The Origin of the Edwards-Harrison Theory

It seems the primary reason even professional genealogists have gotten the Edwards family of Virginia so mixed up over the last century is a 24-page book published in Havre, France by an obscure genealogist named C. W. Chancellor, M.D. 

This book is called Leaves from the Chancellor--Fitzgerald--Cooper--Edwards Tree and in 1895 it introduced to the world the hypothesis that William Edwards of Westmoreland (c.1687-c.1746) was the son of William Edwards (d.1722) and Ann Harrison of Surry County, an idea I've already spent considerable space debunking. But the fascinating thing about this obscure little book is that it seems to be the source for almost all of the early flawed research about the Edwards families of Virginia, in particular, the Westmoreland County clan.

In addition to being quoted almost verbatim in the Register of the Kentucky State Historical Society, Vol. 17 No. 49 in 1919 by Henry Strother (who cited it as his "manuscript" by a "prominent member of the family"), in an early journal article on William Edwards, it is is also evidently the source for Rev. Horace Hayden's claim in his massive Virginia Genealogies that William Edwards married "a miss Hayden" who was from Lancaster County.

It also appears to be the source for several of the claims in the Edwards Heirs newsletters in the 1920s, for example, that William Edwards came to America aboard the ship Ye Merchants, as well as the claim that the Edwards families of Lancaster, Surry and Northumberland are all related to each other as presented in the 1910 book The Beall and Edwards Families and Their Descendants.

Clearly, the impact this tiny book had on Edwards research was immense. 

So what of this book? Where are its theories from? 

They appear to be a mixture of family lore, mistakes from sloppy research in Virginia county records, and fabrications from the Edwards Heirs scams of the late 19th century.

Chancellor posits that the Edwards family of Virginia descends from four brothers--John, Thomas, Robert and William--who immigrated between 1623 and 1635. John settled in Northumberland and died in 1663; Thomas in Surry, where he lived until 1702; Robert to Westmoreland where he died after 1670 without issue; and William "the founder of the family in America" to James City County. Chancellor offers no evidence that these men are actually related, and the assumption appears to be a variant of the common "immigrant brothers myth" that plagues sloppy genealogy, usually used to explain why certain surnames appear in diverse locations.

Chancellor evidently derived his immigration stories from colonial ship manifests. Ye Merchants Hope was a real ship, and there was a William Edwards, age 30, on board in a voyage of 1635. Chancellor erroneously gives his age as 19, which was an age that belonged to Allin King, same row, in the column to the left on the ship manifest. It seems Chancellor fell victim to one of the classic genealogy blunders: if I find someone with the name I'm looking for in the same general area, it must be the right person. A look through Cavaliers and Pioneers shows at least four different immigrants to Virginia named William Edwards between 1636 and 1650. These immigrants, along with John Edwards (c.1640-aft.1724) of Westmoreland, do not seem to have crossed his radar.

Chancellor states that "in 1678, William Edwards Jr. married Ann Harrison, daughter of Col. Benjamin Harrison" noting he was ancestor to two presidents. He then introduces a garbled mess of assumptions--for example, that Haden Edwards was born in Northumberland County in 1723, a falsehood repeated by Henry Strother in 1919, which George Harrison Sanford King debunked with parish records but was unable to find Strother's source for in his work on this family in 1934. He also falsely claims, in an obvious reference to the Edwards Heirs myths, that Robert Edwards of Northumberland, son of William Edwards and Ann Harrison, "died at sea 1785-90" and was "without issue."

Where Chancellor obtained this Ann Harrison information remains a mystery. There seems to be no evidence that Col. Harrison had a daughter named Ann, though he certainly did have a daughter named Elizabeth who married a William Edwards, Burgess of Surry County and died at age 17 in 1709 or 1710. She would have been far too young to have been the mother of William Edwards of Westmoreland, who began appearing in court records in 1708. Furthermore, being born himself in 1645, it seems unlikely Col. Harrison would have had a daughter old enough to marry in 1678.

Throughout the article on the Edwards family, Chancellor cites a few sources, namely the records of Northumberland County, Virginia, Surry County bonds, the rolls of the Prince William County rangers, Westmoreland County, deeds and some others. This does show that he was an actual genealogist who had done his own research. He fails however to do the more difficult work of providing evidence of relations between the Edwards families of Northumberland, Surry and Westmoreland Counties, and his inclusion of Edwards Heirs myths about Robert Edwards shows he was simply working with whatever was available to him. 

This lack of a deep dive, combined with the extreme difficulty of sorting through colonists with a common surname like Edwards and ultra-common given names like John, William and Thomas, led Chancellor to a long list of unsupported assumptions that have been copied-and-pasted by almost every Edwards genealogist since then. Chancellor's book laid the groundwork for 100 years worth of Edwards genealogy errors, cited by a wide swath of genealogical books and journals over many decades. His book likely got so much press simply because it was the first book about this family, and compilers like Rev. Horace Hayden needed to draw on existing research in order to meet their publishing deadlines. 

But who exactly was C. W. Chancellor, M.D.? Extrapolating from the genealogy in his book, he was certainly a descendant of Haden Edwards, via his daughter Elizabeth who married John Chancellor. He was, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the Dr. Charles William Chancellor (1831-1915) who was born in Chancellorsville, Virginia and died in Washington D.C. He was the son of Sanford Chancellor, who was in turn son of John Chancellor and Elizabeth Edwards, as named in his own book. Dr. Chancellor served as secretary of the Maryland State Board of Health, president of the Maryland State Insane Asylum, and United States Consul to Havre, France in 1893-97, the time and place where his book was published.

Dr. Chancellor probably should have stuck to medicine.

© Jason M. Farrell