The Skaggs-Files - Doniphan, Alexandre

L169-GZN FamilySearch.org
1. - Source text:
    "About 1580 a Spanish officer fighting the Moors, named Don Alphonso Yphan, was ennobled and knighted on the battle-field for some brave deed of arms. Subsequently he was banished from Spain and his goods confiscated & title revoked. He came to England as it was understood he was banished on account of religion (whether he became a heretic or refused to execute some cruel order required of the army by the priests, I never heard). He or his son is said to have accompanied John Smith to Jamestown in 1607, returned to England & settled & died.
    "In support of this tradition, our grandmother, who died at my father's home in 1829, told this story to mother in parts & said father & your mother were the 7th generation from the Spanish Doniphan, & if I recall correctly she could name all of them. The name was Anglicised in England or Scotland by dropping the Alphonso.
    "In further support of this tradition, General A.W. Doniphan said when a boy he heard it from old family negroes, and when he was in Washington Cy. at the peace conference in 1861 an old lady sent for him & said that her name was Smith & that she was descended from the Doniphans, & that she had seen at Richmond an old tombstone which recorded the death of Alexander Doniphan in 1680, having been County Judge of Richmond County. Governor Wm. Smith, twice governor of Virginia, who was born in 1797 & whose grandmother was a Doniphan, &, I think, a cousin of your mother, lived to be 86 and wrote to me that he had looked up the history, & an old aunt who died in 1811 had given him the same account as my grandmother had given about Spanish ancestry. And he further stated that his brother, Rev. Thomas Smith, an Episcopal minister, visited Kentucky in 1822 & went to Germantown, Ky. & called on his cousin, Dr. Anderson Doniphan, and saw, hanging in a frame in his parlor, the grant of the King of Spain on a parchment, in Spanish, conferring Knighthood on Don Alphonso Yphan...[1]
    Biography
    "Now as to facts that we know. About 1650 two brothers, John and George Mott, removed to Virginia from Scotland in company of one Alexander Doniphan. The records show that between 1660 & 1670 eighteen thousand acres of land was patented by the colony of Virginia to John & George Mott, one tract in 1663 and following to 1670. Then in 1684 one Alexander Doniphan, Jr. (must have been son of one of the tombstone) joins in a deed with his wife Margaret Doniphan, a dau. of George Mott, who with her sisters were heirs of John & George Mott, for some of the same land."(p. 99)[1]
  - Citation:
    https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/L169-GZN
2. - Source text:
    "About 1580 a Spanish officer fighting the Moors, named Don Alphonso Yphan, was ennobled and knighted on the battle-field for some brave deed of arms. Subsequently he was banished from Spain and his goods confiscated & title revoked. He came to England as it was understood he was banished on account of religion (whether he became a heretic or refused to execute some cruel order required of the army by the priests, I never heard). He or his son is said to have accompanied John Smith to Jamestown in 1607, returned to England & settled & died.
    "In support of this tradition, our grandmother, who died at my father's home in 1829, told this story to mother in parts & said father & your mother were the 7th generation from the Spanish Doniphan, & if I recall correctly she could name all of them. The name was Anglicised in England or Scotland by dropping the Alphonso.
    "In further support of this tradition, General A.W. Doniphan said when a boy he heard it from old family negroes, and when he was in Washington Cy. at the peace conference in 1861 an old lady sent for him & said that her name was Smith & that she was descended from the Doniphans, & that she had seen at Richmond an old tombstone which recorded the death of Alexander Doniphan in 1680, having been County Judge of Richmond County. Governor Wm. Smith, twice governor of Virginia, who was born in 1797 & whose grandmother was a Doniphan, &, I think, a cousin of your mother, lived to be 86 and wrote to me that he had looked up the history, & an old aunt who died in 1811 had given him the same account as my grandmother had given about Spanish ancestry. And he further stated that his brother, Rev. Thomas Smith, an Episcopal minister, visited Kentucky in 1822 & went to Germantown, Ky. & called on his cousin, Dr. Anderson Doniphan, and saw, hanging in a frame in his parlor, the grant of the King of Spain on a parchment, in Spanish, conferring Knighthood on Don Alphonso Yphan...[1]
    Biography
    "Now as to facts that we know. About 1650 two brothers, John and George Mott, removed to Virginia from Scotland in company of one Alexander Doniphan. The records show that between 1660 & 1670 eighteen thousand acres of land was patented by the colony of Virginia to John & George Mott, one tract in 1663 and following to 1670. Then in 1684 one Alexander Doniphan, Jr. (must have been son of one of the tombstone) joins in a deed with his wife Margaret Doniphan, a dau. of George Mott, who with her sisters were heirs of John & George Mott, for some of the same land."(p. 99)[1]
  - Citation:
    https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/L169-GZN

Birth Name	Doniphan, Alexandre
Gender	male
Age at Death	58 years, 2 months, 30 days