Today's History Lesson a la Sluggy's Ancestral Peeps

Well I've traced another ancestral line back to another "1st one in the New World" peeps.
In my mother's side of the family I am finding it is chocked full of very deep immigrant roots in the US.
And up until WW2 not many of them left Virginia for other states and beyond!  Roots that stay put are far easier to dig up.......*snort*

Since many of these ancestors are of English extraction and came over very early in the history of the settling of the New World, I have lots of published genealogical research already mapped out I can tap into once I get back to about the mid 1800's in some lines.

First a little mood music through the streets of Colonial Willamsburg.....


So today we look back at my 10 x Great Grandparents.....Samuel and Alice Sneed(Snead).

These ancestors were right at the center of some lively times in the new colonies.

Samuel and Co. sailed to the Virginia colony in 1635 from England.  The Land Grant Office shows he received a tract of 200 acres from Charles I, in James City county(now York county), on the James River in Virginia.  He moved up river to new lands eventually and by 1664 was living on land on the Pamunkey River.  Though it sounds really far away, by today's standards, it isn't.

Migrating to America with his parents was Willian Sneed.  Two more sons were born in Virginia, Samuel and my progenitor, Henry Sneed.

Henry moved to the Pamunkey River land with his father and probably did much of the clearing of the land for his father as his father was of an advanced age by that time.
Henry married and had two sons, John and Thomas.  One of their neighbors, Gideon Macon employed Thomas, who in 1677 was coming into his prime adulthood, as one of the builders of the Bruton Parish Church.  This was the Church of England parish founded in James county.  The church was completed in 1683.
The church was nearby and served the residents of Middle Plantation, which over time was renamed......Williamsburg.  Very nice Georgian architecture.

Famous folks who worshiped there include Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, George Mason, George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry.

Thomas, who helped build the church, is NOT my ancestor.  Mine is his brother John....he was probably off playing hooky and drinking rum instead.

Henry Sneed, Samuel's son/Thomas' father,  was also involved in Bacon's Rebellion.  Oh, to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.....lol

Bacon's Rebellion, to simplify it, was a group of frontier dwellers rebelling against the colonial governor and his ilk because he didn't provide protection against the hostile native Americans, who were only hostile because they were being pushed out of their ancestral lands by the expanding colonies.  Gov. Berkley held a friendly policy toward the native peoples, even in the face of their raids against the planters and refused to do anything to safeguard the farms, as his crowd was the hoity toity city dwellers and ruling class.

 There were lots of raids back and forth between the Europeans and the Native peoples, looting, pillaging, setting fire to buildings, shooting, killing, etc.  Nathanial Bacon said "enough!" and together with a group of ex-indentured servants, poor whites and free blacks and other planters, led a rebellion against Gov. Berkeley and chased him from Williamsburg.

The only thing the Rebellion accomplished in the long run was to send Berkley back to England and caused the ruling class in the colony to harden their racial caste system stance.  The "elites" were disturbed by the "regular people" forming an alliance against the Government, so they took steps to tighten up the societal laws so that the unwashed masses couldn't revolt in the future and put laws in place to divide the white and black in the serving classes.
This political move affected how slavery in the South progressed and developed, in a negative way.
Ya see what I was saying about being from the South and the whole slavery as an economic model being complicated?

Ruling class oppressing the masses?
Hmmmm......sounds eerily familiar, does it not?  ;-)

I was delighted to see that my ancestor Henry was on the side of the rebels in that affair.   "On Jan. 29, 1677, after the Rebellion, he was one of the signers of the petition of grievances to the English Commissioners, stating the reason for the revolt."
But we find Henry, shortly after this, selling his lands on the Pamunkey River anyway, and moving to the opposite shore.  I guess he figured, he was a marked man as far as the government was concerned(a troublemaker)and after the new government attacked the peaceful and friendly Pamunkey Indians in his area in retaliation after the Rebellion, he'd be sure to have problems from the natives as well.
A no win situation, so it's time to leave the county! lol

Anyway, Henry's grandson, Samuel......let's use some new names already!.....moved further inland up various rivers into south central Virginia and the rest is rather boring history.....unitl you get to ME! ;-)

Here's my 4 x Great Grandfather John Strong Snead 1802-1874.  What a hottie, huh?

His son, Lewellyn Snead was a private in Captain Wright's Virginia Heavy Artillery Company.  He saw action at the Siege of Petersburg, VA near the end of the war and was at Appomattox for the surrender.

Old rebelling Henry and his rebel 6 x grandson Lewellyn.
I guess I come by the non-conformist label honestly.......

Sluggy