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Our recent Quesenbury ancestors were founding members and longtime residents of the humble city of Mulberry, Arkansas. The surname Quesenbury, however, has a surprisingly noble past. In its earliest form, it seems to have come from the surname Questenberg, which originated in the Harz mountains of ancient Saxony (now Brunswick, Germany). Berg is the German word for mountain, and Questen is assumed to be derived from the German word Quast, which means crest or tuft. Because the northern Harz mountains are mostly bare of trees, a peak with a few trees on it would likely have been called a Questenberg - i.e. a tufted mountain. And there is, in fact, a small village in the Harz region with this name that was first settled in the 5th-6th century BC.
The earliest known person of what would become the American branch of this line was a man by the name of Tielmann “Tidem” Questenberg from Lubeck, Germany. In 1418, Teilmann was a merchant of the Hanseatic League doing business in London. This commercial league of merchant guilds and market towns was instrumental to developing and defending trade routes across Northern Europe from the late 12th to 15th centuries. He was born in Bodenfeld, Germany (then called Bortfelde) in about 1380. In 1424, he applied for citizenship to Cologne, Germany and was accepted. (National citizenship in Germany was not well established until well into the 19th century.) He died in about 1446, leaving behind his widow, Sybella von Süchteln and an unknown number of children. Although the Cologne branch of the Questenberg tree later went extinct in 1797, Tielman was likely the common ancestor of all Questenbergs who lived there in the preceding 300+ years.
The only known son of Teilmann and Sybilla was Bertold Questenberg, born about 1420. In 1445, he married a Margareth, and purchased an estate in the commercial district of Cologne, which he named The Lily by the Bridge. This property was passed down through the family for many generations, until the year 1646, when it was declared as too “old, dilapidated and decayed” for continued habitation.
Cologne, Germany 1411
Bertold continued his father's work as a cloth merchant of the Hanseatic League stationed in London. He was also a member of the Cologne Senate for over 30 years. He and Margareth had 4 sons, the oldest of which, Henricus “Henry” Questenberg, was our direct ancestor (born abt 1446). As was traditional for eldest sons at the time, Henry was taken to London with his father to become a Hanse merchant and train in the cloth trade of his father. The Hanseatic League was committed to protecting its trade secrets from the English and as such had very strict rules regarding its members. Women were completely excluded from the communal London colony where they lived, as the confidences of females were not to be trusted. Members were not allowed to stay outside those quarters for even a single night. Consequently, men were at times cut off from their families for many years. Any man who made the mistake of marrying an English woman would immediately be expelled from the league with all of his trade rights forfeited.
Alas, this would be the fate of our ancestor Henry, who married for love to a woman named Catherine from Canterbury, Kent, England, in about 1467. In addition to losing his membership in the Hanseatic League, he was disowned and disinherited by his father and forced to leave London and settle down humbly in Canterbury with his new wife. It is here that the Questenberg surname makes its first change, as foreign names ending in '-berg' or '-burg' were often changed by English immigrants to the native English '-bury' or '-borough' endings. Thus, Henry’s son Augustine was given the surname Questenbury.
Canterbury, England
Augustine was born in Canterbury in about 1468, and began the family line’s long work of reestablishing themselves by opening a tailor shop in 1490. It is known that he had two sons, the oldest of which, John (born about 1493), was our direct ancestor. John’s trade is not known, but he was apprenticed to a William Warlowe. Next came his son Henry Questenbury, born in Canterbury in about 1517 and working as a shoemaker. It was in this generation that some of the prior family wealth began to reaccumulate, for Henry was able to purchase admittance to the freeman class, a distinction which could then be passed on to all future progeny by right of birth. As a freeman, he was no longer bound to the land as a serf, but instead allowed to take his trade where he pleased and sell in his own name. He would also have been allowed to vote in city affairs and respected as a man of substance.
Henry went on to have at least two sons, who took advantage of these new freedoms to settle outside of Canterbury.
Henry Questenbury Jr., our direct ancestor, was born in about 1541 and settled with his wife Mildred first in the nearby town of Leeds Maidstone, and later in Rochester. They had 8 children, and by the time of Henry Jr.’s death in about 1606, they seem to have been quite well off, for he was able to pass on several homes and pieces of land to even his youngest son James (our ancestor).
James Questenbury, born in 1578, married a woman named Joan, also from Leeds and settled first in Bromley and later in (East) Greenwich, now a suburb of London. So it was that in 5 generations, the Questenburys had returned to their former status as wealthy traders in London. When he died there in 1620, James bequeathed all of his property and wealth to his eldest son John, with the stipulation that his younger son
Thomas (our ancestor, born 1608) be paid 30 shillings annually from the rents of the land for the entirety of his life.
