Pannell Peter Genealogy

Before we proceed any further, there is the elephant in the room that we must address: slaveowners in the family. Slavery has been called America's "Peculiar Institution." It had a central and inescapable place throughout American history, and its aftermath resonates and is just as inescapable in the present day. Although slavery has existed throughout human history and has impacted many empires, nations, and states, few if any were nearly torn apart by the economic and moral crises that ultimately led to our Civil War. And the aftermath of slavery—segregation and inequality—threatens the very foundation of the nation and its principles to the present day. Slavery is our nation’s “original sin,” from which we are struggling for redemption. My first encounter with proof that some of our ancestors were indeed slaveowners came with my acquisition of a copy of the will of William Duvall  (1754?-1815) [3rd great grandfather; NextGen: 4th great grandfather]. I received a copy f...

Captain Thomas Graves Well, our family has been in the country for a long time (for Europeans...)! Before we continue with the Duvall line, I want to report on a branch I just discovered: I'll call it the Pearce-Graves line. For some context: "The Emigrant," Mareen Duvall (1630-1694) [7th great grandfather; NextGen: 8th great grandfather]  came to the North American English colonies (Maryland) from France, via England, around 1655, which is pretty early in the scheme of things. By comparison, the Mayflower arrived in New England 35 years earlier, in 1620. But the earliest permanent English settlement in North America was Jamestown , Virginia, in 1607. Our newly discovered ancestor, Thomas Graves (1580-1635) [8th great grandfather; NextGen: 9th great grandfather]  arrived on the second supply ship, the  Mary and  Margaret , in October 1608, over 400 years ago! (The first permanent European settlement on the mainland of what would become the United States was the ...