Last updated September 15, 2023.
Babb is another of the surnames whose bearers have been positive tested for R1b-BY729. Unfortunately, no finer haplogroup resolution is available for them so we can only guess their position within its structure. From STR comparison it would seem they belong to a separate sub-branch of BY729 with Smith and Fenton surnames.
So far all Babbs yDNA matched to this paternal line are US residents which implies the typical problem of finding their European origins. There is no reason to doubt they came to America from the British Isles and the available historical data point to south-eastern Virginia as the area of their initial settlement in the Colonies. This is the starting position of any research. It must also be mentioned that there is a very active Babb Family Association producing a lot of original research on Babb genealogy in general, no matter to which genetic line they belong. In its terminology the Eastern Virginia/BY729 Babbs are earmarked as the White Stags.
The earliest ancestor connected by an uninterrupted paper trail to one of the tested Babb males is James Babb, 1716 – 1750, who died in Nansemond Co, Virginia.1Among his several sons was Christopher Babb, 1736 – 1833, born in Nansemond and died in North Carolina, a sort of a “star” in the south-eastern Babbs genealogy. Thus, until a yDNA tested BY729 Babb from the British Isles makes his breakthrough entrée into the research, Nansemond is the key location for any attempts towards finding the family origins. This brings into picture Captain Thomas Babb, master of the ship Hopewell, who obtained a land grant in Norfolk Co, Virginia, in 1641 . Both Norfolk and Nansemond counties are extinct, however historically they were adjacent or even partly coincided which makes Captain Thomas the first Babb recorded in this key area. The inference that he was the “founding father” of the BY729 American Babb line would therefore be quite substantiated and, in fact, he is presented so in some online genealogies. Yet the inference is problematic for a number of reasons, one of them being that he is often claimed to be related to Philip Babb of the Isle of Shoals, Maine, progenitor of another thriving Babb line in the US. The problem in this case arises from the fact, that Isle of Shoals and Nansemond lines are proven to be genetically unrelated.
James b. 1716 is sometimes attributed birth in Nansemond and sometimes in York Co, Virginia, by various online sources. Since no birth records were kept in that period and his parents are not known the two variants represent mere assumptions implied by Babbs presence in both these counties at the time. This is just the first hint that history of the south-eastern Babbs was more complex. Let us have a closer look at the Captain Thomas introduced above. He is generally presented as shipmaster of Stepney (London), husband of Eleanor (Elinor) Fellgate, who had dealings both in New England and Virginia before acquiring land in Norfolk, his property passing to his daughter in 1655, by then the only living child. What exactly do the surviving sources tell us about his colonial ventures? As we already know, Thomas Babb was granted 100 acres of land “upon the Western branch of Nansamund river, on the Southern side” in 16412The date of 1651 in Jean Sargent’s book Babb families is clearly a typo. . This wasn’t his only land in the area, in 1646 he received two more grants as Thomas Babe – “300 acres lying on the Southward side of a creek called the Indian Creek being a branch of the westward branch of Nansimun river” and “153 acres on the Southward side of the Western branch of Nansimun river“, .
- 1Among his several sons was Christopher Babb, 1736 – 1833, born in Nansemond and died in North Carolina, a sort of a “star” in the south-eastern Babbs genealogy.
- 2The date of 1651 in Jean Sargent’s book Babb families is clearly a typo.