Where possible, original images of census records, wills, court records, manuscripts, and other material, will be posted on this site, and secondly, abstracts of records that have been transcribed by others, especially the transcriptions by Edna Zornes Cabler. A Pardue descendant, she was also a professional genealogist and a marvel of almost complete accuracy in transcribing the old handwriting of the dusty volumes of court records and rolls of microfilm. She died in 1987 not long before the proliferation of online genealogy and I've often wondered how she would have used the new medium. Her name echoes through the hills and halls of the watersheds of the Cumberland in Middle Tennessee for many a grateful family historian. RIP! We miss you, still.
The exact spelling of the original surname for the Pardue families living in the watersheds of the James and Appomattox rivers cannot be definitively determined from the paucity of documented records during the Colonial Period in America. However, an extant unpublished manuscript existing in 2006 in possession of descendants of George Pardue, a grandson of John Pardue who died in 1769 in Bute County, North Carolina, relates that Dr. George Madison Pardue, a grandson of George Pardue, said that the name was spelled Pardue, not Perdue, and that the name was originally spelled Pardieu previous to their ancestors' arrival in America from France. Before his arrival in 1849 to the home of his kinsman, Littleton John Pardue, the name in the family Bible of Littleton John had been rendered Perdue when thereafter the spelling changed to Pardue. Littleton John Pardue was the second to last son of George Pardue.
In 1849, Dr. Pardue came to the Cumberland in Montgomery County, Tennessee from Granville County, North Carolina where his grandfather, George Pardue, had married Sarah Rowland in Granville County in 1785. Dr. Pardue was born in 1822 in Granville County where he lived until his own coming to the Cumberland. Two years before Dr. Pardue's birth, in 1820, the elder George moved with the younger members of his family to the Cumberland as noted by his great-granddaughter, Willie Bell Pardue, also in an unpublished manuscript, a copy of which is in possession of this compiler. Willie Bell Pardue was the granddaughter of Littleton John Pardue and great-granddaughter of George Pardue.
In the 1850 Federal Census records of Montgomery County, Dr. Pardue was living in the household of Littleton John Pardue, where, also, residing in the household was the eighty-eight year old widow, Sarah Pardue, nee Rowland, wife of George Pardue and the mother of Littleton John Pardue.
George Pardue was about 10 years old when his grandfather, John Pardue, died in Bute County, North Carolina in 1769. Two years before, in 1767, George Pardue's father, Joseph the third son of John Pardue, had moved his family from Virginia to Bute County, where he bought land on Yallowood Creek. The land was next door to his father's land on Owen's Creek who, when it was still part of Granville County, had bought it in 1761 when he moved from Amelia County, Virginia to North Carolina. Yallowood Creek was a tributary of Owens Creek.
In August 1761, John Pardue had sold his land on Deep Creek in Amelia County and a month later, in September 1761, bought the land on Owens Creek in Granville County which three years later in 1764 became Bute County which then in 1779 was discontinued and from which both Warren and Franklin Counties were formed, in which Owens Creek became a part of Warren County. When John moved to North Carolina in 1761, his three eldest sons, John the oldest, and sons, William and Joseph, had remained in Amelia County by which time both William and Joseph at the least had married.
In 1767, John's eldest son, John, sometimes in the records called the younger, also moved to North Carolina and in 1769, at the death of his father, he was willed a second portion of land in accordance with the Biblical practice from which is derived the law of primogeniture, wherein the first born son can receive a double portion of inheritance. In 1780, John's second son, William, joined the remaining members of his Pardue family still living in that part of North Carolina, including his brother, Joseph.
The first rendering thus far found of the surname in the Appomattox and James River area was in 1730 on page one of the Henrico County, Virginia Parish Register of Henrico County, where the writer clearly wrote the name Pardue's son, not sons as transcribed in error in some publications. Again, in 1732, in the same record, the name was also rendered Pardue. An image of page one of the manuscript is available on this site.
The earliest Pardue signatures presently found by this compiler are located in The George Washington Papers archived in the Library of Congress where, in 1757, in the records of Captain Joshua Lewis' Seventh Virginia Militia Company, Joseph Pardue clearly signed his name two separate times as "Joseph Pardue". The Seventh Virginia Militia Company during the French and Indian War participated in the campaign led by a twenty-four year colonel named George Washington in the march to capture Ft. Duquesne held by the French, the site now of present day Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.
Joseph's signatures in those papers and his signature on his will written in 1789, in concert with the 1730 and 1732 Henrico Parish records, along with descendants' noting French Huguenot ancestry and the greater prevalence of the spelling as Pardue - and sometimes Pardieu - in the Colonial Virginia and eighteenth century North Carolina and South Carolina records of the documented children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of John Pardue who died in 1769, strongly supports Dr. Pardue's story to his Tennessee kinfolk that the name was indeed spelled Pardue, the Anglicized form of the original French spelling of Pardieu.
As noted on Dr. Pardue's arrival in Montgomery County the spelling entries in the Bible of his Tennessee cousins changed from Perdue to Pardue. The spelling of the name subsequently also changed in the public records for all other Pardue kinfolk as well. John Pardue, George's younger brother, appears to have preceded by some five years, his elder's brother's arrival in 1820 to the Cumberland.
