The Marables of the southern United States are a single family
descended from the immigrant George Marable of Jamestown (or, James Citty), 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 now called
the Merchant Rowhouse 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 Governor's
Council or 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.