Little is known of the Hathcock family until about 1730 when Hathcocks were living in Brunswick County, Virginia. Brunswick County is on the southern border of Virginia, just north of Northampton County, North Carolina. Several Hathcocks lived in these two counties, including Edward Hathcock.

Following is reproduced from the research of the historian Paul Heinegg:659

“Edward Hathcock, born ca 1710, sold 100 acres of the land he patented near Arthur's Creek in Northampton County, North Carolina, to his son-in-law, James Norton, on 26 November 1753. On 2 April 1757 he sold another 100 acres on the north side of Ragland's Road to Drury Jordan of Brunswick County, Virginia. On 15 May 1758 he made a Northampton County deed of gift of 100 acres on Turbyfield's Run near Ragland's Ferry Road to his son Thomas, and two days later on 17 May 1758 he sold 20 acres on Turbafield's Run for 2 pounds 10 shillings to (his son?) John Heathcock [DB 2:129, 387, 475-6]. He was co-defendant in a suit with John Brooks, probably as his security, for a debt of 4 pounds, 2 shillings which the Southampton County court ordered him to pay Samuel Sands on 13 May 1762 [Orders 1759-63, 219]. He entered 400 acres on both sides of Black Creek below the mouth of Mirey Branch in Johnston County on 11 August 1778 [Haun, Johnston County Land Entries]. His plantation where he formerly lived on Little Crooked Creek in Franklin County was mentioned in a Franklin County deed on 29 October 1779 [DB 1:52, 124, 360]. In May 1782 Edward, Holiday, and Joseph Hathcock were ordered to work on the road from the head of Gum Swamp in Johnston County to the Cumberland County line. He may have been living on land of (his son?) Isam Hathcock when he was counted in Halifax County, head of a household of 4 free males and 7 free females in district 3 for the 1786 North Carolina state census. He died before November 1786 when the Johnston County court ordered his orphans Stephen, Amos, and Mary brought to court to be bound out [Haun, Johnston County Court Minutes, III:206, 336]. And on 22 August and 21 November 1786 the Halifax County court bound out Hathcock "base born children," no race mentioned: David (nine years), Nancy, and Mark (eight years old) [Minutes 1784-87, 154, 164, 177]. Perhaps Edward's wife was Elizabeth Hathcock, head of a Johnston County household of 2 free males and 4 free females in the 1787 State Census.”

Heinegg lists about a dozen possible children of Edward Hathcock, but the only ones that are definitely linked are Thomas and Martha, who both received land from Edward and were named as his son and his daughter. John Hathcock also received 20 acres from Edward at the same time and same approximate location as son Thomas, and John may also be a son of Edward. However, Edward transferred 100 acres to Thomas as an outright gift, and named him as his son, whereas the transfer to John Hathcock was only 20 acres, it was actually sold for 2 pounds 10 shillings, and he did not name John as his son.

Although the lineage from Edward Hathcock down to Clayton Heathcock Jr., the keeper of this genealogy website, is not iron-clad at each step, it is nevertheless certain that it was followed. The evidence comes from Y-chromosome DNA. Clayton Heathcock (as well as a number of other 21st century males with some variation of the Hathcock surname (Heathcock, Haithcoak, Hathcoat) has a Y-chromosome DNA pattern that is identical with that carried by several 21st century Nortons who have a strongly documented ancestry to Martha Hathcock, the daughter of Edward Hathcock. It is believed that one of the males raised with the Norton surname by Martha Hathcock Norton and her husband James Norton was really the son of one of Martha’s brothers, possibly Thomas Hathcock.753,800

The Hathcock Y-chromosome haplogroup is E1b1a. “Haplogroup E1b1a is an African lineage. It is currently hypothesized that this haplogroup dispersed south from northern Africa within the last 3,000 years with the Bantu agricultural expansion. E1b1a is also the most common lineage among African Americans. It is an old, diverse haplogroup with many branches and is found distributed throughout Africa today. It is also found at a very low frequency in North Africa and the Middle East.” There are several possible implications of this hapolgroup with regard to the Hathcock male line.

° First, if it is true that the original Hathcock immigrant was Thomas Hathcock (1635) or one of the other Hathcocks who came between 1672 and 1697, then this original immigrant may have been descended from a line of males who trace back to an African male who was taken to England in Roman times.

° Alternatively, it is possible that Edward Hathcock, who is the established ancestor of many of today’s male Hathcocks, was descended from a woman with the Hathcock married name and an African-American (slave or freed slave). This “non-paternal event” could have involved Edward’s mother or grandmother. If this hypothesis is true, then one would probably expect to find other modern Hathcocks with a different Y-DNA pattern, in that they would be descended from the same woman as a result of union with her husband, who would have carried both the Hathcock surname and Hathcock Y-DNA.