The forgoing is an example of how names sometimes come to be changed in particular branches of a family before the advent of the more precise modern record keeping.
Descendants of Joseph Pardue, who as noted wrote his name Pardue, through time have spelled their names, not only Pardue, but, also, Perdue, as well as other variations, until the arrival of more precise rules of language came into existence. Some of Joseph's descendants to the present day have continued the spelling as Perdue. Records of descendants of Joseph's brothers named in their father's will in 1769 also document variations, Perdue being the more common spelling of the phonetically pronounced variation of this name.
Because of the phonetic spellings recorded by the various recorders, the importance of the DNA project cannot be underestimated. By determining as early as possible the DNA profile of an ancestor better serves research efforts in the more distant records.
After many years of research by various descendants trying to find a connection between the Perdue families from the Eastern Shore of Maryland and the Pardue families of the James and Appomattox River area of Virginia, the advent of DNA testing conclusively confirmed there was no common surname ancestor between the two families since the advent of surnames some one thousand years ago.
The DNA project also confirms that those who appear with a variation of the name, mostly spelled Perdue, in the Colonial records of Henrico County and later Chesterfield County, formed in 1749 from Henrico, who have documented descendants and who still mostly spell their names Perdue, do share, within several generations, a common ancestor with John Pardue who died in 1769.
It is presently unknown, at this writing in 2016, who that ancestor was, nor how many generations separated them. DNA for genealogical purposes currently can only determine a genetic kinship within a parameter of generations and not the degree of that kinship. Determination of degree of kinship may well change in the future as the science of DNA becomes more refined.
Lines of descent from John Pardue who died in 1769 can be clearly documented by a number of his descendants from records found beginning in October 1743 in Amelia County, Virginia, where the name was often rendered Perdue by the clerks responsible for the public records. The October 1743 record is the earliest record thus far found documenting that he was the John Pardue who died in 1769 in Bute County, North Carolina. Earlier references prior to October 1743 of a John Pardue in the James and Appomattox River area records are not conclusive, land and court records providing strong evidence pointing to the fact there were two adult men named John P*rdue in the area prior to the 1743 record.
In the last years of residence in Amelia County, Virginia before John Pardue's move in 1761 to North Carolina, the clerical renderings of his name, or the names of his sons in the local records, the Pardue spelling had begun to more frequently appear. And, in his last appearance in 1761 in the Amelia County records, John's name was recorded as Pardue in the deed selling his last land of 400 acres to Henry Walthall.
To the point of this writing, this compiler has been unable to find any records for any of the other families of the Lower Appomattox showing any public renderings but the Perdue variation during the Colonial period. Since then, the Pardue name sometimes appears in various documents, though, most appear to have continued the Perdue spelling.
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As previously noted, the cumulative body of information, while not decisively irrefutable, points to Dr. Pardue's assertion that Pardue is the more correct spelling of the name for those families appearing in the records during the first half of the 18th century in this area of Colonial Virginia. Perhaps the future might one day yield additional records to more precisely document this period.
For the above reasons, the name is spelled Pardue in the narratives on this site, reverting to the spelling in the original records in any transcriptions appearing on this site.
Not long after I began to actively research my Pardue paternal line, with the help of the previous mentioned Mrs. Cabler, we were able to obtain the documents confirming our descent from John Pardue who died in 1769 in Bute County, North Carolina through his third son, Joseph, who died in 1790.
Through the years there have been much speculation and many conjectures, but, no documents, or combination of documents, have been found confirming any link to John's forebears, though new, recently found historical sketches of early descendants, combined with other references, point to the distinct possibility that John's father, or grandfather, or, perhaps, he, himself, was a part of the French Refugees that came to the mouth of the James River in Virginia in 1700. See the post "Huguenot Or Not".
Sometime ago I began fact checking the voluminous amount of information accumulated over the years, to find and correct errors, and, if possible, to shed light on assumptions, not only on my Pardue direct line, but, also, on collateral lines, to see if better clues could be found to determine the ancestry of Joseph Pardue and, John, his father.
There had always been a number of lingering questions in the information I had. And, seeing conjectures and speculations presented as fact (and never intended to be made public, as has evolved, by the original researchers) surrounding those lingering questions proliferating exponentially evermore on internet databases, in the interest of P*rdue researchers, more especially for those who more immediately hold this name and their future generations, this site was created to further other research and conclusively document, if possible, to the earliest generations. The documents and information posted here is the attempt to correct, better inform, and expand the knowledge that is presently known. Further, this site was created to provide information to augment one's own research.
At present, owing to the issues of privacy connected to internet use and other privacy concerns, the owner of this website has no plans to post material much past the known first several generations of the Pardue family and in the interest of preserving that privacy, no present plans to post any databases, or links to databases, whether personal or commercial.
All errors, or confusions, present in these posts are entirely my own. Please feel free to leave comments, corrections, recommendations, and additions to the material posted here so that a more accurate and completed picture of this family may be compiled for present descendants, especially for those who more closely hold this name, and for all those who will one day come to share this name.
Genealogy is never done; it is always a work in progress!
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