James Monroe (1730–1772) married Spence Monroe in 1752 and they had five children: Elizabeth, James, Spence, Andrew, and Joseph Jones. His paternal great-grandfather Patrick Andrew Monroe emigrated to America from Scotland in the mid-17th century. In 1650 he patented a large tract of land in Washington Parish, Westmoreland County, Virginia. Monroe's mother was the daughter of a wealthy Welsh immigrant who had settled in nearby King George County, Virginia. Also among James Monroe's ancestors were French Huguenot immigrants, who came to Virginia in 1700. At age eleven, Monroe was enrolled in the lone school in the county. Monroe attended this school for
James Monroe Trotter African Americans. His son William Monroe Trotter became a rights activist and was founder and editor of the "Boston Guardian", a progressive African American newspaper. James Monroe Trotter was born on February 7, 1842, twenty-five miles south of Vicksburg in the once-thriving community of Grand Gulf, Mississippi, in Claiborne County, Mississippi, although some sources give Trotter's date of birth as November 8, 1842. James was born into slavery; his mother Letitia was a slave and his father was her white master, Richard S. Trotter, then unmarried. After Richard Trotter married in 1854, he freed Letitia and their mixed-race children: James