Welcome to my blog!

I hope you enjoy exploring the stories of our Copeland family and their many branches in my upcoming blog posts. If your Copeland line connects to Reynolds County, Missouri, Wayne or Overton County, Tennessee, Orange or Chatham County, North Carolina, or the Virginia counties of Spotsylvania, Orange, and Essex, there is a strong possibility that you are part of our extended Copeland family.

To begin this journey, I have taken a deep dive into medieval history to help acquaint readers with the ancient roots of the Copeland name. Understanding the world our earliest ancestors inhabited, long before they crossed the Atlantic, adds depth, context, and meaning to the generations that followed. This early background will provide a foundation for the stories and research that come next.

I invite you to start with the first three blog posts, written about a decade ago. They are more whimsical in tone than the posts I’ll be writing now, which will focus more directly on the genealogical history of the Copeland family. Our American story begins in Old Rappahannock County, Virginia, with immigrant ancestor William Copeland and his wife Mary. Their son Nicholas, born in Great Britain, whether in England or Scotland, later moved upriver and settled in what became Essex County, Virginia. His descendants continued pushing westward into Spotsylvania and Orange Counties, and later into Orange and Chatham Counties in North Carolina.

From their home in Chatham County, many Copeland descendants spread throughout the South, with some eventually settling in Tennessee before moving farther west. Through this blog, I will introduce you to these ancestors, share the research that brings their lives into focus, and offer stories that help us imagine what their world may have been like in centuries past.