A HISTORY OF THE FAMILY
John Sidney Davenport, Jr. &
Louise Marguerite Warwick
JUNE 2026 · NEW HAVEN · RICHMOND · ONE FAMILY
Compiled by Maria Byrd Davenport
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INTRODUCTION
Two Families. One Reunion.
On February 3, 1904, two extraordinary American legacies converged in Richmond, Virginia.
John Sidney Davenport, Jr. (“Sidney”) came from New England, carrying the full weight of the Puritan intellectual tradition. His was a family whose documented roots stretch back across many generations to the founding of New Haven Colony in 1638, with ancestors who studied at Yale, served in Connecticut courts, and helped shape regional civic and religious life over nearly three centuries.
Louise Marguerite (“Marguerite”) Warwick carried the deep history of Virginia's Tidewater gentry. Her family connected through the Warwick, Byrd, Carter, and Randolph lines to the founding of Richmond itself, to Westover Plantation, and to the earliest English settlements on this continent.
Together they built a family in Richmond. Their five sons, each named to honor a different branch of their combined heritage, embodied everything their parents carried. Every person reading this is part of that story.
Four Centuries in History
THE STORY
The Virginia side connects to six founding English colonial families.
1600s
THE REV. JOHN DAVENPORT FOUNDS NEW HAVEN
1700s
WILLIAM BYRD II LAYS OUT RICHMOND
1800s
WARWICK BROTHERS KILLED IN CIVIL WAR
1900s
THE TWO LINES UNITE IN RICHMOND
Two Families, Nine Generations.
The Rev. John Davenport co-founded New Haven Colony in 1638 and envisioned the college that would become Yale. A member of the family has attended Yale in every generation since the college was founded, alongside Connecticut legislators, jurists, and a Continental Army major who welcomed Lafayette to Stamford in 1824.
NEW ENGLAND
The Davenports
Cheshire · Coventry · New Haven
The Rev. John Davenport co-founded New Haven Colony in 1638 and envisioned the college that would become Yale. The line that followed produced nine consecutive generations of Yale men, Connecticut legislators, jurists, and one Continental Army major who welcomed Lafayette to Stamford in 1824.
VIRGINIA
The Warwicks
Thomas Warwick patented 200 acres on the Rappahannock in 1664. Six generations later, Corbin Warwick led the Richmond tobacco trade and lost two sons to the Civil War. Through the Byrd, Carter, Randolph, and Bradfute lines, the family connects to the First Families of Virginia and the founding of Richmond itself.
Middlesex County · Lynchburg · Richmond
The Honest Record
What the Record Remembers
Across both lines, three places where the record tells the truth, even when the truth was costly
I.
Samuel Sewall's Apology
January 14, 1697 · Boston
The only Salem judge who ever publicly accepted personal blame. He later wrote The Selling of Joseph, one of the first anti-slavery pamphlets published in America, and was ridiculed for it.
II.
The Deed of Gift
August 1, 1791 · Virginia
Robert Carter III, grandson of "King" Carter, quietly filed the largest single act of private manumission in American history before the Civil War — 452 people freed. Virginia society shunned him for it.
III.
The Secret Diary
c. 1709–1741 · Westover
William Byrd II, founder of Richmond, kept a shorthand diary never meant to be read. Decoded in the 1940s, it recorded, in the same flat tone he used for the weather, his reading, his routines, and the brutal violence he inflicted on the people he enslaved. It tells the truth about him in spite of him, and stands today as one of the most important documents of colonial Virginia.
FAMILY LEGACIES
Religious, Secular, and Military Leadership
From The Rev. John Davenport's New Haven theocracy to the Great Awakening to nine generations in Yale's classrooms.
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Theologians & Religious Figures
From Puritan New England to the Great Awakening
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Governors & Civic Leaders
Four centuries of legislators, judges, statesmen
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