Why is the word which is clearly written as "Matocks" in the original 1650 land document (with George Pace) consistently referred to as Maycox or Maycocks? (The image of the original writing is viewable online through the Library of Virginia's digitized documents and there can be little question as to its spelling as in the handwriting of the clerk, especially after comparing the formation of letters in nearby words.) By the way, there is reference to another Virginia plantation called Matocks, quotation from the Library of Congress site: "Matocks or Mattoax was a Tucker plantation in Chesterfield Co. [VA]..." And, from a Rootsweb site, slightly different spelling, same property: "Frances Bland was a sixteen-year-old beauty in 1769, when she married John Randolph....They lived at Matoax, his plantation in Chesterfield County ... on Appomattox River...The grave of Frances Bland Randolph Tucker is located in the Randolph family cemetery at Matoax, the farm where she lived with her first husband, John Randolph. She was buried beside him there. As a young widow with small children, she married St. George Tucker and continued to live at Matoax with him. So it was only natural that she be buried there in the family cemetery...on the Randolph Farm property of Virginia State University...it belongs to the Commonwealth of Virginia." "Matock" is also a word referring to a kind of axe. Finally, there are the English surnames Matocks and Mattocks on record. So, is it possible that the clerk in 1650 wrote the document exactly as it was supposed to be? Or, are there enough verifiable instances in other records to confirm the "real" name of this property as Maycocks rather than Matocks? - Joyce Harris