We may be related. My family traces the ancestry back to Mayflower passengers, Edward Doty and Richard Warren. Ancestors include Quincy (of John Quincy Adams), William Dawes (who rode with Paul Revere, but never had a poem written about him) and Louisa May Alcott.
Anyone with any good ancestry stories?
- Thread starter Thus Spoke Mainer
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If you have early New England heritage, you almost certainly have some relation. There just were not that many people there early on. Their kids all married each other.
Yes, I'm sure. I grew up in CT. We have multiple generations that settled in MA and CT.
Tom...none came over on the Welcome but one ancestor, Thomas Canby, came over on the Vine in 1684.
NitNE73, my apologies. The dates I gave for Welcome Society membership were from memory. I should know better. Basically, it's open to individuals that sailed over to Pennsylvania on the Welcome or other ships of Penn's fleet in 1681/2 (primarily '82). The Vine was not part of that fleet.
You can look at a list of documented individuals that arrived as part of this fleet at THIS LINK. A note of caution -- the Welcome Society acknowledges that the list of documented individuals is incomplete. However, they leave it up to applicants to prove that one of their ancestors was part of the fleet but not included in the list of the above link. I know of a few people that have gone through this process (applying to the Society, and proving that their ancestor was on the fleet but not included on the linked list), and they found the process to be really stringent.
Nothing of note in my history. My grandmother took up the pursuit back in the 1970's, with most of her progress in her chain. She traced us back to southern Germany and Switzerland, with our earliest arrival we know of c.1742. Moved inland pretty early on, in Snyder, Northumberland and Adams Counties. We're just farmers, teachers, furniture makers with a doctor or two thrown in. Mennonites and Lutherans. She really leveraged LDS resources. Can't imagine it would have been as much fun with today's more expansive resources.
The deal. It was the best rowboat in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The only "famous" ancestors I'm aware of are Peter Brown who came over on the Mayflower and Roger Williams who got kicked out of Massachusetts and then founded the colony of Providence Plantations. Now, how many of you historical trivia geniuses know that Rhode Island is officially known as the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations? I learned that when one of my daughters graduated from.... (drum roll, please).... Roger Williams University. Talk about a legacy recruit!
That very well may be true. I grew up right at the foot of the mountain. I used to walk up to I 99 hunting.
I am a descendant of Jonas Nielsen who came to America from Sweden with Governor Printz in 1642. He had an Indian trading post on the banks of the Schuylkill River. i also have descendants for whom Garrett Road, Marshall Road and Sellers library in Upper Darby were named.
Maybe, although I haven't heard of any of those connections. As someone pointed out, however, the gene pool early on wasn't that large.
I know my connection to Bradford is through the Southworth family, one of which married William Bradford. I have 4 direct ancestors that came over on the Mayflower... John Alden, Stephen Hopkins, John Howland, and William Mullins. Alice (Carpenter) Southworth came over on the next ship, and she married Bradford (his first wife died on the Mayflower, I believe). Descendants of Alden, Howland and Mullins all married into the Southworth family.
The family with my surname came over from England in, I believe, the early 1700's. Apparently I have ancestors with my surname buried in CT, I think in New Haven, so I may take a trek up to see if I can find the grave sites after a little more research. They married a descendent of Hopkins, creating that lineage. Hopkins, incidently, came over before the Mayflower, was shipwrecked on Bermuda before making his way to Jamestown (on a ship he and the other castaways cobbled together) where he served under Captain John Smith. He returned to Europe, and came back in the Mayflower. He was the only one on the boat who had previously been to the "New World." He also had been convicted of mutiny at one point (I think during their time on Bermuda) but managed to get his sentence commuted. He was an interesting character... he had a daughter born on the Mayflower that I believe was the first child born in the ship. And because of his experience with Native Americans at Jamestown, he was involved with the Native Americans in Massachusetts as well and was an ambassador of sorts at times.
Oddly enough, the last time I was in England, I was less than 30 miles from the village my ancestors left... and I didn't know it at the time.
