♀ Susannah

1653 - 1724

Susannah
Spouse
David Anderson
David Anderson
1668 - 1716
Children
David Anderson
David Anderson
1698 - 1735

Story from Find a Grave

I get many inquiries and suggestions for Susannah's memorial. The summary below was one of the most accurate depictions of the known facts. Susannah's line is a dead end and will likely remain so. Thank you all for all the suggestions however without documented evidence the memorial will remain unchanged.

Some have claimed Cornelius Dabney I/Sr. (1631-1694) married after his first wife "Eedeth Moryson", a half native woman known as 'Susanna Swann and/or West', the supposed daughter of Thomas Swann or Thomas West and Cockockoeske, aka 'Queen Anne'.

Fact: Cornelius I/Sr. was a Pamunkey 'Interpreter to the Crown', confirmed by his own written references. However, no bonafide source exists when it comes to his second wife's parentage. Susannah was documented in her will as being married to a Mr. Anderson after her marriage to Cornelius, but her father and mother are unknown via any first or later-hand documentation, showing she was related to the West family of West Point, or to Thomas Swann of Swann Point, whose son Samuel Swann had documented his sister "Susannah died 25 Nov 1660, without issue, married to Major William Marriot for 8 months and 22 days".

There's an April 1937, article (@ JSTOR) on some of the earliest known Dabneys in America, entitled "Origin of the Dabney Family of Virginia"; by a closer known descendant - Charles William Dabney, in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 45, No. 2; pp. 121-143. Susannah is not mentioned as descending from a non-European parent. If Cornelius I/Sr. had married a daughter or grand daughter of Cockockoeske the 'Indian Queen', common sense dictates it would have been noted at some point in the colonial records, or within a few generations of Susannah's death, ca. 1724.

It's doubtful Cornelius married a native woman, with an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 people of European decent living in Virginia in 1680, when Cornelius is said to have been remarried. At the same time, historians estimate there were only about 200 to 300 Algonquin Pamunkey natives left, living there then. Had Cornelius I/Sr. married a native, the Virginia Colony Assembly in 1691, passed an act, making illegal, cohabitation and marriage between whites and nonwhites, which would have "banished and removed" them from the colony (see: The Statutes at Large: Being a Collection of All Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619; Vol 3, p 87; W.W. Hening)

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