Thomas Pettus

Thomas Pettus was born on 9 September 1552 and died on 6 June 1620. He is identified in the supplied family tree as Barbara’s 12th great-grandfather.

Thomas Pettus was born on 9 September 1552 and died on 6 June 1620. In the supplied family tree, he is identified as the 12th great-grandfather of James Dempsey Waters and as part of Barbara’s family branch.

Family Tree Maker notes state that Sir John Pettus and his brother Thomas Pettus made wills in 1613. They remembered their cousins Henry and Susan Pendleton of Norwich and left them property in that city. The notes place these men at Cristree, St. Edmund’s, near Norwich.

The same notes describe the Pettus family of the sixteenth century as prosperous cloth merchants and as holders of the offices of mayor and sheriff of Norwich. Family members were buried in the Church of St. Simon and St. Jude. Pettus House is described as the surviving portion of a larger house formerly occupied by the family and extending toward the churchyard.

The notes further report that several members of the Pettus family were early settlers in Virginia during the seventeenth century. They state that a Thomas Pettus, identified as the son of one of the men who made the 1613 wills, became an early councilor of the colony and may have influenced Pendleton cousins to go to Virginia. This Thomas is not clearly identified as the Thomas Pettus born in 1552.

According to the notes, Henry and Elizabeth Pendleton’s sons Philip, described as a young teacher, and Nathaniel, a minister of the Church of England, came to Virginia in 1674. Nathaniel reportedly died soon afterward without children.

Historical context

The supplied notes associate the wider Pettus family with Norwich civic office, cloth trade, burial at the Church of St. Simon and St. Jude, and later Virginia settlement. These details are presented as family notes and are not individually sourced in the material provided.

Sources & research