 |
| From the top: Kate, Colin, Jim, Ted, Ellie, Frank, Erin and Karen Pensacola, 1996 |
But in line after line, I found myself going
back and back and back and back and back. When one of the lines reached
the Puritans, it was like hitting a genealogy gusher. I was overwhelmed
with the ancestry 'hints' and links to historical websites. So I capped
the well and let my Ancestry.com
subscription expire.
In 2018, Keith and I signed up for a cruise around Scotland,
so I decided to get back on Ancestry to see if I could find any ancestral place
names. Just as I did, out of the blue,
Anne Simpson, a fourth cousin living in North Yorkshire, related through my dad's mom who was an immigrant from England,
contacted Ellen, so I dived back in with renewed energy to find out as
much as I could before we met her. Now I’ve invested far too much
effort to let this lapse. So I wrote this blog.
All the
generations are labeled in relation to Bill and Phyl's grandkids. That is, my parents are labeled 'grandparents'. For
farther-back generations, the number of 'greats' is given as a numeral:
e.g., your great-great grandparents are called "2G grandparents."
Every individual is given a reference number,
starting with Bill McKim (1) and Phyllis James (2). To
find anyone’s parents, double their number. Then add 1 to find the
father; add 2 to find the mother. To find any father’s child, subtract 1
from his number and divide by 2. To find any mother’s child, subtract 2
and divide by 2.
Sources and limitations of this information The
information I saved there is as reliable and credible as I could
manage, but
inevitably as you go back in time, particularly for the western Pennsylvania
pioneers, the records get sketchier. People on the frontier were busy
staying alive and creating a nation, not
keeping records for posterity.
For your grandparents and great-grandparents, I used notes and photos my parents left for me and my sisters.
Most
of the rest of the information in this blog comes through Ancestry.com. It is only a
fraction of what I collected there. If you go to Ancestry.com, look for a
tree named Combined Family Tree
owned by the account karenmckim65. It's saved as a "public tree," which (as I write this) will remain
visible to any Ancestry subscriber, forever, even after my subscription expires or I die.
Ancestry.com
provides links to three types of information:
- Information from contemporary documents, such as census
reports, civil documents, wills, church records and the like. For the 19th and 20th century ancestors, newspaper archives are very helpful. But even primary
sources can be tricky. For example, census takers might record daughter
Amelia one year and daughter Melly ten years later, and names are often
repeated both within families and within local communities, so it can
be dicey to sort out father Jacob Miller from son Jacob Miller and
neighbor Jacob Miller. I was surprised at how fluid the spellings of
surnames remained even into the 18th century-- e.g., Crow, Crowe, Croe, Crowell.
- Genealogical
accounts written many years after their subjects had died, such as applications for
DAR membership submitted in the early 20th century for 18th century soldiers, or histories
of 18th century towns written in the 19th. These are pretty
impressive; the authors usually made clear the sources of their
information and were willing to note at least some information as unclear or
uncertain.
- Personal information shared by other Ancestry.com members, which I assume is from family Bibles and other personal records.
Whenever
possible, I relied upon the contemporary documents. Sometimes I
accepted
information from later sources if it was consistent with reliable
information and with the broader history of the time. I ignored much
material that had nothing to vouch
for it except some other Ancestry member’s claims. I did the best I
could and as I wrote, tried to indicate when I wasn't sure how solid
the information was.
If anyone wants to dig deeper or fill in holes...
Most
of the stories I got for this blog came from late-19th century family
histories and town histories. Many of those are online, full text, for
free. I find both the stories and the quaint writing style interesting.
Among the online books that tell stories about our ancestors are:
- Lyon Memorial: Families of Connecticut and New Jersey All
Lyons are related, but apparently three brothers came to America around
the time of England's Civil War. Follow the information for "Henry Lyon
of Newark".
- A History of Deerfield Massachusetts and the People by whom it was settled, unsettled, and resettled This book has lots of nice description of everyday life, and lots of detailed accounts of harrowing Indian wars. Look for the names Hoyt, Sheldon, Wells, Graves, Strong.
- A History of Williamsburg in Massachusetts has one of the more detailed personality portraits I've encountered in these books: check out page 20 for a not-wholly-flattering commentary on the marriage of your 5G grandparents Jonathan Warner and Eliza Sheldon.
- A History of Plymouth County in Massachusetts
- Genealogy of the Graves Family in America
Despite the title, this book starts with a review of our Graves
ancestors in Europe. But when it gets to America, it dives right into the story of the lives of your 9G
grandfather Thomas
Graves and his son, your 8G grandfather Isaac Graves, with photos. Your 7G grandfather John's story is on page 14 and
your 6G grandfather Elnathan's is on page 20.
- The Leading Citizens of Hampshire County Look for the names Allen, Bartlett, Clapp, Hobart,...
- The King Family of Southold, Suffolk County, New York Look for King, Tuthill, Brown
You could fill in some holes and find more people.