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wow. that's really going back in Pennsylvania history, to a time before Pennsylvania existed. Very impressive
"Joen Nilsson was one of the many soldiers accompanying Governor Printz on the Fourth Expedition to New Sweden. Nilsson of Skåning hundred, Skaraborg län, would later become better known under the name of Jonas Nilsson. Born in 1621, Jonas was a tailor by trade. He was an imposing character, reported to be six and a half feet tall. He began his voyage to New Sweden from Stockholm in September 1642. After arriving at Fort Christina, 15 February 1643, he was one of many men assigned to help build Fort Elsborg, where he was subsequently stationed. Nilsson served governor Printz faithfully as a soldier, and also served the colony as a tailor for eleven years until 1653. But, when Printz returned to Sweden in 1653, Nilsson did not go with him. He obtained his discharge and became a Freeman. After Governor Rising arrived in 1654 Nilsson was able to secure passage to Sweden to collect the moneys due him. New Sweden was essentially a barter economy where the currency consisted of beaver skins, half-beaver skins and sewant. To collect real money for one’s services, it was necessary to go to Sweden. Most of the settlers in New Sweden owed money to the New Sweden Company and had no incentive to return. Before he left Nilsson signed the Freemen’s Loyalty Oath on June 9, 1654, and married Gertrude Svensdotter in 1654. She was the daughter of Sven Gunnarson, and was born in 1636 in Sweden, she immigrated to New Sweden in 1639, on the ship Kalmar Nyckel. Jonas left his young bride in mid-July 1654 to return to Sweden on the ship Eagle. He collected the back wages due him and returned to New Sweden on the Mercurius, which arrived in March 1656.Meeting the ship were his wife Gertrude, and his eldest son, Nils, who was born during his absence. Nilsson then became one of the first settlers in Kingsessing, where he established an Indian trading post on Kingsessing Creek southwest of the Schuylkill River in present day West Philadelphia. Kingsessing was a Swedish village on the north bank of a creek known as Minqua Kill or Kingsessing, there were four households in this village when the 1671 census was taken- one was Nilsson’s.
Nilsson was a friend, protector and business advisor of Armegot Printz, daughter of the former governor Johan Printz, Jonas was a witness to her sale of a church bell to the Swedish church on 24 May 1673.
In Philadelphia near the present day 77th and Laycock streets, stood a house built by Jonas Nilsson, (c. 1650s). Nilsson, for some years before building this house, had dwelt in a cave, the site of which is still preserved in the side of the hill which slopes from the front door of the cottage to what was originally the bank of a navigable creek. Ships from the Delaware brought up merchandise to the front door of the cottage, and the cave, the first home of Jonas Nilsson, where he reared his eleven children, became a storehouse for the goods brought up for his trade with the Indians. The old house with its two rooms and garret was hardly larger than a packing box. The ground floor room had an immense fireplace, walled up, which extended almost the entire width of the room and nearly to the ceiling, which was scarcely more than seven feet high. George Washington later sat in front of that fireplace. Sessions of court were held wherever a building was available, and the old Jonas Nilsson cottage, was one of the earliest places in America where trial by jury was held. A trail that led to the house from the direction of Tinicum Island has appeared on maps of the city from the very beginning as Jones’s Lane. Nilsson’s home and trading post was the center of trade with the Minquas Indians arriving from the west via the Great Minquas trail. Nilsson made his fortune by bartering and trading goods for furs with the Minquas.
Jonas Nilsson lived for his entire married life in Kingsessing (West Philadelphia) where he raised his family of eleven children. Besides his trade with the Indians he was a successful farmer on his tract of 200 acres. He also acquired an additional 270 acres of land at nearby Aronameck from Peter Yocum, land which he divided among his three eldest sons. Each of Nilsson’s sons took the patronymic Jonasson which evolved into Jones.
Jonas’s wife Gertrude was a formidable woman. Her outspoken criticism of defamatory remarks by the English against the Swedes was at least once the subject of court notice. Her father, Sven Gunnarson, and her brothers – the Svenson’s, which later evolved into Swanson- were later to play a unique role in the early history of both Philadelphia and Pennsylvania.
In August 1639, the Swedish government, needing settlers for its New Sweden colony, sent word to the governors of Elfsborg, Dalsland and Varmland to capture deserted soldiers and others who had committed some slight misdemeanor and to send them to America. Among the “convicts” rounded up in this effort was Sven Gunnarsson. When the Swedish War Ship, the Kalmar Nyckel left Goteborg in September 1639, he was aboard with his pregnant wife and two small children. Initially, in New Sweden, Sven was stationed at the Fort Christina plantation, where he was found in 1644 working on the New Sweden tobacco farm and his son Sven, still a boy, was herding cattle at the same location. By 1654 Sven Gunnarsson and his family had moved to Kingsessing. In October 1654 he was finally granted freedom from his servitude and joined other freemen residing at Kingsessing (now West Philadelphia) Here he was known as Sven the Miller, as he operated the first gristmill built in New Sweden on the present Cobbs Creek.
