INTRODUCTION
Major Windle Ray Causey, U.S. Army Retired. I was born 1946 in Glenn Allen, Fayette County, Alabama. My father had returned from World War Two service in the Pacific Theater nine months earlier. I grew up the son of a coal miner. Clifton Tilford Causey was a loving father for me and my sister Linda Faye and a loving husband to my mother Edna Lucille Beasley, the daughter of a share cropper William Beasley.
The Causey name as it is spelled here is most likely derived from the term “Causey” defined as “a road that is raised above water or marshland or sand.” The use of Surnames began to be used in the British Isles around 1100 AD as a means of identification for tax collection. A man named John who lived near the causey began to be referred to in documents as John (who lives by the Causey) or John Causey. By the 1400s there were many of the name Causey and Cawsey on the tax rolls in the United Kingdom.49 Here are a few of the many to be found there:
Thomas Causey of Suffolk in 1495, John Causey in 1498 (reporting agricultural costs to Henry VII), Robert Causey of Tavistock, Devon, in 1552, Hugh Cawsey of Somerset in 1536 and John Cawsey of Somerset in 1523.
There are other ways the name Causey has derived but for the majority of the Causeys who migrated to America as commoners, this is most likely origin of their surname.
In this genealogical study we purpose to move from researching only one Causey family lineage toward a worldwide all inclusive study of one surname, the Causey surname including the many variations of that name.
Based on recent DNA analysis my ancestors of the Causey line were mostly living in Scotland or Ireland by 1600 AD.
The first Causey in Jamestown, Virginia arrived in the Phoenix in 1607. His wife Thomasine arrived in the Lyon, 1609. They had at least two sons John and Thomas. Some declare a third son Richard. I haven’t been able to find evidence of a Richard Causey. The names John and Thomas are found in almost every generation of our Causey clan, (I’m referring to our Causey clan as that of Fayette County, Alabama. It is likely the John Causey who sold his father’s land in Jamestown in 1634 moved up the Chesapeake to Dorchester County, Colonial Maryland.
By the mid-1700s John Causey’s descendants had moved south to Craven and Guilford Counties in North Carolina and South Carolina. By 1800 many had moved on to Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama. My currently trace my line beginning with Nathaniel father of John Causey-I who was father of John Causey-II of Dorchester County, Maryland. John Causey-II b. c1650 was father of Thomas Causey-I b. c1690 who was father of Thomas Causey-II who was father of Zebulon Causey-I b. c1739, who was father of Solomon Causey b. c1769, who was father of James Solomon Causey b. 1812, who was father of James Orlando Causey b. 1856 who was father of John Solomon Causey b. 1882 in Fayette County, Alabama, who was father of Clifton Tilford Causey b. 1923, who was father of Windle Ray Causey b. 1946.
Please join this one-name study and help us find all of our ancestor great grandfathers and great uncles Worldwide.