Background/Project History
The Ragsdale family
name is said to come from Ragdale, England, meaning
either "valley at the pass" or "dweller in the valley
where the lichen grows." Henry Ragsdale was born in
Leicestershire, England about 1450, his son Robert was
born about 1485 in Ragsdale, Leicestershire, England. He
died about 1559 and some of his children were Henry,
Thomas R. and John R. Henry was born about 1510; he
married Elizabeth Oglethorpe about 1532 , and their
children were William, Dorothy, Elizabeth, Margaret,
Owen and Catherine. Henry died in 1559. William was born
in 1575; he married a woman named Heathcote, about 1615;
they had a son, Godfrey I, who married Lady Mary Cookney
and they both came to America.
Godfrey Ragsdale I and his wife, Lady Mary Cookney
arrived in Virginia some time late in the summer of
1638. They were some of the first Ragsdales to come to
America. Godfrey Ragsdale I ands his wife, Lady Mary
Cookney lived in Henrico County Virginia on a 300 acre
plantation on February 25, 1642, upon the north side of
the Appomattox River.
On April 18, 1644 afterwards known as "Opechancanough
Day" the Pamunkee Indians and several tribes in the
Indian Federation went on a rampage. There was a carnage
that was greater than the one in the Norfolk area in
1622. The Indians slaughtered no less than 500
Englishman. This massacre fell almost entirely upon the
frontier Counties at the head of the great rivers, and
upon the plantations on the south side of the James
River. Both Godfrey I and his wife Lady Mary were killed
and scalped.
From documents we know that Godfrey and Lady Mary had a
son named Godfrey Ragsdale II, who was born in 1644.
Because his mother and father had been killed in the
"Jamestown Massacre", Godfrey II's next door neighbors
raised him and later became his in-laws. Historians say
that most Ragsdales in America came from Godfrey II.
