Who We Are?

The origin of the Reno and Reneau families in America can be traced to religious events in their home country of France following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The Edict of Nantes, signed by Henry IV in April 1598, had allowed the French Protestants or Huguenots some religious freedoms, including free exercise of their religion in 20 specified towns in France. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in October 1685 began a new persecution of the Huguenots, and hundreds of thousands of Huguenots fled France to other countries. It was forbidden, under threat of imprisonment as a galley slave, for the Huguenots to leave France unless they first converted to Catholicism, so most who escaped took only what they could carry. Many went to England where they took out Letters of Denization which permitted them to remain and to hold land in England or its colonies. Large numbers of Huguenots migrated to British North America, especially to the Carolinas, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York. Most of the Reno family in America can be traced to Louis Reynaud, a Huguenot from the former province of Angoumois, corresponding today to the Department of Charente near the Bordeaux region of western France. According to research by Sherman Reno, Louis Reynaud was a general in the military service of the Duc de Crequy, who became the Governor of Paris (source: The Reno Family, manuscript by Sherman Reno; The Reno Family, manuscript by William L. Reno, Jr. 1975). On the basis of geography, philology and heraldry, Sherman speculated that Louis Reynaud came from the small town of Bourdeaux on the Roubion River in southeastern France. However, the only written evidence for the origin of our Reynaud ancestors in France comes from the September 8, 1687 bounty award to “Louis Reynaud of Angoumois”.

Two of Louis Reynaud’s sons, Louis and Benjamin, arrived in Stafford County, Virginia, by October 1688. This is documented by records in the Stafford County, Virginia Record Book, pages 94-95, containing sworn statements from Nicholas Hayward, Notary Public, dated October 2nd and 3rd,1688, certifying that he had seen “Letters Pattents of Denigracon” from King James II for two of Louis Reynaud’s sons: Lewis Reynaud and his family, and Benjamin Reynaud and his family. On the same page of Stafford County records Lewis and Benjamin record the brands that they will use for their livestock. A bounty award to Nicholas Hayward two years earlier, in September 1686 when they were still in London, mentions both Lewis and Benjamin Reynaud and their families, further suggesting that the two brothers came together to Virginia in 1688.

Many of the Huguenots who came to the Northern Neck of Virginia did so under a business venture by Nicholas Hayward, who made speculative investments in the English colonies from Virginia to Hudson Bay. Nicholas’ brother Samuel Hayward was the Clerk of Stafford County, Virginia, and Hayward, George Brent, Robert Bristow and Richard Foote, four English businessmen, had secured a 30,000 acre proprietorship between Cedar Run and Broad Run in the northern neck of Virginia from Lord Culpeper that was originally intended as a colony for Huguenot and Catholic refugees from England. French expatriates in London were sought out by businessmen with land holdings in the colonies of Virginia and Carolina who offered promises and provisions to entice the Huguenots to settle there (including Letters of Denization, and bounty payments to the settlers). Thus, Nicholas Haywood and his partners recruited Louis and Benjamin Reynaud and their families to settle on these proprietary lands in the northern neck of Virginia, but the four businessmen were not able to convince enough Huguenot families to settle on their lands to make the venture successful. The area near the proposed settlement of “Brenton” continued to be sparsely settled for another 20-30 years. The greatest influx of Huguenots to Virginia occurred later, in 1700, when four ships brought French Huguenots to Manakintowne in Virginia. Among the names arriving at that colony was Lewis and Benjamin’s other brother, Pierre: “Pierre Reynaud, landed at the James River on September 20, 1700, from the ship “Peter & Anthony’, Danial Pearrey, Capt.” This was the second of three ships carrying Huguenots to Manakintowne in 1700. The Peter & Anthony carried 170 passengers and took 13 weeks to cross the Atlantic. It is known that Pierre Reynaud returned to Europe where he eventually died, and he probably made more than one trip to Virginia.[Note: Sherman Reno and William L. Reno were unaware of the Records in Stafford County dated October 2, 1688, and incorrectly show the original immigrant forefather of the Reno family in America as Lewis Reno, the son of Pierre Reynaud. This Lewis’ uncle, Louis Reynaud, is now known to be the actual forefather.]

