hat, the two accounts agree on his having crossed the Atlantic on two trips.
Whether brother or first cousin to George, Richard and William Howe, all accounts agree that Joseph moved southward from Boston and settled in Virginia on Back Creek in what was then Augusta County, later Montgomery and now Pulaski. The date of this settlement was 1758, the year of the death of George Lord Viscount Howe.
He secured a grant of land for services rendered the Crown and on it built his residence which he called "Sunnyside" and where he spent the remainder of his life. He purchased from John Daye, who afterwards became his son-in-law, and additional tract of land adjoining his grant. The part consisting of the grant was in late years in the possession of Mrs. Agnes Howe De Jarnette
, his great-granddaughter, and the part purchased was in the possession of J. Hoge Tyler
, his great-great-grandson.
Joseph Howe constructed a line of forts from Duquesne southward for the protection of the Virginia frontier. There was preserved in the family for a long time a curious metal tag which he had taken from the nose of an hostile Indian whom he had killed from one of those forts, the tag being one of those commonly furnished by the the French to distinguish the Indians friendly to the French cause.
Joseph Howe is reputed to have been of robust physique. His English home was one of refinement and wealth from which he was separated by reason of his sympathy for the Colonists – a thing the more intolerable because of the prominence of his relations on the British side.
It is not known that any of the English estate reverted to him although it was considerable and although two of his three brothers (or his cousins) died without issue. All of the property may have gone to an only sister, whom the Encyclopedia Brittannica mentions as a friend of Benjamin Franklin. One of Richard Howe's two daughters, Sophia Charlote, married a Curzon and became ancestress to Lord Curzon, in later years Viceroy of India. Of his wife there is nothing known except that she was of Scotch blood. Thus the Scotch strain in the family of Hoge to be stimulated. S.S. Howe says that she was slightly below medium size, with light hair and blue eyes and walked with a slight limp which required the use of a cane and which in years after gave rise to a curious tradition of the stroke of the cane against the floor being heard at the old homestead.
The Family of Hoge – 1927
from a letter written by J. Nellie Hoge, regarding Governor James Hoge Tyler, that appeared in the Richmond Dispatch in August, 1879.
"...His grandmother, the wife of General James Hoge, was the daughter of Major Daniel Howe, on whose headstone, in the family burial ground, in Pulaski County, is the unique epitaph:
'In youth a solider of the Revolution,
In old age a solider of the Cross.'
"The Howe homestead is in the possesion of a granddaughter, Mrs. Eugene de Jarnette (nee Agnes Howe).
"In Mrs. Howe's veins flowed some of the proudest English blood, but as her ancestor had thrown away his title to the trappings of heraldry to espouse the cause of liberty so she ever impressed on this boy that
' 'Tis only noble to be good,
Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.'
"Hence he is a democrat in heart; one of the people; ever ready so sustain that prime American principle: Nobility belongs only to those who win it.
"Bluff City, Virginia, August 21 1879.
J. Nellie Hoge
The Family of Hoge – 1927
"The maternal grandmother of James Hoge Tyler was Eleanor Howe, the daughter of Major Howe, of the Revolutionary War, of the same lineage as Lord Howe and General Wayne."
South-west Virginia and the valley – 1892
"She was a daughter of Joseph Howe, brother of Lord Howe of England."
Earl Clarence Frost – 1954
Martin Wood is the author of The Family and Descendants of St. Thomas More
, published 30 Apr 2008, 3 months after he sent me the following emails.
January 8, 2008
I found your Scrope ancestry very interesting. There is quite a bit of information about the Scropes in "The History and Antiquitie