On
a few branches, I hit a dead end before I reached the immigrant. If
someone else gets on Ancestry.com or better yet, uses some other
ancestry research source (which might have some links that Ancestry does
not), you could look for:
- The
original McKim immigrant. How frustrating is it that one of the few
lines on which I cannot identify the immigrant is that for my own name?
Robert McKim, your 6G grandfather, was born in 1740 in Cumberland
County, in the colony of Pennsylvania, and he wasn't Native American. I
don't know his parents' names or when they came to America or even if it
was his grandparents who were the first McKim on this side of the
ocean. (Historically, it's a safe bet they came from Scotland through
Ulster.)
- The unknown parents of #53, your 4G grandmother Mary Sanford, create the largest missing branch of your family tree. She was born in 1816 on Long Island--into an affluent community and at a time and place when genealogical records are typically complete and easy to find. But we know nothing of her parents--not their names, nothing. Without her parents' names, that line of the family tree remains a mystery beyond Mary.
I blew past a few intriguing angles on our ancestors' stories. For example, the churches they
attended. When I started this, I assumed that Dad's paternal ancestors
were all Presbyterian and Mom's were either Lutheran or whatever church
the Puritans created. But as I collected marriage and baptism records, I
noticed a whole bunch of different denominations--Church of Christ,
Unitarian, Congregationalist, Quaker, and more. (And what is Antinomian?)
Some of Mom's paternal ancestors, whom I thought were all solidly
English, got married in Presbyterian churches. It would be interesting
to collect that information and see if it tells any stories.
Looking carefully at their locations and
movements might also reveal some interesting stories, but it's more
tangled than you might think. Many continued to wander after they came
to America, and sometimes you can see the reason--Indians destroyed
their town (not just Deerfield; we had other ancestors move for the same
reason) or they had a fight in their church and the congregation split
off to form not just a new church but a new town. On the other hand, in
the 17th and 18th centuries, the colonies and young states were
frequently reorganizing themselves, so you might see someone being born
in Centre County, Pennsylvania, and dying in Adams County (one example)
and they didn't really move--the county lines just changed.
You could follow the lines back into Europe.
The
task I set for myself was "Find the immigrant," and I usually stuck
with that, regardless
of any signs of interesting information such as a noble
connection, a Jacobite leader, etc. among the ancestors who stayed in
Europe. If anyone wants to look for high-born or significant English or
Scottish ancestors:
- Many,
perhaps most, of those late 19th-century family history books (linked
above) open with a chapter about the family's ancestors in England,
inevitably focusing on the impressive ones. I don't know how much you
can trust these. One, for example, traces our ancestry back to King Arthur's niece and a knight of the Round Table. But much of it can likely be verified. A very detailed and apparently well-researched family history traces the lineage of your
9G grandmother #1634 Abigail Downing to
William the Conqueror and several later English kings.
- Access
the "Combined Family Tree" I saved on Ancestry.com and start looking at
the individual pages for some of the immigrants. They often have a
parental hint: "We found a possible father for Jane!" and the name they
suggest sometimes has a title: Lord, Lady, Viscount, Sir, whatever. I
did not routinely save those names to our tree, but the hint that points
to the European should still be there. There's also a good chance
you'll find some "significant people" if you look back from the Graham
(#257), Lyon (#443), and Semple (#484) families. (Interestingly,
both Bill and Phyl have branches on their family trees that reach back
to the Semple family in 16th and 17th century Scotland--that is, those
two were likely distant cousins.)
Karen
McKim, January 2020
 | |
| You have an ancestor who sat at King Arthur's Round Table, at least according to our distant cousin, Selah Youngs, Jr. |
Organization
 |
Each of your grandparents and great-parents (the first column in this image) has an individual page, just for them. Your 2G and 3G grandparents (the second and third columns) have one page for each couple. Information
about your 4G grandparents and ancestors even farther back is organized
on four
pages, one for each of the major ethnic groups of your immigrant
ancestors. Your Puritan & Pilgrim ancestors have a few additional
pages about their history in general and about a few interesting
historical stories. |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TABLE OF CONTENTS
of this blog
Immigrants are shaded. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
YOUR GRANDPARENTS
1 - William Hollis McKim (1926 - 2001)2 - Phyllis James (1926-2011)
YOUR GREAT GRANDPARENTS
3 - Hollis McKim ("Grandad") 1891-1971
4 - Jean Abercrombie ("Gram") 1900 – 1976 (technically an immigrant, but it's complicated, and she did not identify herself as one, so I'll skip it.)
9 & 10 - Isaac Wilson Abercrombie 1868-1956) and Susanna Orkney (1867 – 1951) Isaac immigrated from Scotland as a teen; Susanna from England as a teen. They met and married in Pennsylvania.)8
15 & 16 - Robert Alexander McKim
(1838-1906) and Elvira Eleanor Gould (1836-1866)
17 & 18 - Robert Sloss (1816-1892) and Jane Semple (1816-1880) from Ulster
Great Britain families:
19 & 20 - John Abercrombie (1841-1875) and Susan Wilson (1839-1920) immigrated from Scotland
21 &22 - Alexander Orkney (1823–1900) and Hannah Richardson (1827–1910) remained in England, though they visited.
