The Smith Connection

What does this sign have to do with my Nace heritage?

While I’m a Smith through my paternal line, I’m also a Smith through my maternal Nace line via my great-grandmother’s Spence line.

My Nace line, through Frances Spence Nace, goes back to Goffs to Harrisons to Battailes to a Smith line in colonial Virginia. John Battaile (my 8^thgreat-grandfather who settled before 1690 in VA and who served in the House of Burgesses in 1696) was married to Elizabeth Smith, daughter of Major Lawrence Smith who “surveyed and helped lay out the Town of Yorktown.” Here’s the line and how it connects to the Naces (some of the dates might be off by a few years because some sources list slightly different dates; ditto for a few of the spellings of names):

Thomas Smith (1565-):Alice Judd (1565-1615)

Christopher Smith (1592-1638): Elizabeth Townley Halstead (1598-1679)

Major Lawrence Smith(1629-1700): Mary Debnam (1633-1728)

Elizabeth Smith(1668-1708): Captain John Bataille (1658-1708)

Elizabeth Battaile (1695-1770): Andrew Harrison Jr. (abt. 1687-13 July 1753)

Battaile Harrison (1712/ 1720-16 Nov 1776): Frances White (1725- April 7, 1789)

John Harrison (1747-1795): Sally Ellis

Battaile Harrison (1771-): Frances Tinsley

Mary (Polly) Harrison (1794-18??): Archibald Goff (1780-1850)

Andrew Frederick Spence: Mary Lucy Goff (1830-1900)

Sulmana Frances Spence: William Robert Nace

The following info is condensed from various internet sources:

Major Lawrence Smith was born 29 March 1629 (or possibly later), in Lancashire, England, and died after 8 August 1700 in Gloucester County, Virginia. He was an engineer and a surveyor and was a prominent citizen in colonial Virginia. He came to Virginia in the mid-1600's, possibly imported from England to Virginia by his uncle, Augustine Warner, in the year 1652. (Warner was the great-great grandfather of George Washington.) While no pictures exist of Smith, this is a portrait of  Augustine Warner:

Smith patented Severn Hall in Gloucester County in 1662, where he lived and died.  

However, he also had connections to Yorktown. He acquired Temple Farm in Yorktown in 1686. (This farm was the site of Cornwallis’s surrender in 1781.) He surveyed land for the British Crown in both Gloucester and York Counties. In 1691, he received fifty acres of land as payment for surveying and laying out the town of Yorktown. He also received considerable other land for importing people from England to Virginia.

Like several of my colonial ancestors, he was involved in Bacon’s Rebellion. “In 1676, he commanded 111 men out of Gloucester County at a fort near the falls of the Rappahannock River, and the same year he led the trained bands of Gloucester against the rebels under Bacon.” Thus, he was fighting against some of my other ancestors who sided with Nathaniel Bacon.

Page 43 of Families of Virginia shows the connection between Lawrence Smith and John Battaile:

His children with Mary Debnam (name is sometimes different) are Mary (1652), John (abt. 1653), Capt. Charles (1655), Elizabeth (abt. 1665)—my 8th great-grandmother who married John Battaile, Col. Lawrence, Maj. Augustine (1666), Sarah (abt. 1661), and Capt. William (1687). These dates vary slightly in different sources.

In 1699, he was recommended for a King's Councilor post, but did not live long enough to be seated.  (His son John was then given the post.)

The Internet provides plenty of information about Major Lawrence Smith. 

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