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Our American family begins in Jamestown in 1608 with James Davis. We are also first on the Delmarva, the peninsula that is the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia. Some of these first families lived in Virginia: Henry Blair, Levin Denwood, Simon Fosque, Roger Woolford, and William Whittington. They arrived early in the 17th century. Some first landed in Maryland, first Somerset then Dorchester County, arriving there in the late 17th century. Our ancestors Timothy MacNamara, Andrew Insley, and Michael Todd came directly to Maryland from Great Britain. The Stevens and Brooks families stopped in Calvert, then came to Dorchester. These forebears held the first land patents in their counties and some land remains with their lines today.
From these Dorchester roots, we are the children of the Western Shore, our immediate ancestors moved to Washington, DC with the great population shifts of the mid-1860s.
We count mayors, governors, and hard working farmers amongst our family along with steamboat captains and steamboat owners. From the first Levin Denwood, a Friend and dissenter of the 1600s, we have always been avid members of our communities and hometowns. We live in Ireland and Hawaii and a few points in between but most of us are within 150 miles of where our family has been for nearly 400 years.
The Dyer family was in colonial Fairfax, Virginia and the Brewers, of Maryland and Virginia, gave a son in 1813 to the War of 1812, leaving his widow in Fairfax. Later, four Brewer brothers would serve in WWI and be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
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