Family History
John Madison (or Maddison), a ship's carpenter, arrived in Virginia
from England in 1653. For paying the passage of twelve immigrants,
including himself, he was granted six hundred acres of land
through the "headright" system, a system which allowed
anyone fifty acres of land for each immigrant whose passage
from England he paid. Usually, those immigrants were indentured
servants, who worked for a certain number of years in exchange
for their passage. Madison's land was on the Mattapony River,
at a place called Mantapike, and for the next thirty years,
he continued acquiring land through the "headright"
system. By 1683, around the time of his death, his estate consisted
of nineteen hundred acres on the York and Mattapony Rivers.
After his death, his son John continued enlarging
the family estate, becoming a prominent landholder and serving
as sheriff and justice of the peace in King and Queen County.
In 1714, he and a neighbor, Daniel Coleman, patented two thousand
acres of land on the upper Mattapony River. His three sons,
John, Henry, and Ambrose, moved to this land, which was forty
miles above Mantapike, and began working on their own estates.
Of these sons, Ambrose, the grandfather of President James Madison,
proved to be the most important Madison in this generation.
In 1721, Ambrose Madison (James Madison's grandfather)
married Frances Taylor, who came from a prominent landowning
family in Virginia. Frances was the daughter of James Taylor
and an ancestor of future President Zachary Taylor. James Taylor
had been a companion of Governor Spotswood and had been one
of the members of the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe in 1716.
This land surveying expedition, which had crossed the Blue Ridge
Mountains into the Shenandoah Valley, took possession of the
land between the Blue Ridge and the ocean in the West in the
name of King George I of England. Those who had been part of
the expedition then began to stake out claims to the land that
had been surveyed, James Taylor being among them.
Taylor worked on building a 13,500-acre estate.
In 1723, Taylor probably pointed out some of the best 4,675
acres of land for his two sons-in-law, Thomas Chew and Ambrose
Madison, to patent jointly. This land would be part of the Madison
estate originally called Mount Pleasant. When James Taylor's
son, James Taylor, Jr., moved onto another portion of his father's
estate, the Taylor, Chew, and Madison families became a small
community in themselves, all living within a few short miles
of each other.
In 1732, Ambrose and Frances, now with three
children, moved onto their plantation, Mount Pleasant. About
six months later, however, Ambrose died suddenly. Frances was
left, at the age of thirty-two, with three small children, an
estate of about 2,337 and a half acres, much of which still
needed to be developed, and twenty-nine slaves, fourteen of
them being children. She was not entirely on her own, however,
since members of her family surrounded her on nearby plantations,
offering her protection, advice, and help with the estate. Frances
took over the responsibilities of running the plantation and
within a few years, had begun marketing tobacco in England.
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Image Credit: Belle Grove Plantation, Middletown, VA.
A historic property of the National Trust for Historic
Preservation.
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As James Madison, Sr., grew older, he assumed
a larger role in the management of the plantation. One of his
responsibilities was to carry tobacco to the warehouse of Francis
Conway on the Rappahannock River. There he met Conway's daughter,
Nelly, and in 1749, they married. Twelve children would be born
to them over the next twenty-two years, though five would die
in infancy. The first child, James Madison, Jr., was born March
16, 1751, leaving, in order of birth, Francis, Ambrose, Nelly,
William, Sarah, and Frances.
Family Tree Sources:
Brant, Irving. 1970. The Fourth President:
A Life of James Madison. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Brant, Irving. 1941. James Madison: The Virginia
Revolutionist. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Ketcham, Ralph. 1990. James Madison: A Biography.
Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia.
Rutland, Robert A., et al. 1994. James Madison
and the American Nation, 1751-1836: An Encyclopedia. New York:
Simon & Schuster.
http://www.dcs.hull.ac.uk/public/genealogy/presidents/
