Further Thoughts Concerning Origins of the Yancey Family

Do the Yanceys really descend from families of Welsh descent ??
Are they connected to the Nanney family of Wales ??
Is there truth to the story of 4 brothers coming in 1642 with Sir William Berkeley??

Main report concerning Origin of Family

Other sites include:

The Nanney Family
Coat of Arms among the Yancey Family
Early Yanceys in America
1704 Quit Rent Rolls
Shepard Letter

Besides the above sites, the following points should be kept in mind
Notes by Dennis J Yancey: dyancey@miami.edu

• The "story" of the Yanceys being of Welsh descent, is a story that reaches back nearly 200 years, if not longer. The first known reference to it is a "primary source document" - a letter written by a member of the Shepard Family (of Yancey descent) in 1805. It is in this same letter that the first known mention of the connection between the Yanceys and Nanneys is made. The letter does not mention WHEN the Yanceys/Nanneys came to America - but it was probably within 3 to 5 generations of those who wrote this letter - and thus you would expect it to be of some credible evidence.
  
• The similarity between Coat of Arms among the Yancey Family and those bore by members of the Nanney family - as reported by the above letter and other sources has proven out.
  
• One interesting point is the fact that the story of the Welsh origin of the family has been carried down (often apparently totally independant) in most ALL branches of the family - virtually all published accounts of the family (from 1880 to the present) of different branches of the family all recount the Welsh story. The story has even been passed down in the NANNEY family as various researchers have discovered.
  
• I have seen various claims/reports from researchers who have studied the origin of names in general - they often seem to be stumped when they come to the Yancey name - You can find everything from claims that the name is of Hebrew origin to French to one claim that the name is connected to the name of Langlois. None of these claims appear to be based on anything but a guess.
  
• I will be the first one to say that the specific story of the four or five Welsh brothers coming over with Sir William Berkeley in 1642 seems very hard to believe - especially in view of the fact that the first documented Yancey is not found until 1704 - and if they had been connected with Sir William Berkeley and come over in 1642 - there SURELY would have been record of them - and they would have been land-owners if they were close friends with Berkeley - and yet by 1704 the only land-owner of the Yancey family was Charles Yancey with a meager 100 acres. My own opinion is that they came to America much closer to the 1700's and were probably people of modest means. I would think that if they came over about 1700 that within 3 or 4 generations by 1805 (when the Shepard letter was written) that descendants would still have a general idea of where they came from and family connections etc.
  
• The Welsh connection was not a story or report generated within recent decades by a genealogist overly zealous in making an Old World connection as is some times the case - or a report from some mail-order company of questionable repute giving out "genealogies to order" totally ignoring family stories and documentary evidence (such as Halberts and others) - It is a story that has been passed on for nearly 200 years (if not longer).
  
• The Yancey-Nanney and/or Welsh connection - surely lacks concrete evidence. But of all the records that have been researched over the years by hundred of researchers it seems to be the story that holds more water than any other - Does that make it true? Of course not. But I have serious doubts as to whether we will ever be able to prove it one way or the other - records have been lost, first hand accounts have been lost. All we have to go on is the circumstantial and partial evidence with which we find ourselves - and everyone has the ability to interpret that evidence according to their own point of view and opinion - I just hope we look at ALL the evidence and make a fair judgment - and realize that its OK to NOT come to a concrete conclusion - there just doesn't seem to be enough evidence for it - but the Welsh/Nanney connection seem to be the one most held up by Family stories and some circumstantial evidence.
  
• A thorough analysis of the 1850 census does not find a single Yancey born outside of the US (I have copies of virtually every Yancey household on the 1850 census). Further analysis shows that over 61% of those found on the 1850 census are known to have descended from either the two main branches of the Yancey family. Another 35% trace back to lines that have not been "linked" back to these two branches of the family in Virginia but show evidence that they probably were descended from these two branches. Of the entire 1850 census only 11 Yanceys appeared as if they probably did not descend from the Yanceys of Virginia (and 10 of those were Yanceys of African Asmerican descent of uncertain origin). A similar analysis of the 1880 Soundex was made with very similar results
  
• The tens of thousands of pages of the Yancey Family Genealogical Collection available to all Yancey family researchers - and representing hundreds of different researchers as far as I have been able to determine does not make mention of a single branch of the family or a single shred of evidence of any documented old world connection - of any Yancey family that does not descend form the Yanceys of Virginia - I have never seen a single pedigree chart of a Yancey family tracing their lineage out of the US - to Wales, to Ireland, to France or any other place. The one exception to the above statement is a family by name of JANTZI of Switzerland - among whom various descendant in the mid 1800's changed their name here in America (after a few generations of being here) to YANCEY (To keep the anglicized pronunciation in sync with the original pronunciation of Jantzi) . They do not appear to have any similar traits to the Yancey family of Virginia and the fact that a small branch of their family happens to spell the name the same as ours seems total coincidence.
  
• Many genealogists over the years have attempted to contact members of the Yancey family over-seas. Many looking in phone directories etc. to locate Yanceys abroad. The very rare cases where I have known their to be success - the party found appears to have been people who themselves had left the US or were descendants of people who left the US. A search of current Irish phone books did not result in a single occurrence of person by surname Yancey/Yancy (although there were TANSEYS/LANCEYS/JANCEYS).
  
