Augustine Warner

Augustine Warner (1611-1674), was the progenitor of the Augustine Warner Family who arrived in Virginia in 1628 at the age of seventeen, one of a group of thirty-four brought in by Adam Thoroughgood. His first land acquisition came 7 years later when he patented two hundred fifty acres.

Continuing the typical pattern of seventeenth-century success in Virginia as a merchant, investor in land, and statesman, he rose through the colonial hierarchy to become a member of the House of Burgesses in 1652 and then in 1659 a member of the King's Council, which he held until his death. About 1657, he moved across the York River to Gloucester County, where he settled and built the first house at Warner Hall.

Augustine Warner died in 1674, at sixty-three, and was succeeded at Warner Hall by his only son, the second Augustine Warner (1642-1681). After his English education in London and at Cambridge, the younger Augustine Warner returned to Virginia, and soon, by 1666, became a member of the House of Burgesses, and then Speaker of the House in 1676. In 1677 he took his seat on the King's Council, but his career was cut short by his early death in 1681 at the age of thirty-nine.

Besides the son Augustine Warner the second, the first Augustine Warner (1611-1674) had at least two daughters. One married David Cant, and the other, Sarah, married Lawrence Townley, and was the ancestor of General Robert E. Lee.

It is recorded that the second Augustine Warner (1642-1681) had three sons, all of whom died unmarried, and three daughters, who inherited the Warner property and left huge progenies.

The three were; Mary Warner, who married in 1680 John Smith of Purton (ancestors of Queen Elizabeth II), Mildred Warner, who married about 1690 Lawrence Washington, ancestors of George Washington, and Elizabeth Warner, who married about 1691 John Lewis, and kept the Warner Hall house itself in the division of the Warner properties after the brothers’ deaths. Elizabeth and John Lewis were the grandparents of Fielding Lewis, who married first George Washington’s cousin and second his sister, both ladies also being grandchildren of Mildred Warner. Additionally Elizabeth and John Lewis were the ancestors of Meriwether Lewis of the Corps of Discovery fame. Warner Hall stayed in the eldest male line of the Lewis family, through a succession of eldest sons named Warner Lewis, until 1834, when it was finally sold by a daughter of the last of them, another Elizabeth Lewis.

Warner Hall is still known by this name and the Lewis descendants became known as the Warner Hall Lewises. A non-profit DNA Project LEWIS Surname DNA Project is actively seeking descendants from this paternal line. In some cases a scholarship may be offered.

The Lewises who descend from this line also descend from a very ancient line of Welsh rulers documented back to Rhys Goch ca. 1100. And through well researched history further back into the Dark Ages and beyond.