Have you ever had a coincidence happen where you wondered if it were more than mere chance? Was the event a happy accident or did God have a hand in it? I’ve decided to write about a recent “coincidence” even though the outcome has not yet fully manifested itself.
I was recently in Texas watching my sister’s terminally ill dog while my sister was in Austria and Germany. I spent the 19 days working on outlining two more books about Thomas Savage, my 12th great-grandfather and the main character of the book I just finished writing.
Book Two will be more about Thomas’s life and also about Pocahontas and her kidnapping. For the Book Three outline, I had come to suspect through research that Thomas probably married a Native American woman, most likely the daughter of Debedeavon, the chief of the Accomack (a Powhatan Indian tribe now extinct) on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.
At my sister’s, I’d started a document of all the evidence leading me to that conclusion, but knew I had a lot more research to do. Debedeavon’s successor was King Tom. The Accomack and all Powhatan Indian chiefs come through female lines. So, King Tom would have descended from either Debedeavon’s daughter or sister. He would not be Debedeavon’s son, as one would presume. My theory is King Tom was the son of Thomas Savage and Debedeavon’s unnamed daughter.
Debedeavon had gifted Thomas 9,000 acres about 1618. I don’t know of any other Englishman he gave such a large amount of land to, so either it was a great gesture of friendship or Thomas had become family in some way. I’ve since discovered after the coincidence I’m about to share, that Debedeavon also put Thomas on his tribal council. On Thomas’s land in 1640, after his death, the first US reservation (not called a “reservation” at the time) was formed for the Accomack Indians, who (the southern ones) changed their tribal name to Gingaskin. The northern Accomack became the Occohannock Tribe and followed Debedeavon’s daughter Chief Nandua. I suspect the daughter who birthed King Tom was deceased in 1640 or else she would have been the chief of the Gingaskin. But why the split between the two tribes? I haven’t discovered yet but have wondered if it had something to do with one tribe being led by a half-blooded Native.
I got on a family history website and when I initially logged on, I noticed messages placed on my Home Page about updates that had been done on someone in my family tree. After looking at Thomas Savage’s information (which didn’t teach me anything new), I went back to the Home Page to investigate other family. One of my updates showed a researcher, Bonnie, had uploaded a document regarding her Smith line, which is my North Carolina family line too—that’s why it showed as an update for me—it matched one of my ancestors.
About five years ago, Bonnie and I worked on the Hardison and Smith families that we share. But it had been years since I’d been in touch with her, so I decided to send her an email and see how she was and tell her I saw what she’d posted. Bonnie responded to my email that day and caught me up on what she’d been working on regarding our families—the Hardisons and Smiths. She said her grand-nephew had his yDNA done and the y (male) Smith line results came back with a Native American haplogroup, which meant the Smiths were originally Native American, not from England as we had assumed. I was very surprised but even more surprised when she said she’d traced them to Accomack, Virginia. Here I was reaching out to her about my North Carolina family, and it turns out she’s brought me to the very place Thomas Savage lived and died. And the place I’d been researching Debedeavon. I was shocked to be led back to Thomas and the chief through Bonnie.
She had done some additional research on the Smiths of the Eastern Shore of Virginia (Accomack and Northampton Counties) and sent it to me. There are numerous land records with both the Smith and Savage names together. It appears they knew each other.
Like I said, it’s a strange coincidence that fell into my lap right at the time I’d started researching the idea that Thomas had a Native wife. Of all the other genealogists I could have reached out to, I reached out to the very one that had the information I needed. How the Smiths and Savages are related, I am not sure. Maybe they aren’t, but something with the Smith family may play into my third novel…stay tuned for that possibility.
Maybe an Accomack male had a relationship with a Smith female? It would have been unusual, but it wasn’t unusual for a Native female to have a relationship with an Englishman. It happened quite a bit. As for Native females, Pocahontas married an Englishman, John Rolfe. But she had to become Christian to do so. The Church of England had rules about who could marry in their churches and being baptized Christian was a requirement. So, did Thomas convert his wife or did he marry her in Accomack fashion? It’s still all a mystery to me.
Of all the Powhatan chiefs, Debedeavon was the only one who would not war with the English. Not only that, he warned the English when a massacre was planned by the Natives. Although almost four hundred English were killed, Debedeavon saved hundreds more by warning them ahead of time. He saved and helped many others throughout his life. He was peaceful until his death in 1657. His nickname was “The Laughing King.” I would be proud to be his descendant. I hope I can someday say I am.
