The Descendants of Meredith Edwards of Westmoreland County, Virginia

Seldom has a single genealogy been so riddled with mistakes and faulty research as the Edwards family of Westmoreland County, Virginia. Compounding the problems of scarce colonial records was an outright fraud in the 19th century that left genealogists and historians copy-pasting bad information for over a century, and some rare, heroic souls trying to fix the mistakes as far back as the 1930s. I’d like to show where genealogists went wrong, and hopefully illuminate the real origins of this Edwards family.

While a number of fake “traditions” swept quite a few Edwards ancestors into this mess, it seems the Edwards family of Westmoreland County, Virginia may be the most impacted. These early gentleman planters spread out into Spotsylvania,

King George and Stafford Counties by the 1730s. But by the 19th century, genealogists were already confusing them with unrelated families all over the Tidewater. In each case, the erroneous claim can be identified by its total lack of supporting evidence.

Identification for the origin of the Westmoreland branch seems to follow one of two major theories: one that posits them as descendants of an immigrant to Surry County, Virginia in the early 17th century, another, inspired by the Edwards Fortune scam, claims they descend from a Welsh clergyman and his sons who supposedly immigrated in the mid-i8th century.

Despite their prevalence in journals, newsletters and in genealogies all over the internet, both theories are demonstrably false.

Jason M. Farrell