The name of Thomas Hord, who is styled "Gentle- man in the records, has been selected as the title of the following pages, not only in order to distinguish them from the "Genealogy of the Hord Family published several years ago, but also because it is of him that this little volume-although containing a few references to other members of the family-principally treats. He was descended, as Robert Hord states in his manuscript history of the family written in 1838, from an ancient and honorable family in England, which has been traced in a direct line as far back as the year 1215. It is of Saxon origin and was seated for many centuries at "Cote House, near Bampton, Oxfordshire. The name in the English records is spelled variously, Hord, Horde and Hoord. There is a brass memorial in Ewell Church, Surrey, inscribed with the name of Thomas Hord and in the same church another memorial bearing the name of his father, Allen Horde. Sir Thomas Hord, Knight, was distinguished in the great Civil Wars in England during the reign of Charles I, and in each successive generation the Lord of the Manor of Cote has borne this name. It is also interesting and significant that in the earliest records of the family in Virginia we find the name of "Thomas Hord, Gentleman. In the Court House at Tappahannock, in Essex County, Virginia, there is on record the following quaint old deed:
"This Indenture made the fifteenth day of November in the year of our Lord Christ one thousand feven hundred and thirty six between