Ancestors and Descendants
of the Immigrant George Marable
of Jamestown, Virginia

The Marables of the southern United States are a single family descended from the immigrant George Marable of Jamestown, James City Co., Virginia. Arriving in Virginia in about 1652 at the age of 21 or so, George Marable was the eldest son of Valentyne Marable, a bricklayer and mason of Canterbury, Kent, England. It seems likely that his emigration from England was in part a mercantile venture, arranged with London merchants, although there is no documentation of such a venture. At the end of his life he held a leasehold (1683) on 117 acres of the Governor's Land adjoining Jamestown Island, but court records surviving from Charles City Co. from the 1670's suggest that he was more a merchant than a planter.

He started his family in the middle tenement of the three row houses known as the Old or First State House whose ruins can be seen at Jamestown even today. With the family rooms above, the lower floor served double or triple duty as an ordinary (inn) frequented by visitors to Jamestown on commercial or government business and even, from time to time, as the meeting place for the House of Burgesses.

The immigrant had only one son who left issue: Maj. George Marable of James City Co. Born in about 1665, he married in or before 1700 Mary Hartwell, daughter of Capt. William Hartwell, and they had four sons.

Henry Hartwell Marable of Surry and then Sussex counties left no issue, but the other three founded the three main branches of the Marable family. William, the eldest, established the restless branch that moved from Southside Virginia to the Carolinas and Georgia, then to Alabama and Mississippi, then to Texas. George Marable, Jr. of Charles City Co. is the ancestor of most of the Marables who remained in Virginia. Benjamin Marable, the youngest son, produced the branch that moved on to Tennessee.

These pages show all of the generations of the descendants of George Marable of James City, as they are now known, and the two generations of his ancestors that are known.

Table of Contents

Ancestors and Descendants of George Marable