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Just do not confuse the LDLs microfilmed originals with user submitted data. The user submitted data, particularly the IGI, is riddled with inaccuracies.
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Use LDS microfilm, but only CITED data and PRIMARY SOURCES for valid research. They have done a fantastic job of saving this. However, the IGI is simply names added that sometimes have no cited data, which is a crime.
What are the odds that I could be distantly related to someone influential in history? Like one of the founding fathers, or one of the revolutionary war generals - Possible but slim.....extraordinary people are "extraordinary" for a reason....they stand out because there's not many of them. And so what if you're not?
Apparently in the south, alot of people are part Native American or Black , and they don't even know. Is that the same case with New England? Or was that because it was less economically developed and had slavery - Well, I'm wouldn't just say the south but virtually anywhere in the eastern U.S. especially if you're family line comes from some of the earlier waves of European immigration to the U.S. and also if you descended from a weathier family, it's most likely african-american ancestry due to the fact that only the wealthiest of land owners could own slaves. If you were descended from the poor frontiersmen, very likely Indian ancestry. Many fronteirsman lost their wives in the wildernesses and trecks west, and despite what historians might like to say, many of the pioneers actually initially got along well with many of the local Indians and their was not always hostilities in every instance. Also, it was not uncommon for widowed frontiersmen to take native-american wives. Living alone on the frontier, with young and hungry children and no women to tend your household and help with chores and child-rearing was a matter of "life or death" in those days. Actually, one reason why many frontier families were fairly large is because they knew that this provided more help and support and increased their chances for survival
Does state correlate to where in England they immigrated from - Yes, as a matter of fact it does with regards to some of the earliest English settlers. Most of the very earliest colonists, especially in the Jamestown area were from Lincolnshire. Archeologists and historians were able to surmise this by the size, and also the building styles of the earliest dwellings excavated in the area, which closely resembled the "wattle" and "thatching" style rooftops of cottages and houses only found in Lincoln. Also some of the early ships manifests, many family names traced back to that county.
Maryland ( as in the case of my family ) were mostly English Catholics, persecuted from the East Midland counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Rutland. My family in particular came from a village called "Castle Donnington" in Leicester. They came over to Frederick Co Maryland in the mid 1700's, my 5th great grandfather served in the "Maryland Militia" and then received a land grant as a reward for his service of 150 acres on the north side of the "Rolling Fork" river just south of Louisville Kentucky. So, they crossed the Virgina mountains, through the Gap, up the Wilderness road and settled near Lebanon Kentucky in 1791...and my family is still in central Kentucky to this very day. My 4th great grandfather was only 7 years old at the time they left for Kentucky and a baby brother was born along the way. They left with a group of some 90 other families, all English Catholic families from east Midland counties.
Here's a map of the county in England where many of my mothers lines hail from:
Last edited by EricOldTime; 10-03-2014 at 12:34 PM..
What are the odds that I could be distantly related to someone influential in history? Like one of the founding fathers, or one of the revolutionary war generals?
Apparently in the south, alot of people are part Native American or Black , and they don't even know. Is that the same case with New England? Or was that because it was less economically developed and had slavery?
Does state correlate to where in England they immigrated from?
Thanks
I too agree that it is unlikely your ancestors that came from England married natives upon their arrival in MA. Some of my ancestors were Puritans who came to Andover, MA. in 1640. (This is based on a book published in 1847 and then a family tree based on that from the 1960s.) These ancestors came as a married couple from England and based on a recent internet finding they came from Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire and the female ancestor's parents were also from the same area (as her father was born there in 1595). The records show all my ancestors in the New England area as marrying into other immigrant families and not marrying the local natives.
I too agree that it is unlikely your ancestors that came from England married natives upon their arrival in MA. Some of my ancestors were Puritans who came to Andover, MA. in 1640. (This is based on a book published in 1847 and then a family tree based on that from the 1960s.) These ancestors came as a married couple from England and based on a recent internet finding they came from Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire and the female ancestor's parents were also from the same area (as her father was born there in 1595). The records show all my ancestors in the New England area as marrying into other immigrant families and not marrying the local natives.
I know intermarriage with native populations was most prominent on the "then" what was known as the "western frontier" of Kentucky, Tennessee, also the territory of Indiana, Illinois and Michigan ( NW territories I think it was called? )
Huegonots and Puritans were "Fiercely" religious and would've most likely strictly forbidden marriage with "heathens"...at the very least they'd have to become christians. They co-existed, but I don't think marriage was happening, infidelity? Children out of wetlock, possibly but I'll bet it was pretty rare in those deeply religious communities.
