Additional Information
The Society of the Whitfields is proud to honor and preserve the memory of William and Rachel Whitfield, whom we recognize as the founders of our line of the family originating in North Carolina. In the early 1740s, they courageously ventured forth into the sparsely populated lands along Neuse River to create a new and hopefully better life for themselves, quickly becoming one of the leading and most respected families for many miles around. Time and again, William was selected for positions of leadership, an accomplishment rarely achieved without the support of a loving wife. William and Rachel were hardy pioneers who contributed to the success of North Carolina as a colony, and when the time came, fought for its independence from the tyranny of the English crown. They raised a family that they clearly cared deeply about, transferring much of their financial success to each of their nine children through generous dowries for the daughters, and separate plantations for each of the sons. Their descendants spread throughout the South and beyond, and many had distinguished careers as doctors, bankers, governors, professors, justices, legislators, planters, and more. Many of us can trace twelve generations from William and Rachel through our grandchildren. A family site on rootsweb.com projects that a single couple from the early 1700s has produced 265,000 descendants through twelve generations, over 236,000 of whom are alive today (http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~pamonval/genealogy/howbig.html). With the next generation, both of those numbers exceed 700,000. These are conservative estimates, as they are based on an assumption of only three children per couple per generation. William and Rachel had nine children and 104 grandchildren. And if that number seems too fantastic to believe, here are their nine children, and the number of children that each had (as complied by Emma Morehead Whitfield in her “Whitfield, Bryan, Smith” book):
William (29 children via 4 marriages)
Elizabeth (14 children via 2 marriages)
Sarah (7 children)
Bryan (13 children via 2 marriages)
Charity (12 children)
Needham (13 children via 4 marriages)
Rachel (6 children via what is thought to be 4 marriages)
Mary (1 child)
Lewis (9 children via 3 marriages)
Accordingly, the descendants of William and Rachel must be exponentially greater than the rootsweb.com model, and must number in the millions. We give them our profound thanks.