Carol Cason, Past National President of The Huguenot Society of the Founders of Manakin in the Colony of Virginia, sent the following information to Sue Damewood on February 26, 2010, concerning Manakintowne. She wrote: “First, we spell it ‘Manakintowne’. This despite the fact that there never really was a town. The original land grants are skinny rectangles stretching up to the James River on the north, like piano keys. This meant people didn’t have far to go to get to their neighbors across the short east-west axis. William Byrd sketched out a town, but all these city people were sent to the wilderness to farm, and no town ever really happened.

“Second, boats couldn’t land at Manakin. The ocean vessels off-loaded at Jamestown, and the passengers and supplies were put on smaller boats. These went up the James as far as the falls, which are basically seven miles of rocks. At that point,the rest of the trip was 20 miles over land. The lack of any roads other than Indian trails added to the ordeal. ….

“A fourth ship came later. Most of these Huguenot passengers justifiably chickened right out and headed up the York River to settle within reach of civilization.”

The manuscript “A Frenchman in Virginia, being the memoirs of a Huguenot refugee in 1686” gives a good description of the situation under which our Huguenot ancestors left France, and the conditions they found upon arriving in Stafford County, Virginia. The author of the memoirs (translated and published by Fairfax Harrison in 1923) said he was “of the ancient and noble” Huguenot family of Durand from the province of Dauphin. In describing how he left France, the manuscript reads: “Collecting all his available money, he fled to Marseille. While there he saw some of his unfortunate neighbours, who had refused to recant, led to the galleys, shaven and manacled. Depressed by the spectacle, he made his way into Italy. At Leghorn, the primary port of Tuscany, he took a ship and, after a hair breadth escape from Algerian pirates, told with the convincing simplicity of detail of a narrative by Defoe, duly reached London in the summer of 1686.” His description of the conditions in Virginia, including how tobacco was used as currency and was smoked by even the children, and the construction of houses, is as follows: “There is little money in circulation, except among the people of quality. They do business with their tobacco as if it was money. With tobacco they buy lands, hire and buy cattle; and as they can secure all they want with this commodity they become so lazy that they even import from England their linen and their hats, their women’s clothes and their shoes, their iron, their nails, nay, even their wooden furniture” “They set out their tobacco in the month of May, leaving a distance of three feet between the plants. A great quantity of this crop is consumed in the country. Everyone smokes both at work and at rest. When I went to church (all their churches are in the woods) I saw the parson and all the congregation smoking in the churchyard while waiting for the hour of service. When the sermon was over they did the same thing before separating. There are seats provided in the churchyards for this purpose. It was here that I saw that everyone smoked, women and girls and boys down to the age of seven years. There are some very good houses in this country. Those of the peasants are all of wood. They are sheathed with chestnut plank and sealed inside with the same. As they get ahead in the world they refinish the interior with plaster, for which they use oyster shell lime, making it as white as snow; so that although these houses seem poor enough on the outside because one sees only the weathered sheating, within they are most agreeable. Most of the houses are amply pierced with glazed windows. They make quantities of brick in Virginia and I saw a number of houses built entirely of brick. Whatever their estates, for which reason I do not know, they build their houses consisting only of two ground floor rooms, with some closets and one or two prophet’s chambers above. According to his means, each planter provides as many of such houses as he needs. They build also a separate kitchen, a house for the Christian slaves, another for Negro slaves, and several tobacco barns, so that in arriving at the plantation of a person of importance you think you are entering a considerable village. They provide no stables at all for they never house their cattle. More than that, few of their house doors are ever locked for robbery is here unknown. You can travel 200 leagues through the country with your hat full of money without fear that any of it would be taken from you by violence. When the women do their washing, if the clothes are not all dried the same day, they leave them out of doors sometimes two or three days and nights at a time. Robbery is punished so severely that if a man is convicted of having stolen a chicken he is hanged. All of their cattle sleep in the woods. My landlord had only two boys to work his land. For a maid he bought one of the trollops who came in the ship with me. With this force he usually harvested six bushels of wheat and 200 bushels of Indian corn, after sowing one bushel of each; fifteen bushels of beans, of yams what would perhaps amount to fifty bushels if they had been measured, and, finally, twelve casks of tobacco, weighing 6,000 pounds. The latter I saw him sell at forty-four shillings a cask, and he had never before sold so cheap. The standard cask of tobacco is 500 pounds.”

