Robert Beverley Jr.

Major Beverley had emigrated to the Virginia colony from Hull in Yorkshire, England and became the Clerk of the House of Burgesses, in which several of his descendants would serve.

His father and elder full brother both died before this Robert Beverley reached legal age, so a guardian, local merchant and future burgess William Churchill, who had succeeded to the Beverley merchant relationship with Jeffreys and Company in London, was appointed to handle the estate for the children.

In 1688, the year following his father's death, Beverley worked as a copyist in Jamestown, assisting the colony's secretary as well as becoming a deputy clerk of the surrounding James City County.

However, when Governor Francis Nicholson ousted William Edwards as the chief clerk of the General Court and the colony's secretary, Beverley probably also lost his position.

However, in the summer of 1692, his uncle Christopher Robinson became the colony's secretary and appointed his nephew as clerk of King and Queen County nearby.

He was appointed to the Elizabeth City County court on December 27, 1700, but that body (which also held administrative powers over the county) soon found itself in litigation, and the General Court decided adversely to it, so Beverley appealed to the Privy Council and set sail for England to prosecute the case in 1703.

Journalist John Fontaine records that on the return trip, both Beverley and his horse fell, and rolled to the bottom of a hill, but without serious injury to either.

[1] Concerning slavery, in the 1722 re-edition, Beverley says that whilst both black males and females were likely to work in fields, white women were not.

The house is one of the largest colonial plantation mansions in Virginia, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969.

Robert's half brother John Beverley (1675-1737) and his wife Margaret Early (1689-1738) begot a son in Bertie County, North Carolina.

This John Beverly II (1708-1765) and his wife Margaret Williams resided in Orange County, North Carolina.