The Glorious Generation

The Glorious Generation was born just after the worst convulsions of the English Civil War. Its members grew up under renewed concern for order, schooling, and discipline, then came of age amid colonial war, imperial consolidation, and the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89, when James II was displaced by William and Mary. It afforded my family my earliest patrilineal ancestors in the New World with the landing of Amor Via (born c. 1660) in Virginia circa 1677.

AMOR VIA. c. 1660–c. 1717.     My probable paternal great⁹-grandfather. Good information on Amor Via, an early bearer of the surname in Virginia, is precious and scarce. (I have compiled every source I am aware of onto this page, and, if I am missing any, would sincerely appreciate amendments.) Online genealogists list him under diverse names. The forms I have found in contemporary records, as published in the sources below, are Amor, Amer, and Amar, with Amos offered as an alternative reading in the patent abstract. Names like William and Pierre have hitched a ride onto his record over time, but I have not identified a contemporary record establishing either as his name. Because verified records for this particular Via are lacking, document search algorithms on Ancestry and similar sites have, for decades, routinely pulled up irrelevant files containing those names. Well-meaning researchers have then conflated those records with Amor. Specifically, William seems to stem from a “William Vier” named in a Virginia patent of 1675, found in Cavaliers and Pioneers: Abstracts of Virginia Land Patents and Grants, 1666–1695, Vol. II (pages 165–166). Pierre may reflect a conflation with a “Pierre Viet” reportedly described in The Compendium of American Genealogy (p. 322) as settling at Manakin Town in 1698. The volume, edition, and underlying evidence for that reference still need to be established; the documented Huguenot settlement at Manakin dates to 1700, so I do not treat the 1698 claim, or the proposed identification, as verified.

The oldest Via in America to which I can incontrovertibly connect myself is Micajah Via Sr. (c. 1740–1818), my great⁶-grandfather. Because he dwelt in Hanover and Albemarle Counties, he has been linked to a William Via who bequeathed his plantation to grandsons Micajah and William Viar in his will of 7 April 1782. There is, however, a substantial difficulty with identifying that grandson as my Micajah.

On 15 August 1799, Micajah and William Viar of Halifax County appointed Chapman Poindexter to sell their land in Albemarle, describing it as “the Land Will’d us by our Grand-father William Viar”. An indenture of 24 December 1803 again identifies Micajah as a resident of Halifax and his land as inherited under his grandfather’s will. These documents survive in Thomas C. Fletcher v. Chapman Poindexter, Albemarle County chancery cause 1805-025 (Library of Virginia; power of attorney, image 28 of 38; confirming indenture, images 23–25). The handwriting confirms both the residence and the inheritance. Meanwhile, the Albemarle tax compilation repeatedly lists Micajah Sr. and Micajah Jr., and the Halifax lists record another Micajah. Taken together, these records strongly suggest that the Halifax grandson was a different man from my Albemarle ancestor.

The will therefore does not securely connect my Micajah to its testator. It also leaves a smaller ambiguity: it calls the grandsons sons of the deceased William, but does not expressly call that William the testator’s son. Sarah Viar is called his daughter and allowed the use of the lands during her widowhood; her exact relationship to the other people named still needs to be established. Even the probate year requires checking: my transcription gives 8 May 1782, while the RootsWeb transcription gives 8 May 1783. The execution of the will, its proof in court, and William’s death are separate events; the will’s date alone does not establish his death in 1782. The record is cited as Albemarle County Will Book 2, page 408.

This William has himself been presumed on the basis of place, date and the resemblance in name-forms to have been a son of Amor Via, the obscure but widely discussed patriarch of the Vias. That identification, too, remains a hypothesis. Amor is thus the very probable ancestor of my line, and I have attempted to piece together his life using the scant relevant resources. As follows are the only concrete facts of his life as I understand it.

The historical facts of Amor Via

In Virginia Land Office Patent Book No. 6, page 619, abstracted by Nell Marion Nugent in Cavaliers and Pioneers: Abstracts of Virginia Land Patents and Grants, 1666–1695, Vol. II (Virginia State Library, 1977, pages 178–179), the following entry lists Amor among the headrights supporting Webb and Rea’s patent. This is a record of a land grant, and so establishes neither his arrival in 1677 nor his employment or residence on the patented tract. It aids us in our timeframe, but, as the Library of Virginia explains in The Virginia Land Office, Research Note 20, page 2, headrights could be transferred, and patents might be issued years or even decades after the relevant immigration. The entry also does not establish that all fourteen people were servants. It is interesting to note “James the Frenchman”; if Amor was indeed French, as is so widely claimed, then why does only James earn the epithet? Is it because Amor’s name is so obviously foreign that it would be superfluous to note? It is possible that this James merely lacked a surname known to the clerk, but the fact that one man was explicitly distinguished as French and Amor was not mildly weakens, in my view, an automatic French identification of Amor.