Tobacco was shipped to Europe in round casks called hogsheads, which weighed between 90 and 150 pounds empty. Hogsheads stood about 5 feet tall. When filled to capacity with 1000 pounds of tobacco, the hogsheads were heavy, cumbersome, and difficult to carry. The plantation owners devised an innovative way to transport these hogsheads to market. Rather than lift these casks atop carriages, the individual casks were rolled. Large pegs in each end of the cask were attached to a yoke, hitched to a horse, and rolled to the market. Planters utilized existing Indian paths as roads, and soon these travelways were known as “rolling roads”. One of the biggest rolling roads in the area was Dunfried Road, and the intersection of the Potomac Path (the north-south road) and Dumfried Road was soon an important crossroads in the region.

The study of the Reno family, from their origins in Virginia in 1688 to the current situation where Louis Reynaud’s descendants can be found in almost every state in the country, is a lesson in American history. The first Renos settled in and around Stafford Co., Virginia, parts of which became Prince William County, where Lewis Reno and his sons were tobacco farmers. Most of the Reno/Reneau family descended from Lewis’ son John Reno and his wife Susannah Thorn, who moved from Prince William County to Patterson’s creek in Hampshire Co., VA about 1760, and then further north in about 1773 to the newly-opened wilderness area of Chartier’s creek near present-day Pittsburgh. Both Virginia and Pennsylvania claimed this land until 1784, and the Renos claimed land there on Virginia certificates, but later a federal commission determined that Pennsylvania’s claim was valid. Two of John Reno’s sons, Charles and Thomas, fought in the Revolutionary War. Ten years earlier, King George III had made the Proclamation of 1763 that reserved all lands west of the rest of the Allegheny and Appalachian mountains for the Indians, and the settlement on Chartier’s creek was one of the most western settlements of the growing country. In the 1750s, the Indians had sided with the French against the British and the colonialists in the French and Indian War because the French had convinced the Indians that the British colonials would take their land, whereas the French meant only to trade with the Indians. During the period of 1750 through 1800 the Ohio River valley which included all of the territory west of Chartier’s Creek including what is now West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois became known as “that dark and bloody land” where attacks by Indians and taking of scalps by other Indians and whites became a daily occurrence. The area around Pittsburgh and over to Wheeling was the main departure point for the huge numbers of settlers pouring into the Ohio River valley, and many of the Renos who settled in Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois went down the Ohio River on boats after following the overland road to Fort Pitt and Wheeling. Other sons of John Reno, including Charles Reno, John David Reno, and Thomas Reneau, went south to Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama. The last property owned by Charles was in the name of Charles Reneau. Other members of the family changed the spelling from Reno to Reneau, possibly in an attempt to disassociate themselves from the bitter political debate over the short-lived state of Franklin, to which the Renos and the Tiptons were opposed. Some of the grandchildren of John Reno and Susannah Thorn were early settlers in southern states and fought in the Indian wars of Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, later setting on lands previously held by the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole tribes. Three Reneau brothers were in Texas during the 1830s, when those lands were under the control of the Spanish and then the Mexican government. Other Reno families were in Arkansas while it was still part of the Missouri Territory, after the Louisiana Purchase, but prior to the assignment of the Indian Lands. As new lands opened, whether Reno or Reneau, the families were there – moving further westward. Some of the “southern contingent” moved north to areas inhabited by other related families, but the “northern contingent” migrated into the southern areas. Lewis Reno (b. 1740) in Prince William County (grandson of Lewis Reno the Huguenot), moved with the Kincheloes and other neighbors from Virginia to settle on patent land in western Kentucky where they founded the town of Lewisberg. This Lewis’ younger brother, Zeley Reno, fought in the Revolutionary War at Yorktown and moved in 1784 to the wilderness of what is now Harrison County, KY, at a time when few whites lived there and Indian raids were commonplace. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, the Renos moved around by boat, horse, and oxcart. Even as late as 1840, the railroad only went as far west as Missouri, and the wagon trains of the Oregon Trail started from there around 1843. The transcontinental railroad that opened up the country did not occur until after the Civil War.