• With the boom of Genealogy - and the boom of the Internet - If there were any Irish Yanceys or any Yanceys who had made documented connections to anywhere in the Old World - it seems strange to me that they have not popped up as of yet.
  
• The name YANCEY does appear (rarely) on US immigration records. An analysis of these records often appears to show that although the name was spelled YANCEY on the Index to the original records - the original record casts much doubt on whether the name was actually YANCEY or YANCY. Many appear to be the name TANSEY / TANCEY. I feel it quite unsafe to just assume that these names are indeed YANCEY (when so often the handwriting is all but illegible) - and without any living (or at least known) descendants of these immigrants with records to really document that the name was indeed YANCEY. Anyone who has looked at original Yancey census records knows what I mean - how many different ways has the YANCEY name been transcribed on census records - JANCEY/ TANSEY/ TONSEY/ LANCEY/ YANSI/ and the list goes on and on - yet we all know that in the Yancey/Yancy family there are virtually only two variations of the spelling of the name - all the variations on the census records appear solely to be because of the illegibility of the handwriting or the carelssness of the record-keeper. There seems to be even more problems with immigration records. There were multi-millions of immigrants to America - if the Yancey name did appear in the Old World from 1600-1800 I find it hard to believe that it was so rarey recorded on the millions (billions?) of US immigration records (only a handful). My guess is that those rare cases that do exist are mis-transcriptions. But I certainly would be interested in finding someone who descends from one of these immigrants - to decide this one way or the other.
  
• Name Variation In my research of the Yancey family - from earliest times down to the present - I have been rather intrigued to find that the spelling of the name is so consistent among all branches of the family. My research indicates that among White Anglo Yanceys that there are only two variations in the spelling of the surname: 1) Y-A-N-C-E-Y and 2) Y-A-N-C-Y. My research also indicates that the first spelling (with the E) is by far the dominant spelling. Over the years I have created a computer database of all Yanceys/Yancys etc that I could find record of (from the earliest times down to current generations). I now have a database of about 10,000 persons by name of Yancey/Yancy. Of these 10,000 entries about 9,000 it would appear used the spelling YANCEY as the accepted spelling while only about 1000 have I been able to document who actually used the YANCY spelling as the accepted spelling and passed such spelling on from one generation to the next. I will be the first to admit - that on census records, deeds, even wills and other records - there ARE various versions of the name (ex: YANCIE, YAUNCEY, YANCE, YANSIE etc) but it would seem that most all of these variations were either caused by carelessness of the person recording the document, or just because someone spelled it as they thought correct - without really verifying it - as well as people getting the name wrong because when they transcribed it from the "hardly legible" original document errors were made. I have even found genealogists who had spelled the name YANCY throughout their computer database records - even though the name was (in such particular branch of the family) obviously correct as YANCEY. And even the lines that use the spelling YANCY as the accepted spelling you can usually trace their line back far enough where it connects with families where the accepted spelling was YANCEY - indicating that from one generation to the next - for whatever reason, intentional or not, the name in a few branches of the family was changed from YANCEY to YANCY (This usually happened in the mid 1800's) Name changes in the 1900's are quite rare.
  
  I have also checked address statistics using various address search engines on the Internet. It would seem that there are somewhere over 7,000+ Yancey/Yancy households across the country. For every YANCY household their seems to be about 5 YANCEY households. My research indicates that the use of the spelling YANCY (vs YANCEY) is much more common among African Americans who use the name) - And this may explain why in my genealogical computer database the ratio of YANCY to YANCEY is lower than this 1 to 5 ratio (because even though I have always tried to include African American Yanceys in my database - genealogical records for them are more scarce and fewer would have made it into my database) Most of the 500 YANCYS in my genealogical database ARE WHITE Yancys. But however you look at it, the dominant spelling is YANCEY and about the only other variation among Anglos is YANCY (among Blacks in rare cases I have seen the spelling YANCIE).
  
  I would compare these statistics to other names among which variations in spelling etc. are MUCH more common. Pick for example the KAVANAUGH name - there are 10's of different variations on the spelling of the name and different branches of the family which appear to have no close (if any) connection. The name has existed in Europe and America across various centuries and their have been many people and many times and many places immigrating to America. The consistency on the spelling and the history and origin of the family in all means very diverse - even though most all came from an Irish Ancestry. There are hundreds of different branches of the family who can trace their line back to totally different immigrant ancestors, different spellings of the name, different family traditions etc.
  
  NOW compare the KAVANUGH family to the YANC(E)Y Family - all Yanceys who can trace their line back far enough seem to be able to connect into ONE group of families found living in the Hanover/Culpeper area of Virginia. I have NEVER been able to contact even one person who has been able to trace his line - out of the country to the Old World or prove that he was NOT a descendant of these Hanover/Culpeper Yancey families - EVEN though many have not been able to make the connection. I have NEVER been able to contact people living in Europe who currently use the name YANC(E)Y - nor have I EVER been able to prove the existence of a YANCEY family who passed the name as such from one generation to the next (IN EUROPE - or anywhere outside of America). YES, on rare occasions I have seen the YANCEY name pop up on various very large European indexes etc. - but the names seemed to be extremely uncommon - and nothing to PROVE that the name was (without doubt) YANCEY - but could well have been a mis-transcriptions of names such as JANCEY/JAUNCEY - mis-written by either the original data taker (such as the original census taker) - or mis-transcribed by a current indexer or transcriber due to the unclear nature of the spelling or writing.