Blackbeard

[blackjohn]

Teach, Tach, Thatch, Drummond.

What say ye?

[Pynch]

I always thought it was Teach...looks like I've got more reading to do.

[Capt. Flint]

Actually blackjohn..it looks as if you've covered them all. I read that very little is factually known about his early life and that includes his actuall name. There is a great deal of thoughts, ideas and supposition, but, little known true facts

[Nomadicalpirate]

I've read various speculations, but the most common one seems to be

E. Teach

So if I was a betting man, and I very well might be, I'd go with that.

[JoshuaRed]

Yeah, I'd go with Teach as well. Most accounts say he was born in Bristol, but some also say he was born right here in Philadelphia. Who knows??

[Lady Seahawke]

Well, I say (considering the season) hold a seance, conjure him up and ask him yourself...

[Slopmaker Cripps]

Well seeing as Blackbeard is my 12th great grand uncle....I'll pipe in. It was my grandmother who actually found the connection. Unfortunately she died while I was to young to have the slightest interest in history. According to my Dad, she used to brag that we had no "black sheep" in our family, and when she found out that blackbeard was in the family she was in a state of shock for days. Guess she didn't like scoundrels much. But anyway, here's the lineage taken straight off our family tree she made up. I'm starting with Baron Owen Theach and working down to myself.

Baron Owen Theach had two sons. One named John, and the other Edward, soon to be the notorious blackbeard. John immigrated to North Carolina while Edward began his privateering and pirating career. But while Edward pursued his "career"..........

John Theach married Elizabeth Weeks.

Their daughter, Elizabeth Theach, married Willoughby Adams.

Their daughter, also named Elizabeth Theach, married Baron John Davis (also from Wales).

Their daughter, Cecelia Davis, married a man by the name of Pope. We don’t know his first name. It may have been Clinton. This was about the time of the American Revolution.

Their son, Owen Clinton Pope, married Sarah Sinquefield.

Their daughter, Mary Wilde Pope, married Ephraim Jordan. This was about the time of the Civil War.

Their daughter, Martha Elizabeth Jordan, married Thomas Turlington.

Their daughter, Sally Mae Turlington, married William Bailey Greene.

Their daughter, Martha Sue Greene, married John Charles Cripps.

Their son, also named John Charles Cripps, married Diane Johnson.

And their son is moi. Adam Cripps, Slopmaker, ordinary seaman, and 12th great grand nephew of Blackbeard.

Cheers,

Adam C.

Slopmaker

[Gentleman of Fortune]

I heard his real last name was Ezeakial Theackowitz.

He was a Sephardic jew who fled the old contry because of religious persecusion.

He change his name and turned his back on religion and the rest is history.

OK I AM KIDDING alright!

[Nomadicalpirate]

Be careful what you kid about.

If you write that down on paper, and hide it in a couple of places, you'll confuse the crap out of people 200 years from now.

[Cap'nPern]

I like the following story:

Born in Bristol England to a well to do family with the name of Edward Drummond. When he grew up and decided on a life of privateering he changed his name to Thach to protect his family.

There is an island on the atlantic side of the eastern shore of Virginia by the name of THACHES Island according to a chart of the 1720's if you compare the chart to a localized chart of Teaches Hole Ocracoke N.C. it bears a very close resemblance to the small scale chart of the Eastern Shore.

After hanging with Benjamin Hornigold for a while privateerin, he was given a ship by Benjamin and decided to get into pyracy. It was then that he changed his name to Teach to further confuse anyone that was trying to track him down.

This is merely my humble opinion after doing a little research.

[Fox]

There is a guy, Peter James Martin, who reckons he has found definitive evidence of Blackbeard's early life, in Bristol. He refuses to make the information public until he has published his own book on the discovery - which is fair enough, but I wish he'd hurry up. It was about 2 years ago he told me about it and I've heard nothing since.

On the other hand, his previous book was without question the worst pirate history book I have ever read - no competition. Badly written, badly concieved and so full of hideously glaring errors it's unbelievable, so I'm not holding my breath too much.

[Silver Steele]

I read on a site awhile back, can't remember where at the moment, but....

The statement of "Blackbeard being referred to as Edward Teach is grossly incorrect, as his last name was Teague." Just makes me wonder at times where people come up with this stuff.

[Captain_MacNamara]

Be careful what you kid about.

If you write that down on paper, and hide it in a couple of places, you'll confuse the crap out of people 200 years from now.

[Red Maria]

I read on a site awhile back, can't remember where at the moment, but....

The statement of "Blackbeard being referred to as Edward Teach is grossly incorrect, as his last name was Teague." Just makes me wonder at times where people come up with this stuff.

Please site your source on this. Primary documents if you can.

[corsair2k3]

"Teague" is Scottish, no?

The Corsair

[Fox]

It doesn't take 200 years to deceive people if you write something down on paper - only the length of time it takes to get published.

Teague may well be Scottish in origin (I don't know) but that wouldn't necessarily imply that Blackbeard was Scottish (if that was his real name), or that if Blackbeard were English his name couldn't be Teague.

[Hrothgar Addams]

Yar. When I was a young pup, I knowed Capn' Bleckbeard real well. We usta raid th Carolina coast and we was on the same bowlin' team.