Numerous spelling variations of the Reno name have appeared in records during the past 300 years in America, such as Reno, Reneau, Renneau, Reynaud, Renno, Rennoe, Renoe, Renaw, Rayno, Rhyno, and others. Many of the records, such as census records, were spelled phonetically and the records themselves cannot be relied upon. However, various documents signed by Renos appear with various spellings over the years, and the variations Reno and Reneau are common to this day. The Huguenot immigrants, having fled France for a British Colony, anglicized the spelling of Reynaud to Reno, at a time when they were British subjects and the French were the enemies of the British. Lewis Reno wrote his name Reno when he signed a deed in 1711, and deeds from the Northern Neck Grant books and early Prince William County records have original signatures by lewis Reno, Jr., Thomas Reno, Zeley Reno, and others with the spelling Reno. The majority of the Reno/Reneaus today can be traced to John Reno and Susannah Thorn. In his 1806 will, John spelled his last name, and the names of his sons, as Reno, and most of the land records also spell his name Reno. Their son Thomas, probably the first,  changed the spelling of his name to Reneau when he moved to the French Broad River country of Tennessee, and in several lines of the family, children of a Reneau spelled their name Reno.

Perhaps the most famous member of the Reno family was Jesse Lee Reno, who was a general in the Union Army during the Civil War. The city of Reno, Nevada; Reno County, Kansas; and several streets and small towns are named for him. His son, Jesse Wilford Reno, was an accomplished engineer who invented the escalator. In 1896, according to the Guiness Book of World Records, the “inclined elevator” invented by Jesse Reno, was ridden on by more than 75,000 people when it debuted for two weeks at Coney Island in New York. Another famous Reno was Marcus Albert Reno, a Brigadier General in the Civil War who later served as Major in the 7th Calvary under the command of George Custer. Custer’s widow tried to brand General Terry, Captain Benteen, and Major Reno as having done less than their duty in order to explain Custer’s defeat. A Court of Inquiry into his actions during the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25,1876 exonerated him of any blame, but he was dismissed from the Army in 1880 on a general charge of misconduct related to advances he made on another officer’s wife. In 1967, his court martial was reopened and the original verdict of guilty was reversed, and he was restored to his full rank and honors. His body was reinterred in the Little Big Horn National Cemetery. Another Reno of note was John Christmas Reno who settled at the Falls of St. Anthony on the upper Mississippi River and was largely responsible for founding and developing what are now the cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul. The Reno name was also made famous by the Reno Gang, a notorious band of train and bank robbers in Indiana just after the Civil War who probably descended from Revolutionary War veteran Zeley Reno. The Reno Gang committed the world’s first train robbery as well as a series of robberies and other crimes, and three of the brothers were eventually hung by vigilantes, causing a serious strain in relations between the United States and Great Britain because Frank Reno had been extradited from Canada to be tried. Former Attorney General Janet Reno, in case anyone is wondering, is not part of this family. According to an interview with her in Time Magazine, her father picked the name Reno off a map of Nevada because their Danish surname of Rasmussen was too often misspelled.