Early New England families:
23 & 24 - Lewis Lyman James (1805-1880) and Cerintha Wells (1807-1865)
25 & 26 - Henry Sanford Bellows (1834-1897) and Harriet Amelia Tichenor (1838-1933)
Southern Pennsylvania families: 27 & 28 - Andrew Bream (1821-1892) and Rebecca Plank (1822-1905)
29 & 30 - Levi Taylor (1826-1913) and Catherine R. Hoffman (1827-1912)
Farther back in Western Pennsylvania - Individuals from Scotland and Northern Ireland and their descendants
29 & 30 - Levi Taylor (1826-1913) and Catherine R. Hoffman (1827-1912)
Farther back in Western Pennsylvania - Individuals from Scotland and Northern Ireland and their descendants
This page contains what I was able to discover about the Pennsylvania McKim and Sloss families from your 4G grandparents going back to the first immigrants.
I was unable to discover the first McKim immigrant, who was living in Pennsylvania sometime before 1740. Many others in this part of your family tree arrived from Ulster (they are known in the US as Scots Irish) in the late 1700s.
Farther back in England -Individuals in, or from, northern England
This page contains what I was able to discover about the Abercrombie and Orkney families, the branch of your family tree that remained in England until the late 19th century.
Much of the family is still there. Anne Simpson of North Yorkshire and I are proud that the Orkney clan has stayed in touch all these years. I can put you in touch, if you're interested. Truly delightful people!
Farther back in New England: Your Puritan roots -Individuals who came to America during the 17th-century 'Great Migration' from the British Isles and their descendants
The James and Bellows families have been here since the Puritan "Great Migration" (1620-1640) that preceded the English Civil War. They kept a lot of records, and their descendants preserved those records. As a result, there are just piles and piles of information to discover. As much as I collected and shared here, I made only a big dent in what I'm sure could be discovered.
This page contains a brief overview of historical context for your Puritan ancestors--not your individual ancestors, but their remarkable collective story.
Finally, this page contains the scandalous story of one of your ancestors, Rev. John Lyford, who as it turned out, was only pretending to be Puritan.
Farther back in southern Pennsylvania - Individuals known as the 'Pennsylvania Dutch' (plus a few Ulstermen)
This page contains what I was able to discover about the Bream and Taylor families from your 4G grandparents going back to the first immigrants. They have been in southern Pennsylvania since the early-to-mid-1700s. Mostly they came originally from Germany but one branch came from Ulster (that is, they were what is known now as Scots Irish).
___________________________________________________________
CHARTS (Going back six generations)
My working documents were some charts, which I did not complete, but thought I'd save them here.
The first one is my parents and three generations before that. Then,
each of the 3G‑grandparents has a separate page, going back to
the 6G‑Grandparents. In the charts in the first section, the place
names for each person are their birthplaces. Underlined names are the
immigrants. “Undiscovered” means I could not find any useful hints on
Ancestry, or I didn’t try. “Unclear” means that the Ancestry.com information I could
find was too confusing or conflicting to preserve in this document.
The first two charts cover my parents and three generations before that. Then, each 3G grandparent has a separate chart, going back to the 6G Grandparents.
Chart: Phyllis James, and back to your 3G grandparents
Chart: Robert Alexander McKim (15) and 3 previous ...
Chart: Alexander Orkney (21) and 3 previous genera...The first two charts cover my parents and three generations before that. Then, each 3G grandparent has a separate chart, going back to the 6G Grandparents.
In the
charts, the place names for each person are their
birthplaces.
- Underlined names are the immigrants.
- “Undiscovered” means I could not find any useful hints on Ancestry, or I didn’t try. In most lines, I quit when I found the immigrant. You’re welcome to pick up that ball if you wish!
- “Unclear” means that the Ancestry.com information I could find was too confusing or conflicting to preserve in this document.
- Soldiers who served during the American Revolution are noted with (AR). They tend to have good documentation on Ancestry.com as a result of all the uploaded applications for membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) and Sons of the American Revolution (SAR).
Chart: Phyllis James, and back to your 3G grandparents
Chart: Robert Alexander McKim (15) and 3 previous ...
Chart: Hannah Richardson (22) and 3 previous gener...
Chart: Lewis Lyman James (23) and 3 previous gener...
Chart: Cerintha Wells (24) and 3 previous generati...
Chart: Henry Sanford Bellows (25) and 3 previous g...
Chart: Harriet Amelia Tichenor (26) and 3 previou...
Chart: Andrew Bream (27) and 3 previous generation...
Chart: Rebecca Plank (28) and 3 previous generatio...
Chart: Levi Taylor (27) and 3 previous generations...
Chart: Catherine R. Hoffman (30) and 3 previous ge...
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