Dugger Genealogy

Marty and Karla Grant

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Dugger Genealogy

Welcome to my Dugger genealogy pages. I am interested in the Dugger surname in the United States. My own ancestors lived in Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee. I’m interested in all the others as well. Most of the American Duggers seem to be part of the same large extended family, with a few exceptions.

The most common spelling is Dugger, followed by Duggar. Other variations include Dugard. There are several ways to misspell the name. The name Dugger, in our line anyway, is of English origin, though it may have been Anglicized from the French Dugard at some earlier time.

Neither Dugger, Duggar, nor Dugard made the Top 1000 most common surname lists for America in 2000 or 2010. Back in 1990 “Dugger” was ranked the 3,439^th most common surname in the USA, so it isn’t a common name at all. Despite that, there seem to be Duggers spread all throughout the south and midwest and points beyond.

My most recent Dugger ancestor is my five times Great Grandmother Mary Dugger (1750s-1836). She was probably born in Granville Co., NC, moved to Surry/Wilkes Co., NC area with her parents by 1772. She moved “over the mountains” into what is now Carter Co., TN where she first married Drury Goodwin ca 1780. After his death ca 1782, she married 2^nd to Jacob Smith (bef 1766-1823). She had two Goodwin children and three Smith children. Mary is most likely a child of William and Martha (—) Dugger.

William Dugger (c1720-c1774) was born in Surry Co., VA where he resided until before 1741 when he moved to Brunswick Co., VA. He lived there until the 1750s when he moved to Granville Co., NC. By 1762 he was in Halifax (now Pittsylvania) Co., VA and remained there until ca 1770 when he moved to Surry Co., NC where he died ca 1773. That section of Surry became Wilkes Co., NC after his death. William was thrice married, first to Martha (—) before ca 1745, second to Margaret (—), and 3^rd to Mary (—) who survived him, dying after 1787 in what is now Carter Co., TN. William had at least five children as best as we can determine. William Dugger is the one, I believe, who was erroneously referred to as “Julius Caesar Dugger” by some early Dugger historians. William is almost certainly a son of Daniel and Mary (Scarborough) Dugger.

Daniel Dugger (c1696-c1773) resided in Surry Co., VA until moving to Brunswick Co., VA in the mid 1700s. He married Mary Scarborough ca 1715 in Surry Co., VA. They had seven children as best as we can determine. His parents are not known, but there was a John Dugard in Virginia in the 1600s who certainly *could* be his father, but proof is lacking.

(Note from 2026): Several years ago I had a large Dugger section on my website. Due to extensive correspondence and collaborative research going on then amongst many of us, I thought it would be helpful to move all my work to a “public” website so others could make edits to the data. The choices then were limited and I chose WeRelate.org, a Wiki style website. I moved all my Dugger work there and it remains there. However, as I soon learned, it was not a good choice because it’s very difficult to manage. Making even small changes are hard to do. Thus, for a long time now I’ve been meaning to restore it all to my own personal site. However, that probably won’t happen in full, but I’ll do some of it here. It will take time of course. Meanwhile, the Werelate pages are there, and in some cases, others have actually made contributions, which is what I’d hoped for, though mostly it’s still my original work, unchanged as far as I can tell. And by my “original work” I only mean that I did all the typing, formatting and compiling, etc. The Dugger research itself isn’t mine alone as I had many people helping with that. Click here to see those pages. (End of note.)

Revised: July 14, 2026

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