The amount of detail available on the genealogy of the Reno/Reneau family is due in part to attempts by the Reno family in the late 1800s and early 1900s to prove that they descended from Philip Francois Renault and were therefore entitled to lands transferred to him by the West Indian Company, which was granted certain lands by King Louis XIV of France in 1714. In April 1887, a meeting was held by certain Reno family members, including Marshall H. Reno, for the purpose of forming a family corporation and hiring lawyers to pursue land claims. For more than 30 years, the family tried to prove that they descended from Philip Renault, and that the lands that he had acquired in Missouri, Illinois and elsewhere prior to the Louisiana Purchase rightfully belonged to Philip’s heirs. A letter from J. M. Reno in 1887 instructed family members to “Begin with the oldest known member of your family, state his name, when he was born, and where he was born, and if living, his address so that a correct family tree may be set up, giving as perfect a genealogy as possible” The resulting information was published as Marshall H. Reno’s “Reno Family Tree.” A letter from Faust and Wilson, Attorneys at Law, dated March 7, 1915 to Marshall Reno summarized the genealogy and legal research that confirmed that Marshall and the other Renos were not related to Philip Francois Renault, and that French courts had previously established that his true heirs lived in Belgium and France. The only Renos that made any money from the land claim attempt were those that sold their shares in the family corporation early. It has since been proven that the true forefather of the Reno family is Louis Reynaud of Angoumois, but the incorrect information that we are descended from Philip Renault is still repeated by people unfamiliar with the true story.

Two earlier publications of the book “Genealogy of the Reno Family in America, 1600-1920” were done by Steven Fancy. In 1998, Steven began collaborating with Sue Reneau Damewood of Powell, Tennessee, who had been conducting research on the Reno/Reneau family for more than 30 years. This publication of the Reno/Reneau family history included genealogy information for more than 20,000 Reno/Reneaus, or spouses or children of Reno/Reneaus based on the combined efforts of Steven’s and Sue’s research, plus the contributions of dozens of cousins who have sent information on their immediate family line. This publication is a compilation of information from several thousand sources, including original research on various branches of the family by Steven during trips to Indiana, Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Alabama, Colorado, Salt Lake City, the National Archives, and Library of Congress in Washington, DC, and several trips to Stafford and Prince William counties in Virginia, and dozens of research trips by Sue to libraries, county courthouses, and state archives throughout the country. Information from previous publications of this book (some of it now known to be incorrect) has frequently been “cut and pasted” and can now be found on dozens of websites on the internet. The original three sources for the information compiled here were the manuscripts of Guy B. Reno, “John Reno and Susannah Thorn and Their Issue”; Dr. William Lawson Reno, Jr., 1975, “The Reno Family”, portions of which were published in a series of articles in the Detroit Genealogical society Magazine; and “The Reno Family by Sherman Reno 1970, which was provided to us by his son Kyle Reno. The initial skeleton of this family tree was based on Guy Reno’s manuscript, provided to us by his son Roger Reno to whom we are extremely grateful. For most entries, we have documented the source of our information, and most of the entries that are not documented are based on our original research or the material presented in the manuscripts by Guy Reno or William Lawson Reno. Several other key sources that have been incorporated here are “The Reneau-Reno Family” by Mrs. W. R. Eckhardt, Jr.; “The Reneau-Reno Family of Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky” by Mrs. McAlister Elliott (published in Colonial Families of Americas but later revised by the author); the “Reneau Excursus” by J. B. Boddie, 1975, in Historical Southern Families, “Descendants of Benjamin Franklin Reno and Mary Vosburgh”, by Roger Reno 1996; “A genealogy and history of some of the descendants of George Reno 1751-1988”, by E. R. and G. T. McCoy 1988; “Reno Family Tree 1645-1915” by Marshall H. Reno; “Reno and Apsaalooka Survive Custer,” by Ottie W. Reno; “Remember Reno” by William F. McConnell, “History of Muhlenberg County”; “Pioneer Families of Missouri”; and family histories for the Randolph, Kincheloe, Bland, Quimby, Randall, and other families that married Renos. Other important information has been provided by dozens of “cousins” who have provided information on their direct family lines, to whom we are grateful.

Based on research, it is estimated that 10 to 20 percent of the present-generation Americans with the surname of Reno or Reneau are descendents of other Reno immigrants who originally came from France, Germany, or Italy by way of Canada, Mexico, and England. In addition to the main Reno/Reneau family tree, there are several other lines for which additional information is needed before they can be attached to the original immigrant. Hopefully, further research will tell whether these lines connect to the main family tree or to some other Reno immigrant.

Sue Reneau Damewood

Powell, TN 37840-4224