John Page (Middle Plantation)

Colonel John Page (December 26, 1628 – January 23, 1692), a merchant in Middle Plantation on the Virginia Peninsula, was a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses and the Council of the Virginia Colony. A wealthy landowner, Page donated land and funds for the first brick Bruton Parish Church. Col. Page was a prime force behind the small community gaining the site of the new College of William & Mary, founded in 1693, as well as a chief proponent of the village being designated the colony's capital in 1698.

These events resulted in the renaming of Middle Plantation as Williamsburg in 1699, perhaps most well known as the birthplace of democratic governmental principals among the patriots before and during the American Revolution. In the early 21st century, Colonel Page's tiny Middle Plantation is the modern home of the restored colonial city now known as Colonial Williamsburg, one of the most popular tourism destinations in the world.

According to the Genealogy of the Page Family in Virginia, published in 1883, "John Page, son of Thomas Page (b. 1597), of Sudbury, County Middlesex, England, seventh son of Richard Page, second son of John Page (b. 1528), first of Henry Page (b. 1500), of Wembley, County Middlesex, England, all of the Parish of Harrow, was born at Sudbury in A.D. 1627. He immigrated to America about 1650 at about 23 years of age, and became the progenitor of the Page-family in Virginia." John Page's niece Mary Whaley (daughter of his brother Matthew and wife of James Whaley of Bruton Parish, York County, Virginia) is buried in the churchyard.

John Page became a merchant, and emigrated to the Virginia colony; his sister Elizabeth (wife of Edward Digges) and brother Matthew also emigrated to Virginia. In about 1656, John Page married Alice Lukin, (1625–1698) perhaps the daughter of Edward Lukin, a Virginia Company shareholder. The Pages originally lived in the New Towne section at Jamestown.

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