The first of this family in Virginia was
1. Col. Richard 1 Johnson, of Bilsby, Lincolnshire, England, who came to Virginia and settled in what is now King and Queen County. The exact year of his arrival in Virginia is unknown; but in 1679, as "Capt. Richard Johnson" he was living in New Kent (from which King and Queen was formed). In 1680 he was J. P. for New Kent and Captain of horse in the militia (Va. Mag. I, 248). He was appointed to the Council in 1696 and died in 1698. As the records of New Kent and King and Queen have been destroyed, but few details can be learned in regard to him. He evidently bought land from private owners as he owned much more than that embraced in his one patent. This, dated, Oct. 25, 1695, and, for some reason unknown, surrendered Oct. 15, 1696, granted to Col. Richard Johnson 3285 acres in King and Queen Co.; in Pamunkey Neck (now King William Co.) The head-rights were: Richard Johnson, Jane Johnson, Richard Johnson, Susanne Johnson, &c. These evidently included Col. Johnson and his children and probably his wife.
In the absence of contemporary records it is difficult to speak positively as to his marriages. Richard Chapman, also a Lincolnshire man, who came to Virginia and married Col. Johnson's grand daughter says, in a letter and memorandum book still extant, that Richard Johnson married a lady in England and by her had a daughter Judith, who was educated at a boarding school in Lincoln, and who, about 1700, married Sir Hardoff Wastneys. This is confirmed by Burke's "Extinct & Dormant Baronetage," which says that Sir Hardoff Wastneys married Judith, daughter and heir of Col. Richard Johnson of Bilsby.
Richard Chapman farther says that Col. Johnson came to Virginia, and by a later marriage had several sons and daughters. He intimates that there was some irregularity about this marriage. What was its nature does not appear and probably will never be known. At Old Church, King and Queen County, is a tomb with the following epitaph:
"Here
Lyeth Interred ye Body Of Susana
Daughter Of Wm. Duncomb Of
Holbeach In Ye County of Lincoln. Esq.
and Wife Of Collo. Richard Johnson
Esq. Who Departed This Life Much
Lamented The 8th of August Anno
Domini 1686, Aged Twenty-Two
Years and Three Months."
Susanna Duncomb could not well have been the mother of Col. Johnson's three sons. That there was some irregularity in the marriage with the mother of one of them is indicated by an act of Assembly (Hening V, 114, &c), which recites that Richard Johnson Esq., late of King and Queen Co, by his will dated April 8, 1698, left to "one Thomas Johnson" a tract of land, 750 acres in the parish of St. John, King William Co., describing it as all his land in Pamunkey Neck, and also left divers lands and hereditaments to Richard and William Johnson, brothers of the said Thos. Johnson. In those days of strict adherence to legal technicalities it was no doubt deemed best not to leave any weak point in an act docking an entail.
(To be Continued.)