His real name weren't Teach, Thatch, Drummond, or Teague--it were Ustinov.

H. Addams , Godolphin College, class a 68.

[Silver Steele]

I read on a site awhile back, can't remember where at the moment, but....

The statement of "Blackbeard being referred to as Edward Teach is grossly incorrect, as his last name was Teague."  Just makes me wonder at times where people come up with this stuff.

Please site your source on this. Primary documents if you can.

I do not remember the site, and I did not book mark the site, hence the reason why I stated "can't remember where at the moment" as I thought the statement was pure rubbish, hence the "makes me wonder where people come up with this stuff".

And how can I provide primary documents when 1) I never claimed to have made that statement and 2) the individual who posted that statement on their site did not post any sources.

Thank you.

[corsair2k3]

I'm with both you guys--I wonder where people find this stuff, and I wish to hell they would post their sources.

"Teague" is a point of curiosity with me insofar as there was at least one Teague family in Cecil Co. Maryland at the time.

Regards,

The Corsair

[Capt. Flint]

What on Gods green earth are you all talking about...This started as a post about Blackbeards real name.. If anyone has info. on his early life, thats documented, PLEASE share it. I for one would be very interested in it. Where did the name Teague ever come from. I never heard it before. Is there any reading on it. Thanks... The Capt.

[Silver Steele]

According to the Greater Hyde County Chamber of Commerce in North Carolina (which is the Pamlico/Albermarle Region of NC including Ocracoke Island), "he has been referenced as Thach, Tach, Teache, Tatch, Teatch and Thatch. Teach seems to be the accepted spelling since it was used by Lt. Maynard."

As I have said before, I did not bookmark the site that used the spelling of Teague as it did not cite any sources of information for that claim. And if my memory serves me correct, it was a family genealogy page. Living here on the North Carolina coast, it seems that everyone and their brother, sister, aunt and uncle here claim to be related to Blackbeard. Not that there couldn't be quite a few people related to him, since he did have what? a dozen wives or so, and there were probably quite a few other women in various ports in the Atlantic and the Gulf, awaiting his return. With all that I am sure he was the busy little pirate.

But yet no one can provide a bit of proof to the claim and they respond by saying "My mom (dad, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, grandparents, cousin, great grandparents, etc, insert your choice of relation here)looked it up and told me."

My impression of the page at the time was that someone was really reaching to try to place their family in relation with Blackbeard by making that claim. And does everyone really believe everything they read on the net? Would people even dare to make up stories on the net or post false tales of information? *gasp*

For example, on the "Teach's Hole" Blackbeard Exhibit and Pirate Shop located in Ocracoke, on their guestbook, there are more than 4 entries halfway down the page (I stopped halfway) with people claiming to be related to Blackbeard. And this is just on one site out of the millions on the internet.

http://www.teachshole.com/book.htm

Here's another example where a person states "NC Smithwick's related to Blackbeard (Tynch)?"

http://genforum.genealogy.com/cgi-bin/page...hwick::280.html

[Longarm]

In the trail records of Blackbeards crew wasn't the name Thatch used by his crew? It may not be his true name but, it is interesting to see what those that sailed with him called him. Maybe Thatch came from the thickness of his beard, refering to the thatch on a roof?

[Captain Tito]

Aye did he write? Did historians ever turn up any letters actually written by him with his name signed? I know that something like that may have been hard to recover.

[corsair2k3]

Aye did he write? Did historians ever turn up any letters actually written by him with his name signed? I know that something like that may have been hard to recover.

Greetings,

Manuscripts by pirates are extremely rare--I think there was a certain sense of "collectors' value" even back then.

In the case of BB, for example, his logbook was recovered by Maynard etal. yet nobody knows what happened to it.

There are other references/inferences to pirate papers that are either no longer in existence or have been squirrelled away--either by collectors or by the British government.

[sometimes I envision an old chest at the PRO...]

If such papers were kept in Virginia, however, they might have been destroyed at the burning of Richmond during the War Between the States.

Regards,

The Corsair

[Captain Jim-sib]

[

According to the Greater Hyde County Chamber of Commerce in North Carolina (which is the Pamlico/Albermarle Region of NC including Ocracoke Island), "he has been referenced as Thach, Tach, Teache, Tatch, Teatch and Thatch

In Hugh Rankin's The Pirates of Colonial North Carolina, p.43, "Tach" is spelled w/ an "e"...Tache. Dropping the "e" is common when going from Old English to modern English.

Also, it is recorded in the Summer of 1718, BB's sloop Adventure was officially recorded/registered by the Vice Admiralty Court in Bath, NC for use in trading expeditions. The research I have done indicates that this registry was under the name "Teach". This was during BB's time in Bath, NC after the grounding of the QAR when he received a pardon from Governor Eden.

Also, as I have posted before, the town of Bath, NC will be having their

Tri-Centennial in 2005. The person that I have been in communication with there wants to have a ship in Bath--like the Elizabeth II is in Manteo-- and desires BB's Adventure. Certainly this will not be accomplished prior to the Festival in Sept, '05, though it is being actively pursued.