First Families of Virginia

The First Families of Virginia are a group of early settler families who became a socially and politically dominant group in the British colony of Virginia and later the Commonwealth of Virginia.^[1] They descend from European colonists who primarily settled at Jamestown, Williamsburg, the Northern Neck and along the James River and other navigable waters in Virginia during the 17th century. These elite families generally married within their social class for many generations and, as a result, most surnames of First Families date to the colonial period.

The American Revolution cut ties with Britain but not with its social traditions. While some First Family members were loyal to Britain, others were Whigs who supported and often took leading roles in the Revolution.^[2] Most First Families remained in Virginia, where they flourished as tobacco planters, and from the sale of slaves to the cotton states to the south. Indeed, many younger sons of the First Families were relocated into the cotton belt to start their own plantations. With the emancipation of slaves during the Civil War and the consequential loss of slave labor, Virginia plantations struggled to turn a profit. The First Families, albeit poorer than before, maintained social and political leadership. Marshall Fishwick says that by the 1950s, "the old-time aristocracy [had] not given up, or sunk into decadence as Southern novelists suggest." They adopted modern agricultural technology and co-opted rich "Yankees" into their upper-class, rural horse-estate society.^[3] However, mirroring the fortunes of other White Anglo-Saxon Protestant social groups, the political and financial influence of the First Families in Virginia has declined over the last century.