Brewer Families From Southside Virginia

 David Brewer has just published a new book, Brewer Families From Southside Virginia. Dave is one of the co-administrators of the Brewer DNA Project. He is focused on the Brewer families whose origins are found in the southern colonies of British North America. 

In Dave's words:

As we all know, over the past decade, several distinct branches of American families with the surname Brewer have been identified thanks to advances in DNA analysis and improved digital access to colonial and early American records. 

I've just published a new book, Brewer Families From Southside Virginia, in a further effort to sort out the ancestry of a broad group of Virginia pioneers, whose forebears mostly migrated from southwest England to the area south of the James River during the colonial period.  Among them were members of haplogroup I-Y15300, including George Brewer of Brunswick County, Thomas Brewer of Sussex County, William Brewer of Martins Brandon Parish in Prince George County, John Brewer of Hertford County, North Carolina, formerly of Southampton County, Virginia, and Benjamin Brewer of Franklin County, Georgia, formerly of North Carolina.  Their descendants have identified earliest known ancestors who lived in Indiana or southeastern states -- especially the Carolinas, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama -- in the decades before and after the turn of the 19th Century.  Until now, traditional record research alone has not allowed them to trace their ancestries back to the period between the mid-1600's and mid-1700's, the heart of the American colonial era.  

This book also studies the possibly related families of John Brewer (I), the Ancient Planter of Jamestown Colony, the 18th and 19th Century John Brewer line of the Upper Parish of Nansemond County, Virginia, William Brewer of Isle of Wight County, Virginia, Joseph Brewer of Warren Counties, North Carolina, George Brewer of Northampton County, North Carolina.  

Several other family groups whose founders settled in the area south of the James River also receive detailed attention.  Those groups include the family of Sackfield Brewer (died 1699), which is unrelated to the members of haplogroup I-Y15300 on the male side.  However, they had common associates and kinships in Virginia.  The book also studies the family of Robert Brewer, who appears to have been of Romany descent, and who settled in Nansemond County in the late 1600’s.  

As with my recent book about the descendants of George Brewer of Brunswick County, I've published the new book with Kindle Books in both e-book and paperback formats.  I like the e-book format.  It's less expensive, and it's reader-friendly, with an interactive table of contents and hot linked end notes.  This makes it easy to navigate.  The cost of printing makes the margins very thin for the paperback version, which, at more than 500 pages in length, is priced at $20.  The e-book is priced at $5.  You can find both versions at Amazon.

Little is tidy in this family history, but such was the stuff of life in the rapidly expanding New America.  Accordingly, this book is work in progress, meant to be supplemented and corrected by the fruits of further research, including DNA test results.  Even now, the journey proceeds.

I look forward to your comments and questions. 

 

 Dave can be contacted through the Brewer DNA Project's website.

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