(Book 16: page 49) ;
Abraham Venable 2100 acres-Amelia County-issued September 12th, 1738
(Book 18: page 122);
Abraham Venables 4230 acres-Goochland County-issued June 29th, 1739
(Book 18: page 293);
Abraham Venable 3300 acres-Amelia County-issued March 30th, 1743
(Book 20: page 493);
Abraham Venables 225 acres-Goochland County-issued June 16th, 1744
(Book 22: page 56) ;
Abraham Venable, Jr. 340 acres-Lunenburg County-issued August 24th, 1754
(Book 32: page 395);
Abraham Venable, Jr. 740 acres-Lunenburg County-issued November 26th, 1754
(Book 32; page 420);
Abraham Venable, Jr. 2065 acres-Lunenburg and issued June 26th, 1759
Bedford Counties- (Book 33: page 574);
Abraham Venable 571 acres-Lunenburg andissued June 5th, 1765
Bedford Counties-(Book 36: page 733).

Besides these records, we have no knowledge whatsoever of any of the Virginia Venables mentioned, except the last, Abraham Venables of New Kent Co., Va. Two family records of this man have been preserved: one by his grandson, Nathaniel Venable of "Slate Hill," Prince Edward Co., Va.; the other, by William Lewis Morton, son of Elizabeth (Venable) Morton, sister of Nathaniel Venable, just mentioned.
The first of these, dated Dec. 25, 1790, states: "Abraham Venable came from England into Virginia and married the widow of John Hicks, or Nicks, who was daughter of --- Lewis, left one son, Abraham Venable, who was born 22nd March 1700 and who married Martha Davis of Hanover Co."

The second record (original copy now in the possession of Mrs. W. E. Dale, 828 Clay St., Shelbyville, Ky.) says: "Abraham Venable, my great-grand-father from England, Devonshire, who is of a numerous family in England. [We have canvassed twenty-six volumes of parish records and abstracts of Wills of Devonshire and find mention of but one Venable: Parts 1-6 of Devonshire Pedigrees by Tuchett (from the Herald's Visitation) p. 17-6: "William Venables, married Ann Leigh, daughter and heiress of Richard Leigh of High Leigh in Cheshire." No dates were given.] The following post card from Mr. Reginald Glencross of London will also throw some light on this point: "Many thanks for your letter of 24 June which crossed 2 of mine. I fear I do not believe that Abraham came from Devon tho he may have shipped at Plymouth. Consistory and Archdy. Courts of Exeter are all printed down to 1799 and no V's occur at all. There were several other courts but the 2 first mentd. were the most important and would certainly have a mention of the name. Sorry I am such a cold sponge.
RMGlenX."

Another item from William Lewis Morton's record is interesting: "John Venable died in his 21st year without issue." (This John is evidently an older son or brother of Abraham Venables I of New Kent Co., Va. The one who held 200 acres of land in New Kent Co., Va., 1704.) So far as the writer knows there is no other existing record of this man, and there is no mention in any Virginia record of ancient date of any "Joseph Venable who went to Maryland" or "William Venable of Pennsylvania." The assertion by later historians of relationship between these families is founded only upon similarity of names and the fact that these men chanced to come to America about the same time.

Our conclusion, therefore, in regard to Abraham Venables I of New Kent Co., Va., is as follows: He came to Virginia about 1685; he married (I) Sara, and had issue, perhaps John and surely Isaac; married (II) Elizabeth Lewis, widow of John Hicks or Nicks and daughter of Hugh ap Lewis, and had issue, Abraham Venables, of whom later.
Unfortunately, most of the Colonial records, parish registers, and courthouse records of that part of Virginia have at various times been destroyed by fire.
Of the first wife of Abraham Venables I we know nothing more; of the second, and her father, we have some knowledge. From the record of Nathaniel Venable of "Slate Hill," Prince Edward Co., Va., as above stated, we learn that she was "widow of John Hicks or Nicks and daughter of --- Lewis"; from that of William Lewis Morton, her great-grandson, that "Hugh Lewis came first with his wife and daughter, Abadiah Lewis, and lost his wife in America and returned to Britain with Abadiah, his only (unmarried) daughter and both returned to America with Robert Davis."

In Hotten's Lists of Persons of Quality, etc., emigrants to the American Plantations, 1600-1700, we find a John Hicks or Nicks, living in Barbadoes in 1679, and also, on p. 503, the following item:
Parish of St. James, Barbadoes (not Virginia, as stated by some) ; Ann. Accot. of The Land as itt-standeth in ye Church Books: With the Number of Servants and Negroes With Names of The owners thereof. In The psh = of St. James = As = Was taken by The Church Wardens of the Said Parish on the 20th December 1679.
Lewis = Hugh = Capt. Land 40 A, negroes 15.
We are led to believe by this that the second wife of Abraham Venables I of New Kent Co., Va., was a daughter of this Captain Hugh Lewis, and an older sister of Abadiah Lewis and a widow of this John Nicks or Hicks recorded as living in Barbadoes in 1679.

Abraham married Elizabeth LEWIS in 1699 in Prince Edward, VA. (Elizabeth LEWIS was born on 10 May 1665 in Louisa County, VA.)