Ancestry of
Johnny Depp

Movie Actor

Elizabeth Key

View famous kin of Elizabeth Key

• • 8th Great-grandmother of Johnny Depp — 11th Generation
  • Ahnentafel No:
  • 1281 
  • Father:
  • Thomas Key 
  • Mother:
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  • Birth Date:
  • ABT 1630 
  • Birth Location:
  • Virginia 
  • Christening Date:
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  • Christening Location:
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  • Death Date:
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  • Death Location:
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  • Burial Date:
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  • Burial Location:
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  • Spouse Name:
  • William Grinstead
  • Marriage Date:
  • ABT 1655 
  • Marriage Location:
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  • Child:

  William Grinstead Jr. (Ahnentafel No:640 )

  • Notes: 

  • Elizabeth Key was a Virginia slave born to an English father and an African-American mother. She sued for her freedom and won on July 21, 1656. During the lawsuit, she apparently fell in love with her lawyer William Grinstead and they were married.

• Sources for Elizabeth Key

  • ¹ Ancestry.com, "Unmasking The Lone Ranger’s Leading Men: Real Life Heroes in Hammer and Depp’s Family Trees", (accessed 10/13/2016).
  • ² Banks, Taunya Lovell, "Dangerous Woman: Elizabeth Key's Freedom Suit - Subjecthood and Racialized Identity in Seventeenth Century . . .", (accessed 10/13/2016).
  • ³ PBS Frontline, "The Blurred Racial Lines of Famous Families: Greenstead/Grinsted/Grimsted, etc.", (accessed 10/13/2016).
  • ⁴ Shumaker, Gorrell and John L. N. Grinstead, The William Grinstead Family in America, Unknown: Unknown (1974), 11.
  • ⁵ Wikipedia, "Elizabeth Key Grinstead", (accessed 10/13/2016).

Johnny Depp photo by Angela George (CC BY-SA 3.0)