Richard Casey

  General Notes:

First Casey-ancestor in America.

The busiest years of the Great Migration were those of "The Eleven Year Tyranny" (1629'961640) during which Charles I tried to rule without calling the Puritan-dominated parliament.

For the purpose of stimulating immigration and the settlement of the Colony, the London Company ordained that any person who paid his own way to Virginia should be assigned 50 acres of land 'for his owne personal adventure,' and if he transported 'at his owne cost' one or more persons he should, for each person whose passage he paid, be awarded fifty acres of land.

Richard Casey was transported by Justinian Cooper on the ship Truelove out of London, Robert Dennis, Master, to Virginia City Sept. 16th 1636.

Justinian Cooper was granted 1050 acs. Warrisquick Co., 13 Sept. 1636, p. 380. N. "W. upon the head of Lawnes Creek, S.E. upon the Back Creek, N.E. upon his dwelling howse & S.W. into the woods. 50 acs. for his personal adventure & 1000 acs. for transportation of 20 pers: Richard Casey, Nicolas Man, John Curtis, John Corker, Henry Ranciful, Clement Evans, Henry Bonny, James Smith, George Stacy, William Redman, George Archer, William Bannister, William Cooke, Samuel Eldridge, William Nosse, Mary Clinton, Jno Davis, Robert Radge, Richard Smith, William Underwood and Mary Quarterly, 7 (W) (1) 286.

Richard Casey is one of the headrights in the grant of land to Justinian Cooper for the transportation.
Source: "Cavaliers and Pioneers, Abstracts of Virginia Land Patents
and Grants" 1623-1666, Abstracted and Indexed by Nell Marion Nugent.
Volume One, Baltimore, Genealogical Publishing Company, 1969, p. 47.

Justinian Cooper, a prominent immigrant, who married Anne Harrison, the widow of James Harrison. Her maidenname was Oliffe. She and Justnian Cooper had no children, but there appears to have been children of Cooper by a first marriage. In taking out several patents to land from 1635/6 on for several years, Justinian Cooper repeatedly used the headright of Richard Casey, when he took out patents.

Transcribed as "Nicholas Richard Coursie" in one transcription from 1642.

Col. Donald E. Casey, compliant of the Casey family genealogy, believes that Richard would be classed as a representative figure, rather than a prominent one. Like so many Irishmen of this time, he came to Virginia during the colony's crucial half century, and in the new world found a home and founded a family. The headright method of making land grants was adopted soon after the colony was getting started. It was probably in this manner that Richard Casey obtained his land, it being thoroughly characteristic of those times. (Col. Casey found no evidence that Richard was indentured.) It was this system that enabled Richard Casey and many men like him to acquire property they probably could never have possessed otherwise.

Many of those brought over were poor Irishmen and women (some of them of good families, but with meager fortunes and prospects) who were unable to pay the six punds Sterling, the average fare then charged for the transatlantic voyage.

Richard Casey and Nancy Jane Rickets are thought to have had nine children, but only four survived to maturity: Nicholas, James, Mary Ann and Peter.

Seventeenth Century Isle of Wight County, Virginia: A History of the County shows Justinian Cooper in his will of March 26th 1650 giving his godchildren each a calf. "To my brother Richard Cossey 200 acres where he and John Snellock lives by the river side after my wife's decease." To Edward Pyland, son James Pyland 500 lbs. tbco. Wife Anne extrx. Friend Cap. Wm. Barnard to be overseer. Gives him a piece of plate worth 10 pounds. Teste (witnesses), James Pyland, Jno Britt.

Surry County Records, Surry County, Virginia, 1652-1684 has records of a Richard Case and wife Isabella, on 100 acres on the west side of Gray's Creek, called Hollowing Pont and ye middle neck adjoining to it at the head of Spring Swamp to the end of Sandy Valley on Nov 3, 1667.
On July 2 1672 this Richard Case, aged 53, depositions between Thos. Gray and Thos. Cruse, and Isabell Case, aged about 56, deposeths same as husband.
A John Case lived in Surry County as well, mentioned in 1639 (purchasing 500 acres) and again in 1669.

Richard married Nancy Jane Ricketts about 1640 in Virginia City, VA, USA. (Nancy Jane Ricketts was born circa 1615 in Shandon, Cork, Ireland and died in Warrosquyoake, Virignia.)