No one really knows where many of the 18th Century Jetts came from, and I hope that some of my online speculation has not led others to draw conclusions. Jett genealogy is like a 100-piece jigsaw puzzle with 30 missing pieces. You just can’t put it together until you have more parts. That is not going to happen until we throw out all the secondary and hearsay sources, and instead accumulate in one place all of the facts that are based on reliable sources. Then the Jett “crowd” may collectively put together the puzzle that an individual might find impossible. For example, let’s take the year 1760. We know that there were at least three men named James Jett alive in Virginia that year. One of them ended up, fairly well known and respected, in Culpeper County. One of them died in New Jersey, fighting in the Revolutionary War. And one of them lived in Fauquier County. At one time I thought the second and third might be the same person, but James Jett continued to show up in county records after the War. We have only one record, suggesting a parent for a James Jett living in 1760. That would be the James Jett, son of Peter Jett who died in 1758. But we can’t use this record for all three James Jetts, just because we don’t have two others. We need to figure out where all three of them originated. Until that happens, we are just spinning our wheels, and discouraging others from doing good research because they think they can rely on our faulty conclusions. Incidentally, I have seen recent references to the SETTLE and MOTHERSHEAD families, both of whom also appear in JETT records. Sometimes, making connections between families is a good way to sort them all out. The population of Virginia in 1760 was about 340,000. That’s much less than the population today of Wyoming. I doubt there were more than 40 or 50 male Jetts living at any one time, during the 1700s. It’s just that they kept moving to the frontier, where few written records were kept and even fewer have been preserved. (It also doesn't help, that more than half of them were named John, Francis, William, Peter or James.) But the small number of subjects, and the small amount of reliable records, should make tracing all of them easier, not more difficult. I am always grateful that I am not a Smith descendant. Bob Kamman

Same series on books as E Mail I just sent to you. This information is from Vol. I of the series. Page 154-155 Walter Aston, Gent. 250 acs Charles Citty Co. page 12. [no date]. W. on the great river, E on the plantation of Causey's Care {Cleare?], S on land of Capt. Epps [ in the Island] & N. on land of Robert Martyn. Granted by order 15 Oct 1641 & also due for trans.of 5 pers.; John Bailey, John Bull, Hen. Bradshall, Eliza. Vauaghn, JUDITH SETTLE. [ by Wm. Berkley]. **** No Jett's in Volume I so they must have arrived per transport listed in my previous E Mail tonight listing their names in Vol. II of this series. ** Ginny K.