~OUR FAMILIES ANCESTRAL ROOTS~

Governor William Stone

Born: Northamptonshire County, ENGLAND.

Appointed Governor by Lord Baltimore during 1648, the first Protestant Governor of the state of Maryland.

It is believed that he married 1635 in Hungar's Parish Accomac County, Virginia to Verlinda Graves.

His parents were believed to have been Captain John Stone "The Immigrant" and Dorothy (Poynton) Stone. Although there is still much research to be done and may never be able to prove this either way.

Research shows him and his wife to have been buried on Poynton Manor, Nangemy Parish, Charles County, Maryland. (But no one seems to know exactly where.)

∼In 1648 William migrated from England to Virginia and settled on the eastern shore near Hunger's Creek, and he was called Captain Stone. In the same year, 1648, he negotiated the removal of a party of non-conformist like himself from Virginia to Maryland and in August 1648 he was appointed Deputy Governor of the Colony of Maryland by Lord Baltimore, the lord proprietor and Governor. While governor (first Protestant Governor) William lived in St. Mary's City. 1648 proved a rather eventful year for the emigrant.

6 Children:

1)Thomas Stone was born about 1635 or 1638 in Accomack Co., VA, and died in 1676. He married Mary unknown.

2 children:

William Stone, b.c. 1666, m. Theodosia Wade, d. 1731.

(1 son William Stone, b. 1746, m. Patsy __, 1758, d. 1799 They had 1 son William Stone was born about 1760 in Henrico Co., VA, and died about 1832 in Grayson Co., KY. He first married Lucy Trammel in 1785. She was born in 1765 and died in 1810. He married second Polly Snyder in 1810. At least the first 3 children below were born in Henrico Co., VA.

Children - Stone, by Lucy Trammel

Moses Stone, b. 3 Dec. 1789, m. Catherine Barnes, d. 29 Aug. 1832.

Aaron Stone, b. 3 Dec. 1789, m(1) Rosannah Hanners, 12 Feb. 1812, m(2) Jemimia Braizer, 26 May 1859.

Hosea Stone, b. 22 June 1792, m(1) Elizabeth Weedman, 1812, m(2) Artemitia Morris, 28 May 1826, d. 17 April 1863.

Mary Stone, b.c. 1792, m. John Weedman, c. 1812.

Hetty Stone

Sally Stone, m. William Haycraft.

Children - Stone, by Polly Snyder

William B. L. Stone, b. 24 Dec. 1820, m(1) Eliza A. Dennison, m(2) Martha Burnett.

Ephraim Blackford Stone, b. 14 Nov. 1823, m. Elizabeth Johnson, c. 1842, d. 3 Dec. 1908.

John Christopher Caleb Stone)

2) Richard Stone

3) John Stone was born about 1642 and died in 1698. He married 3 times Elizabeth Warren, Florence Raynor & Eleanor Bayne. 6 Children total.

4) Elizabeth Stone was born about 1650 and died in 1707. She married Hon. William Calvert, son of Gov. Leonard Calvert, in 1661/2. He was born 1642/3 in England and died 10 Jan. 1682 in Maryland.

5 children:

1. Elizabeth Calvert, b.c. 1662, m. James Neale, 20 Dec. 1681, d. 1684.

2. Charles Calvert, b.c. 1664, m(1) Mary Howson, 1690, m(2) Barbara Kirke, d. 1733.

3. William Calvert, b.c. 1666.

4. George Calvert, b.c. 1668, m(1) Elizabeth Doyne, 1690, m(2) Anne Notley, 1691 (?), m(3) Hannah Neale, d. 1699 (or 1739).

5.Richard Calvert, b.c. 1670, m. Sarah ‑‑‑‑‑‑, d. 11 Nov. 1718.

5) Mary Stone was born about 1656 and died in 1682. She first married Benoni Thomas. He died, and she married second Robert Doyne, Esquire, in 1674. He was the executor of the estate of Mary's mother. He was born in 1654 and died in 1680 (or 1689)

1 child with Benoni

Benoni Stone Thomas

6 children with Robert:

Wharton Doyne

William Doyne

Sarah Doyne

Verlinda Doyne, m (1) Samuel Taylor, m (2) John Brown. one

son -Samuel Taylor, Jr., m. Mary Wight.

Elinor Doyne

Mary Doyne, b.c. 1683, m. Nicholas Dawson, d. 14 Dec. 1734/Jan.

