Augustine Warner

Portrait of Augustine Warner

Coat of Arms of Augustine Warner

Augustine Warner (November 28, 1610 – December 24,^[1] 1674), was born in Norwich, Norfolk, to Thomas Warner and Elizabeth Sotherton. The progenitor of a prominent colonial family, and great-great grandfather of President George Washington, Warner arrived in Virginia in 1628 at the age of seventeen, one of a group of thirty-four settlers brought in by Adam Thoroughgood. His first land acquisition came seven years later, when he patented 250 acres (1,000,000 m²).

Continuing the typical pattern of 17th-century success in colonial Virginia as a merchant, landowner, and politician, he rose through the hierarchy to become a member of the House of Burgesses in 1652 and then in 1659 a member of the King's Council, which he held until his death. About 1657, he moved across the York River to Gloucester County, where he settled and built the first house at Warner Hall.

Augustine Warner died in 1674, at sixty-three, and was succeeded at Warner Hall by his only son, Augustine Warner, Jr. (1642–1681). After his English education in London and at Cambridge, the younger Warner returned to Virginia, and by 1666 became a member of the House of Burgesses, and then Speaker of the House in 1676. In 1677 he took his seat on the King's Council, but his career was cut short by his early death in 1681 at the age of thirty-nine.

Besides a son, Augustine Sr. had at least two daughters as well. One married David Cant, and the other, Sarah, married Lawrence Towneley, and was the ancestor of General Robert E. Lee.

It is recorded that Augustine Jr. had three sons, all of whom died unmarried, and three daughters, who inherited the Warner property and left many descendants. The three daughters were:

• Mary Warner, who married in 1680 John Smith of Purton, they were the ancestors of Queen Elizabeth II through the Bowes-Lyon ancestry of the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother;
• Mildred Warner, who married about 1690 Lawrence Washington (1659–1698); they were the paternal grandparents of George Washington; and
• Elizabeth Warner, who married about 1691 to John Lewis, and kept the Warner Hall house itself in the division of the Warner properties after the brothers’ deaths. Elizabeth and John Lewis were the grandparents of Fielding Lewis, who married first George Washington’s cousin, and second his sister, both ladies also being grandchildren of Mildred Warner.

In addition, Elizabeth and John Lewis were the ancestors^[2] of Captain Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Warner Hall stayed in the eldest male line of the Lewis family, through a succession of eldest sons named Warner Lewis, until 1834, when it was finally sold by a daughter of the last of them, another Elizabeth Lewis.

Warner Hall is still known by this name,^[3] and the Lewis descendants became known as the Warner Hall Lewises. A non-profit DNA Project LEWIS Surname DNA Project is actively seeking descendants from this paternal line. In some cases a scholarship may be offered.

References

External links

• Legend of Lewis

Bibliography

• Moses, Grace MacClean. The Welsh Lineage of John Lewis.
• The Queen's American Ancestors