Eastes Family History

This is my third family history project. The first was about the Garrett family and since my wife was a Bates, the second effort resulted in 500 Years of Bates Family History. My wife's mother was an Eastes, so here is 500 Years of Eastes Family History.

The spelling of Eastes is still changing. Even some of my wife's uncles spell it Estes. In the past it has been spelled Eustice, Eustace and Estis to name a few.

It is interesting that the Eastes ancestors and the Bates ancestors were from the same county in England (Kent County) and both immigrated to Virginia as indentured servants. The Eastes' married into the Kirkpatrick and Baldridge families who were both from the same county in Ireland.

As with a lot of genealogy studies, the Eastes ancestors before 1500 AD are fuzzy. In this case, the likelihood of the Eastes family descending from the illegitimate son of Leonnelo d'Este is not very high but never-the-less a possibility. In doing the Garrett genealogy, I found that at time of Edward the Confessor's reign, Edward gave the village of Dover to the Eustace family and that is where the Eastes' are from.