6) Catherine (Katherine) Stone

Note: Verlinda Graves had a sister Ann Graves married to a Rev. Cotton, Ann and the Rev named their daughter Verlinda Cotton in honor of Ann's sister. Don't get them confused!

It is likely William's burial is at Poynton Manor in "Cherry Field", but the oldest headstones there have long since crumbled with time.

∼William Maximillan Stone was christened Oct 7, 1603, Twiston, Lancashire, England. His parents were Dorothy Jennett (1581-?) and Capt John Carr Stone (b: 1578 in Croston, Bretherton, Lancaster, England). [. . .] Stone died December 21, 1660, in Charles County, Maryland. (Thanks to FindAGrave contributor C Powell #47864916 for updated birth & death dates.)

In 1648, Captain William Stone had come into Maryland from Virginia Colony. [. . .]

When William and Verlinda Stone moved their home from Virginia into Maryland, they brought with them a number of indentured servants. They also brought "four Negroes and one Turk and one Indian." This accounting appears in a formal registration William Stone submitted to the land office in Maryland, demanding the right to enter lands he had been promised in exchange for bringing his family from Virginia to Maryland.

The Stone ledger indicates the dramatically different demographics of arriving immigrants in the colonies along the Chesapeake when compared with New England. One of the biggest differences was the presence of intact families in New England as opposed to individual laborers in the more southerly colonies. English colonists, settling north of the Chesapeake Bay in the seventeenth century, reach the Colonies mostly as family groups. In but a few short years after the arrival of the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock in 1620, colonists landed and disbursed in a remarkable eruption of energy and zeal. However, in the tobacco colonies of Maryland and Virginia, the stream of immigrant arrivals was steady and continuous for decades after the first permanent settlement at Jamestown in 1607. The continuing influx included a large percentage of single persons, bound to labor for a term of years. These singleton drudges in Maryland and Virginia were mostly from central England by way of the slums of London or one or another port city. Male immigrants arriving in seventeenth century Maryland and Virginia outnumbered females about six to one. [. . .]

The legalization of African enslavement in Maryland was formally established in 1663/4, a generation after its introduction. Note what the colonial legislature, composed of male, land owning immigrants, found of concern in 1663, sufficient to cause them to legalize slavery in their domain, thereby reversing the ancient laws and customs of England. The problem was White women: English women were "intermarrying" slaves:

"Divers free-born English women, forgetful of their free condition, and to the disgrace of our nation, do intermarry with negro slaves; by which, also, divers suits may arise, touching the issue of such women, and great damage doth befall the master of such negroes, &c."

Therefore:

"Whatsoever free-born woman shall intermarry with any slave, shall serve the master of such slave during the life of her husband, and that all the issue of such free born women, so married, shall be slaves, as their fathers were."

[. . .]

For both commercial and social reasons, the custom of slavery was codified in Maryland in the seventeenth century, as it was in other Southern colonies, at the same time. The region made itself dependent upon a cheap and ready source of debased labor. All aspects of human striving, whether moral, commercial or carnal, were made to include the daily betrayal of the humanity of those least able to protect themselves. These included African men, women and children, as well as indentured English men and women, though of course the indentured class was not enslaved for life. [. . .]

In the middle of the seventeenth century, William and Verlinda Stone were part of the leading edge of these developments. [. . .]

A communicant of the Church of England, Stone became Governor of Maryland shortly before the beheading of Charles I in 1649. He was appointed by the Catholic Cecil Calvert, Second Lord Baltimore and colonizer ("proprietor") of the Province of Maryland. Cecil Calvert "hastened to secure his tenure of Maryland by showing the world that his Province was not all Roman Catholic to the prejudice of Protestants."

Maryland was intended as a refuge in America for persecuted English Catholics. But the province never at any time was Catholic in a majority of its population. In 1632 the charter had to be revised to limit its western boundary after it was discovered that Protestants from Virginia had already moved east across the Potomac River. [. . .]

At the time of his appointment as Governor of Maryland, William Stone was already prominent in Virginia. Born in Northamptonshire England in 1603, he was living in "the Plantation of Acchowmacke" [Accawmacke] in 1633, a commissioner, and member of the Accawmacke Court (Northampton County) that year. (Records of William Stone's appointments, land transactions and other activities in Virginia are among the oldest surviving records in that state.) In 1634, Stone was appointed High Sheriff of the county and was still living in Virginia when appointed Governor of Maryland in 1648. He moved there in 1649. [. . .]