The following entries, recording daughters Naomi (read by some, though, as no-name), Judith, Margaret, and Mary, appear in The Vestry Book and Register of St. Peter’s Parish 1684–1786 (pages 400, 445):

In the New Kent County Rent Roll in the Parish of St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s, 1704, transcribed in Louise Pledge Heath Foley’s Early Virginia Families Along the James River: Their Deep Roots and Tangled Branches, Vol. I (1974, page 138), “Amer Via” is listed on 50 acres. This seems to me likely to be the same man as in the 1677 land patent, given the unusual name and the locality—perhaps even the same plot of land—though this is based on resemblance alone. His fifty-acre holding is a separate fact: how he acquired it remains, to my knowledge, unestablished.

In the 1708/9 processioning of St. Paul’s Parish lands (the parish carved out of St. Peter’s), listed in C. G. Chamberlayne’s edited transcription, The Vestry Book of St. Paul’s Parish, Hanover County, Virginia, 1706–1786 (Richmond: The Library Board, 1940, page 217), “Amor Viah” is named a precinct overseer with George Turner. (Processioning was the periodic Anglican-mandated practice of walking property lines to confirm boundaries and prevent encroachment.)

The lands of James Blackwell Sen,^r Geo: Turner, Benj:^a Buckley the Widdow Thompson, Gabriel Heath, John Barnet, and Amor Viah being made one precinct, of which the said Geo: Turner, and Amor Viah, were Appointed Overseers, who made this return on the Back of the Order (viz,) in Pursuance of an Order of Vestry held for S,^t Pauls Parish for proceſsioning of Lands We Amor Viah & Geo: Turner in Company with Rob,^t Thompson Edw,^d Burnet, John Howard and George Jones, have proceſion’d our lands into one precinct, except the failures hereafter mentiond and also the dividing Lines betwixt each other without any Exceptions: Also James Blackwell Sen,^r being in Company with us where his land Joind upon part of the Afores,^d land proceſsion’d into one precinct. These following are the failures, viz. Geo: Turners Land begins upon the main run of Mattadecun creek, thirty Chains below the mouth of a bottom, called the Spring Bottom and James Turners late of this county Deceas’d by a late Survey made a Small incroachm,^t there Also Luke Howard Bought of James Turner late of this county, a parcel of Land for forty Acres, more or Leſs, bounding upon Geo: Jones’s Line and upon Rich,^d Butlers line, & upon M,^r Rob,^t Booths line, y^e Said forty acres more or leſs, as Afores,^d hath three Sides, two thereof we find but the Line dividing it from the said Booth’s Land we cannot Find. but thus far we find, viz. two corner Trees pointing out the line according to Our Judgments.

Subscrib’d , Amor Viah, & Geo: Turner

A 1711 processioning (page 226) lists “Marg: Via” (Margaret Via) in a precinct with several of the same neighbors. This has been taken to mean that Amor had died and that the land was in his widow Margaret’s care. It is, as far as I can tell, the principal basis for the proposed wife’s name, but the entry does not clearly establish their relationship. Several other women in the same list are expressly called widows; Margaret Via is not.

In the same book (pages 250–251), another processioning entry associated with 1716 names Mary Via in the order and Amor Via in the return. This has sometimes been taken to be posthumous, but that interpretation assumes a death date not otherwise established here. Mary could reflect a misreading of Marg:, an older owner’s name could have persisted, or the discrepancy could have another explanation. I am forced to leave it unresolved, including whether the associated date of 3 April belongs to the order or its administration rather than to the actual walking of the boundaries.

Summary and other leads

And that is all. Those are all of the strong facts of Amor as they appear in his lifetime. He was not known, in the historical record, as a Huguenot (or even as a Frenchman!), as a privateer, as a blacksmith, or as any of the other fantastical things ascribed to him. The historical record merely knows him as a young man of uncertain background named in a headright patent and later recorded as a father, a small landholder, and a processioning overseer in Virginia. Indentured service is possible, but his age on arrival, occupation, and supposed years as a tenant farmer are not established. There are several interesting leads, however, which follow:

Dr. Socrates Maupin (1808–1871) is reported to have referred to the Via immigrant as William—but only once, with a question mark appended. The account appears in The Story of Gabriel and Marie Maupin, compiled, edited and expanded by Dorothy Maupin Shaffett (Baltimore: Gateway Press, 2000), drawing on Socrates’s research begun in 1837 and the later work of Eugene Maupin. The report about the question mark is therefore a later account of Socrates’s wording, rather than a quotation from his manuscript verified here. Had he not known of Amor, as he seems not to have, William is a reasonable guess at the name of the Via ancestor, as William was the family’s most popular given name in its first centuries in America. My own great-grandfather was William James Via. The same book traces Socrates through Margaret Via Maupin; identifying her with the Margaret baptized in 1701 would make Amor his great-great-grandfather.