° A third possibility has been suggested by a number of individuals who believe that early Eastern Shore Hathcocks were of native American origin and followed the practice of matrilingal naming, whereby children carried the surname of the mother, rather than of the father. Under this scenario, there would be no linkage of the surname with the Y-DNA and one would expect to find a lot of Y-DNA diversity among modern Hathcock males. This is not the case. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case -- in 2008 the following male surnames have been found to have Hathcock Y-DNA: Johnson, Jacobs, Reynolds, Scott, Norton, Haithcoat, Heathcock (2), Hathcock, Hathcoat.

HEATHCOCK-NORTON HISTORY957
By Joseph Moore

Based on Douglas W. Hathcock, “Hathcock Family History, Volume IV: Hathcock Families of Ancient England, Colonial Virginia and the Carolinas (Huntsville, Al.: privately published, 1989);” Mary Norton Doggett, The Norton Family History of North Carolina (Greensboro, N.C.: privately published, 1992); and research and records of William Alton Norton of Pembroke Pines, Florida.

EDWARD HEATHCOCK of Northampton County, North Carolina, is at the present time the earliest proven ancestor of this family. The writer places his birth, no doubt in Virginia, at circa 1700, and his death as being soon after 1763, when he last appears on record. Several writers have stated as apparent fact that he was a son or grandson of the immigrant Thomas Heathcock who was transported from England to Virginia by William Stone of Northampton County on the Eastern Shore, coming aboard the Paule in 1635. While this claim is certainly possible, and may in fact be probable, it cannot at present be stated as fact. No proof of this immigrant Thomas Heathcock’s family or descendants is yet found. While he is the first individual of the Heathcock name recorded as coming to Virginia, that fact alone does not mean he is the ancestor of the subject Edward. There are indications of several Heathcock immigrants to Virginia aside from Thomas of the Eastern Shore: another Thomas Heathcock was transported in 1672, William and Henry Heathcock were stated to have been transported in 1697, and another Henry Heathcock in 1715, although no Virginia records are found on these men (Hathcock IV:36, as above). Francis Heathcock died in 1670 in Lancaster County in the Northern Neck of Virginia, and some persons presume him to be a son of the immigrant Thomas Heathcock of the Eastern Shore, but again, no proof of this assertion is found (ibid.).

The historian Paul Heinegg has written that an Edward Heathcock was in Henrico County, Virginia, from 1711 to 1721, and cites as references Henrico County “Orders, 1710-4, 85, 198; Minutes 1719-24, 142.” Heinegg speculates that this Edward Heathcock of Henrico County was likely the father of the subject Edward Heathcock later of Northampton County, North Carolina, and of Joseph Hathcock of Brunswick County, Virginia. The late Douglas W. Hathcock of Huntsville, Alabama, author of several volumes of Heathcock/Hathcock history, did not mention these Henrico County records and was evidently unaware of them. According to Mr. Hathcock, the first records locating Heathcocks in a specific Virginia locale are found in Brunswick County in 1732, when Joseph and Jesse Hathcock first appear in land records. As for Joseph Hathcock of Brunswick County, while he may have been a brother of Edward of Northampton, North Carolina, the relationship is not proven. Various Heathcocks/Hathcocks are found in Brunswick County records after 1732 and the names Edward and Thomas were used among various branches of the Heathcock/Hathcock family in Virginia and North Carolina.

The first known record of the subject Edward Heathcock appears in a Northampton County, North Carolina, land grant dated 22 June 1749, from Lord Granville to Joshua Step, referring to land on the east side of Arthur’s Creek joining Edward Heathcock and Norton’s Branch, establishing the presence of both the Heathcock and Norton families in the northwest corner of Northampton County just above the Roanoke River prior to this date in 1749 (Hathcock IV: 110; Doggett 5). The location of their lands was between the present towns of Gaston and Garysburg on the north side of the Roanoke River, stated to be some five miles west or northwest of the city of Roanoke Rapids.

