McCallister's McAlisters (and some other good families)

The Pope Family

There are two principal groups of families that make up the bulk of my ancestral lines: the Maryland Catholics and the Virginia Protestants. The Pope family, despite the name, are from this latter group.

Nathaniel Pope was born in England and came to the American colony of Maryland in 1637. Although he became a member of the assembly for that colony, by 1648, he had patented land in Westmoreland County Virginia and had relocated there. He name his estate “The Cliffs”. Part of The Cliffs was developed into a separate estate called Wakefield, and it was this part that Nathaniel gave to daughter Anne when she married Colonel John Washington in 1658. (This is the same John Washington who brought my Rowley family to Virginia, and the same John Washington, who with Anne, became the great grandparents of George Washington of Virginia).

A grandson Nathaniel Pope III, sold “The Cliffs” to the Lee family, who changed the name of the estate to “Stratford” and built a large manor house. In this house, the famous Robert E. Lee was born.

Nathaniel Pope IV married Lucy Fox of Louisa County Virginia and they saw two of their daughters and two of their sons marry into the Samuel DuVal family of Mount Comfort, Richmond Virginia. One of these daughters, Elizabeth Pope, married Major Claiborne Duval in 1794 and finally settled in Logan County Kentucky. Major Claiborne Duval and Elizabeth Pope were the parents of seven children and the grandparents of Mary Ann Duval, who married Robert E. Rowley on 20 March 1843 in Union County Kentucky. They are my 3rd great grandparents. Mary Anne Duval Rowley, by virtue of her Pope ancestry, is the third cousin (three times removed) of our first president, George Washington. How's that for having a shirttail relative?

The house at the top of this page is a picture of Stratford Hall, built by the Lee family on the original land patented by Nathaniel Pope in 1648.