07/23/2026
I've decided to copy some of the Genealogy items I've contributed to "I'm A Bullington" here to Family History Adventures.
First is a family tree which shows my current understanding of the first three generations of my surname family in North America. We started out with an immigrant from England named Nicholas Bullington. He was enumerated in the 1623 "census" of the colony that was taken in the wake of Opechancanough's attack in March of 1622 as a "Person of Quality". That meant he owned at least some land. He was enumerated in "The Maine" which was what the colonists called the land across the lagoon to the north of Jamestowne, which would be the southern suburbs of Williamsburg today. Presumably his land was there.
Nicholas is not listed on any Ship's List that has survived, so when he arrived is not clear. However, that he owned land in 1623 indicates that if he had been an indenture, one of two things must be true. Either he arrived some time before 1616 and completed his indenture contract, or the family to whom he was indentured was killed in the massacre and for his deportment during the fight he was given land by the Council. He is not accompanied by an "Uxor Bullington", implying that as of 1623 he was not married.
There is no record of his death, but there is a mention of him in a 1636 land transaction for an Elizabeth Ballhash in which the metes and bounds included adjacent "land late in the possession of Nicholas Ballington". It's not clear whether the use of "late in the possession" means that he died or simply that he sold it.
In any case, it seems that he did marry fairly soon after the 1623 census, because there are a total of five men and one woman who are mentioned in various court documents beginning around 1660, a George, a Robert, a John, a Nicholas, a Benjamin and (probably) a Susan.
George and Robert are both first mentioned in the 1660's, Benjamin in 1673, and John and the younger Nicholas in the 1680's. It is possible that John and the younger Nicholas might be the children of Robert and/or Benjamin, but it is certain that George, who was the eldest, had no children. In June 1666 he received a grant of 504 acres of land for paying for the transportation of ten people to the colony, but three months later he was killed in a horse-riding accident and had to forfeit the grant. Had he fathered young children, they would have received the land.
The first Robert was also the recipient of a smaller grant of land which stayed in the Bullington family until 1823, though it passed from his descendants to those of Nicholas Jr in 1761. That Robert was deposed in two court actions in the 1680's in which he stated his age in ways that bracket his birth as between 21 Jun 1632 and 20 Jun 1636. I believe it is toward the beginning of the span.
The first Benjamin is named in "The Westover Manuscripts", written Colonel William Byrd between 1728 and 1736. In it is the description of Byrd and his party discovering a large Beech tree at the "Forks of the Roanoke" (actually, the confluence of the Roanoke and Dan rivers] where Benjamin and two fellow explorers carved their initials on 17 Apr 1673. Byrd wrote: "It is not difficult to fill up these initials with the following names, Joseph Hatcher, Henry Hatcher and Benjamin Bullington, three Indian traders".
So, George and Robert must have been born before 1640 and Benjamin before 1650. John and Nicholas might have been sons of Benjamin's but they cannot be sons of George, because he died without heirs, and they are probably not the sons of Robert because he had minor children at his death in 1683 as shown in an Orphans' Court proceeding. Nicholas the Younger died in 1691, and his wife Marjorie the next year, leaving their underage son John in the care of her "step-father" who was actually the father of her first husband. John died some time soon after 1692.
So, I have chosen to show all six of the children at as Nicholas' direct children, but the truth is we cannot at this time be certain who fathered whom.
This tree reaches down two more generations which I'll explain in comments soon.
