PAMUNKEY DAVENPORTS AND OTHERS INTERESTED: Recent developments have brought to the fore the need to define who qualifies as a PAMUNKEY DAVENPORT, viz. (1) The best and longest identified line of among us does not have the now strongly established Pamunkey Davenport DNA. Another line from Martin, Sr., with a strong, albeit circumstantial, paper trail has the same problem. Both lines are distinctly different from each other as well as from the Pamunkey DNA. Are these aberrant lines Pamunkey Davenports? (2) Richard Davenport, Sr., of Albemarle (son of Richard, Sr., of Caroline, and grandson of Davis Davenport), in his will made in August 1792, directed that Slave Martin, born in January 1790, was to be set at liberty on his 21st birthday. On the Albemarle Personal Property Tax List of 1811 (assessed after 1Mar and before 1Jun), "Martin Davenport (Free Negro)" appeared charged for a Poll Tax. The listing continued annually through 1815. The anomaly of this listing was that there was a separate listing for Free Negroes and Mulattos. Martin Davenport was not listed there, but was listed among the Whites, always identified "(Free Negro)," a practice consistent for all five years that he was Albemarle assessed. His tax status was no different from those on the Free Negroes and Mulattos list, each assessed for one Poll and such horses as they owned. Martin Davenport (Free Negro) was clearly different to the Tax Assessor in some manner from others of his identified ilk. Richard Davenport, Sr., of Albemarle, had a White son named Martin. Did he also have a Negro son named Martin? If so, that son would have been a Mulatto, and would not have been identified, per a rather rigorous custom of that day, as a Negro. The matter has the potential for rampant speculation. Whatever, Martin (Free Negro) was a Davenport to the Tax Commissioner. Are his descendants, if any, Pamunkey Davenports? (3) John Davenport, on the Free Negro and Mulatto list, in Charlotte County, was likely an issue of either Pamunkey or Prince George Davenports. Free mulatto males of the first order obtained their status because they had White mothers. If the son of a Pamunkey mother, was John Davenport, Mulatto, a Pamunkey? (4) William Davenport, son of James Davenport, Jr., and a man of prominence in Charlottesville, county seat of Albemarle, long considered to have been childless, at his death in late 1805 made a devisement to Sophie Shiplet "to be paid when she comes of age" that strongly suggests that she was his natural daughter. (We would note that while William's marriage with Sally Harris Rodes was barren of children, that William apparently had issue either before or apart from his marriage, and his widow had a number of children by her second husband Micajah Woods.) Are descendants of Sophie Shiplet eligible for Pamunkey Davenport membership? The Shiplets were a landed family in Albemarle. (5) We have not encountered the situation in Colonial and Post-Revolution Virginia, but it has surely occurred in the years since: namely the matter of an adoptee who was renamed or chose the Davenport name, and whose descendants have continued in that surname. Are these folk Pamunkey Davenports if they had been adopted by a Pamunkey? (6) Can a person be a Pamunkey Davenport by choice? We have our opinion relative to eligibility for the Pamunkey Clan, but what say you Pamunkeys? John Scott Davenport Holmdel, NJ