Wife and Children
Samuel Jordan's wife Cicely, who in the patent quoted above is described as "an ancient planter...of nine years continuance", is shown in the 1625 census as age 24, having come to Virginia on the Swan in August 1610, at which time she would have been ten or eleven years old.
It appears that at the time of her marriage to Samuel Jordan (sometime before 1620, as shown by the wording of the patent quoted above), Cicely was a widow with a small daughter named Temperance Baley. There is no direct evidence of this first marriage, but Temperance Baley is mentioned as an adjoining landholder in Samuel Jordan's 1620 patent, and she appears in the census of 1625 aged seven, living at Jordans Journey in the Muster of Mr William Ferrar and Mrs Jordan. John F. Dorman concludes that she was probably a daughter of Cicely Jordan from a first marriage to a Baley.
In 1622, the local Indian tribes organized a surprise attack on the English colonists. During what became known as the Indian Massacre of 1622, many men, women, and children were killed in a coordinated series of attacks led by Chief Opechancanough of the Powhatan Confederacy. After the attack, most of the outlying settlements were abandoned for the time being, and the inhabitants evacuated to safer locations. A limited number were kept as inhabited settlements, including "A Plantacione of Mr Samuell Jourdes" (presumably Jordan's Journey), Kecoughtan, Newport News, Southampton Hundred, Flowerdew Hundred, Shirley Hundred. At the time of the Feb 1623/4 census, 42 people were living at Jordan's Journey.
Read more about this topic: Samuel Jordan
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