University of Virginia Library

In replying to your letter from Tappahannock, I am sorry
to have to say to you that I am in possession of no papers that can be
useful to you in your notices relative to the Church, &c. in Virginia. I
have always understood that my ancestors were attached to the Protestant
Episcopal Church from their first settlement in this new world. They
were all well-educated men, and all business-men, generally filling public
offices down to the Revolution. It is highly probable my grandfather—
who died in April, 1800, and who, I was told, was a regular attendant at
and supporter of the church of which Parson Matthews was the pastor—
did leave papers that might have been useful to you. But in the division
of his estate his library and papers not on business were divided out
among his many sons, and, no doubt, like the other property left them,
scattered to the four winds. My uncle, Carter Beverley, qualified first as
his executor, and so took all papers on business—and, it is probable,

many others—to his home in Staunton, and, he told me, lost every thing
of the kind by the burning up of his house.

My father, Robert Beverley, married Miss Jane Taylor, of Mount Airy,
Richmond county. My grandfather, Robert Beverley, married Miss
Maria Carter, of Sabine Hall. My great-grandfather, William Beverley,
married Miss Elizabeth Bland,—the sister, I have heard, of the distinguished
Colonel Richard Bland, of the Revolution. My great-great-grandfather,
Robert Beverley, (the historian,) married Miss — Byrd,
of Westover, I have heard. His father—the first of the name in the
Colony of Virginia—settled at Jamestown about the year 1660, and from
thence moved to Middlesex county. He was a long time Clerk of the
House of Burgesses, a lawyer by profession, and a prominent actor in
Bacon's Rebellion, commanding, I think, the King's troops as major. I
have never heard the name of the lady he married in Hull, England. I
have heard she was the daughter of a merchant of that town. He
brought her to Virginia with him. For a more particular account of this
individual I must refer you to the third volume of Henning's "Statutes
at Large," from page 541 to the end. You will there see an authentic
account of some of his services and persecutions. You will also find
in vol. viii. of the same work, page 127, an act which gives, I presume,
the only true account of the male branch of the family now
extant: the act was obtained by my grandfather for the purpose of
changing an entail from an estate in Drysdale parish, King and Queen
county, (where the historian lived and died,) to one of more value in
Culpepper.