The Nortons had settled in that part of Northampton County by 1744, having come from Bristol Parish, Virginia (probably from the part of Bristol Parish lying in Prince George County), where William and Anne Norton, parents of James and Mary Norton, were living in 1721. (The birth of James Norton, son of William and Anne, appears in the Bristol Parish Register, showing him born 2 October 1721, and baptized 30 October 1722; Mary Norton, their daughter, was born 9 January 1724, and baptized 1 November 1724 [Churchill Gibson Chamberlayne, The Vestry Book and Register of Bristol Parish, Virginia, 1720-1789 (Richmond: 1898); Doggett 3-4].) William and Anne’s daughter Mary Norton acquired, apparently as an inheritance, Northampton County land from the estate of Thomas Harrington, deceased, in 1744/5 (Northampton County Deed Book 1, p.180, 11 February 1744/5, Mary Harrington and Drury Harrington, Executors of Thomas Harrington, deceased, to Mary Norton of Northampton County, 100 acres in the fork of Arthur’s Creek, part of a patent of 200 acres granted to Thomas Harrington on 1 May 1742 [Doggett 5-6]). The deceased Thomas Harrington may have been the father of William Norton’s wife Anne, and thus the grandfather of Mary Norton, but this is unproven. Mary and Drury Harrington, in another deed dated on the same day and with almost the same wording, conveyed another 100 acres of land, from the same 200-acre grant, also apparently as an inheritance, to Mary Hill, daughter of the late John Hill, deceased (ibid.). Unfortunately, no family relationships to Thomas Harrington are stated in these deeds, thus they are left to conjecture. Mary Norton again appears in a 1744 deed dated 17 August, when John Wade conveyed to Thomas Parker, both of Ockonichy (Ocannechie) in Northampton County, one negro boy called Will and one horse (Northampton County Deed Book 1, p. 134, 17 August 1744, witnessed by Thomas Pace and Mary Norton [Doggett 5]). William Norton’s wife Anne Norton appears as witness to a Northampton County land deed in 1763 (Northampton County Deed Book 3, p. 241, 2 February 1763, Thomas Jordan to Burwell Bass, land on Arthur’s Creek joining Edward Heathcock and others [research of William Alton Norton]). In later years, reference is made to “Norton’s Corner” in Northampton County land records.

The subject Edward Heathcock, although a landowner and designated as planter in deed records, evidently died intestate sometime after 1763, and only two children, Martha Norton and Thomas Heathcock, are proven to have been born to him and his wife Catron. (Catron’s proper name was certainly Kathryn or Catherine, for which Catron is a known nickname [Hathcock IV-121]; as Catron Heathcock she cosigned a deed with Edward Heathcock in Northampton County in 1757 [Northampton County Deed Book 2, p. 387, dated 2 April 1757, Edward Heathcock to Drury Jordan, 100 acres on the north side of Ragland’s Ferry Road adjacent to James Norton and other lands of Heathcock, as abstracted in Hathcock IV:112].) The father-daughter relationship of Edward Heathcock to Martha Norton is proven by a Northampton County deed dated 26 November 1753, in which Edward Heathcock, planter, sold to “James Norton, his son-in-law,” 100 acres being part of a patent originally granted to Edward Heathcock (Northampton County Deed Book 2, p. 129 [Hathcock IV:111, 123; Doggett 6, 9]). In later records James Norton is identified as a planter (Northampton County Deed Book 3, p. 202, 22 June 1762, “James Norton of Northampton County, North Carolina, planter,” to Amey Heathcock, for 10 pounds, 50 acres of land on Arthur’s Creek, bounded by lands of James Norton and Sylvanus Stanton [Doggett 10]; Amy Heathcock is not identified).

Edward Heathcock’s relationship to Thomas Heathcock is proven by a deed dated 17 May 1758, in which Edward Hathcock, planter, sold to Thomas Hathcock, planter, “for the love and good will I have for my son [Thomas],” 100 acres of land on Turbyfield’s Run (Northampton County Deed Book 2, p. 476 [Hathcock IV:113, 118; Doggett 6]). Thomas Heathcock moved by 1769 to Anson County, North Carolina, on the South Carolina border, probably in the part of Anson that was afterward formed into Richmond County and ultimately became Scotland County, North Carolina. Thomas Heathcock was thus evidently the first of the Heathcocks and Nortons to settle there. In 1780 William and John Norton (William known to be a son of James and Martha [Heathcock] Norton and John believed to be William’s brother) were in Richmond County applying for land grants (research of William Alton Norton), but William returned to Northampton and the Norton family as a group did not make the move to Richmond County until 1787. (No other record of this John Norton has yet been found, whereby it is thought he died by 1790 or thereabout. He may have been the father of several young children who appeared in the James Norton household between 1786 and 1790, when James’s own children had long since established separate households of their own. It is thought that several of these children may have included at least some of the Nortons later in Fayette County, Georgia.)

