Deacon Edward Convers (Converse; 1589-1663) emigrated to Salem, MA, from England on 12 Jun 1630. He signed the town orders that created Woburn, MA on 18 Dec 1640. The town was incorporated Sep 1642 by Edward with 6 others, including Samuel and Ezekiel Richardson, Edward Johnson, John Mousall and Thomas Graves.
Edward Converse was the brother of a direct ancestor of Pez through his father's maternal side.
My family's not too shabby, though. I recently discovered that I'm a direct descendant of Charles Kinsey, a Congressman for NJ back in the early 1800s under President Monroe. He was later a judge at the common pleas court in Bergen Co, NJ, and a paper manufacturer who invented continuous roll paper!
I've also unearthed a lot of French on my mother's side, hailing mostly from Normandy (Rouen), Picardy, and Maine (Le Mans -- no wonder I've got such a lead foot). Two of my ancestors were "filles de roi" or "King's Daughters", women who agreed to travel to and marry settlers in Nouvelle France (Canada) in exchange for a 50 pound dowry from the French King. The name I've been following here is Pradet dit St Gelais. It actually started as plain Pradet but morphed over time with the "dit" name to Singelais.
Still, I must now put up with a British husband who appears to have earlier footing in this country than many of us Americans can claim! Genealogy is so much fun.
Just been doing some more digging and on old Edward's wife's side, we're related to some dude called Franklin Pierce, 14th US President. Mez won't be speaking to me now!!
Pez
And a lot of luck in that others have already researched lines we're interested in. Also Pez is part of GenesReunited, a UK genealogy site, which has helped him tremendously.
Getting past the 1700s-early 1800s is daunting. The American census records especially are so thin on detail at that time (only head of family named, no exact ages, no clue where they were born, and the spellings!) that it takes some sleuthing to figure out where a person has popped up from. I've taken to reverse-engineering some lines in order to join them up across the "dark ages", with minimal success.
My husband's family is from Wales. How would I go about that? I know that his mother was a 'downstairs' servant in London before coming to USA and his father was a miner in South Africa. I know names but I am lost as to what is next.
I have an ancestor from there too, only briefly however, as his parents were on the way from Cheshire to America. Quakers!
The problem with the British records at that time is they revert to parish-held only. Which, on thinking about it, is the same thing that happened here. What I'd suggest is contacting someone who offers to do lookups in the part of Wales you're interested in, for the name(s) and timeframe. Here's one page for example:
So you find the reference you think might have information you're looking for, and email the lookup contact with the details you have. They get back to you with what they find or don't find.
Another tool I've found moderately helpful, though the information quality isn't always great and should be verified, is FamilySearch.
Here's a page all about Welsh genealogy, with links to other useful sites and a mailing list (joining highly recommended; the people on them are very knowledgeable and can often at least point you in the right direction):
With all of this at your fingertips you should be able to make some headway. It just requires a little luck in finding that first bit of info, and then suddenly things will pop into place. And eventually you'll hit another brick wall. But that's the fun of it -- the challenge. Or so I'm told.
My mother's family came from England in 1636...I think Puritans. I took her family back another 200 yrs of so. Hard to verify that far back though.
My Dad's family came from Englamd about 1663. I only know them since then...all by other's work in the family. I'm trying to find if his grandmother who was a Paine, is a collateral relation of Robert Treat Paine. I know she wasn't directly. But Robert (a signer of the Declasation) was a lawyer practicing in Portland, Maine. And my greatgrandmother's family lived just outside the city.
Yes, Josie, it is fun...but can be very time consuming.
The correct spelling is "Holladay" but poor Doc's name has been corrupted over the years. (That's fitting, I guess.) My three brothers got all kind of points for being related to him. Another cousin was the railroad baron, Ben Holladay. His name is all over Portland.
My own grandfather, Anderson Holladay, was a Civil War veteran. He was a teenager living in Kentucky at the time, and nobody in the family knows what side he fought for.
I had no idea the spelling was actually Holladay. Where does this surname come from, do you know, Doc?
I just did a quick lookup of Anderson Holladay in KY, and indeed he was young during the civil war: an 1860 census puts him at 12. So he went off to battle at what -- 15-16?
Also I did a search of Civil War Pensions. The records only cover Union soldiers and there's no Anderson Holladay from KY listed. (I'm supposing he would have filed in KY as he appears in later censuses as resident there.) So either he didn't file for a pension, or he fought for the South.
That's him! Where did you find him on the internet?
As you said, we figure he must have been about 16 or so when he fought in the war. The only way we know that he did is that there is a civil war veteran's marker on his grave.
Peregrine White was a Mayflower baby (born in the harbour in 1620), from which Tom and I are both descended! (We were 8th cousins! Just learned that a year ago). Also, another Mayflower dude, John Briggs, b. 1605 in York,England, is my ancestor. Then, again, I am descended from Mohawk chief "King" Hendrick Brant, through his granddaughter, who married Lt. Henry (T)/Zimmerman, who was part of the era just before the American Revolutionary war. Lt. Henry's father, Jacob, was born in Nassau, Germany in 1692. So, uh, maybe because the Mohawks were already here, I may be the furthest descended on the site. But Peregrine White and John Briggs are the farthest back to the Brits lineage for me. Oddly enough, Tom and I were related more closely, not through the White line, but through the Case line; his grandmother, and my greatgrandmother had common grandparent(s). I finally handed over the entire Legacy file to a man in TX, another 8th cousin. Too much for this not very factual mind to handle! My mind is on Little T and the great granddaughter, Karina! Babies are kinda hard to take at my age. I'm too young for this..and too old.....
This message has been edited by Nore3ne on Jul 26, 2008 10:31 PM
Actually we might be on a par with each other, Norene. There was a story on my mother's side of the family that her great-grandfather from France married a Cree or Metis (mixed white/native indian) woman in what would later become Canada. I haven't been able to verify it because the census records aren't online, but I did find another person's tree that said the same thing. Which at least lends support to the rumor.
I don't think I have a Mayflower ancestor, you've got me beat there. But then, I didn't guess that any part of my family had been here before the Revolution; I grew up thinking we were fairly recent immigrants. So tracing so many of them back to the 1600s in New York is exciting! And as a by-product I'm learning a lot of interesting things I didn't know about that period in America's history, and my family.
No mind for it, lol. You say that when I just had to wipe out an entire branch of my tree tonight because I got the wrong parents! I make silly mistakes all the time. But again, that's part of the fun of it and why I enjoy it.
a Grandson of King Hendrick, commissioned by the Brits, took the tribe to Canada, where they remain today, in a large Mohawk Territory section of the country. Yikes. We may be closer than we think!
However, the Mohawks do send representatives to the NYS fair every year, as part of the history of the Iroquois Nation, and no, I can't remember all the nations. There were 7. I also have a Seneca ancestor from the early 1700s. Too complicated for me. I had trouble with the hardbound copy of the Briggs Genealogy!!!
My grandfather came from Retranchement, Netherlands, in 1902, at age 22. He died 10 years later, of tetanus, leaving widow and 5 kids. Worked in the mines at Furnaceville, NY. They list him in the records as Clarence, but I have his birth certificate, his lineage, pic of his gravestone, marriage license, and the ship's manifest, and his name was Clement. Tried for 7 years to have it changed. Gov't officials don't understand that these folk spoke only Dutch, as the Irish only spoke Irish, and the Italians only spoke Italian, in Furnaceville.