In his Ancestral Lines from Maine to Virginia (2002, pages 190–191), genealogist Carl Boyer III (1937–2019) allows for Amor’s four mentioned daughters as well as two proposed sons: Robert, presumed from C. G. Chamberlayne’s transcriptions of the parish books, and William, citing a 2002 account by Mrs. Elaine Marie Via Bouscher. These are proposed relationships, unlike the daughters’ explicit identification in the parish entries. William has also been identified with the man who left the aforementioned 1782 will, but that is another identification requiring proof. In the processioning material of 1731–1732 in the St. Paul’s book (pages 278–279), a William appears among several of Amor’s former neighbors. This is useful evidence of locality, though the passage unhelpfully does not say that he inherited Amor’s land or was his son.

Judy Maupin Pons has put forth the interesting notion that there was actually a third William: an early son of Amor’s, whose own son would be the William of the 1782 will. Her proposal is partly an attempt to account for the long gaps between the known individuals, but it also has a documentary motivation. In the Fredericksville parish-support entries discussed on RootsWeb, a William receives assistance for keeping his parents in 1772–1777, his mother in February 1779, and himself in 1780–1782. Pons asks whether this was the same recipient throughout; Edna Barney proposes a different interpretation involving father and son. I agree that the records thus support a real question, though they do not yet clearly establish the recipients’ identities or the additional generation.

Notes on the name

The name forms appear in the primary sources as follow. Multiple mentions in one source or entry are not counted.

The divergent name forms are interesting, and suggest, in my view, that the name was foreign to English speakers. Amaury was a contemporary French name, the equivalent of English Amory. Aymer was present in both England and France, though an uncommon name in both places. A more interesting, and perhaps stronger, possibility is Amour or Amor, a rare name attested in medieval France and including the eighth-century St. Amor, founder of Amorbach Abbey. Interestingly, there was also an ancient Saint Amor the Martyr venerated at Saint-Amour, Jura, alongside a companion named Viator. The Amours and Amors seem invariably from Latin amor, “love”.

As an editorial choice for consistency, I have hence referred to this first Via as Amor, as that is the form predominantly used in the final attestations of him.

The surname’s earlier pronunciation is less certain. The spellings Via and Viah suggest to me the possibility of something like VY-ə, which, in a non-rhotic accent, could be heard and interpreted as Viar. By my great-grandparents’ time in the early twentieth century, this had become VYE. My father always pronounced the name VYE while I was growing up. For career reasons, we now both often pronounce it VEE-ə; this is a hypercorrection I have made myself. I do also remember a classmate in my school who pronounced my name VY-ə.

Genetics

The public Via surname project contains a substantial J-M172/J2 cluster among men reporting descent through Micajah Via, William Via, and related branches, which strongly supports a shared biological paternal lineage among the tested Micajah/William descendants that is traditionally attributed to Amor. It is, in my view, a meaningful corroboration that the colonial Virginia Via population was not merely a collection of unrelated spelling coincidences. However, tested lines attributed to Robert Via fall into incompatible haplogroups. They cannot all descend in the biological male line from one seventeenth-century Via unless some pedigrees are wrong or adoption/non-paternity occurred. Gideon Via, too, a child more spuriously attributed to Amor (see Rumor and mythmaking), has descendants outside of this haplogroup.

J2 is appreciably more characteristic of Mediterranean and southeastern Europe than of Britain or northern France. It therefore makes Amor’s origin in southern France, Catalonia, Provence or among another continental population somewhat more probable than it would have been on documentary evidence alone. However, as with so many of our other sources, it has no certain answers for us.

Rumor and mythmaking

The American Huguenot Society lists a “Pierre Amer Via” as an established Huguenot ancestor, and, branching off of this, FamilySearch’s surname page for Via confidently (and sourcelessly) describes Amor as “one of the French Huguenot settlers of Manakin, VA” and “born in the middle of the 17th century in Haute-Marne, France; his father was reportedly a German”. As I said, I believe the name Pierre is erroneous here; maybe it is a conflation of Amor Via with Pierre Viet, a genuine 1698 settler of Manakin Town, or perhaps it comes from Ancestry’s algorithm’s propensity to suggest the Pierre Vio of the the 1653–1668 Guer baptismal records (as it did to me), who, so far as I can tell, has nothing to do with our Amor.

My father grew up with distant notions of Italian ancestry. Though I initially dismissed the idea outright, feeling that 1677 was much too early for Italian immigration, the presence of certain Anglo-Italian families in seventeenth-century Virginia—namely that of the Taliaferro family—reopened the possibility to me.

Most Via family lore to do with Amor is preposterous mythological accretion meant to tell a more heroic ancestral narrative than a transported servant. One publication, cited by Erica Lewis, called “The Totem Pole” by Harold Houston Via (Issue #6), gives the following:

The lack of citations here disinclines me to believe any of it, but family lore, untrue as it may be, is always useful in telling us about what a family aspired to be and what they wished to see in its history. However, Amor Via, as far as the records examined here establish, was an early Virginia landholder and father whose origins remain uncertain. Indentured service and French extraction remain possibilities, and he seems to have initiated the Vias of the American South, but evidence is wanting.