Four family lines move through early America—from England and Ulster traditions to the Cowpasture, Tazewell, Maryland and beyond.
Every claim is labeled: documented, probable, or an open research lead.
The honest version of a family story is often more interesting than the polished legend. These are the earliest arrivals currently supportable from records, with uncertainty left visible.
A Virginia patent placed William on 400 acres near Timber Neck Creek by 1642. A later Maryland lawsuit described a bond made in England about twenty years before 1652/53, making an English connection strong even though his parish of origin remains unknown.
Documented in Virginia English origin probable sourcesMaryland transportation rights record William, wife Grace, children Thomas, Richard, Elizabeth, Ann and Alice, Grace’s daughter Elizabeth Wood, and others moving from Virginia about 1646. Thomas’s biological mother remains unresolved.
Documented migration sourcesWilliam Batten, brother of Joan Batten Smoot, transported a household to Maryland in 1651. William Barton, grandfather of Captain Thomas Smoot’s wife Elizabeth, was in Maryland by 1654; a later family will points toward Bartons in Warwickshire, but not to a proved birthplace for the immigrant.
Origins probable sourceWilliam and Mary were present in the lower Cowpasture community by the 1750s, and William’s 320-acre tract was patented in 1761. A 1721 baptism in County Armagh is a serious hypothesis—not yet a proved identity. The link from William to Thomas Gillespie of Tazewell is likewise probable, not documentary proof.
Cowpasture proved Armagh probable sourcesDots mark reported or approximate birthplaces. Lines show a person or household moving, or the family’s next generation appearing in a new place. Click any dot or line for context.
The family data is inside this file, but Leaflet and OpenStreetMap tiles load online.
The 1761 patent ran northward through four straight calls—222, 168, 254 and 60 poles—then returned “down the various courses” of the Cowpasture. The calls imply a narrow tract roughly two miles long, with the river as its closing boundary. The shape shown here is schematic; the clickable map polygon is an approximate placement near Griffith Knob, not a modern boundary survey.
Title trail: William and Mary Gillespie → Aaron Hughes (1780) → apparently Alexander Simpson (1787). The second transfer should be compared with the original Botetourt deed before the chain is called proved.
The earlier generated PNG was not available in this workspace, so this file includes an original embedded SVG reconstruction instead.Not fame for fame’s sake, but people whose lives illuminate the family’s place in a larger American story.
Physician Charles Taylor Pepper (1830–1903) practiced in southwest Virginia and served as a Confederate surgeon. His daughter Ruth McDowell Pepper married Tazewell lawyer Barnes Gillespie; their son was Charles Pepper Gillespie.
The family link is real. The familiar claim that Dr. Pepper invented—or definitively named—the soda is not. The Dr Pepper Museum credits Waco pharmacist Charles Alderton with creating the drink in 1885 and says the name’s origin remains unclear.
Born in Tazewell in 1903, he carried both family names. Contemporary alumni notices place him at Washington and Lee and later practicing law in Tazewell; the Virginia Museum of History & Culture lists a portrait file for him (1903–1954).
The previous tree work identifies two family connections involving Rev. Aaron Burr Sr. and his son, Vice President Aaron Burr Jr., but the exact bridge people are not present in the recoverable source material for this file.
They are therefore preserved here as research leads, not displayed as kinship. Princeton confirms that Burr Sr., his wife Esther Edwards, and their children Sarah and Aaron Jr. lived in the President’s House in 1756.
Born into an established Charles County family around 1660, the younger Thomas married Elizabeth Barton and became sheriff of Charles County in 1703. He should not be confused with his father, Thomas Sr., who died about 1668—or treated as a 1687 immigrant.
Research identifies Isaac Wiseman (1738–1818) as a Pennsylvania militia private on the American side. A 1788 Rockingham record names Isaac, son Samuel and Isaac Jr.; the date is postwar and should not itself be described as a Revolutionary muster.
A later lawsuit looks back to an English bond from about this time.
William’s Virginia patent anchors the family in the colony.
Transportation claims later name the family members.
William Gillespie’s 320 acres sit opposite the Griffith Knob landscape.
Thomas and Margaret Bowen’s descendants become a major Tazewell family.
Ruth McDowell Pepper marries Barnes Gillespie.
This is a research snapshot, not a frozen family tree. The labels below are intentionally conservative.
William and Mary Gillespie’s Cowpasture presence and land; William Smoot’s Virginia and Maryland record trail; the Thomas Sr.–William relationship; the Pepper–Gillespie marriage path; Captain Thomas Smoot’s Maryland career.
William Gillespie as father of Thomas who married Margaret Bowen; William’s connection to County Armagh; an English origin for William Smoot; Warwickshire association for the Maryland Barton family.
The two exact Burr kinship paths; William Smoot’s parish and first wife; Mary Gillespie’s surname; original deeds proving the 1787 Cowpasture transfer; a modern parcel-level boundary reconstruction.
1687 as Thomas Smoot’s immigration date; a precise Dutch origin for William Smoot without evidence; a proven modern boundary for the 320 acres; certainty that Charles Pepper named the soda.
Prepared 15 August 2026. Geographic coordinates are approximate and are not legal descriptions. OpenStreetMap contributors supply the base map.