Braceys and the Migration to Colonial America
compiled by Edwin C. Dunn
The first English settlers in North America arrived at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, and the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in New England in 1620. However, after these initial colonization experiments, there were four great migration groups of British colonists to North America between 1629, when the first Puritans arrived in the Massachussetts Bay Colony, and 1775, when the onset of the American Revolution began. These groups have been identified, both as to where they landed and as to where they originated in Great Britain.
The first great migration was that of the East Anglian Puritans who migrated to New England between 1629 and 1640. In the eleven year Puritan migration, of the 80,000 oppressed emigrants who left England, 21,000 made their way to New England. While they came from nearly every county in England, over half came from East Anglia, ie. Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and if one draws a circle of 60-mile radius around Haverhill, Suffolk, 65-70 percent of the emigrants of this first migration would be included.
The second migration from 1641 to 1675 was that of the West Country Cavaliers and their servants to the Chesapeake region. During this 34-year-period, the society of the Chesapeake Bay area (Maryland and Virginia) was formed, reflecting the origins before 1650 of the people from a 60-mile radius of London (but excluding the East Anglia area). After 1650, the primary area of migration for servants was within a 60-mile radius of Bristol. These royalist elite and "distressed cavaliers," along with their servants, began the plantation society of the southern colonies.
The third migration was that of the North Midland Quakers to the Delaware Valley, ie. to New Jersey and Pennsylvania, between 1675 and 1715. They originated in a concentrated area from Shropshire, Staffordshire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire, through the West Riding and North Riding of Yorkshire to Durham, with lesser numbers coming from surrounding areas. There was a large group of German immigrants who began to arrive in Pennsylvania with the English Quakers at about the same time.
Finally, the fourth group to arrive in the colonies were the British and Scottish borderers between 1717 and 1775, ie. the Ulster Irish, or "Scotch-Irish" as they became known in America, and people from the border counties of northern England adjoining Scotland. They settled the backcountry from Pennsylvania south through Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, to Georgia.
There were historical reasons why these groups of people migrated at the times they did. All of them represented minorities in Britain, and all felt squeezed by religious, economic, or political factors at work in the country at the time they left. The various migration groups established regional customs, dialects, and societies in the New World.1
What is the relevance of these generalizations concerning the migration groups with the known Bracey immigrants who arrived in colonial America?
Thomas Bressey emigrated to New England in 1634. He was a son of Edmund Bressey of Maulden, Bedfordshire. He was joined by his brother, John, who is thought to have had Puritan leanings, since he is mentioned by the Rev. Cotton Mather. However, John had returned to England by 1649. Edmund Bressey practiced his profession (law) in London, while his family remained in Bedfordshire. Bedfordshire was one of those eastern counties from which the Puritan emigrants originated. By 1635 Thomas was noted in the records of Ipswich, Massachussetts, a date that fits within the first great migration. It should be pointed out, however, that this branch of the Bracey family, while having roots in Bedfordshire and London, can be traced back to even earlier generations in Cheshire.2
William Bressie first appeared in the records of Isle of Wight County, Virginia, in 1655. His wife Susannah was a daughter of a Buckinghamshire Anglican minister. No point of origin in England for William, or for his two nephews who were in Virginia, has been determined, but the Buckinghamshire association does fit with the second migration group coming from the London-West Country area. Did the inclination to switch to Quakerism in Virginia in the 1670s indicate some family ties to the North Midlands where the Quakers were strongly centered in the next migration? This is yet to be determined.
Robert Bracey was another immigrant to Virginia during this second migration period. He received a grant of land in Accomack County in 1661. Nothing is known about his origins in England.
During the third migration period from the North Midlands, Thomas Bressey arrived in Pennsylvania with William Penn. A Quaker from Willaston, Cheshire, he was a First Purchaser who immigrated in 1682. His origin fits perfectly with the typical third migration group.
Finally, there was the fourth period of immigration between 1717 and 1775. The only Bracey who "might" fit into this time period is represented by a John Bracy who appears in the Washington County, Pennsylvania, tax lists in 1785. Pending additional information, it is unknown how much earlier he was in southwestern Pennsylvania, and nothing is known about where he originated, whether he was the immigrant or some unknown branch of a Bracey family already in the colonies. Nor is it clear if there were Braceys residing in the northern border counties of England, or in Ulster, at that time.
The Braceys were a part of the historical movement of people to the New World in the 17th and 18th centuries, and they seem to fit typically into the various migration groups which arrived. No doubt it would be possible to fit Braceys into the historical movements within England during earlier centuries.
Footnotes
1David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed. Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); William Dollarhide, British Origins of American Colonists, 1629-1775 (Bountiful, Utah: Heritage Quest Genealogical Services, 1997)
2Walter Goodwin Davis, "Ancestry of Thomas Bressey of New Haven, Conn.", New England Historical and Genealogical Register (Boston: New England Historical & Genealogical Society,1958), vol. CXII, pp. 40-43.
© 2000 Edwin C. Dunn