There was, in Culpeper County, Virginia, a John Thomas family of English descent. Actually, there were probably other Thomas families. Sorting all of these Thomases out by nationality is not easy. One branch of the English descends from William (1613-1665) who married Rebecca. Their son John (1648-1710) married Elizabeth. Then their son John (1690-1782) had another John who left a will in Madison Co., VA 9 Sep 1793. He names a wife Elizabeth and children Jesse, Massey, Elisha, George, William, Betsey, Rhoda Barlor, and Jemima Rush. The last John had a cousin by the name of Rowland.
I would take the genealogies just cited with a bit of caution. One of the workers in this area, Mrs. Mary Dunnica Micou, was prone to make statements such as, "Without doubt the Thomas family (meaning the English) of Orange County, and also that of Culpeper County, are descended from the earliest emigrant of that name . ." She gives absolutely no hint that she is aware of a German Thomas family who, in fact, were probably in the area before the English Thomas family.
In the family of John ( -1793), there is a question as to whether the Barlor name is meant to be Barbour or Barlow. There were Rushes in the Madison area. One reason for trying to understand a bit about the English Thomases is to be able to separate the German Thomases.
As a general guide, John Thomas, Jr., (German), perhaps had a son Michael. If he did, this Michael went to North Carolina. Michael Thomas, John's brother and the father of the twenty-five children, went to Kentucky. It appears that all of his sons went to Kentucky or to Pennsylvania. By the end of the Revolution, there were probably no male German Thomases in the area which became Madison County. So most of the searches for the male Thomases will be made in Pennsylvania (at the time, it was thought to be a part of Virginia), or in Kentucky. Few of the records actually tie the Thomases in Kentucky to the Thomases in Virginia except by implication.
The search depends heavily on the people who are associated with the Thomases. I have been emphasizing some of the relationships that exist among the people who are to be found in Kentucky or Pennsylvania. This ties them together and shows what their origins were. Some of the people are the three Smith boys who had a Thomas mother. Then there were the Fishers who were cousins of the Thomases and Smiths. Two of the Holtzclaw men married Thomas girls. Branches of the Hardin family were closely connected to the Holtzclaws. Another Culpeper family, the Hupps, moved to Pennsylvania. Everhard Hupp had married Margaret Thomas. Also, the Rows moved to Pennsylvania.
By the time that the story is told, you will see that many of the pioneers in Kentucky came from Culpeper County, Virginia. They were among the first settlers in the region.
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.