George Thorpe (Virginia colonist)

George Thorpe (baptized January 1, 1576 - died March 22, 1622 at Berkeley Hundred), was a noted landowner, member of parliament, distiller, educator and major investor in early colonial companies in the Americas. George Thorpe was born at Wanswell Court, the family estate in Gloucestershire, England. He is the eldest son of Nicholas and Mary Wilkes Thorpe.

February 20, 1598 - George Thorpe matriculates at the Middle Temple in London, where he likely studied law. On July 11, 1600, George Thorpe and Margaret Porter marry. Although her date of death is unknown, she was buried at Berkley Church on March 10, 1610. The couple had no surviving children. Less than a year later, on February 21, 1611, George Thorpe and Margaret Harris marry. The couple will have five children, of whom at least two, William and John, will live to maturity.

In 1614, George Thorpe represents Gloucestershire in a short session called the Addled Parliament. Also by this date, George Thorpe became a major investor in the Virginia Company of London, the East India Company, Somers Isles Company and the Berkeley Hundred.

"He was related both in blood and by marriage with some of the distinguished men of the Jamestown colony, and among others with Sir Thomas Dale. The Thorpe family was a prominent one and our subject became a gentleman pensioner, a gentleman of the privy chamber of the king and a member of parliament from Portsmouth. He was a man of strong religious feeling and became greatly interested in the problem of the conversion of the savages with which his countrymen were newly coming into contact in the new world. He formed a partnership with Sir William Throckmorton, John Smith of Nibley (John Smith (antiquarian born 1567)), Richard Berkeley (son of Henry Berkeley (d. 1608) and grandson of SirRichard Berkeley (died 1604)) and others for the ownership and conduct of a private plantation in Virginia, and selling his English property, he set sail for Virginia, where he arrived March, 1620. He was appointed deputy to govern the college land and to have three hundred acres and ten tenants, and on June 28, 1620, he was made a member of the council." In March 1620, George Thorpe sailed from Bristol for Virginia. He is later made a deputy in charge of 10,000 acres of land to be set aside for a university and Indian school and is also named to the governor's Council of Virginia. Shortly afterwards, plantation investors remove Captain John Woodlief as commander of Berkeley Hundred and replace him with George Thorpe and William Tracy.

...
Wikipedia