Being a freeman in New Sweden was like being a peasant under the tyrannical rule of Governor Johan Printz. Like other freemen, Sven was required to work without pay at Printz’s Printzhof plantation whenever the Governor demanded, was prohibited from trading with the Indians and forced to buy all necessities at the company store. Like other freemen, he fell heavily into debt. Another such freeman, Lasse Svensson the Finn and his wife Carin had their plantation seized by Printz (who renamed it Printztorp) Both Lasse the Finn and his wife were forced to live without shelter in the woods. Both perished, leaving several impoverished children.
It was not surprising; therefore, that Sven Gunnarsson was one of the 22 freemen who signed a petition of grievances that they submitted to Governor Printz in the summer of 1653. Printz called it a “mutiny” and returned to Sweden.
Sven the Miller fared better under Governor Rising, 1654-1655. He even volunteered to help defend Fort Christina against the Dutch invasion on August 31, 1655. A pitched battle was averted when Rising decided to surrender the colony. Conditions proved to be even better under Dutch rule. Stuyvesant allowed the Swedes living north of the Christina River to organize their own government. That government, known as the Upland Court, treated Sven Gunnarsson well.
After the Dutch takeover of New Sweden, Sven Gunnarsson moved with his family across the Schuylkill to Wicaco, a former Indian settlement, where Sven’s 1125-acre plantation embraced what would become the future City of Philadelphia. On May 5, 1664 the Dutch Governor, Alexander D’Hinoyossa, granted him and his three sons’ acres at Wicaco, which was confirmed 31 May 1671 by a grant from Governor Francis Lovelace after the territory came under English rule. Here, on his land, the first log church at Wicaco (now Gloria Dei Church) was built by 1677. The last known reference to Sven occurs in the Upland Court minutes of 13 November 1677 where he withdrew a lawsuit after the defendant settled out of court. And he appeared on the list of tydables in the court’s jurisdiction as living with his son, Anders. Sven Gunnarsson died about 1678 and probably was one of the first to be buried at the Wicaco church.
In the spring of 1683, Sven’s three sons agreed to provide the northern part of Wicaco for William Penn’s planned new city, to be called Philadelphia. The sons who had adopted the patronymic Svensson, which evolved into the anglicized Swanson were left with 230 acres apiece. Sven Svensson (Swanson) was the eldest son of Sven Gunnarsson, he was born in Sweden. He was a Wicaco Church warden, and a justice on the Upland court in 1681-82 and was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1683. They sold William Penn the land upon which the city of Philadelphia was laid out.
“Having promised, in July 1681, to lay out a “large town or city in Pennsylvania”, William Penn drew up his specifications for his town. He named his cousin, William Crispin (1627-1681), and Nathaniel Allen (d. 1692) and John Bezar (d. 1684), two Quakers from the western part of England, as his commissioners, and instructed them to set aside 10,000 acres on the best site for a port along the Delaware… William Penn’s commissioners, however, were not able to acquire enough land to carry out many of [Penn’s] plans because the Swedish, Dutch, and English inhabitant’s had already taken up most of the river frontage along the west bank of the Delaware from New Castle to the Falls opposite present day Trenton, New Jersey. The commissioners concluded that the best site for William Penn’s town was a few miles north of the mouth of the Schuylkill River on land patented by the Swanson family, and in the spring of 1682 they obtained 300 acres of river frontage from the Swansons … in which to lay out his capital city.”1
“One of William Penn’s most important and most difficult tasks was to lay out his capital city. Originally, he wanted to set aside 10,000 acres for Philadelphia, but since all of the choicest riverfront property along the western bank of the Delaware was already patented, William Penn’s commissioner’s had to settle for a much smaller site. In early 1682 they bought a tract, extending a mile along the Delaware River, from three Swedes, the Swanson brothers of Wicaco. Dissatisfied with this cramped area, William Penn acquired a mile of river frontage on the Schuylkill from two other Swedes, Peter Cock and Peter Rambo, parallel to his frontage on the Delaware. This gave him a rectangle of 1200 acres, stretching two miles in length from east to west between the two rivers, and one mile in width from north to south. Within this rectangle Surveyor-General Thomas Holme plotted his famous grid plan of the city.”2
Records prove that Sven also had two daughters, including Gertrude Svensdottar, who was born in Sweden in 1638 and who married Jonas Nilsson in 1654, she died in Kingsessing in 1695 survived by eleven children.
