Norfolk City-Princess Anne County Virginia USGenWeb Archives Biographies.....Burruss, Margaret Walters Dey ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/vafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher http://www.rootsweb.com/~archreg/vols/00001.html#0000031 February 26, 2008, 9:11 pm Author: Leonard Wilson (1916) MARGARET WALTERS DEY BURRUSS MRS. MARGARET WALTERS DEY BURRUSS, widow of the late Nathaniel Burruss of Norfolk, Virginia, is a daughter of William and Margaret Catherine (Walters) Dey. Her father was a native resident of Princess Anne County, Virginia; her mother was a daughter of Captain George Walters of Maryland. Particulars regarding her marriage and children are given in the sketch of Nathaniel Burrus, her late husband, in this volume. Although the branch of the Dey family to which Mrs. Burruss belongs has been identified with Virginia since 1790, the name is usually associated with New York where the family was very prominent for generations and for whom Dey Street was named. During the last century Dey Street, Greenwich Street and Broadway were the center of fashion as is Fifth Avenue to-day. In the Revolutionary period a distinguished member of the family was Colonel Tunis Dey whose mansion at Preakness, New Jersey, served as headquarters for General Washington from July 1st to November, 1780. According to accepted family tradition this family is descended from one Count Isarn de Die who participated in the First Crusade in 1096 and was a grand-master of the French order of the Lords and Chevaliers. Evidently, in later generations, some of his descendants became Huguenots, for they left France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and settled in Holland and Scotland, where the spelling of the name was changed to Dey in Holland and Dye in Scotland. Under the same pronunciation but with three different spellings the family name has been prominent in the annals of four countries, France, Holland, Scotland and America. The branch of the family from which Mrs. Burruss descends was founded in Virginia by Lewis Dey who came from Middlesex County, New Jersey, in 1790, settling in Princess Anne County with his son, William Bates Dey, the father of William Dey. Lewis Dey had served as captain in Nixon's Light Horse (militia) during the Revolution. He was twice married, his first wife being Agnes Bates, a native of New Jersey; his second wife, Mrs. Fannie Williamson of Princess Anne County, daughter of Captain Hinley. Lewis Dey was born in 1758 and was baptized in the old Shrewsbury Episcopal Church in New Jersey. Mrs. Burruss is a descendant of Captain Nicholas Stillwell, who organized a troop of horse in 1644, and in the campaign against the Indian King Apechancanough, brother and successor of Powhatan, overcame and captured the chief and finally broke the power of the tribe. She is a granddaughter in the fifth generation of William and Mary Tillyer of Staten Island, New York. William Tillyer was the son of John Tillyer, an ensign in the British Army. Tillyer deeded St. Andrew's Church, with the land and burying ground attached, and this was the first English church on Staten Island. Mrs. Burruss is a lineal descendant of Obadiah Holmes, a native of Manchester, England, who lived in Boston in 1639. He was Commissioner-General to the Court from Warrinke, Rhode Island, in 1655-56, and Commissioner-General to the Court from Portsmouth also in 1650. Obadiah Holmes was a descendant of the ancient English family of Hulme, whose ancestral seat was in Lancashire. Members of his family were knighted by Henry II and their ancestral line dates back to the coming of William the Conqueror. The Perrin family also takes its place in Mrs. Burruss' genealogical chart. This was a distinguished Huguenot family; one of its members served as an officer in the Protestant armies during the terrible religious wars which raged in France during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is recorded that Roger Perrin, Seigneur of Barneville and Roswell, accompanied William the Conqueror, later joining the First Crusade, marching to Palestine under Robert, Duke of Normandy. He evidently acquitted himself gallantly, as he was honorably mentioned in the records of that period. It is from this Roger Perrin that the immigrant Daniel Perrin who came to this country on the "Ship Philip" in 1665 in the suite of his cousin, Sir Philip Carteret, the first governor of the Colony of New Jersey, is descended. Mrs. Burruss is the granddaughter in the fifth generation of this Daniel Perrin and his wife Maria Thorel. She is also a lineal descendant of Jan Tomassee Van-Dyke who was born in Holland. An education, acquired in part at Norfolk College and finished in Richmond after the Civil War, has developed Mrs. Burruss' musical and literary tastes. For many years her home has been a social center, from which is dispensed liberal entertainment to cultured people. She is versatile, and, besides being a veteran traveler well acquainted with nearly every place of interest in our country, she writes travelogues. She has a better business equipment than many men of affairs and is a most capable manager. She is keenly interested in the civic life of her community and takes an active interest in everything that tends toward its improvement. She belongs to Christ Episcopal Church; and is also a member of the Norfolk Country Club, the Woman's Club, and the Colonial Dame Club of the city of Washington. For several years she served as president of the Entertainment Committee of the "Retreat for the Sick," now known as the "Protestant Hospital" and was successful in raising large sums for that institution by entertainments which taxed all of the resources of her versatile mind. Prior to the death of Captain Burruss in 1908, she entertained elaborately, and even now her home is the scene of many pleasant social gatherings and musicales which young people enjoying her generous hospitality love to frequent. This lady presents an exceedingly interesting study: three distinct racial strains unite in her; French, Dutch and English. It would be difficult to find anyone who can trace an ancestry from a larger number of distinguished families of America. The names of her forbears include Perrin, Tillyer, Thorel, Fontaine, Bodine, Holmes, Stillwell, Bates, Thompson, Clark, Bennett, Van-Dyke and Dey. She has in her possession the Coats of Arms of all the above-mentioned families and that of Count Isarn de Die. A descendant of sturdy pioneers, she possesses, as might be expected, an unusual share of patriotic spirit. With such an inheritance her natural love for her native country has led her into great activity in the leading patriotic societies. She holds membership in the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Virginia, the Huguenot Society of New York, the Holland Dame Society of New York, the Great Bridge, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the United Daughters of 1812. In the last mentioned she was named by the President-General, Mrs. Flora Adams Darling, as the first president of the State of Virginia; she resigned from that position to serve as first vice-president, which office she filled until 1912. She has a right to pride in so distinguished an ancestry and her efforts to perpetuate the lives and deeds of these worthy ancestors, through the medium of the patriotic societies to which she belongs, deserves praise. She is a good citizen in the best sense of the word; one who has lived up to the high privileges of splendid traditions and who has filled her place in her generation worthily and with honor. Additional Comments: Extracted from: MAKERS OF AMERICA BIOGRAPHIES OF LEADING MEN OF THOUGHT AND ACTION THE MEN WHO CONSTITUTE THE BONE AND SINEW OF AMERICAN PROSPERITY AND LIFE VOLUME II By LEONARD WILSON, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ASSISTED BY PROMINENT HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL WRITERS Illustrated with many full page engravings B. F. JOHNSON, INC. CITY OF WASHINGTON, U. S. A. 1916 Copyright, 1916 by B. F. Johnson, Inc. Photo: http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/norfolkcity/photos/bios/burruss73gbs.jpg File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/norfolkcity/bios/burruss73gbs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/vafiles/ File size: 8.5 Kb