Now if you were kicked out of that community, shunned and or forbidden a marriage with a women of christian character....yeah you might marry a heathen native-american woman. People in the old days were deeply fiercely religious or nothing....so it was different
However on the western frontier were hard men, ex soliders, fronteirsmen, people on the lam running from the law, maybe they killed someone in a duel...any number of things. These folks were a different demographic of the population in those days. Besides if you wer shunned from the community, running from the law, branded or ostracized from the local society back then, it would be an attractive propostion to marry a native-american women I think. Or a hardened, experienced fronteirsmen, woodsmen who knows the land, and Indiana women would be the perfect fit for a man like that.....besides they are also "drop dead" gorgieous women.....very beautiful indeed. Besides their out in the middle of the woods, aint no women on the frontier folks except for indian women ( unless you're in a local settler community or came west with a woman ) and men feel the biological urge to "sow their oats"...it seems a very likely, plausable, and practical explanation in my book.
Even so I know for a fact MANY pioneer women ( and men and children ) died of disease and all kinds of stuff on the frontier, dysintery, consumption....very prominent in that hard life. So, I'm sure lot's of Indiana women married or lived with european settlers and frontiersmen on the frontier.
Last edited by EricOldTime; 10-03-2014 at 03:37 PM..
I too agree that it is unlikely your ancestors that came from England married natives upon their arrival in MA. Some of my ancestors were Puritans who came to Andover, MA. in 1640. (This is based on a book published in 1847 and then a family tree based on that from the 1960s.) These ancestors came as a married couple from England and based on a recent internet finding they came from Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire and the female ancestor's parents were also from the same area (as her father was born there in 1595). The records show all my ancestors in the New England area as marrying into other immigrant families and not marrying the local natives.
Yes, each local parish kept records right from Day One and the colonists only married each other. They were on good terms with the Native Americans during the first generation but there was no intermarriage that I have ever heard of. The Native Americans gave them food and taught them how to plant but that was about it.
By the second generation the grown children of the original colonists were at war with the grown children of the Native Americans. (King Philip's War, 1675-78. King Philip was Native American, the son of Massasoit, friend of the first colonists.)
My family history shows people coming to MA as married couples or a single man who then married the daughter of one of the couples. My family history also has someone who lived in a house that was sold because the Puritan owner sheltered two Quakers during a thunderstorm. The home owner had to flee to Rhode Island for that treachery. If they weren't allowed to associate with two Quaker gentlemen, then they certainly wouldn't have been marrying the Natives. Not yet anyway.
HollyHockGarden- If you are related to the Bushes, then WE are related but I don't find that my people were on the Mayflower but some of them arrived here around that time. Two of my 9th great grandfathers were Richard Haines and John Borton of Aynhoe England. Hello distant relative!
In our background, there was ONE native American female who did marry into our Quaker family in the mid-1600s. Some of the descendants have this appear also in their dna.
my family came from scotland in 1649, i did the dan and have the family tree back to scotland. I,m just a white boy, no native anywhere , no slaves was ever owned.
there was an article in a genealogy magazine that talked about the indian princess and how everybody wants to be related to an indians or a slave. they claimed in the magazine that the indian relation is rare, less than one percent, although over 50% will claim it.
LOL the "Indian maiden" myths were very common in my family and seemed to revolve around two women who were twins and who were supposedly "half Indian" who married brothers in my family tree back in the 1840s or so. Also, my mother always told me that her father was 1/4 Blackfoot Indian.
I began to be a bit leery of all these tales when the internet began providing easier genealogy research and nothing was coming up at all. Every name my dad and I found sounded European through and through.
I had my DNA test done last year and lo and behold, I'm the whitest person I know. I don't even have any SOUTHERN EUROPEAN in me. My DNA test showed 98 percent northern European, with about 70 percent of that definitely from the British Isles and the next biggest chunk from Germany or possibly France. The other 2 percent was just "European."
After getting over the initial surprise, I actually began to really like that personal history. I've always been a big fan of British history and now I know why - LOL!
No Indian princesses here, folks. No gypsies, no Ashkenazi Jews, no Italians or mysterious Moors - just lots and lots of people with really pale skin. No wonder I can never tan.
I, too have the Indian story. When I tested with 23andMe it came back with all European with a tiny percentage of Asian. Maybe that could be the "Indian blood." I contacted a distant relative up in Vermont who also does genealogy and she told me that --Yes, we do have Indian blood. In fact a relative talked about it in a book he wrote. It was an Indian princess.
These Indian princesses sure got around.
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