[1][2] The son and heir of planter and former speaker of the House of Burgesses Thomas Harwood was a young boy when his father died, so William Whitaker became guardian for him and his two sisters.
[3][4] His father and great uncle William Harwood had both arrived in the earliest days of the Virginia colony, and became political leaders as well as major planters.
In that year, still long before this boy's birth, his man's father sailed to Britain to present colonists' complaints against the colony's unpopular governor, Sir John Harvey, who was recalled.
[5] Humphrey Harwood inherited about 3644 acres, which he formally claimed in 1670 after reaching legal age, and then cultivated using enslaved labor.
[8][6] Harwood's last public acts were as a judge for a trial of pirates at Elizabeth City in May 1700, as well as taking a list of tithables in upper Mulberry Island Parish that June.