The Pages of History - Charlie's Ancestor Links

Your Great-Grandmother's family, the Pages were one of the first families in England to have a coat of arms, possibly even the first! Sir Hugo  de Pagham was the first recorded, (1274). He was from Ebor, (now York), who's Kings were the source of many of the historical events that became the King Arthur legends, (King Peredur of York was who the character of Percival was based on). This means that your ancestors were at Camelot!

The 8th Crusade

Hugo led the 8th Crusade, helped in battles with the infamous Border Reivers, (like Robin Hood) and was a messenger from the King Henry III of England, (the first King of England to be crowned when he was still a kid!) to King Alfonso X, (Alphonse the Wise) , of Spain.

Interestingly, your Great-Grandfather's family, the Beattie's, were Border Reivers! SO they were fighting one another! (More about Clan Beattie, a part of the MacBeth Clan made famous by Shakespeare!)

It is extremely likely that we are also descended from Alcuin of York, who was the King of England's messenger between Charlemagne and King Aethelbald of Mercia. Alciun said that he was related to the father of a Saint named Willibrod. These ancestors lived several hundred years before Hugo, in the 700s!

Queen Anne Boleyn

Several hundred years later, our ancestor Edmond Page was foreman of the jury that convicted Queen Anne Boleyn. Because of this, he received valuable land that had previously belonged to a convent. The land, which now includes parts of London, is some of the most valuable in England but has been lost in a legal tangle for centuries! Some say this is because of a curse the nuns placed on the Page family when they lost their convent!

Here is a newspaper article about the property and lost Page millions.

The Pages came to America in 1652. We had our own ships and brought endentured servants over on them. This gave us LOTS of land, (you got several hundred acres for each person you brought over). The first land grant the King gave us was Williamsburg! Called Middle Plantation at the time, our family helped make the city the capitol by giving land and money to build Bruton Parrish Church, (the first church there, which still stands today), suggesting the founding of the College of William and Mary, and many other things. (It was, after all, our land!)

The Pages played an important role in the American Revoloution. We were even part of Bacon's Rebellion, (an attempt to gain idependance from England that happened 100 years before the Revoloutionary War)!  We were part of many other exciting things, including the capture of the son of the first Page in Virginia, Matthew Page, by pirates!

The Ruins of Rosewell

Matthew's son, Mann, built Rosewell. The house was considered the best example of the architecture of the time EVER! Some think it was built on the site of Indian Chief Powhatan's favorite home, where Pocahontas was born and where John Smith was brought when he was captured. Thomas Jefferson, a cousin of ours, spent a great deal of his childhood there after his mother died. He became best friends with our ancestor John Page, (whose mother had also died around the same time). Letters between the two are still in publication today.  (If you get a book of the letters of Jefferson at Barnes and Noble, you'll find them in there!) It's also said that an early draft of the Declaration of Independance was written at Rosewell with Mr. Page! Artifacts from Rosewell are in the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

The Pages in Virginia:

John Page of Middle Plantation the first ancestor to come here from England:

Portraits of John Page:

His Great-Grandson, Mann Page III

Mann Page, III and his sister, Elizabeth

The first Mann Page



The best-known of the Page family was, of course, Thomas Jefferson's best friend, Gov. John Page. Jefferson offerred to make him Bishop of Virginia in addition to Governor but he declined. Here are some of the many pictures of him:

His wife, Jane:

And here is one of many important letters he wrote during the Revolutionary War:


Other very cool ancestors are:

Confederate General Richard Lucien Page, a Cousin of Gen. Robert E. Lee

Novelist, Poet and Ambassador, Thomas Nelson Page

and, of course, 'Spider' author and advisor to Presidents Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy, Norvell Page, who you were partly named after!

They ALL would have been EXTREMELY proud of you! (Including the Kings and Presidents they worked with, I'm sure!)

If you notice, they all have our big eyes!

The Falkner family history is very cool too. Wikkipedia evenhas a list of famous people, (real and in fiction), with your name! Check it out! They were falconers, which sounds like an awesome job. The first recorded Falkner was a man named Gulielmus Auceps (William the Falconer) in 1200. He lived in Angus, Scotland. A man named Robert le Faukener paid homage to King Edward I in 1296.  Matthius in 1202.  More about the Falkner family here

Links to info about other parts of our family:

Bessette (Bissette)

Your Great-Grandmother Bissette was a Glover. The Glovers have an interesting history that goes back almost as far as the Pages do. The name later meant makers of gloves as we think of them now but in earlier times meant the glove of suits of armour So one ancestor Glover may have made your Page ancestor's suit of armour! The Glovers came to Virginia even earlier than the Pages, (like, nearly right after Jamestown), in1635.

and the Beatties, who were extremely cool, are linked to in the first few paragraphs here.

Soon I'll post a blog that tells what the symbols on our Coats of Arms mean!