Summary of Casteel early history FG#4 and FG#5

The following was shared with me by Leslie McConachie (lesliemac100@sbcglobal.net).  Her work saves me many hours dealing with folklore that the Casteel family lines that our groups run into from time to time are  Castles who changed their surname for one reason or another.  I have put this information on this blog to keep it close at hand when I run into Casteel in a location where my own Castle line is found.

 As to our documentary history, for a very long time the only clearly identified immigrant was Captain Edmond du Chastel, a wealthy privateer/pirate who left records in Philadelphia in the very late 1600s and who left a marriage record and will in that place in 1693 and 1713 respectively. Capt. Edmond is supposed to have come from Belgium where the family had been for a long time.

Capt. Edmond's widow left a Philly will in 1714 and identifies only 3 children, 2 sons and a daughter (the daughter md. a James Allen and gets lost). One of the sons, Samuel, disappears from the records almost imediately and is not known to have left children, while the other, Edmond Casteel (Junior), seems to moved to Prince George's Co., MD, and occupy a farm named Casteel's Folly beginning circa 1713. This second Edmond Casteel died intestate, and descent from him grows complicated by a lack of records. He left deeds which do name 2 sons, Edmond III and Meshach, but there have always been several other contemporaries in MD in the early 1700s records who are either undocumented children of Edmond II, or who come from another Casteel progenitor.

In the last several years, some diligent work by several dedicated genealogists has unearthed the European origin of Capt. Edmond and several Casteel cousins living in London whose descendants could have come to America, plus a few scattered other Casteel records in Philadelphia left by Casteels who are not later traced. Quite recently a Francis Casteel has been found in early MD, with a reference to him having a family.

So, we're stuck on tying later Casteel lines back to Capt. Edmond or to one of the other early Casteels who left scant records. The only descendant lines with paper proof as well as DNA results come down from Edmond II through his sons Edmond III (who did leave a 1772 will in Prince George's Co.) and Meshach.

By 1750 or so, Casteel families began to move, and here it gets more difficult because known Casteel branches migrate to the same regions where they should have known one another and interacted. They move to the intersection of far western Maryland, the rapidly-developing counties of Southwestern Pennsylvania, and the Monongahela River region of north Virginia where it abuts both MD and PA. Despite falling into 3 states, this is one geographic area. Since this was the edge of European occupation at this time, records are few prior to the Revolution.

Again for my own information, I want to add one other piece of information....Leslie's line is found in Russell County when Joseph Casteel dies in that county in 1803.  He was born in 1720 in Greenbrier County in what is now WV.  Remember this is pure conjecture and is for my own information....On our Castle surname yDNA project, we have two Casteel groups.  One appears to be that of Leslie's.....a rather large group that seems to come down from the family described above.  The other is very small with only two members and Leslie has indicated  they are part of the John Casteel of Greenbrier County line.  A group that may have a female genetic Casteel who raised her illegitmate son with her maiden name.  Only autosomal dna can lead to confirmation of that possibility.  But the Greenbrier County connection gets my attention.  

You can see by this map that Greenbrier County was a huge county at the time of Joseph Casteel's birth.  And Greenbrier County dropped down into what we now know as southwest Virginia.  It is not hard to imagine that the children of the female Casteel or the children of her brothers could have moved at least briefly to Russell County.  All this line would have had to do was follow the New River up into what is now WV and cross the Ohio River at Point Pleasant into Ohio......Or to follow the Guyandotte River up to Guyandotte in what is now WV to the Ohio River.  And so when I see the Casteel name in Russell County, I will think of this line rather than Castle family members who might have changed their name.