Identifying William Rountree’s wife Dorcus
Many family researchers have accepted John S. Wurts’
statement, made more than 100 years ago, that William Rountree’s wife was Dorcas
Dudley, to whom Wurts gave a long and illustrious genealogy.[1] This contention,
however, is largely worthless for genealogical purposes since it is accompanied
by absolutely no evidence. Furthermore, the source is suspect. The
reliability of the connections made by Mr. Wurts from royal lines to American
colonists has long been regarded as questionable (to put it kindly) by
professional genealogy societies.[2]
In this case, we have every reason to doubt him. He wrote that Dorcas Dudley
was the daughter of Ambrose Dudley “of New Kent County” and the granddaughter
of Colonel Ambrose Dudley of Gloucester County. Unfortunately, the records of
both Gloucester and New Kent are practically nonexistent, so one wonders
exactly what led Mr. Wurst to draw this conclusion. Not only is there no
evidence presented for the Virginia Dudley genealogy itself, there is not a
shred of evidence that that any Dudley had a daughter named Dorcas, much less
that Dorcas Rountree was related to either Ambrose Dudley Senior or Junior.
Nor has there been found any record linking William Rountree with any member of
the Dudley family.
Worse, there is no evidence that anyone named Dudley ever set foot in New Kent
County until 1733, when Ambrose Dudley III (whom Wurts guesses is Dorcas’s
brother) appears in the St. Peter’s parish records in connection with the
baptism of a son in 1733.[3]
Ambrose Dudley is mentioned frequently after 1733, and was elected a vestryman
in 1736, but does not appear in the records until several years after William
Rountree and Dorcas were married. There is no mention of his supposed father,
Ambrose Dudley II, in any New Kent record and there are no patents to Dudleys
in New Kent or the surrounding counties until 1760.[4] Could it be that Wurts
misunderstood the St. Peter’s entry for the birth of Dudley Rountree – which
does not mention his mother’s maiden name?
If we ignore Mr. Wurts for the moment, are there any other plausible candidates
to be Dorcas Rountree’s father? Actually, there are at least two more
candidates more plausible than Dudley. Dudley was a perfectly acceptable given
name in this time period, and we cannot assume that it honored a surname. But
three others of William Rountree’s children had given names that might have
memorialized the surname of a parent or grandparent: Turner, Randall (or
Randolph), and Richardson. Persons with all of those surnames appear in New
Kent records in the right timeframe, and are therefore potential candidates to
be Dorcas Rountree’s father. Thus, we might plausibly argue that any of the
four names might reflect the maiden name of his wife. Richardson and Turner,
in particular, are names frequently recorded in the vestry books.
For example, at the time William Rountree was having children, John Richardson was a vestryman in Blisland parish, and Richard Richardson of Blisland was a Burgess from New Kent in 1729. Charles and Robert Richardson were baptizing children in St. Peter’s parish in the 1708-1715 period. As for Turner, that was a very common surname in New Kent – no fewer than five persons named Turner recorded the births of their children between 1700 and 1710 in St. Peter’s parish.
Although a minor point, the absence of the given name “Ambrose” among William Rountree’s descendants, and the absence of “Dudley” among all but the descendants of Dudley Rountree, is bothersome. One would think that such an illustrious (and wealthy) line of three successive Ambrose Dudleys would have been memorialized. Both Richardson and Turner, in contrast, are names that do appear among descendants of the children other than Richardson and Turner themselves. In summary, it appears we will never be able to prove or disprove her maiden name, though Dudley seems quite unlikely.
Finally, I might also note that it is not clear that all of William Rountree’s children were by a single wife. The sole mention of Dorcas is in the record of the birth of the son Dudley in early 1729. William Rountree’s children appear to have been born over a span of roughly 25 years, a relatively long (and dangerous) period of fertility for women in that time.
[1] Magna Charta , Vol. 8, John S. Wurts, (1892, reprinted by Brookfield 1954). This purports to show the Dudley line from Charlemagne to Dorcus Dudley. Unfortunately, there is no evidence whatsoever that Ambrose Dudley of New Kent had a daughter named Dorcas. Nor is there any evidence that William Rountree’s wife was ne Dudley. Mr. Wurts used a variety of printed sources to lay out his English pedigrees, but the last few generations of Dudleys are highly suspect.
[2] At the time Mr. Wurts published his work, many Americans were seeking illustrious genealogies and many genealogists were in the business of providing them. Obviously, the market for his book depended, in part, on making connections to American families. The portions of his genealogies which connected royal lines to the American colonists have frequently been proven false, and are universally viewed as suspect by professional societies. In the case of the Dudleys, the last 100 years have produced no proof to verify his last few Dudley generations.
[3] Chamberlayne (St. Peter’s), p511.
[4] Virginia Patent Book 33, p828.
