Resources for Fitz Randolph Family Historians

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Surnames/tags: Fitz Randolph FitzRandolph Fitz-Randolph

Contents 1 Fitz Randolph One Name Study 1.1 Members helping to develop this page 1.2 Members who have contributed 2 Online Communities 3 Fitz Randolph's in America 3.1 General 3.2 Edward the Pilgrim 3.3 Scituate and Barnstable years 3.4 New Jersey 3.5 Seventh Day Baptist Church and West Virginia 4 Fitz Randolph's in England 4.1 General

Fitz Randolph One Name Study

This is a research page of the Fitz Randolph One Name Study. Click this link to return to Study's Fitz Randolph Traditions home page.

Members helping to develop this page

Members who have contributed

Online Communities

• Facebook group: Fitz Randolph Ancestry, administered by Anne Gleason
• Facebook group: Fitz Randolphs of the World, administered by Chris Randolph

Fitz Randolph's in America

General

• Louise Aymar Christian and Howard Stelle Fitz Randolph. (1950). Fitz Randolph Genealogy: The Descendants of Edward Fitz Randolph and Elizabeth Blossom. 222 pp. Plus: Supplement to the Fitz Randolph Genealogy with addition and corrections. (1955) Edward Brothers Inc.: Ann Arbor, MI, 44 pp. Available online and can be downloaded from this link at Archive.org. The 1955 supplement with corrections and additions is also available at this link to Supplement on Archive.org

Carefully researched, extensive genealogy of the family in America, with over 1000 primary entries and thousands more cited spouses and children.

• Oris Hugh Fitz Randolph. (1976). Edward Fitz Randolph Branch Lines, Allied Families and English and Norman Ancestry: A Family Genealogy, 860-1976. Edwards Brothers Inc.: Ann Arbor, MI. 694 pp.

Builds on the Louise Aymar Christian and Howard Stelle Fitz Randolph genealogy with 2,383 primary entries. Makes an effort to follow some of the female descendants, not just the men.

• Spokt.com: FitzRandolph Family Hub.

This site is the current repository of many of the earlier materials posted since the late 1990s at various genealogy communities online that have since disappeared, and includes the many threads of exchanges on specific topics between community members. Materials are organized by topic in Books and there is an ongoing message board. It is a critical resource to understand what information relevant to your research might be available and has already been discussed at some point, but has not been captured in any more permanent record like Wikitree. It's also a great way to identify other people researching the same branch as you. The cost of maintaining the site has relied on voluntary contributions from members, but there is no charge to join. Any current member of the hub can invite new members, so just leave a comment here if you want to be invited.

• Roy Ziegler, 2020. Unfaltering Trust: How Pilgrim Edward Fitz Randolph Jr. and His Descendants Helped Build America. iUniverse.

• DAR database
• SAR database

• Familypastexpert.com: three well-written and documented stories about:
  • Margaret Fitz Randolph 1744-1833, daughter of Robert Fitz Randolph and wife of 'Black Abraham' Vail.
  • Katherine Hartshorne 1682-1759, wife of Edward Fitz Randolph
  • Robert Fitz Randolph 1712-1804, the 'Fighting Quaker' and his minor role in the piracy tale involving Captain Samuel Fitz Randolph 1694.

Edward the Pilgrim

Edward Fitz Randolph, the progenitor of the Fitz Randolph family in America, is the subject of a dedicated Wikitree profile (click on his name at the beginning of this sentence to link to it). That profile is the consensus work-in-progress of many genealogists and family historians and offers an extensive list of sources. It also links to a similar profile for his wife and her family. We don't repeat all of those sources here, but do add a few that have been found useful to get a sense of the context of Edward's move to America and early years there.

• Something about the Winthrop Fleet?

Winthrop Society offers context about the wave of immigration from England to Massachusetts in 1630 that included Edward. (Thanks Anne Gleason!)