Jonas Nilsson died October 23, 1693 and is buried at Gloria Dei (Old Swedes) Church Burial Ground in Philadelphia."
My father owned mountain land to the top and I spent many a happy day hiking and climbing that mountain. At the top there was a small cliff of roughly 15 or 20 feet where you could sit down and survey Morrison's Cove southern end. It was lovely. Of course this was pre I 99 days. I know there is a large ridge on the Osterburg side of the mountain that I could see from the top. I remember a market with a lot of produce somewhere on 220 near your area but not the name. We visited that market many times.
Logan's Lament - I appeal to any white man to say, if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry, and he gave him not meat; if ever he came cold and naked, and he clothed him not. During the course of the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the whites, that my countrymen pointed as they passed, and said, Logan is the friend of the white men. I have even thought to live with you but for the injuries of one man. Col. Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood, and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not sparing even my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This has called on me for revenge. I have sought it: I have killed many: I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my country, I rejoice at the beams of peace. But do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one.
Blue Band, if you make it back to Ct. to research the Hopkins name, take some time to travel to the northwest section and visit the Hopkins Inn and Vineyards on Lake Waramaug. It has beautiful views of the lake, one of the largest natural lakes in Ct., and is a great spot for a summer lunch on the outdoor patios or a wonderful dinner inside in their colonial dining rooms. Then tour the vineyard and its little country store.
one of the bigger myths that is taken as fact by the American public. The immigration officers at Ellis Island did not determine the spelling and the names of the immigrants that came through Ellis Island.
When a ship arrived at Ellis Island, the ship's manifest/passenger list was turned over to the immigration officers. The passenger lists were filled out by the employees of the shipping line at the port from which the ship embarked to New York. Basically, the generation of new names, or the misspelling of names, was done by the shipping employees when they entered the names in the passenger list. The immigration officials at Ellis Island would simply take the names listed in the passenger list, and issue paper work to the immigrants with those names on them.
And folks also don't often know that spelling was, at best, haphazard during Colonial times. And later. I've run into a few Woodberry/Woodbury pairings for the same people at different times in the early 20th C in my New England research.
I'm not sure that poor spelling was unique to the Colonial era. However, if you're doing historical research, or genealogical research, and viewing documents from that time, the frequency of poor spelling is quite surprising.
In modern books that make heavy use of original source documents from the Colonial era, the author(s) have to frequently insert "(sic)" in the quoted text to indicate that the misspelling is not a typo, but how the writer of the quoted document wrote/spelled.
In genealogy research, the misspellings in church documents, government documents, etc., can be quite a source of frustration, as the researcher is always on the guard for not assuming that the individual or family they have found is not the person(s) they are looking for, and not just a person or family that has nearly identical names, but not the same people.
They also had the habit of using the same first names over and over again for a number of generations, which makes it hard to untangle. This was so common, that in Essex, MA, many folks were known by nicknames--sometimes both first and last names--which would muddy the waters even further.
Great grandparents and before that from my mother's side they were painters for the Czar in Russia.
Had an ex-boss who lost his lake house then. Cuba Lake maybe? I know it was around Olean.
Thanks Tom
Where did you find this bio? There was some info I had not seen before
In my one case, the family members can't even decide on one spelling. My Hessian soldier ancestor, Johann Conrad Dietz's line constantly waffles between Dietz and Deitz. I've found transcriptions of military rosters that it was spelled Dietz when Johann came over. Also, since even now, the family still pronounces the name as 'Deets' with the long 'e' sound which matches the German pronounciation of 'ie' makes me believe the correct spelling is most likely Dietz. While Johann's tombstome is now missing, the tombstones of his wife Catharina and his son Wilhelm, as well as the church records spell it Dietz.
