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| Poindestre/Poindexter Coat of Arms "Loyal Right Hand" |
When I discovered our descent from the Poindestres/Poindexters of the Isle of Jersey, I was pleased to locate and purchase a scarce genealogy book researched by John Poindexter Landers and privately published in 1977. He wrote, " . . [T]he descendants of the Poindestre-Poindexters are singularly fortunate in that the name was native to the island of Jersey alone until the Seventeenth Century, at which time only one immigrant came to Virginia . . . [The early descendants] are representative of a true Norman family that had lived on one of the Norman Isles for at least 600 years." From the Introduction of Poingdestre-Poindexter, A Norman Family.
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| Tiny Isle of Jersey |
These Normans immigrated to the Isle of Jersey in the late 10th century. The island has an almost Mediterranean climate. "According to family tradition it was in the capacity as a retainer or squire to the De Carteret family on some . . . military foray that a shadowy medieval ancestor first became graced by his lord with a surname -- Poingdestre, or pugnus dexter [Right Hand], in honor of his rough loyalty to his leader on the battlefield." They spoke Norman French and, although English is now the official language of Jersey, some of its citizens still speak it today.
This is our family ascent to George Poindestre/Poindexter, the Immigrant, from our 5th great-grandmother, Catherine Hall Vaughan (1745 Surry Co., VA -1836 Warren Co., NC), wife of William Rainey (1750, Surry Co., VA - 1799 Northampton Co., NC):
Catherine Hall Vaughan's father was William Vaughan, Sr. (1722 New Kent Co. or Northampton Co., NC - 1794 Northampton Co.); her mother was Catherine Hall, who died shortly after her birth in 1746. William Vaughan's father was John Vaughan (c1695 New Kent Co., VA - c.1750 Northampton Co., NC). John's father was another John Vaughan (1665 Charles City, VA - 1725 New Kent Co.), who in 1686 married Sarah Poindexter (c1668 York Co., VA - 1725 New Kent Co.). They were our 8th great-grandparents. Sarah's parents, George Poindestre/Poindexter (1629 Isle of Jersey - 1692 New Kent Co.) arrived in Virginia about 1657. His wife Susannah (1630 Isle of Jersey - 1698 New Kent Co.) and three children joined him a few years later.
The Poindestres were of Norman Viking stock, their surname found in Normandy as early as the 1180s. The Isle of Jersey, a granite rock 4 by 9 miles (45 square miles) covered with good soil, lies 14 miles off the coast of Normandy, whose dukes ruled it as part of their duchy. When Duke William conquered England in 1066, Jersey and Normandy became part of the English crown. After Normandy was lost by the kings of England to France, Jersey and the other Channel Islands remained attached to the British Crown. The author traced eleven generations up from George the Immigrant. The first mention of Poingdestres as landowners in Jersey occurred in 1250. The earliest document bearing the Poindestre coat of arms seal was written in 1452. "The Poindestre family soon entered the ranks of the landed gentry to become one of the leading feudal families on the island." The family's source of influence in St. Saviour Parish seems to have come from being minor clerics (who could marry), judges and bailiffs (the second highest position on the island). By the late 1300s and early 1400s, they had become great landowners. (A relative term, since the island isn't very large, not to be compared to the great swaths of land granted in Virginia Colony). By the time of John Poindestre's death in 1477, three generations of the male line had held the office of bailiff (similar to a governor), receiving the honor of being buried inside the church of Saint Saviour. By 1500 the name Poindestre was being Latinized into Poindextre and later Poindexter.
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| St. Saviour Church, once Catholic, then Calvinist, now Anglican |
Once the Danes of Normandy were converted to Christianity, the Poindexters worshiped as Roman Catholics, numerous members becoming priests. When the Reformation came to Jersey, the Poindexters, as island leaders, embraced Protestantism. During the reign of Catholic Mary I of England, members of the family crossed over to France to attend Calvinist services.
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| Parishes on the Isle of Jersey. |
Seldom did more than one or two Poindexter sons reach adulthood, but our ancestor George, born in 1627, was the 3rd son of Thomas Poindestre and Elizabeth Effard. His maternal grandfather, the Rev. Nicolas Effard, was born to a prominent family on the nearby Isle of Guernsey, educated at its newly founded Elizabeth College and later at Oxford. He was installed as the Calvinist rector of St. Saviour in 1587, where he married as his 2nd wife, Sara de Caumont, daughter of the Rev. Pierre de Caumont, rector of St. Peter in Jersey. De Caumont, of a Huguenot family, had formerly been rector of Sainte Marie du Mont in Normandy, but fled to Jersey with other refugees of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in September 1572. Read about that atrocity HERE
Because the Poindestre family married into other leading families of Jersey, we can trace our line back to the Lempriere family, whose origins were in Cotentin, Normandy, in Everard de Lempriere, born about 970, and directly descended from Rollo, first Duke of Normany and, through his wife, from Charlemagne.
