Lt Colonel Edward Douglas

[Henry Barraud Hunt, Jr.]

I shall start with a general review of what we can say about the Colonel and, after that, provide new information I have to offer about this ancestor from whom I descend through four separate lines.

Edward Douglas was born 14 Dec 1540 in Norfolk, England and died 02 Nov 1657 in Northampton Co, Virginia. He married Isabella Bowman of Middlesex Co, England in 1641. Her birth was in 1600 and she died 1666, then the wife of Rev Thomas Teackle, in Northampton Co. Virginia. Edward Douglas inherited the Dale Plantation, better remembered as Dale's Gift because of his blood relationship to Sir Thomas Dale, High Marshall and Provisional Governor of Virginia. Dale's Gift represented a total of 10,000 acres that began at Cape Charles to the South and Old Plantation Creek in the North. There had elapsed a long period of time from the death of Sir Thomas Dale and the actual presentation of the land to Edward Douglas in the form of two patents. The Virginia Company dolled it out to him and he passed away before acquiring it all. Remember Sir Thomas passed away in 1617 and Edward Douglas became eligible after two things happened -the death of Elizabeth Throgmorton, his wife and after Edward Douglas's marriage to Isabella Bowman in 1641. During that period there were numerous patents issued by the Virginia Company and others who settled there awaiting for an issuance of a patent. After Lt Colonel Edward Douglas and his wife arrived in the colony the Virginia Company started issuing patents that would go into effect in seven years, The Company was uncertain as to whether or not the land south of Magoty Bay was part of of the plantation and at the other end along parts of Old Plantation Creek.(to be continued)