Additional information
by Emily P. Cary (Author)
The more we learn, the less we know. Since the publication of the third edition of The Pritchard Family History in 2006, several discoveries make it clear that Thomas Pritchard, the immigrant of our line, was not, as earlier believed, the carpenter for the London Company who arrived on the ship Abigaile in 1620. New details about the immigrant Thomas Pritchard allow the reader to disregard conjectures found in past editions and consolidate the known facts into the true biography. This new information does not in any way gloss over the contributions of earlier researchers who spent hours validating the information contained in these pages. Because court records relied on the clerk's command of the language, the surnames of the early settlers varied in spelling. The immigrant family arrived as Pricket or Prichet, but the surname appears in official documents as Pritchard, Prichard, Pritchet, Prichett, Pricket, Prickett, and Pritchardt. Ever since Thomas Sr. of Loudoun County, Virginia has adopted Pritchard as the preferred spelling. The primary residences of the Pritchard family were in Virginia and the portion that became West Virginia after the Civil War. A wealth of facsimile reprints of vintage photographs and several maps add to the value of this work.