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| George Poindestre/Poindexter was born in this manor house at Swan Farm in 1627 |
George Poindestre immigrated to Virginia in 1657 with his cousin Peter Effard and his half-uncle Jean Poindestre, Esq. Why did George leave Jersey for Virginia? For a possible clue, we turn to his half-uncle, Jean Poindestre (1609-1691)
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| Jean Poindestre, painted in England c.1636. It is the earliest portrait of a Jerseyman. |
A Latin and Greek scholar, lawyer and cleric, Jean Poindestre studied at Cambridge, which had Calvinist leanings, but as a staunch Royalist, became a fellow at Exeter College, Oxford in 1635, where he began his literary career. In 1638 he was tutor to the children of King Charles I's grand chamberlain, a lucrative position. In 1641 he took Anglican orders as a deacon and was given a benefice, another source of income. At the height of the English Civil War, expelled from his fellowship at Oxford by Parliamentarians, he returned to Jersey. King Charles I was beheaded in February1649, and his son was proclaimed Charles II in Jersey's main market square.
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| Charles II as Prince of Wales |
King Charles II and his brother James arrived in Jersey in September, and took up residency in Elizabeth Castle until their departure in February 1650 to seek Dutch assistance in regaining his throne. In October 1651, Cromwell remembered Jersey and sent forces to conquer this last bastion of Royalist loyalty. Jean and possibly other Poindestres withstood the siege in Elizabeth Castle.
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| Elizabeth Castle, Isle of Jersey |
Jean was sent to Charles II in Paris to request orders and returned to tell the besieged to accept the best conditions of surrender they could negotiate. Charles II, in exile in France, requested Jean become his Latin secretary - most official documents were still written in Latin - but he declined.
Jean Poindestre seems to have had amicable relations with the Parliamentary government established on Jersey, but he disappears from the record between 1657 to 1659, and it's believed he voyaged to Virginia with his nephew George (our 9th great-grandfather), son of Jean's half-brother, Thomas Poindexter, and his wife Marie Effard, accompanied by George's cousin, Peter Efford. Virginia was the logical place for Royalists to go. Jean returned to Jersey, married, was granted honors on Charles II's resumption of kingship in 1660, and served as Lieutenant Bailiff of Jersey 1669-1676, afterward writing among other works, a history of the Isle of Jersey. His nephew George remained in Virginia.
As mentioned earlier, George was a 3rd son with little hope of inheriting land from his father Thomas, seigneur of the fief Poindestres. Already 30 years old when he voyaged to Virginia, George and a George Thompson acquired 350 acres in Gloucester County in March, 1657. Yet he seems to have settled in York County at Middle Plantation, present-day Williamsburg, for in 1667, along with Otho Thorpe, he acquired 850 acres from Edward Wyatt and his wife, exactly where historic Williamsburg now stands. He became a prosperous merchant and planter, and a joint owner of several ships with Nathaniel Bacon (he of Bacon's Rebellion of 1678).
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| Present-day York County, Virginia |
He must have avoided the chaos and punishments after the rebellion because when Bruton Parish was founded in Williamsburg in 1679, George, an important man about town, was elected to its first vestry.
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| Present-day New Kent County, Virginia |
In 1685, on land between the Pamunky and Chickahominy rivers in New Kent County, he built with slave labor, for he was a large slave owner, a remarkable house of brick with a timber frame, he named Christ's Cross or Criss-Cross (for its crosslike shape), now one of the six oldest houses in Virginia, with several bed-chambers, a great hall and a wine cellar. Held by the Poindexter family until the 19th century, it was derelict by the 1930s, purchased and restored in the 1950s and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. See before and after photos and the story of the restoration. HERE
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| A before photo of Criss Cross |
George was one of the founders of St. Peter's Parish in New Kent County, which was Anglican, as were all parishes in Virginia until the American Revolutionary War, and was a member of its first vestry. He died in 1690 and Susannah died in 1693.
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| St. Peter's Church, New Kent County, Virginia, where our ancestors worshiped |
On the 5th day of November 1686, our 8th great-grandparents, Sarah Poindexter and John Vaughan were married. However, the edifice above wasn't built until 1704, but they worshiped there and some of their large family married there. Their son, our 7th great-grandfather, John Vaughan (1694 - 1750) married Cassiah (b. c1695) either there or after relocating to Northampton County, North Carolina. St. Peter's Church history HERE
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| Northampton County, North Carolina |
There is a well-established Poindexter Descendants Assoc. that I've joined to learn more about the early years on this family in America.