Unfortunately for Thomas, his father’s wishes were not carried out as expected. He died when Thomas was only 12 years old. His older brother John was 14, and so his mother was guardian over his father’s will until they reached adulthood at the age of 21. In 1624, however, Joan remarried to a John Griffin from Westminster, who went on to defraud his new wife’s former offspring (Ref 3, p46-49). In court documents from 1663, in which Thomas tried unsuccessfully to recover his due from the will, Thomas stated that after his father’s death, he was left with no one to care for him, and that as a minor was unable to force the tenants of the land to pay the rents that would provide the salary he was due. Thus, in 1624, at the age of only 16, he felt he was forced to make his way to America to try his fortune here instead. In his absence and unknown to him, in 1628 his step-father transferred the property that was to pay his lifelong salary into his name and sold it, keeping the profits for himself.
Thankfully for Thomas, and for our family line, the Virginia Company of London had a program in which they found boys of good character who were orphaned or neglected and sent them to America to learn one of the skilled trades that were so badly needed in the new world. Thomas Questenbury seems to have been selected for this program (Ref 3, p.47-49). He is the only Questenbury known to have come to America, and as such is the common ancestor of all American Questenbury’s, regardless of its myriad spellings. In fact, despite the Questenberg/Questenbury line having originated in Germany and existed for many years in England, by 1797 it had gone extinct in all but the American line. No doubt due, at least in some part, to the many offspring over the years who chose to join the clergy and live a life of celibacy.
Not long after arriving in the colonies, Thomas married a woman named Joane Jesse. They had two sons,
John (our direct ancestor, born 1627) and Francis, and four daughters. Thomas must have been disappointed by his efforts in America though, because in 1650, his wife and their daughters (Sarah, Mildred, Joane, and Elizabeth) returned to Canterbury, England (see Note 1). There he set up shop as a shoemaker while pursuing the lawsuit mentioned previously alongside his sister Mildred. He died in about 1672 and may have been buried at or near the Church of St. Mary, Northgate where many of his other family members' graves are found.
His sons, however, then in their mid 20’s, chose to stay in Virginia (see Note 2). Francis never married and left no offspring. John married Anne Pope from a wealthy and well-known Royalist family. (Ann’s cousin, also named Ann Pope, married John Washington, the great grandfather of George Washington.) Due to these Royalist connections, things got a bit tense in the colonies for the Questenburys during the years of the English Civil War, 1642-1651, particularly after 1649 when King Charles I was executed. Perhaps this contributed to Thomas's decision to return to England. When the Fairfax Grant opened up the northern neck of Virginia for settlement, many Royalists supporters of King Charles II took advantage to resettle and form a new political center more loyal to the crown than those of the Puritans or Cromwellians.
Virginia’s Northern Neck
In 1651, John helped to survey the land in this area for what would later become Stratford Hall, the future home of General Lee in Westmoreland Co. (then Northumberland Co.). Then, in 1666, he was able to purchase land adjoining this estate. Interestingly, in 1656, when John signed for this land, he did not yet know how to read and write. He was later able to learn as an adult, but always spelled phonetically. It was this that caused the ‘t’ to be dropped from the surname Questenbury. Apparently the ‘t’ has always been silent, as shown by the fact that when written by members of the family it was present, but when written by others, it was usually absent. But at this point, John’s father was back overseas, and his brother Francis was illiterate. It was up to him to decide how it should be spelled and he spelled it like it sounded, Quesenbury. As time went on, his offspring often "Americanized" the -bury ending to be spelled as -berry instead.
John was known to have been an upright, devout, and trustworthy man. He and his family were members of the famous Pope’s Creek Episcopalian Church (now Baptist). Although there are no longer burial markers there from that long ago, it is assumed that this is where he and his family were buried. He was a farmer and a surveyor’s assistant, and if similar in stature to his father’s line, was likely very tall, as many of his male ancestors were said to have been over 6 ½ feet (clearly we didn't get that gene). He had three sons, John, William, and Humphrey. The oldest, John, died young and had no off-spring. The youngest, Humphrey, settled in KY and his line intermarried with the Pope family many times over the generations. The middle son, William, born about 1671, was our direct ancestor.
As the eldest living son,
William (direct line, b.1672) inherited most of his father’s Westmoreland Co. land after his death in 1714. He married Eleanor Miner in 1699 and together they had 8 children before he passed at the age of 91. He was wealthy enough that in 1740 he gifted each of his 3 sons 50 acres of the land he owned, while still having many acres remaining. His third son, Nicolas (born about 1710), was our direct ancestor. Nicolas and his wife Rose McGill had son (see Note 3), also named Nicolas, born in about 1755. He married Elizabeth Pope, and together they set off for Wake Co, NC. where our 5th great grandfather, William Miner Quesenbury was born in 1777. Later, as the west opened, their off-spring would spread to TN, AR and TX as well.
