John Waters of "The Forks"

This John Waters was never married to Ann Lloyd OR Elizabeth Giles OR Arabella Cox (nee Strachey).

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Susanna White was James White’s widow. Traditionally said to have taken John Waters of "The Forks" as her second husband. (Surviving documentation is sketchy at best, but there does seem to have been such a person among the West River Quakers of early Anne Arundel County.)

This is the first member of the line of Waters of Anne Arundel who we can be reasonably sure was born in the Colonies. It is a logical guess that he was born on the lower Eastern Shore, where his relatives the descendants of Lt. Edward Waters lived, that he got involved with the Quaker movement approximately when they did, and that he moved up the Eastern Shore to Somerset County, Maryland, when they did. But then he went a step farther....

He was resident in Maryland in the Middle Hundred (by then established as Anne Arundel County) before June 16, 1676, when the official surveys for "Water's Adventure" and "The Forks" were made over to him. (Date and event cited in Newman, Anne Arundel Gentry, p. 478.) It may be safely assumed that he was of legal age, and probably older, by that time.

His two sons, John and Samuel, were the founders of the two main lines of the Waters family in Anne Arundel County. It is curious that the line founded by John contains mostly sons named John, but few Samuels, while the line founded by Samuel includes many Samuels and few Johns.

There may have been daughters also, but this requires further research.

John and Samuel are thought to have been *half-*brothers, of whom John was the elder by an UNKNOWN first wife - who was NOT Ann Lloyd OR Elizabeth Giles OR Arabella Cox (nee Strachey).

[Fanciful theory mash-merging three consecutive John Waterses deleted.]