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Descendants of Robert Claggett 1490
Of Kent, England
According to tradition the Clagett family is sprung from Norman stock, the progenitor of the race having landed in England with William the Conqueror in 1066 and participated in the Battle of Hastings.
The surname Claygate was first found at Claygate Cross, a hamlet in the Sevenoaks District of in Kent, England. The name may also have originated in Claygate, a village in Surrey that was first recorded as Claigate in the Domesday Book of 1086.
Origins of the Family in England
The earliest known Claggett ancestor is believed to be William Claggett (b. abt 1450) in England. His son Robert Clagett of West Malling, Kent, England, was born about 1490.
Next in line was Richard Clagett (1525-1593), who married Margarete Godden (1529-1574), a daughter of Sir Robert Godden. Among their issue was a son George (1563-1638) of Canterbury and the manors of Windhill, in Minster, Isle of Thanet, and Quarington, in Mersham Co., Kent. George was a haberdasher (a dealer in a variety of household goods), councillor, alderman, chamberlain (superintendant of domestic affairs and often also in charge of receiving and paying out money), and three times Mayor of Canterbury. He married Ann Colbrand, daughter of Thomas and Catherine Colbrand.
Richard Clagget's son Edward, formerly a Colonel in the Army of King Charles I, emigrated to the British Colonies in about 1671. A wealthy gentleman, he immediately bought large tracts of land.
See the First Emigrants to New England.
Colonial New England Families
Dr. Samuel Claggett (1750-1821) born in Port Tobacco, Maryland, served in the Revolutionary War at Valley Forge and at Bethlehem Hospital, Maryland as a surgeon. He was "tall, with blue eyes, auburn hair, and very fair skin." After the war ended, he settled in Centerville, Fairbox County, Virginia. In 1801 he moved to Warrenton in Culpeper County, where he built Snow Hill, a plantation four miles northeast of the town center. The name "Snow Hill" reportedly derives from the locust trees that were abundant on the land years ago. In the spring, when the locust trees were loaded with white flower blossoms, the entire area appeared from a distance to be covered with snow.
Dr. Claggett's grandson Samuel Claggett III (1797-1846) was born in New Baltimore, Fauquier Co., Virginia. Samuel III married (1) Lucy Sanford (1796-1827) with whom he had three children. When she died, Samuel married her sister (2) on 8 May 1827 Julia Frances (1807-1876) with whom he had six children. Lucy and Julia were born in Prince William County, daughters of Thomas and Kesia (Wilson) Sanford.
Upon marrying Sam at age 20, Julia Sanford Claggett owned "considerable personal property." She conveyed her slaves, beds and other personal property, into an indenture, or trust, managed by James Fewell, which kept it separate from her husband's property and debt. Five years later, Julia sold a Negro girl Jane to pay Samuel's debts. A female household slave was worth from $1000 to $1400 at that time.
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| Randolph Tucker Claggett was a farmer in Lexington, Illinois, in 1895. He was born in Warrenton, Fairfax County, Va., May 10, 1858, the youngest son of James A. and Catherine Johnson Claggett. |
Claggetts in the Civil War
My grandfather, Johnson Tucker Beasley, died before I was born. His mother, Ruth Matella "Mattie" Claggett, was the fourth great grand niece of our oldest known ancestor, Edward Claggett. He wrote:
"I am not sure that any of the Claggetts were in the Civil War, but the Claggett homestead is in Virginia near the site of the First Battle of Bull Run [First Mannassas]. I have heard my grandmother [Catherine Johnson] tell of having watched the battle from the back porch, and Uncle Tucker [who was 7 years old at the time] tells me his father carried him on horseback to the scene of the battle after it was over, and that the sight of row on row of wounded and dying was never erased from his memory."
Julia Claggett's farm was located in New Baltimore, Virginia. She also bought a farm named Codd's Mill for her daughter Virginia and son-in-law Craven King 2½ miles east of Haymarket, nine miles northeast of New Baltimore.
Julia's farm sat astride the Warrenton-Alexandria Turnpike, the major thoroughfare connecting Northern Virginia with Washington D.C. Troops frequently passed by her farm, making it an easily accessible source of supplies. The First Battle of Bull Run was fought nine miles from her home. After the Confederate forces retreated from Centerville in the spring of 1862, her farm was mostly within Union lines for the remainder of the war.
Move to Illinois
Five of the eight children of Samuel Claggett and his two wives, (sisters) Lucy and Julia Sanford, left Virginia for Lexington, Illinois. Sanford in 1941; James with his wife Kittie Johnson, sons (Randolph Tucker and James William); daughter (Matella Beasley) and sister-in-law (Sarah Johnson) on Christmas Day, 1866; Benjamin "Frank" by January 1857; Thomas Johnson and his wife Columbia and five children in February, 1879; and Ann in 1897 after the death of her husband.
Brothers Sanford, Frank, Thomas, and their sons William and Randolph Clagget became storekeepers and farmers. Five of the descendants owned considerable farmland in Illinois, as illustrated in an 1873 map of McLean County. Only two sisters, Virginia and Frances, who married Virginia men remained in the state after the War of the Rebellion.
Two sisters, Julia and Ann, married brothers William Alpheus and Thomas Wesley Beasley of Culpeper, Virginia. Julia, wed at age 14, left on her honeymoon for a trip to California. Her husband died when she was eight months pregnant and she returned to Virginia, where she married James Kirby. Ann and Thomas, whose home in Brandy Station, Virginia was in the middle of more than one Civil War action, had 11 children, including my great-grandfather Joseph Carson Beasley. Some of Ann and Thomas' children also left Virginia for Illinois.
Much of the Claggett or Clagett genealogy is directly or indirectly attributible to Brice Clagett, who wrote The Clagett Family: A Brief History of the Name in England and a Register of all the Known Descendants of Capt. Thomas Clagett. Barb and Marc Roddin of Mountain View, California, based on Brice Clagett's work above, contributed information on the descendants of Captain Thomas John Clagett and his wife Mary. Linda Ball Gibson contributed information on Samuel Claggett III and his two wives, sisters Julia and Lucy Sanford. Charlie McNett of Bethesda, Maryland contributed valuable information on the descendants of Christopher Columbus Claggett. The descendants of Ferdinand Claggett were researched by Robert Christman.
Source Information
The following sources may be of help to those researching the Claggett family.
From Hayden, Horace Edwin Virginia Genealogies: A Genealogy of the Glassell Family of Scotland and Virginia : Also of the Families of Ball, Brown, Bryan, Conway, Daniel, Ewell, Holladay, Lewis, Littlepage, Moncure, Peyton, Robinson, Scott, Taylor, Wallace, and Others, of Virginia and Maryland E.B. Yordy, 1891 .
The Clagett family: A Brief History of the Name in England and a Register of all the Known Descendants of Capt. Thomas Clagett, by Brice Clagett,
Genealogical Narrative, A History of the Claggett-Irvine Clans, by Edith Kerns Chamber, United States Library of Congress.
"Across the Years in Pr. Geo. Co., MD," by E. G. Bowie .