Over the years, I have made a number of blog posts on our Jordan family of Halifax County, Virginia.  These are among the most visited posts in this blog.  Now, in the summer of 2024, I thought it time for a concise review of some of the pertinent information.

There are many Jordan families.  Until the late Middle Ages, few people bore a surname.  As that changed, prompted in part by the Crusades, some chose Biblical surnames, and the name Jordan was adopted by a number of unrelated families.  The surname Jordan appeared all over western Europe with a variety of spellings.

The origins of our own Jordan family are obscure, but tradition has it that a Norman ancestor (named De Courcy or Deandon, depending on source) arrived in England in 1066.  A descendant of this man is reputed to have distinguished himself in the Third Crusade (1189-1192), earning for himself the surname Jordan along with the motto Percussa Resurgo.  Later this motto was identified with a Jordan family located in Wiltshire, a southwest English county, and it also appears along with the name Jordan in a glass window of an early colonial church in Isle of Wight County, Virginia.  This New World location is associated with Thomas Jordan I, a 1620 Jamestown arrival on the ship Diana, as well as his son Thomas II, who was born in Virginia.  (Thomas I is a presumed son of the Samuel Jordan of Wiltshire who came to Jamestown as a Sea Venture survivor in 1610.)

Our family’s connection with Thomas Jordan II was firmly established by DNA testing.  It shows that we share a common Jordan male ancestor who probably lived in Wiltshire sometime during the 15th or 16^th century.  However, no one has been able to prove a line of direct descent from Thomas to the Halifax County Jordans.

My son Stuart Jordan’s genealogical research and yDNA evidence reveals that Robert Jordan, patriarch of our Halifax County Jordan family, was likely the son of a William Jordan who was residing in King and Queen County, Virginia, in 1780.  William had a brother or close cousin named Robert living in adjacent Caroline County.  These two counties are in Virginia’s Middle Peninsula.  William’s father is unknown, and Stuart was unable to prove William’s descent from any of the early Jamestown Jordans; however, he believes that William and Robert were probably from a related Jordan family that immigrated from Wiltshire and settled in Virginia by mid-18^th century. In support of this theory, Stuart has found that proven male-line descendants of Thomas II all have identical allele values in the genetic STR marker known as DYS464.  Proven male-line descendants of William and Robert also share common values in DYS464, but they differ slightly from that of Thomas II descendants.  Both the Thomas II line and the William/Robert line have the same yDNA 12-marker prefix and therefore both are included in Family Tree DNA’s Jordan Surname Project Group #8 (JG08).   This means that both lines descend from a common male ancestor residing in England possibly as late as the 16th century.  Stuart’s recent book, Beneath the Black Walnut (2nd Edition), documented all of these findings.  You may contact Stuart directly at StuJ635@hotmail.com.

There has been speculation about a connection between the Jordan family of Wiltshire (JG08) and the Jordaine family of Dorset and Devon.  Sylvester Jordaine was on the ship Sea Venture with Samuel Jordan in 1609, and many researchers have assumed them to be cousins.  However, the surname spelling is usually different, and a family relationship has not been proven.   As of this writing, no known descendant of Sylvester Jordaine has taken the yDNA test. For more information on the Jordaines, read my blog posting entitled “Jordan Family Roots Revisited,”  published on August 31, 2021.