THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 12, 1995 TAG: 9503100297
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
Since Madam Sarah Thoroughgood-Gookin-Yeardley was the first-known free-spirited woman to live in what is now the Norfolk area, she easily qualifies for special notice during National Women's History Month.
Sarah, who had a hair-trigger temper, jealously guarded her position as the grande dame of Lower Norfolk County, the area now occupied by Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake and Virginia Beach. Early records are peppered with accounts of her wranglings with the county justices or anyone who crossed her.
One of the first things a local newcomer learned was to steer clear of anything that might rile Sarah. Those who disregarded the warning usually had the sheriff pounding on their door before their criticisms were cold. The complaints didn't end there. In most cases, the culprits received a healthy dose of the cat-o'-nine-tails for their indiscretions.
Born in London in 1609, Sarah was a daughter of Robert Offley, an eminent ``Turkey Merchant'' and former lord mayor of London, and Anne Osborne, a daughter of Sir Edward Osborne, Lord Mayor of London in 1583. On her maternal side, Sarah was also a granddaughter of Sir William Hewitt, who had held the same office when the English made their first attempts to establish a toehold in North America.
In 1624, when she was 15, Sarah married Capt. Adam Thoroughgood in St. Anne's Blackfriars in London. Thoroughgood, a younger son of a clerical family in Norfolk, England, had recently been released from a four-year indenture to Edward Walters of Elizabeth City County, Virginia. Both Sarah and Adam were ambitious, however, and by 1635, with the aid of powerful friends in England and Virginia, they owned 5,350 acres of land on the Chesopean, now the Lynnhaven River.
In 1636, one year before the establishment of Lower Norfolk County, of which he and Sarah were among the upper crust, Adam was appointed to the Governor's Council at Jamestown. Four years later, he was dead. Six months after she had buried him, Sarah sued Elizabeth Causon for declaring that Adam had paid his bills ``slowly or paid not at all.'' Elizabeth lost the suit and was forced to beg Sarah's pardon publicly on her knees in Lynnhaven Church.
Shortly thereafter, Sarah married Capt. John Gookin, who came to live with her in the ``Grand Manor House'' near the Lynnhaven that old records prove was not the house now known as the Adam Thoroughgood House.
A few months after Gookin's death, two loose-tongued gossips were unwise enough to scandalize one of Sarah's daughters by her first husband. Both speedily felt the widow Gookin's wrath when one was sentenced to apologize publicly and the other received 50 lashes on her bare back. Meanwhile, Sarah flatly refused to account for Adam Thoroughgood's estate, in which she held a life interest, telling the justices it was none of their business. Sarah maintained this bulldog stance until her death.
Meanwhile in 1647, Sarah again married, this time to Col. Francis Yeardley, a man 20 years her junior. Soon afterward the progenitors of the Moseley family of Lower Norfolk County arrived on the scene from Holland, long on jewelry, family portraits and a pedigree, but short on livestock. Madam Yeardley's eyes apparently coveted the jewelry, for she was soon sporting Madam Moseley's brilliants in exchange for a large drove of cattle.
Sarah's last appearance on the scene was characteristic. When the Emperor of the Roanoke Island Indians was visiting the Lynnhaven area, she took him to church with her, defying the redneck element in the congregation that looked down on him as savage and wanted to harm him.
Yeardley died in 1655, and Sarah followed him two years later. Her will ordered that her best diamond necklace and jewel (formerly Madam Moseley's?) be sent to England to be used in the purchase of six diamond mourning rings and two black marble tombstones. At least one of these was delivered and was still around until the Lynnhaven River claimed it during the early 19th century. Its inscription read:
``Here lyeth ye body of Capt. John Gookin and also ye body of Mrs. Sarah Yeardley who was the wife to Capt. Adam Thoroughgood first, Capt. Gookin and Colonel Francis Yeardley who deceased August 1657.''
Sarah's death at age 48 left a temporary lull in Lower Norfolk County feminine belligerency. by CNB