Thomas Heathcock lived many years in Richmond County with his wife, children, and grandchildren. He is probably not the Thomas Hathcock whom Heinegg found as an insolvent on the Bute County, North Carolina, Tax Digest for 1769 (other records locate the subject Thomas Heathcock in Anson County in that year); he was surely the Thomas Heathcock listed in the 1790 Richmond County Census with three white males and three white females composing his household. His wife’s name is unknown and the number and names of all his children are also unknown. Douglas Hathcock attributed three sons to him: Samuel Heathcock, Thomas Heathcock, Jr., and John Heathcock, Sr., no one of whom is proven. Other writers give him other sons. Thomas Heathcock’s death was noted with what must have been considerable error and exaggeration in the Richmond County Carolina Observer of 12 May 1818:

LONGEVITY --- Died in Richmond County on the 13th instant at the seat of Colonel T. Pate, Thomas Hathcock, aged one hundred and twenty five years. He left a numerous family of children settled in different parts of the country, two of whom live in the State of Georgia, one aged ninety-three and the other eighty-seven, and one son in Richmond County, but little the rise of sixteen years of age! [Hathcock IV:132]

Samuel and John, Sr., were believed by Douglas Hathcock to be the two sons living in Georgia in 1818, and Thomas, Jr., the son who is traced in land records into South Carolina. (Hathcock also observed that the two sons in Georgia could have been Hosiah and William Hathcock of Elbert County in that state [Hathcock IV:139]). If he died in 1818 at age 125 years, Thomas Heathcock would have been born around 1693, which is many years too early in view of the later birth of his sister Martha Norton, whose husband James Norton was born in 1721, and her own birth surely occurred between 1720 and 1730. It is more likely that Thomas Heathcock was upwards of ninety years old at his death in 1818, and that, like his sister Martha, he was born sometime between the years 1720 and 1730. Such exaggeration in the ages of the “old and ancient” of that era were common in the popular press, and even in the census records of the time. As his own age was exaggerated, so were the ages of his sons as given above, the first two stated to be older than they were, and the last probably being a grandson or great-grandson rather than a son of this Thomas Heathcock.

As to Colonel Thorougood Pate, at whose home Thomas Heathcock died, associations among the Heathcock, Pate, and Norton families were apparently close and they often appeared in one another’s records in Richmond County. All three families were near neighbors on and near Joe’s Creek in southeast Richmond County, in what is now Scotland County. The writer suspects marriages among the Heathcocks, Nortons, and Pates that have escaped surviving records. (The question arises as to whether Colonel Thorougood Pate was in some way related to the family of Captain Adam Thorowgood who came to Virginia in 1621 and ultimately settled in Lower Norfolk County. Pate researchers find no connection and have determined that the Thoroughgood name was used in the Pate family prior to their settlement in Virginia [Joel M. Pate to the writer, 4 August 2002].)

It has been suggested that John Heathcock of Northampton County may have been a son of the subject Edward Heathcock (see Northampton County Deed Book 2, p. 475, 17 May 1758, Edward Heathcock to John Heathcock, for 2 pounds 10 shillings Virginia money, 20 acres on Turbafield’s Run joining Drury Jordan [Hathcock IV:113, 141; Doggett 6]), and that various other Heathcocks/Hathcocks may have been Edward’s children, but only Martha and Thomas are proven. Erroneous information has appeared in several webites relative to this Heathcock family, such as that suggesting these Heathcocks were Native American mixed bloods, or that this Edward Heathcock was the father of two families of mixed-blood children by black or mixed-blood African or Native American women. Given that one of these families was located in Halifax County and the other in Johnston County, all in the same year (1787), some twenty years after the death of the subject Edward Heathcock, it is clear that at least two different men named Edward Hathcock and Edward Haithcock were the subjects of such later records, and neither could be the Edward Heathcock of this account. All records found on the subject Edward Heathcock, his wife Catron, their son Thomas and daughter Martha, as well as Martha’s husband James Norton, his parents William and Anne Norton, and the children of James and Martha (Heathcock) Norton, identify them as free white persons; both the Heathcock and Norton families were of English and probably Norman origin. Douglas Hathcock regarded the name Catron as a French nickname for Catherine, and if so, Catron Heathcock may have been of French Huguenot extraction and descended from one of the many Huguenot families who settled in 1700 at Manakintowne in Henrico County, where the Heathcocks were evidently living by 1711.

Finally, the Edward Hathcock in Northampton County in the 1786 North Carolina State Census is not the subject Edward, but is likely one of the several Hathcocks/Haithcocks who moved into the Northampton County area from around Southampton, Greensville, and Brunswick Counties, Virginia.

Joseph Moore
Henry County, Georgia
26 October 2002