The Catholic population was primarily in southern Maryland, around St. Mary's City, while a large group of Puritans from Virginia had settled in Ann Arundel County (named for the wife of Proprietor Cecil Calvert) at the community they called Providence, which shortly was renamed Annapolis (named for Princess Anne, daughter of English Queen Mary).

The Virginians had come into Maryland to avoid curtailments of their religious practices, as was being attempted by Virginia Governor William Berkeley. The new Marylanders proved unwilling to take an oath of allegiance to Lord Baltimore, holding the oath was "Romish" as it bound them to obey a "Popish Government." The Puritans offered to swear to be true to Baltimore's interests, but this compromise was not acceptable to the Lord Proprietary, who ordered all who refused the oath to be expelled. The impasse was compounded by continuing turbulence in England. William Stone was Protestant but not of a Separatist stripe. Unfortunately for him, many of the Virginians who joined him in Maryland, were blood and bone Puritans. [. . .]

In 1654, commissioners from England arrived in Maryland. They insisted that the province be governed directly from England by the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. William Stone was compelled to resign. He stated in a proclamation that he did so "for prevention of the effusion of Blood and ruine of the Country and Inhabitants." But the risk of "ruine" soon was reassessed.

In 1655, a ship, the Golden Fortune, arrived with reinforcements from Lord Baltimore. The emboldened William Stone, to his misfortune, then demanded that he be restored as Governor under the terms of the original charter. Marching with his supporters toward Patuxent to reclaim official records, Stone was met by an army of Puritans, many of them recently settled asylees from Virginia Colony, whom Stone himself had invited into Maryland. These hearty, serious planters were in no mood to come once again, under the thumb of an overreaching colonial administration, and certainly not a Catholic Proprietorship. [. . .]

Near present day Annapolis, at the mouth of the Severn River, the Virginia Protestants, commanded by Captain William Fuller, defeated the little army of William Stone, agent of Lord Baltimore. Some of the defeated "Papists" were court marshaled and at least one was executed on the spot. Stone, wounded in the shoulder, only just escaped execution by firing squad.

For a time, Stone was held prisoner. His wife Verlinda boldly appealed to Lord Baltimore, reciting in her letter some of the details of the battle. "Not above five of our men escaped," she wrote, "which ran away before the fight was ended . . . They have sequestered my Husband's Estate, only they say they will allow a maintenance for me and my children which I do believe will be but small. They keep my husband with the rest of the Council, all other officers, still prisoners, et cetera." Stone was freed and regained possession of at least some of his lands, including his estate, Nanjemy, later called Poynton Manor. William Stone died in 1660 in his house in St. Mary's City.

William and Verlinda Stone had seven children: Thomas, Richard, John, Matthew, Elizabeth, Katherine, and Mary Stone (?-before 1689), who became the wife, first of _____ Thomas and then, as a widow, of Robert Doyne (?-1689), High Sheriff of Charles County, Maryland. [. . .]

The Maryland State archives (St. Mary's City Men's Career Files, MSA SC 5094) list William Stone's public offices: justice of peace (Accomack County, Virginia), 1633, 1635-1639, 1641-1645, 1647-1648; Hungars Parish Vestry (Accomack County, Virginia), 1635; sheriff (Accomack County, Virginia), 1634, 1640, 1646; and Burgess (Accomack County, Virginia), 1642. [. . .]

Verlinda and William Stone had many prominent connections and descendants' collateral to this line. Mary Stone's older sister, Elizabeth married William Calvert, son of Maryland Governor Leonard Calvert and grandson of George Calvert, First Lord Baltimore. Another descendent, William Murray Stone, was the third Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Maryland. Thomas Stone, a double great grandson, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Descendent Michael Jennifer was a member of the Maryland Convention that ratified the Constitution of the United States in 1788. John, a brother of the signer Thomas Stone, was a governor of Maryland. [. . .]

William and Verlinda Stone were the 9th great grandparents of this writer and website memorialist, as follows:

Mary Stone Doyne (?-before 1689)

Mary Doyne Dawson (?-Abt Dec 1734)

George Dawson (?-?)

Nicholas Dawson (1745-1789)

Elinor Vallette Dawson Moore (1781-1834)

Marmaduke Moore (1808-1883)

Benjamin Moore (1837-1894)

Mary Baldwin Moore Taylor (1863-1936)

John Oliver Taylor Jr (1891-1960)

Betty Taylor Cook (1918-2000)

This brief biography has been taken from Volume I of a two volume book of family history entitled ALL OF THE ABOVE I & II, by Richard Baldwin Cook. For additional information, visit the contributor profile, #47181028.