Research Notes
(1) Some sources say that only John and Francis were born in VA and that Thomas remarried to a younger woman upon return to England (possibly Alice nee?) and the daughters were all born there. This conclusion seems to come from a lack of records proving the daughters were ever in America whereas records of their adult lives are found in England. (Ref 3, p.49-50, Ref 1, p.124). No records of their births seem to exist in either country though, and unless they were all born in Thomas's older age (42+ years), it seems more likely to me that at least some were born in VA around the same time as John and Francis. Though to be fair, many Quesenbury men seem to have fathered children into older age.
(2) It seems that John initially returned to England with his father in 1650, but was then sponsored by Richard Turney to return alone to Virginia in 1651 (Ref 6). Some researchers feel this voyage record means that Thomas never actually came to Virginia in 1624, and rather it was his son John (b.1627) who did, but not until 1651. It is true that 1651 is the first time at which John's presence in VA records is concretely found. However, it is by Thomas's own words in his court trial of 1663 that he describes himself as having been "forced to seek his fortunes and go beyond the seas, where he remained for many years" (Ref.3, p.48). So to me it makes the most sense that John was indeed born in VA in 1627 and left only briefly when his father relocated to England in 1650.
(3) There is much confusion among researchers as to the exact parentage of the Nicholas who lived in NC in 1777 and was the father of William Miner Q. One possibility, laid out in this article, was that he was the son of Nicholas (b. 1710) and Rose McGill. Nicholas (b.1755) was definitely the grandson of William Sr (b.1671), and is mentioned in his 1762 will (Ref 1, p.b128, Ref 5, p.124). Another possibility was that he was the son Nicholas (b. 1735) of his 2nd cousin William Jr (b. 1704) and Anne Pope. However, there is no mention of this Nicholas (b.1735) as having any son other than George (b.1785), who was born 20 years later than his supposed brother (Ref 1.,p.b133), whereas per family account, William Miner Q. (b. 1777) is supposed to have had several brothers (Ref 2, p.37). Additionally, Nicholas (b. 1735) removed his family to NC for only a time during the Rev War, after which there is a well documented trail of his return to VA and remarriage to Hannah (Ref. 1, p.b131). Nicholas, father of William M., seems to have settled in NC permanently (Ref. 2, p.35).
Another possibility is that Nicholas is really a son of John (b. 1700), though this Nicholas is supposed to have died in 1750 without male heirs (Ref. 1, p.b128). Finally, some researchers say he is the son of a John descended from the Humphrey line rather than William line. This certainly seems possible, though I have yet to find a John of that line that fits the time and place. (And can I just say that it doesn't help that they pretty much all had at least one child named Nicholas, William, and/or John). For now, I am following the conclusion that our Nicholas (b.1755) was the son of Nicholas (b. 1710) and Rose. But regardless of father, all Quesenburys in America descended from the original John b. 1627.
References
(1) Mayes, Edward. "
Genealogical notes on a branch of the family of Mayes and on the related families of Chappell, Bannister, Jones, Peterson, Locke, Hardaway, Thweatt and others". Jackson, Ms. : Hederman Brothers, 1928, Chap. "The Quisenberry Family".
https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/14899/ : 2022.
(2) Quisenberry, Anderson C. "
Genealogical memoranda of the Quisenberry family and other families". Washington DC : Hartman & Cadick, Printers, 1897.
https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/13482/ : 2022.
(3) Quisenberry, Anderson C. "
Memorials of the Quisenberry family in England, Germany, and America". Washington DC : Gibson Bros., Printers & Bookbinders, 1900.
https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/13484/ : 2022.
(4) Mackenzie, George Norbury, and Nelson Osgood Rhoades, editors. "
Colonial Families of the United States of America: in Which is Given the History, Genealogy and Armorial Bearings of Colonial Families Who Settled in the American Colonies From the Time of the Settlement of Jamestown, 13th May, 1607, to the Battle of Lexington, 19th April, 1775". Vol. 1. 1912. Reprinted, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1966, 1995.
https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/61175/(5) Payne, Brooke. "
The Paynes of Virginia", p.124. Richmond, VA : William Byrd Press, 1937.
https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/12187/images/dvm_GenMono001631-00073-0?pId=131 : 2022.
(6) "
Early Virginia Immigrants, 1623–1666". John Quesenbury arrived by 1651, sponsored by Richard Turner.
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