Scituate and Barnstable years

New Jersey

Nathaniel Fitz Randolph Book of Records

• Oliver B. Leonard, (1899), The Fitz-Randolphs of New Jersey Contemporary with the American Revolution. The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, Volume 30, p. 106-109, available at Google Books.

Tom Chrisman recommends the following from the Vail family which included marriages to Fitz Randolphs in New Jersey; he has relied on these together with the Oris H Fitz Randolph to support his application to a number of medieval lineage societies:

• Vail, John Randolph. "A Genealogy of the Vail Family." Portsmouth, England, 1996.
• Vail, Wm. Penn; "Genealogy of Some of the Vail Family Descended From Thomas Vail..."; Blairstown, NJ: Wm Penn Vail, 1937
• Alfred Vail Papers (currently in archives at New Jersey Historical Society in Newark and at the Smithsonian in DC)

• Drake, George; Brown, J. F. (James Fuller), History of the First Baptist Church of Piscataway : with an account of its bi-centennial celebration, June 20th, 1889, and sketches of pioneer progenitors of Piscataway planters, Stelton, N.J., 1889. P. 114-115.

Seventh Day Baptist Church and West Virginia

• WVCulture.org has the West Virginia State Vital Records in a searchable database that links to scanned copies of original births / marriages / deaths registers, including marriage bonds. Plenty of Fitz Randolph's in there!

• Corliss Fitz Randolph. (1905). A History of the Seventh Day Baptists in West Virginia including the Woodbridgetown and Salemville churches in Pennsylvania and the Shrewsbury church in New Jersey. The American Sabbath Tract Society, Plainfield, NJ. This book can be viewed online or downloaded at Archive.org.

This book is a very detailed account of this church in West Virginia and has many references to Fitz Randolph family and the role it played.

• [www.sdbhistory.org/resources/sabbath-recorder-archives Sabbath Recorder Archives]

The Sabbath Recorder is the long-running newspaper of the Seventh Day Baptist Church, starting in 1844. In particular, it has had a section on marriages and deaths that offers information about the many Fitz Randolph's involved in the church over the centuries.

• Rev. John Fitz Randolph (1939), Dr. John LaForge Fitz Randolph of Salem, W.Va.: His Ancestry & Descendants. Mimeograph, Milton Junction, Wisconsin. 30 pp. Not much that isn't covered in the Oris H. Fitz Randolph genealogy.

(Tom Randolph has a copy.)

• lewisathome.com: Mark Lewis descends from John LaForge Fitz Randolph branch and has posted several autobiographies from the Preston Alois Fitz Randolph family that make fascinating reading about life in West Virginia in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

• The Mayflower Society, Patriots to Passengers Bridget Project list includes Samuel Fitz Randolph (b. 1738), confirming his link back to Pilgrim Edward Fuller.

DoddridgeCountyRoots.com; has large, well researched genealogical database for the Doddridge-Ritchie-Harrison County area, including many Fitz Randolph's

Fitz Randolph's in England

General

• Lewis Van Syckel Fitz Randolph, 1907. Fitz Randolph Traditions: A Story of a Thousand Years. The New Jersey Historical Society. Available online or downloaded as a Google book at https://archive.org/details/fitzrandolphtra00randgoog/mode/2up.

The book is out of copyright and copies have now been reprinted by several publishers as well as being available online. This is a scholarly study of the Fitz Randolph lineage from Edward Fitz Randolph back to its Norman origins, including lineage trees. Portions of the lineage are now considered inaccurate, but it still makes for good reading if you enjoy the flowery style of the 19th Century.

For well-documented genealogies of the Fitz Randolph line in England, these references are recommended by Thomas Chrisman:

• Vail, John Randolph. "A Genealogy of the Vail Family." Portsmouth, England, 1996.

• Vail, Wm. Penn; "Genealogy of Some of the Vail Family Descended From Thomas Vail..."; Blairstown, NJ: Wm Penn Vail, 1937. This can be consulted online at a Family History Center.