Seven new sketches were recently posted to the Early New England Families Study Project database on americanancestors.org:
Andrew Lane of Hingham, a feltmaker and farmer who had nine children with his wife Trypheny.
George Lane of Hingham, Andrew’s brother, a shoemaker, who had eight children with his wife Sarah Harris.
Oliver Mellowes of Boston and Braintree, farmer. By his first wife, Mary James, Oliver had four children. His second wife was the widow Elizabeth (Hawkredd) Coney – see below.
Elizabeth (Hawkredd) (Coney) (Mellowes) Makepeace. By her first husband, John Coney, Elizabeth had four children in England, two of whom died as infants. She was 25 and pregnant with their fourth child when she was widowed for the first time. She married her second husband, Oliver Mellowes (above), a widower with four children from his first marriage. Oliver, Elizabeth, and their combined six children came to New England in 1634, where the Melloweses had three more children. Elizabeth was 33 and pregnant with their third child when she was again widowed. She married third, bringing five of her own children and four step-children, to Thomas Makepeace, who had six children, and then they had two more children together! She outlived her third husband.
John Pike of Ipswich and Newbury, Massachusetts, and Woodbridge, New Jersey. John and his first wife, Mary Turvell, had nine children. He had no children by his second wife, Elizabeth (Blossom) FitzRandolph, but she had twelve children (several of whom died as infants) by her first husband, Edward FitzRandolph. John Pike and several of his children were founders of Woodbridge, New Jersey.
Robert Pike of Ipswich, Newbury, and Salisbury, John’s brother. Robert had eight children by his first wife, Sarah Sanders. His second wife was the widow Martha (Moyce) Goldwire, whose first husband was George Goldwire. Robert Pike has been described as “A Massachusetts magistrate and military man in Maine and New Hampshire and a liberal leader ahead of his time.” He opposed legislation that he claimed limited free speech and defended Mary (Perkins) Bradbury during the witchcraft trials.
John Tompkins of Salem, farmer. John and his first wife, Margaret, had ten children. His second wife was the widow Mary (—) Reade, who had eleven children by her first husband, Thomas Reade, some of whom also died as infants. Thomas had four children by his first wife.
Whew!
What a surprise for me! George Lane and Agnes Farnsworth were great grandparents of mine. I’m certainly going to spend some time in this data base as soon as I can! Thanks for posting.
Dave, thank you.
Oliver Mellowes’ mother Martha Bulkeley was a sister to Frances, who was mother to Olive Welby, married to Henry Farwell, my husband’s immigrant ancestor. Martha and Frances were also sisters to the Puritan minister Rev. Peter Bulkeley. And their sister Sarah Bulkeley was grandmother to another Puritan minister, the Rev. Samuel Whiting and mother-in-law to his father, also the Rev. Samuel Whiting. I am wondering if the story of this family of Puritan ministers has ever been told with all the Boston, Lincolnshire and New England family connections?
I might suggest a title such as “Those Bulkeley Women”, but alas they were not a Downton Abbey group at all; Mrs. Hutchinson and That Winthrop Woman (see earlier threads) have that corner to themselves in Mass Bay History. For what compiled background exists on them, see Jacobus’ Bulkeley Genealogy (1933). And by that appellation, I mean to include the women who married INTO the families as well as the daughters.
Dramatizing capable women who hold several families together while still producing more children on a frontier setting, but who do not sign any petitions nor run away with bounders nor have any recorded breakdowns, is a difficult thing to do. A tapestry approach, a la James Michener, might work (cf first section of Hawaii).
You’d have a better personality hook with Anne (Dudley) Bradstreet because she was a good poet AND got published, as well as being all the above, and was in Boston from nearly the beginning.
“If ever two were one, then surely we . . .”
Gretchen, Bob Anderson has been gathering much information about the inter-related families that settled New England and his future book on “Puritan Pedigrees” will undoubtedly have more.
Gretchen, Henry Farwell and Olive Welby are my 10G grandparents, so your husband and I are cousins. I am descended through their son Joseph Farwell and his wife Hannah Learned.
Thanks, Linda. My husband Dan is also descended through Joseph Farwell and then through Joseph’s and Hannah’s fifth son William and wife Elizabeth Solendine; etc. There are many interesting connections to early Great Migration settlers in both Farwell and Welby/Bulkeley families.
Yes!
I am a descendant of Henry & Olive as well. I was pretty deep into doing all the research many years ago, then had to take a break. I recently restarted. I used to be able to say which route from Henry & Olive I was descended from. But now I’m missing a generation. My grandfather was the last Farwell listed in a book I have copies of. I recently bought a similar copy of that book, but it doesn’t have all the generations. It stops about one or two generations from where inhave back tracked.
