Down the Rabbit Hole of Genealogy: The Earl of Surrey?

This week I have been focusing on identifying the antecedents of Louisa Tapscott White Armstrong, my husband's great-great grandmother. In that search, I discovered handwritten documents and information about the family, particularly the Whites. Then I found myself pursuing information about other family connections, the Bakers and the Woods. Every family history is a warren. If I attempt to follow every passage in that warren, I will lose sight of the reason I began this blog: to organize the letters, photos, and other ephemera now in our keeping that my husband's ancestors collected and saved. Occasionally, I must pursue a question that these documents raise, but if I'm ever to get these hundreds of letters read and organized, I must remain true to my original plan. Then I can wander deeper into the warren.

However, I will record what I discovered about connections between the Whites, Bakers, and Howards, going back to Judith Howard Wood, of Howard Hall, England. The family history recorded by Susan C. Armstrong has some discrepancies that I cannot reconcile now, while many of the details are corroborated in published documents. As the pages of Susan's record at the end of this post indicate, the branch of Whites from which my husband is descended traces its antecedents back to Lady Judith Howard of Howard Hall, daughter-in-law of the Duke of Norfolk. This connection may well make the Whites (and my husband) a descendant of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547); Susan White Armstrong was certainly claiming that connection, and more academic documents show that the family was descended from the Howards--but what Howard? A younger son, as Susan Armstrong's record suggests? Really? Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey? Many families have stories of famous relatives in the distant past. That's a subject for another investigation.

An article in The William and Mary Quarterly(vol. 6, No. 2, Oct. 1897, pp. 94-97), provides information about the White connection to the Howard and Wood families. [The entire text can be accessed more freely here: http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/schools/wmmary/family01.txt.] Here is an excerpt:

William Howard, who lived about the time of the battle of Culloden, married Judith------, and had several children born in England. Henry Howard, the youngest, was born February, 1745. Susannah Howard an elder sister, married Peter Wood, of Maryland, and had issue, four daughters, one of whom, Judith, married John Baker, of Devonshire, England, who settled in Jefferson county Va.--Abstracted from an old letter, 1838, of Judge L. P. Thompson, quoting the family Bible.

John Baker and Judith, his wife, had issue: 1, Margaret, who married William Lisle, of Staunton, Va., and left issue: 2, Anna, who married Zachary Waters, of Montgomery county, Md., and left two sons, Baker and Tilghman, and one daughter, Courtenay; 3, Susannah who married, first, James Wood, of Betetourt county, Va., and had issue, James, Stanhope, and Fonrose. She married, second, James Tapscott, the immigrant, of English descent, and had Baker Tapscott, who married Ellen Morrow Baker, his cousin, of whom hereafter; 3, Arabella, who married Judge Robert White, of Winchester, Va., and had two sons, John Baker and Robert Baker White. Judge White was born in 1759 and died in 1831, a soldier at Boston from Virginia in 1775, wounded at Princeton, lawyer in 1783, and judge of the General Court from 1793 to 1826;.....

James Tapscott and Susanna [Baker] Wood [first husband, James Wood], his wife, had issue; Newton Tapscott, married Louisa, daughter of Ferdinando Fairfax, second son of Bryan, eighth Lord Fairfax; Chichester, married a daughter of William Naylor, Esq., of Romney, Va.; Baker, of whom hereafter [in a following paragraph that I do not reproduce here]; Susan Caroline, first wife of Judge Lucas P. Thompson, of Staunton, Va.; Louisa married John Baker White, of Romney, and had three daughters, one of whom was second wife of Judge Lucas P. Thompson, her uncle-in-law. --Abstracted from statement of John B. Tapscott, Esq.

Oh, what a tangled web this excerpt brings to light. John Baker White, father of Louisa Tapscott White Armstrong (my husband's great-great grandmother), first married his first cousin, Louisa Tapscott; this union produced Susan C. White, who married William Armstrong, brother of Edward McCarty Armstrong. John Baker White married a second time to Frances Streit; this union produced Louisa Tapscott White Armstrong. Louisa and Susan were half-sisters--and sisters-in-law. And the last part of that excerpt indicates that one of the daughters of John Baker White and Louisa (first wife) married her uncle by marriage after he was widowed.

And now, the handwritten family version of these antecedents, as recorded by Susan C. White Armstrong. As is often the case with family documents in which people recall details that have been told to them, the information needs to be corroborated with other documents. There are claims here that don't absolutely match up with information I've read elsewhere, and the multiplicity of common names makes accuracy more difficult.

I have loaded below images of a number of pages of this handwritten document. Click on each image for a readable view.