General Notes

The Colonial grandee, born about the end of the year 1663, who has been called "King Carter," who named one of his children Ludlow, was, it is agreed, the son of John Carter and Sarah Ludlow, his wife. The tombstone over that couple and three other wives tells us that Sarah's father was "Mr. Gabriel Ludlow." There was a Roger Ludlow, Deputy Governor of Massachusetts, and afterwards of Connecticut, and a George Ludlow, member of the Virginia Council, whose will, styling him of York County, was probated August 1, 1656. The celebrated Parliamentary General Ludlow speaks in his Memoirs of this kinsman's services to the Parliamentary side. George left most of his property to the children of his brother Roger, and the children of his brother Gabriel. The latter's daughter Sarah is mentioned in the will of Gabriel's widow dated September 20, 1657, which appears in Brown's Abstracts of Somersetshire Wills. Sarah's brother Thomas received his uncle's farm in York County, Virginia, and probably brought her to America. A pedigree of the Ludlow family has been prepared recently by Henry Hungerford Ludlow-Bruges of Seend, Melksham, England, a portion being reprinted in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register. It shows us that Roger, George, and Gabriel aforesaid were first cousins of General Ludlow's father, and were the sons of Thomas Ludlow of Dinton, and grandsons of George Ludlow of the old seat at Hill Deverill. The marriage of Edith, daughter of Lord Windsor, to George Ludlow of Hill Deverill is mentioned in terms of self-congratulation in Lord Windsor's will, dated in 1543, abstracted in Nicholas's Testamenta Vetusta. That this Edith was the mother of Thomas of Dinton is proved by family deeds, as well as by a herald's visitation made in 1565, in the lifetime of his father. The latter's ancestry as far as it is set forth in the chart also appears in this visitation. The memorandum of the wills, I have taken from the pedigree recently prepared. The ancestry of Lord Windsor's father-in-law, I have taken mainly from Sir Alexander Croke's Genealogical History of the Croke Family, originally named Le Blount. For so much of the Spanish pedigree as I have used, he appears to have had as authority the writings of the celebrated statesman and author, Don Pedro Lopez de Ayala, who was uncle of Sir Walter Blount's wife, and who speaks of her marriage with "un Cavellero de Inglaterra que dijeron Mossen Gauter Blont, del qual ovo fijos a Mossen Juan Blonte, un buen Cavallero, qui murio en la cerca de Roa," etc. The Cronicas de la Casa de Viscaya in the British Museum, Egerton MS. 897, which I have consulted independently, corroborate the statement that Don Lope Diaz de Haro had as his third legitimate son Don Lope Ruys, whom it calls Don Rui Lopez.

In the rest of my work, I have not merely transcribed heralds' visitations, Dugdale's Baronage of England, Dugdale's own Addenda thereto (printed in Collectanea Topographica. et Genealogica), or Anderson's Royal Genealogies. I have weighed their authority, and tried to verify any statement requiring verification. As there had been for a long period prior to the settlement of America a body of officials who had the regulation of coats of arms, and whose business it was to know descents and relationships, it perhaps would be sufficient to cite documents prepared by them;


 
Page 6
 

Previous Page | Next Page | Book Beginning | Search Book
GenealogyLibrary.com Main Page