If you are descended from Henry Farwell & Olive Welby, we are related somehow. LOL Would you like to try and help me forgive out how? I created a FB page about 6 years ago, it only has a few ppl in it, mostly my direct relatives. My grandfather was Lucius Leonard Farwell (married to Jessie Leah (Hayward) Farwell. His father was Raymond Hill Farwell, who was a twin to Robert W Farwell. Their father was Lucius Andrew Farwell, son of Lucius Leonard Farwell… son of Joseph Farwell. That’s where I am currently at in my back tracking.
I am looking for other descendants to connect with.
Please feel free to email me at
Girlmomx5@gmail.com or look me up on FB.
Melinda (Farwell) Morgan
My FB page is called HENRY FARWEL & OLIVE WELBY (WELBIE) Descendants.
When requesting to join, please message me to let me know I referred you VIA this page.
I just requested to join the FB group. I got an email from Family Search telling me that my 4th great grandfather was Hanibal Farwell, born in 1795. His second great grandparents were Henry and Olive. My great grandfather was P. Roy Cory of Moncton, NB.
Henry and Olive are my 8th great grandparents and then I come down through their son, Joseph, his son, Joseph and yet another Joseph. Next comes Jonathan, Leonard, Joseph, Lucius, Joseph, my grandfather, Daniel and then my Dad, Leonard.
I am also a descendant of Henry & Olive. Please see my comment below for more info.
I’m looking to connect for other descendants/relatives.
Melinda
What a coincidence! In today’s Daily Oklahoman is an announcement of a talk to be given by a DAR member on her 11th gt-grandmother, Mary Perkins Bradbury, and why this convicted witch was not hanged. Her assumption was that money and connections saved her.
My assumption also … she is my nth great grandmother
Elizabeth, certainly connections saved Mary. No record of whether money changed hands, but not unlikely.
Yes. As her 11th gt-granddaughter said, “we believe it was because of the family’s stature in the community…”
Any chance Dunbar, Harrub ,Studley ,Nott ,families are in the early new England family study ?SCITUATE MA….
Hi, The Early New England Families Study Project, together with the Great Migration Study Project will eventually cover all couples who married in New England through 1700, probably more than 35,000 sketches. However, we are working on couples by year of marriage and right now are still dealing with those married prior to 1642. So the answer is “yes” but not soon.
My family is descended of John Milk of Boston and Milk street is named for the family. My mother was a Milks in northern Indiana.
Joan, The Milks are an old family that stretch all the way to the west coast now. The original John Milk married in 1665, so it will be a while before we get to his sketch (still working on pre 1642).
I wonder why some families are done over and over that have been studied indepth before as my ancestor Joseph Loomis but I have never seen an indepth study done of my ancestor Benjamin Mun(n).
Nancy, Traditionally the families who have been treated in print are the ones with a large number of descendants, particularly those that retain the surname, and someone in the family who had the money and/or leisure time to do the work!
Then shouldn’t these families be the ones that you and others research.
Nancy, Yes, naturally. I thought your question was rhetorical. However, the Early New England Families are done according to time parameters, so which ones get done first isn’t tied to how much has previously been done on them, although I do try to favor the “undone” families whenever I can.
Nancy Roemer, would love to discuss Loomis and Munn families, as they are also my ancestors. Please feel free to e-mail me at: cecreyes1@yahoo.com
I would like to see an article about founding father William Spencer.
Earl,
William Spencer of Cambridge/Hartford will eventually be part of the Great Migration Study Project, having come to New England prior to 1641, but I can’t give you an estimate on when his sketch will be done.
Earl,
Actually, William Spencer has already been treated in the Great Migration Study Project, volume 3 of The Great Migration Begins. You can access that on the database on americanancestors.org.
Thanks to Bob Gerrity for reminding me!
Thanks for the posting, and the mention of Mary Bradbury. As a descendant of her brother Jacob, she has always fascinated me and been of particular interest to our family. My daughter even composed a lengthy poem about her for a high school English assignment some years ago.
Mike, thanks. There is definitely a void to be filled about the ladies who settled the continent. I become more fascinated with each new sketch.
Mike: I would love to hear your daughter’s poem about Mary. I, too, think Mary is fascinating as well as her husband and eldest daughter. I hope you will send me a copy. Thank you.
Thank you so much for all your hard work and that to come, Alicia. Bless you.
I have been trying to work out in my head the New Jersey, Nantucket, Eastham/Truro and Casco Bay connections for years to shed light on pieces of families spread hither and yon. The John Pike/Robert Treat/Jonathan Higgins famiiles may be the clue.
Does anyone know if there are any good histories/genealogies of the early New Jersey settlement at Piscataqua (and even about the Piscataqua connection in Maine)?
These people moved from NJ to Martha’s Vineyard, to Nantucket, to Provincetown, to Kittery (and Nova Scotia) using the Atlantic as easily as we do the interstate system.
And, again, Alicia, thank you, because both these Pike and Tompkins entries are fascinating (ancestors) because they reveal dimensional details that mere dates and names in genealogies can’t provide.
