Some Blackard family origin legends say that the first Blackard immigrant married in Wales and had two children before coming to America.
However, no record of the name, Blackard, has ever been found in Wales.
One English professional genealogist searched the lists of Protestant "dissentors" prepared in Wales and found no names similar to Blackard. Likewise the National Burial Index of England and Wales includes no names like Blackard in Wales.
Additionally, according to this English genealogist, no immigrant ships sailed from Wales during the years prior to the appearance of Charles Blackard in America.
Some say that the given name "Willoughby" is Welsh, however, this is totally false. Judging from the records in the National Burial Index of England and Wales and the Vital Statistics records of the Britain Isles, the use of Willoughby as a given name did not start in England until after it had already started in Barbados and tidewater Virginia. The first use of the given name Willoughby that I have yet found was for Willoughby Chamberlain who was named in the will of Dame Willoughby, widow of Francis Willoughby who came to Barbados after the English Civil War around 1650 and became governor. Prior to this the only occurence of that name is the Willoughby family of Somerset and Lincolnshire, England and the title Lord Willoughby for the governor of that area centered on the town of Willoughby. Their family name comes from the willow trees that grow in that region granted them by William the Conqueror. Francis Willoughby named his estate in Barbados, Parham, after the Willoughby ancestral castle in Lincolnshire.
Perhaps this story is a distortion of a memory of the Welsh ancestry of the
wife of Charles Blackard. Genealogists find that most American origin stories
are more fancy than fact, yet many contain some kernal of fact that has been
misconstrued or extrapolated upon in the interest of making a good tale.