In the absence of county records, family tradition and oral history have been the mainstay for this Drake family. The family traditions are quite rich, and without them there would be even greater difficulty. However, as I hope to show, this oral history must be analyzed and used with care. Although much of it is surprisingly accurate, there is clear evidence that mistakes have crept into the family traditions.¹

The usual starting point for Drake genealogy in Abbeville County is one James Drake, who was born in 1784, and who married Nancy Breckenridge in 1805. From James forward things have long been in good condition, genealogically.² There is a large organic Tree type pedigree in circulation showing James with all his descendants drawn on branches. This tree was printed in the mid 20th Century, but was based on an earlier version dating at least to 1923.³

Oral tradition has long averred that James Drake was the son of John Drake, who sailed from Dover England in 1735. A descendant of James, one William McGukin, may have written down this tradition around 1900, although a copy of this writing has not come to light. There is an existing letter written by McGukin in 1900, which gives the mother of James Drake as Mary Dunn. The letter does contain inaccuracies, however.⁴

The family tradition became "carved in stone," literally, when a monument was erected in the family burying ground in the 1940s, which reads "This spot is forever sacred to the memory of John Drake who came from Dover, England in 1735 and died in 1799." This monument was said to have replaced an earlier marker, and is obviously based on a tradition which antedates its unveiling. Unfortunately, the circular created by the family at that time is a rambling account of the various Drakes thrown together, and most of it involves the order of service for the unveiling of the monument. The circular does repeat the tradition that John Drake sailed from Dover, though the year is given as 1635.⁵

Confronted with such tradition, some critical appraisal is necessary. If John Drake were the father of James, he clearly cannot have come from England in 1735 and yet fathered a child born in 1784. Later versions of the tradition apparently tried to "fix" this dilemma, either by changing 1735 to 1635 or by proposing that John was the grandfather of James.

However, I think it is much more likely that the oral tradition of John was "contaminated" by the reference to one John Drake, an emigrant in 1635 found in HottenŐs List,⁶ and possibly by a confusion of "Devon," from which so many Drakes came, with "Dover" so prominently associated with seaports in the minds of many. Clearly someone in the last century was a genealogist, and did some research, but it all cannot be correct.


1    The oral history is analyzed in detail in Appendix A.
2    See for example the web published account of this family by Kim Fleming at http://web.infoave.net/~kfleming/drake.html.
3    It was first drawn on a window shade by Virginia, wife of J. Harvey Drake; Louise Ervin, "Digging Through History: As Families Search for Their Roots, They Find Themselves," Anderson Independent, 27 October, 1985, p. 1E.
4    McGukin mistakenly includes a sister of James Drake as a sibling of Mary Dunn Drake. He also errs on the name of Mary DunnŐs father. See Appendix A.1.
5    See Appendix A.2 and A.4.
6    John Camden Hotten, The Original Lists of Persons of Quality 1600-1700, Genealogical Publishing Company, 1986, p. 128. However, this John went to Barbados.