Jane
Jane, thank you. My knowledge of New Jersey families is limited, so hopefully another reader may have an answer to your question. The best part of Great Migration and Early Families is that we can begin to compare patterns.
Perhaps you mean New Hampshire, not New Jersey, as there is a Piscataqua River that is a boundary between a section of New Hampshire and Maine. Many of my ancestors were fisherman that settled and then would move to other fishing areas on various islands in the Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine area.
No, that is actually the amazing part. The Piscataway area of New Jersey has a connection with the Piscataqua settlers through the families of the settlers who began those settlements. In reading histories of the towns of Cape Cod, I found that seafarers, such as the Coffins and Starbucks from Nantucket families, intermarried with descendants of early people at Eastham, who were early settlers at both Piscataqua AND Piscataway (descendants of the possibly Quaker Higgins family of Eastham, and Rev. Samuel Treat (son of Gov. Robt Treat of CT) as well as descendants of the sea faring Strouts of Provincetown, and the foot-loose Small, Smith, and Samuel Freeman families of Eastham). Finally the very mobile and powerful Jordans of the early Casco Bay and Richmond Island (Maine) settlements were connected to the Boston Gray family, the Simmons (Simonson) of Boston, the Vickery family of Hull, and the Smalls and Samuel Freeman family of Eastham.
I have always wondered how Joseph Andrews of Hingham, Mass. died 1680 had the following land in New Jersey. This is from his will=”
Item I giue unto Ephraim Andrewes my son all that estate of mine that is in his hands which he had of me when he went to newe Jazsy” [New Jersey] He settled in New Jersey.
Hi Kathleen…
Check the Andrews family tree carefully. You probably have seafarers, a sea captain, an adventurer, or even religious dissenters. You should also look at the timeline. If Native American depredations were threatening, people frequently picked up and moved, or had alternative places to go.
As for the religious dissent, the laer Puritans of Massachusetts were not nearly as tolerant as the earlier Pilgrims of the Plymouth colony (and Cape Cod). Dissenters or Quakers, or even those of a more secular mode, would tend to move away from the center of government and church supervision to be less supervised. There was a sort of “free-thinking” diaspora, including many Quakers, or those who deplored the judgmental attitudes of those in Boston and its surrounding area.
I sent a reply, Em, but don’t see it here. The reason that the names of Piscataway area in NJ and the Piscataqua area in (now) Maine are so similar, is that members of families who were familiar with both gave the areas those names. In reading “Richard Higgins, a resident and pioneer settler at Plymouth and Eastham, Massachusetts, and at Piscataway, NJ” by Higgins, Katharine E. Chapin, the new “The town records of Eastham during the time of Plymouth Colony, 1620-1692” transcribed and edited by Bangs, Jeremy Dupertuis, Pratt’s “Comprehensive history of….”, a most informative “History of Wellfleet, MA”, Mayo’s history of Nantucket, and various other accounts of the mariners in Billingsgate, Truro, Eastham, and Provincetown, one gets a picture of early intermarried, LARGE, seafaring families with sons and daughters scattered from Piscataway NJ to Nantucket, to the Cape, along the coast of Massachusetts, to NH, KIttery and on to Casco Bay. It was an incredible diaspora. The roaming Higgins, Strout, Freeman, Smith, and Small families, through descendants of Alice Carpenter Southworth Bradford, and the Clarke, Collier, Cole, Young, Paine, and Doane families, were married to the Coffins and Starbucks of Nantucket, the Nickersons of Chatham, the Treats of CT (Gov. Robert), and the Jordans of Richmond Island in Casco Bay. If one could stand offshore and watch Cape Cod from a distance, it would be eye opening. If you have an elusive ancestor, these communities bear checking.
Thank you so much for the sketch on Robert Pike. It is exciting for me because this is the first sketch in this project dealing with someone in my ancestry. In my research, I try to gain additional information on the families of spouses. Robert’s son John married Sarah Moody, one of my first cousins nine times removed. This sketch also gives me a very helpful example of how a sketch should be written (and documented). Thank you again, and keep up the good work.
Jim
Jim, You are welcome. It is the most fun when we can make these connections.
I am wondering about my ancestors with the surname Makepeace. My question is, is that an English name? It’s shown that Thomas Makepeace was born in England. And his second wife’s surname was Hawkredd. Do you have any information on their ethnicity? Perhaps they are Narragansett Indians? Thank you for all the work you’re doing! You can contact me at cindylou54@hotmail.com, or just a reply on this link.
My grandmother was a Southworth, her name was Violet Ruby Southworth her father was Albert Southworth and his wife was Luella B. Skinner, (nick name she used was Nellie) Albert’s father was Charles A. Southworth and his wife was Jannette A. Kissell. His father was Andrew A. Southworth and wife was Elizabeth Miller. I need help with the rest of the family tree if someone could help I would greatly appreciate it. Thank You!