Family of John Eager HowardSource: The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Jan., 1901), pp. 189-191Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and CultureStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1920295 .

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FAMILY OF JOHN EAGER .HOWARD. 189

1819, died May 2, 1866, married William S. Peachy, of Wil- liamsburg.

28 (Dr.) WILLIAM6 A. DAINGERFIELD, born October 13, 1769, was educated in medicine at Edinburgh, settled in Alexandria about 1800, served as colonel in the war of 1812, and died at his estate in Prince George county, Md., October 19, 1821. (See Brockett's History of Alexandria, Washington Lodge No. 22.)

In 1792, "H. B. Daingerfield (Hanna Bassett Daingerfield) witnessed the marriage settlement of Nathan Blodget on Martha Bland. Other witnesses, John Bland and May Bland (Prince George County Records). Martha Bland was widow of Col. The- oderick Bland, and after the death of Blodget she married one Corran, a sea captain, with whom she went to France, and there died. A journal kept by her for three years at Cawsons, during her second widowhood, dated about 1795, was extant in 1840. (see Bland Papers, I., p. 74, note.) She was probably a sister of Col. William Daingerfield of "Belvidera." (See suggestively Bland Papers, Vol. IL., p. 18, and letter from Arthur Lee, Chat- ham, near Fredericksburg, to Hon. Theodorick Bland: "Col. Daingerfield and family are well," etc. Ibid., II., p. 77.)

Robinson Daingerfield, who must have been a brother of Col. William Daingerfield, of Belvidera, was living on the Matta- poni in 1772. (Hening's Stats., VIII., p. 634.)

FAMILY OF JOHN EAGER HOWARD.

Editor of the William and iiary College Quarterly Historical Magazine: In the review of The Thomas Bookl in Vol. IX., No. 1, July,

1900, of your publication it is said, in speaking of the Howard families of Virginia and Anne Arundel county, Maryland, "the statement of Col. John Eager Howard that his grandfather, Joshua Howard, camne to this country in 1667 (1687?), at the time of Monmouth's Rebellion, is disproved by the date of his own birth (1752), which would demand another generation at least. Assuming that Matthew Howard, of Norfolk, was the father of Cornelius mentioned in the will of Richard Hall, we have Matthew, of Lower Norfolk county, Va., who had Cor- nelius, member of the Maryland Assembly, who had Joshua,

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190 WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE QUARTERLY.

grandfather of Col. John Eager Howard, who had Cornelius, father of the same."

Col. John Eager Howard's written and signed statement, dated February 17, 1810, thus summarily discredited, is as fol- lows: "John Eager Howard was born on the 4th day of June, 1752, in Baltimore county, in Maryland, at the place settled by his Grand Father, Joshua Howard, who came from England to the Country about the year 1667.' He was from Manchester, where the people generally turned out, and he with them, though very young, to support James at the time of Monmouth's In- vasion. They marched to London, where, Monmouth being de- feated, they were discharged, and he preferred coming to this Country rather than return to his Father, who was displeased at his leaving Home in the manner he did. He obtained a grant for the land where he settled, which is still in the Family, soon after he came to this Country. He married Joanna O'Carroll from Ireland and had a number of Children, one of whom, Cor- nelius, Father of J. E. Howard, married Ruth Eager," etc.

Why should this circumstantial account be doubted? Joshua Howard died as late as 1738 and his widow not until

1763. Cornelius died in 1777 "in the 71st year of his age" (tomb-stone), and his widow lived until 1796. Col. Howard's information about his grandfather, Joshua, came directly, no doubt, from his father and mother or his grandmother, Joshua's widow.

As to Col. Howard's statement, with all the details, being dis- proved by the "demand of another generation at least," the re- cords are conclusive in locating this Joshua Howard as far back as the latter half of the seventeenth century. He was born in (or about) 1665,2 and took out his first land patent, for "How- ard's Square" (a part of the property "still in the family" in 1810), in 1698. In his will, dated and proved in 1738, he de- vises Howard's Square, with other, to his son Cornelius, who,

1 I have not Col. Howard's original statement, but a copy in the hand-

writing of my father, a son of Col. Howard, has this obvious error of 1667 (for 1687?). It may have been a slip of the pen in copying. I

gave it so, without correction, in Hanoon's Old Kent. 2 A deposition in the records at Annapolis gives "Mr. Joshua Howard'"

aet. 70 in 1735. For this I am indebted to Dr. Christopher Johnston, of

Baltimore.

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LEWIS OF WARNER HALL. 191

by his will in 1777, devises "Howard's Square Resurveyed" to his third surviving son, James, on whose death intestate in 1806 it passed to his brother John Eager Howard and others. It is the original homestead and contains the old family burying ground, with the graves of Joshua, Cornelius and others.

There is absolutely nothing to fix or suggest any relationship between Joshua Howard and the Anne Arundel family except a similarity of names in the early generations. It may be that he came to Maryland, knowing that his kin were there already, and he may have been abiding with them from his coming in 1687 to his patenting land in the next upper county in 1698, but there is no evidence. There was also an Edmund Howard in the lower part of the province who figures in the early history, and Joshua Howard's (probably) second son was so named, but no connection can be traced.

McHENRY HOWARD,

919 Cathedral St., Baltimore.

LEWIS OF WARNER HALL.

The tradition in this family is that they descend from "General Robert Lewis, of Brecon in Wales," who emigrated to Gloucester county, Va. A Robert Lewes, aged twenty-three, was in 1635 en- tered to be carried to Virginia in the Plain Joan of London. A man of the same name appears in the records of York county (out of which Gloucester was cut in 1651) as early as 1645, when the estate of Thomas Smallcombe is debtor to Robert Lewis for a cheese bought of him. On Sept. 30, 1656, a court was held for York county at the house of Col. Nathahiel Bacon for auditing and perfecting the accounts of Capt. Ralph Langley concerning the estate of Robert Lewis, deceased, whose widow Mary and ad- ministratrix he married. At the same court Mary, oldest orphan of Robert Lewis, deceased, was given into the care of Capt. Ralph Langley, and Alice, the youngest daughter, into that of Capt. Thomas Ramsey. At an orphan's court, held for York county, Sept. 10, 1658, Ralph- Langley admitted that he had in his charge some cattle "belonging to Mary and Alice Lewis and Ann fol- man, which came to them by their brother Henry Jones, de- ceased." I find no grants made by the government to this Robert Lewis, or any other of the name. But the said Robert Lewis did

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