However, my grandfather spelled it Deitz, and that is what is on my mother's and aunt's birth certificates. But on most records for my great grandfather Charles it is spelled Dietz. My great grandfather Charles and my great great grandfather Joseph are buried across from each other. The tombstone records for Charles and his wife Hulda it is spelled Dietz. The tombstone for Joseph and Mary is spelled Deitz.
In census recorde, the spelling frequently varies from census to census for the same person. Sometimes the spelling even varies for a person within their own obituary. Church records sometimes spell it one way for a person's baptisimal and another for their burial.
Another one of my lines used to spell their name Kemble and sometimes Kimble. One of them became a prominent business man and owned several stores in neighboring towns. Starting around 1917-1918, the store names were changed from Kemble to Campbell and it's been Campbell ever since. I'm guessing that with the Great War against the Kaiser and the Huns, he thought it was better for business to appear to be Scottish rather than German even though it was and still is an area dominated by the Pennsylvania Dutch. The tombstone for this 'first' Campbell is one of the most impressive in the cemetery.
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I researched using Find My Past and Scotland's People. I avoided ancestry.com like the plague because I'm leery of its previous ownership (LDS). Why did I research. My surname is shared with the descendants of slaves, and I wanted to know if mine owned slaves. Here are the highlights...
- My father's side is Scots-English.
- For the most part, I come from a long line of coal miners. They immigrated from north central England (Manchester area) to NYC in the 1880 - 1890. I am relieved to know it was post Civil War. They settled in Cambria County, PA. As yinzers know that's prime coal mine country.
- My father's side branches into Herkimer, NY. Unfortunately, New Yorkers felt census-keeping was a form of overly intrusive government. So that in much of the 19th century there are no public records outside the cities of NYC, Albany and Buffalo. One must rely on church records, instead.
- The oldest record I found was dated 1792 Scotland. His occupation was 'Fox Catcher'.
- My Scottish side was not noble. The clan has no coat of arms. However, Fox Catcher here married into nobility by taking a Mackintosh for a wife.
- My paternal grandfather served in France in WWI. He was too old to serve in WWII but nonetheless, he had to register at 42 yo! I have a photocopy of that registration. He lists his occupation as electrician, which means he threw off the yoke of coal mining by learning a trade.
- He eventually moved his family to Erie County, PA.
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True. They were shipped to Russia via Iran. Their principle claim to fame: Studebaker trucks carried the Katyusha rocket launcher the Nazis so feared. Some say Russia wouldn't have won the war without it. I would also give credit to the T34 tank. From Wikipedia...
"The cross-country performance of the Studebaker US6 2½ ton truck was so good that it became the GAU's standard mounting in 1943, designated BM-13N (normalizovanniy, 'standardized'), and more than 1,800 of this model were manufactured by the end of World War II.[8] After World War II, BM-13s were based on Soviet-built ZiL-151 trucks."
Answer to your question: because in 1913, "Austria" wasn't the same country it is today.
Also complicating the issue is immigrants began arriving from countries where the Cyrillic and Greek alphabets were used. In countries like Poland and Slovakia, the "normal" alphabet was used, but there were special letters added to correspond to sounds particular to their languages.
I know a lot of people who wonder why their east-European relatives don't pronounce the family name the right way. Um, no, you're the one who's pronouncing it differently after generations of it being anglicized.
Both my grandfathers were in their 60s at the start of WW2 and still had to register.
The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, which was enacted on Sep. 16, 1940, was the first conscription set up in the US during a time of peace. While Europe was embroiled in WW II at the time, and Japan was fighting with China, the US was not party to the war at the time of the Act. The Act required all male US citizens between the ages of 21 and 35 to register for the draft. The initial draft was held on Oct., 1940.
After the US declared war on Japan, and then Germany and Italy, in Dec. 1941, and thus entered WW II, amendments to the Selective Training and Service Act were enacted. Basically, the amendments expanded the age of male US citizens eligible to be drafted from 35 to 45, and the age of of male US citizens required to register for the draft from 35 to 65.
Had that in Columbus regarding an important road on the east side: Tussing Rd. Folks pronounced it "Tuss-ing". It's really "Too-sing". The family noted it to our local radio station a number of years back (it shows up in traffic reports a lot), and they now use the family's pronuciation. Then there was my roomie my first year at PSU who had a French surname. He did not pronounce it that way. But he was from Monroeville, so....
My 11th great grandfather and Abraham Lincoln's 8th great grandfather are the same person.... Obadiah Holmes
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