Captain Thomas Osborne

  General Notes:

Captain Thomas (I) Osborne
Lieutenant Thomas Osborne arrived in Jamestown aboard the Bona Nova late in 1619; no family members are known to have accompanied him at this time. Whether his wife had previously died in England is not known, but her name has never appeared in any of the extant colonial Virginia records. He was selected by the London Company in England to serve as the leader of the military contingent in the settlement of College Land, a large area of land near Henricus City. The latter was the second permanent settlement in Virginia, the first, of course, being Jamestown. He appears in the two early lists of inhabitants, dated February 1623/24, and January 1224/25, as a resident of "Colledge Land."

After the March 1622 attack by the Indians, where roughly one-third of those settlers between Jamestown and Henricus City were killed, Lieut. Thomas Osborne lead a retaliatory attack; from this point onward, he appears in the records as Captain Thomas Osborne. From 1625-1633 he served in the House of Burgesses and, having been granted a large tract of land known as Coxendale, settled there around 1625. The first town in Coxendale, Gatesville, was later named Osbornes and became an important inspection, storage, and shipping center for tobacco well into the late 19th century. He lived his entire life in Coxendale (that part which is now Chesterfield County), and the succeeding four generations of his namesake also made Coxendale their home.

Thomas married on 21 Sep 1607 in Hurstpierpoint, Sussex, England.