Dramatis Personae

Peter apparently had a son, James; but there is also a James Fugett (Foucate, etc) a bit later, the son of “James La Foucate and Emaline Lamb of Old England) – this earlier James having been born circa 1630. Herein lies one of the “problems” of early Fugate ancestry: who was or was not related to whom on either side of the Atlantic, and which one or which one’s descendants was the forefather of Josias Fugate, the first agreed upon direct ancestor?

Like John Combs, Peter La Foucate came as an indentured servant – though to Maryland, and not Virginia; his contract surIn 1650, there were only 50,000 Europeans living in the settlements which later became the 13 colonies which later became the vives in the Maryland State Historical Library:

United States of America. John Combs was one of them: and not the only one of our ancestors known to have been living on the North American continent in that early time – although the prize must certainly go to the family of Pocahontas.

These presents witness that I, Francis Spooner, of the good ship King David have sold unto George Goldsmith Peter

Combs had arrived on board the “Marigold” at Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, listed on the ship’s manifest as a “draper.” He Fugate, a vintner, for the term of four years, and also do assign full rights of land unto George Goldsmith or his

was from London – perhaps originally Devonshire - and it must have been as obvious to him then as it is to us now that neither his assignees for his transportation unto the Province of Maryland.

craft nor his experience in a large city would be of any use in his new life along the swampy, malarial shores of the James River.

Jamestown at that time had a population of only 400 and was little more than a fortified pig sty. John Combs’ arrival as an WitneSS our hanDS thiS 11 July, 1661

indentured servant at the age of 19 increased the population of the threadbare English toehold on the North American continent by 2 percent: the equivalent of 150,000 immigrants arriving in the United States today. Great Britain had a population then of Just before Peter La Foucate landed in 1661, the English colonies had 210,000 residents: a two hundred fold increase in just approximately 5 million people. Europe contained 70 million; the entire planet, 500,000,000 – about one and a half times the 30 years, although Maryland had only 4,500 Europeans living within its boundaries. With Peter’s arrival, its population increased population of the United States today. Jamestown was only 12 years old in 1619 and was barely hanging on; no matter how many by .02% - the equivalent of 6,000 immigrants arriving today. Peter was obviously a success as an indentured servant – he served immigrants England poured into the colony, the population had gone almost nowhere. Death from disease, starvation, warfare only 18 months indenture - and he was granted the land that became “French Plantation,” located at the head of the Chesapeake on with the Indians, and execution by duly appointed English authorities, had reduced the chances of surviving more than a year in what is now part of the Aberdeen Proving Grounds. He must have prospered for a while, because he purchased “Peter’s Addition”

Virginia to far below 50 percent.

around 1690.

Combs was luckier than most of the colonists. By 1624, he had not only survived the Indian Massacre of 1622, but was now As successful as he was as a servant, he was a failure as a settler. By 1700 he had “fled to Virginia” for failing to pay his taxes –

listed as a “freeman” (having either bought out his indenture or successfully served his term), and was living in the household of presumably because he couldn’t afford it. In 1731, just a few years after the former owner of “French Plantation” had crossed the Robert Sheppard in “Jamestown Citie” He lived another 16 years, dying at the age of 40 not far away in Yorktown, having married River Styx, another one of our ancestors arrived – a few miles north of the Chesapeake, near Philadelphia - Michale Neihs. Other Margaret Archdale (the Archdales and the Combs families had been related by marriage in England) and had at least two sons:

“Neace” family researchers maintain that it was an earlier arrival named Hans Neuss who established the Neace family of Virginia Thomas and Archdale Combs (b. 1625, d, 1692, Middlesex Co, VA, age 67). John may or may not have been related to the John and Kentucky, and that he was one of the first “Pennsylvania Dutch” who, in 1682, came to Germantown, PA. The Neuss family Combs who came over to Jamestown in 1608, and who was probably a friend of Shakespeare, though it is almost certain that the was from Krefeld, Germany, and were considered “Mennonites.”

latter John and not the former was our direct ancestor.

Herrs Neihs/ Neuss had three things in common with Peter La Foucate: he was victim of the religious wars, he was Protestant Archdale Combs named his son John Combs (b. 1662), presumably after his father, and it was this young John’s good fortune to the core, and it didn’t take long after his arrival in Pennsylvania before he decided to move: first, to the area around Culpeper, to live into the following century, dying in Richmond Co. VA in 1716, age 54 - almost 100 years after his grandfather had come to VA and then either he or his family decided to make the trek all the way down to southwestern Virginia.

Jamestown.1619 was an important year for the colony as well. The House of Burgesses, the first English legislature in America, Somewhere between Philadelphia, PA and Abingdon, VA. the Neaces met the Nobles – and the families married.

met in that “Citie” for the first time (thus establishing English parliamentary government on this continent); and it was in that year George Washington mentions the Noble family in the diary he kept as a young man: they were neighbors of his boyhood

also that a Dutch ship pulling up to the dock on the James River sold the first black Africans to the colonists, thus establishing home in northern Virginia (near Fredericksburg), and the future First President was said to have taken George Noble along with chattel slavery here.Jamestown was a mercantile colony, not a religious experiment like that introduced to Massachusetts a year him on a surveying trip into Western Virginia – which meant near Culpeper. Washington said the “Deutsch” men he met, which later in 1620. Still, it was a thoroughly Protestant place in a time when Catholics and Protestants were contending for dominance, probably included the Neaces, were “as ignorant a set of people as Indians they would never speak English but when spoken to not just in England, but throughout Western Europe.

they spoke all Dutch” – in their German accents, saying “dis” and “dot” for “this” and “that.”

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