ty where they settled along the ridgeline between the 
Rappahannock and Mattaponi Rivers, the site of 
their ancient hunting village and 1682 reservation; 
(27) during the 1760s, 3 Rappahannock girls 
were raised on Thomas Nelson’s Bleak Hill Planta-
tion in King William County; 
(28) of those girls— 
(A) 1 married a Saunders man; 
(B) 1 married a Johnson man; and 
(C) 1 had 2 children, Edmund and Carter 
Nelson, fathered by Thomas Cary Nelson; 
(29) in the 19th century, those Saunders, John-
son, and Nelson families are among the core Rappa-
hannock families from which the modern Tribe traces 
its descent; 
(30) in 1819 and 1820, Edward Bird, John Bird 
(and his wife), Carter Nelson, Edmund Nelson, and 
Carter Spurlock (all Rappahannock ancestors) were 
listed on the tax roles of King and Queen County and 
taxed at the county poor rate; 
(31) Edmund Bird was added to the tax roles in 
1821; 
(32) those tax records are significant documenta-
tion because the great majority of pre-1864 records for 
King and Queen County were destroyed by fire; 
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(33) beginning in 1819, and continuing through 
the 1880s, there was a solid Rappahannock presence 
in the membership at Upper Essex Baptist Church; 
(34) that was the first instance of conversion to 
Christianity by at least some Rappahannock Indians; 
(35) while 26 identifiable and traceable Rappa-
hannock surnames appear on the pre-1863 member-
ship list, and 28 were listed on the 1863 membership 
roster, the number of surnames listed had declined to 
12 in 1878 and had risen only slightly to 14 by 1888; 
(36) a reason for the decline is that in 1870, a 
Methodist circuit rider, Joseph Mastin, secured funds 
to purchase land and construct St. Stephens Baptist 
Church for the Rappahannocks living nearby in Caro-
line County; 
(37) Mastin referred to the Rappahannocks dur-
ing the period of 1850 to 1870 as ‘‘Indians, having 
a great need for moral and Christian guidance’’; 
(38) St. Stephens was the dominant tribal 
church until the Rappahannock Indian Baptist 
Church was established in 1964; 
(39) at both churches, the core Rappahannock 
family names of Bird, Clarke, Fortune, Johnson, Nel-
son, Parker, and Richardson predominate; 
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(40) during the early 1900’s, James Mooney, 
noted anthropologist, maintained correspondence with 
the Rappahannocks, surveying them and instructing 
them on how to formalize their tribal government; 
(41) in November 1920, Speck visited the 
Rappahannocks and assisted them in organizing the 
fight for their sovereign rights; 
(42) in 1921, the Rappahannocks were granted 
a charter from the Commonwealth of Virginia for-
malizing their tribal government; 
(43) Speck began a professional relationship 
with the Tribe that would last more than 30 years 
and document Rappahannock history and traditions 
as never before; 
(44) in April 1921, Rappahannock Chief George 
Nelson asked the Governor of Virginia, Westmoreland 
Davis, to forward a proclamation to the President of 
the United States, along with an appended list of 
tribal members and a handwritten copy of the procla-
mation itself; 
(45) the letter concerned Indian freedom of 
speech and assembly nationwide; 
(46) in 1922, the Rappahannocks established a 
formal school at Lloyds, Essex County, Virginia; 
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(47) prior to establishment of the school, Rappa-
hannock children were taught by a tribal member in 
Central Point, Caroline County, Virginia; 
(48) in December 1923, Rappahannock Chief 
George Nelson testified before Congress appealing for 
a $50,000 appropriation to establish an Indian school 
in Virginia; 
(49) in 1930, the Rappahannocks were engaged 
in an ongoing dispute with the Commonwealth of Vir-
ginia and the United States Census Bureau about 
their classification in the 1930 Federal census; 
(50) in January 1930, Rappahannock Chief 
Otho S. Nelson wrote to Leon Truesdell, Chief Stat-
istician of the United States Census Bureau, asking 
that the 218 enrolled Rappahannocks be listed as In-
dians; 
(51) in February 1930, Truesdell replied to Nel-
son saying that ‘‘special instructions’’ were being 
given about classifying Indians; 
(52) in April 1930, Nelson wrote to William M. 
Steuart at the Census Bureau asking about the enu-
merators’ failure to classify his people as Indians, 
saying that enumerators had not asked the question 
about race when they interviewed his people; 
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(53) in a followup letter to Truesdell, Nelson re-
ported that the enumerators were ‘‘flatly denying’’ his 
people’s request to be listed as Indians and that the 
race question was completely avoided during inter-
views; 
(54) the Rappahannocks had spoken with Caro-
line and Essex County enumerators, and with John 
M.W. Green at that point, without success; 
(55) Nelson asked Truesdell to list people as In-
dians if he sent a list of members; 
(56) the matter was settled by William Steuart, 
who concluded that the Bureau’s rule was that people 
of Indian descent could be classified as ‘‘Indian’’ only 
if Indian ‘‘blood’’ predominated and ‘‘Indian’’ iden-
tity was accepted in the local community; 
(57) the Virginia Vital Statistics Bureau classed 
all nonreservation Indians as ‘‘Negro’’, and it failed 
to see why ‘‘an exception should be made’’ for the 
Rappahannocks; 
(58) therefore, in 1925, the Indian Rights Asso-
ciation took on the Rappahannock case to assist the 
Rappahannocks in fighting for their recognition and 
rights as an Indian tribe; 
(59) during the Second World War, the 
Pamunkeys, 
Mattaponis, 
Chickahominies, 
and 
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Rappahannocks had to fight the draft boards with re-
spect to their racial identities; 
(60) the Virginia Vital Statistics Bureau in-
sisted that certain Indian draftees be inducted into 
Negro units; 
(61) finally, 3 Rappahannocks were convicted of 
violating the Federal draft laws and, after spending 
time in a Federal prison, were granted conscientious 
objector status and served out the remainder of the 
war working in military hospitals; 
(62) in 1943, Frank Speck noted that there were 
approximately 25 communities of Indians left in the 
Eastern United States that were entitled to Indian 
classification, including the Rappahannocks; 
(63) in the 1940s, Leon Truesdell, Chief Statisti-
cian, of the United States Census Bureau, listed 118 
members in the Rappahannock Tribe in the Indian 
population of Virginia; 
(64) on April 25, 1940, the Office of Indian Af-
fairs of the Department of the Interior included the 
Rappahannocks on a list of Indian tribes classified by 
State and by agency; 
(65) in 1948, the Smithsonian Institution An-
nual Report included an article by William Harlen 
Gilbert entitled, ‘‘Surviving Indian Groups of the 
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