More fun with charts

In 1962 Mark’s great-aunt Barbara married Eppes Wayles Browne Jr.  There was a story in the family of a connection between Barbara’s husband, Wayles, and Thomas Jefferson, and that Wayles & Barbara had attended some Eppes family functions at the ancestral home in Hopewell, VA.

In July 2008 I picked up a book at a flea market called Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised our Nation by Cokie Roberts.  In it she lists the “cast of characters” which includes: “Thomas Jefferson – husband of Martha Wayles Jefferson; father of Martha Jefferson Randolph and Maria Jefferson Eppes; cousin of Anne Randolph Morris.”  I knew it couldn’t be a coincidence to have Eppes AND Wayles, spelled exactly right, in the same family.  That got me digging.

EPPES.  Francis Eppes, son of John and Thomazine Bankes (Fisher) Eppes, was born in 1597 in Ashford, Kent, England and emigrated to Virginia before 1625.  Five generations later Francis IV was born.

WAYLES.  John Wayles, son of Edward & Ellen (Ashburner) Wayles, was born in 1715 in Lancaster, Lancashire, England and emigrated to Virginia about 1734.

I don’t know if the chart above looks simple or complex to you.  Just in case you’re not visually-oriented here it is in words:

• Francis Eppes IV had, among other children, Richard and Martha.
• Martha Eppes married John Wayles in 1746 and “had issue”, viz. Martha Wayles.
• Martha Eppes Wayles died in 1748.  John married Tabitha Cocke in about 1750 and had issue, viz. Elizabeth Wayles.
• Meanwhile Francis’ son Richard married Martha Bolling in 1744 had issue, viz., what else?  Francis.
• This Francis Eppes married John & Tabitha Wayles’s daughter Elizabeth and had issue, viz. John Wayles Eppes in 1773
• Meanwhile Martha Wayles married Thomas Jefferson in 1772 and had issue, viz. Mary Jefferson.
• John Wayles Eppes and Mary Jefferson married in 1797.

And all was right with the world.

I will tell you that no one handed that chart to me. I can count on two hands the number of times I attempted to untangle these people’s threads. Information shows itself gradually. Articles about Jefferson abound; they generally say a few things about Martha and sometimes mention her daddy but finding anything written that illustrates, for example, how Jefferson was related to Elizabeth Wayles is…well, it hasn’t happened for me yet. Imagine how much harder it is if your intermarrying ancestors didn’t achieve the notoriety that these good people did.

Anyway, I thought it was an interesting constellation. Much has been written about eight of the ten spots of light it contains but I’ll leave it to you to figure out which.