Anderson, Robert. A Closer Look at the Great Migration Study Project, New England Ancestors, Fall 2001.
The primary mission of the Great Migration Study Project has been to serve as a guide to what is known about each of the immigrants to New England between 1620 and 1643 and to replace the many older reference works we have for these families.
At a very early stages of the project, we developed a sketch format to organize our biographical and genealogical knowledge of each of the immigrants. This format has stood up well over the years, but the material included under each heading within a sketch has undergone changes. Most importantly, the original plan was to include a list of the names of the children of each immigrant, with only birth or baptismal data attached; but David Greene (who, along with Robert Wakefield and Roger Joslyn, has been from the beginning of the project one of the readers of sketch drafts) soon insisted that more detail be given for the children, including especially their marriages, but also other information where relevant.
Other changes have been made as well. In the section on "Offices," there has been a steady trend to present the data in a more rational form, with civil offices given first, and then military offices, and within each of those subsections, the material was further divided by the jurisdiction within which the service was performed.
One of the expressed purposes of the project has been to "serve as a foundation for future research." Genealogical scholars have already begun to extend the work of the project, and to fill holes which could not be filled during the research and writing of the Great Migration volumes.
Anderson, Robert. Uncovering Personalities of the Great Migration, New England Ancestors, Fall 2002.
An unexpected benefit of the Great Migration Study Project has been the light thrown on the full range of personalities of the immigrants to New England. By studying exhaustively and systematically every immigrant during the years from 1620 to 1640, we begin to see patterns, and we establish a norm, from which there are the expected deviations.
Along one axis, we have the usual socioeconomic distributions. At one end of the spectrum were a few men and women with exceptional wealth, and, for the men, along with that wealth usually came high political position.
At the other end of the scale we find immigrants such as Matthew Abdy and Webb Adey, men who lived on the margins of society, with a bare minimum of the economic essentials. Even these poorest of the first New England generation were not, however, so forlorn as those on the lowest rungs of society in old England. Nor were the wealthiest and most powerful anywhere near as potent as those at the higher end of the scale in the society they had left behind. Those who chose to move to New England in the 1620s and 1630s were from a relatively narrow band in the middle of the full range of English social strata.
Many practiced trades, and most who did not were styled yeomen or husbandmen, reflecting their status in England as comfortable farmers who tilled a substantial amount of land.
When these husbandmen and tradesmen made their settlement in New England, they distributed themselves along a second axis. Most fell into a standard pattern. They married and had a number of children. They were given substantial grants of land, in most instances far more than they had held in old England. They joined the church, and were made freemen. They were frequently called to hold office, whether as jurymen or constables or selectmen. They were occasionally before the courts as plaintiffs or defendants in civil suits, or as perpetrators of minor infractions in criminal cases.
Having seen so many immigrants in great detail, the few who do not adhere to this central pattern stand out from the norm, and demand our attention.
William Hatch (our relative) a resident of Sandwich, Kent, sailed for New England in 1635 on the Hercules. Upon arrival he settled in Scituate, where he resided until his death in 1651. He brought with him his second wife and five children, two other children having died in England prior to the family's migration. The town of Scituate granted him the usual course of land distributions.
Beyond these basics, William Hatch in some respects seemed to reflect the norm of the middle of the middle stratum. He became a freeman soon after arrival and served in several offices, including participation on grand and petit juries. He was, in fact, a little above the norm, in that he was in 1642 and again in 1645 Deputy from Scituate to the Plymouth Colony General Court, and in 1643 he was appointed Lieutenant of the Scituate trainband.
Were this the totality of what the surviving records had to tell us about William Hatch, we would account him a solid but unremarkable New England immigrant. But in addition to the details of his life which have been outlined above, we find also a steady stream of other notices of this man which tell us a different story.
The very first entry in the volume of "Judicial Acts of the General Court and Court of Assistants" of Plymouth Colony, dated January 3, 1636/7, was a law suit against William Hatch, instituted by Comfort Starr in a case of debt, the jury finding for the plaintiff. This judgment in itself was not remarkable, but, as will be seen, was a portent of things to come. Barely six months later, on June 7, 1637, "whereas William Hatch, of Scituate, is presented for an incroachment upon a piece of ground on this side the river without license of this Court, it is therefore enacted by this Court that the said William Hatch shall reap the crop this year only, and leave the land, which is the mulct laid upon him for his presumption therein."
Not long after these events, Hatch returned to England, and then sailed again for New England on the Castle, bringing with him his brother Thomas and his family. While on this voyage, William Hatch formed a partnership with Thomas Ruck and Joseph Merriam to handle the affairs of the voyage. In August 1639, a year after this transatlantic passage, Ruck and Merriam sued Hatch, claimed he did "overreckon, misreckon, account short & mischarge" various items in the accounts.
Two years later, on September 7, 1641, William Hatch was accused of stating publicly that "the warrants sent from the governor were nothing but stinking commissary warrants." Finally, on March 5, 1643/4, the Court took notice of a dispute between Hatch and his servant Hercules, regarding the length of service of the latter.
Very few men were so frequently recorded in so many forms of disagreeable behavior. Even so, throughout this period, William Hatch continued to hold offices at the colony and town level. His peers and neighbors clearly valued his skills and abilities highly enough to set aside his apparent antisocial behavior, but he may have been skating very close to the edge.
An Excerpt from the NEGHS Great Migration Newsletter: Settlement of Hingham, New England Ancestors, Fall 2001.
Hingham first appears in the records on September 1634, when the settlement, then named Barecove (or Bear Cove), was assessed £4, in a year when the entire colony paid taxes of £600, and the three largest towns, Boston, Dorchester and Cambridge, paid £80 apiece.
In its first year or so of existence Barecove should probably be thought of as an extension of its neighbor immediately to the west, Wessaguscus (soon to be known as Weymouth). At this time Wessaguscus itself was an offshoot of Dorchester, and the majority of the residents of these latter two places were form the West Country of England.
The name for the town arose because of the great influx of settlers who had their origin in the parish of Hingham in Norfolk in old England [including our grandparents Rev. Robert & Anne (Lawrence) Peck & Peter & Rebecca (Peck) Hobart]. At some point in his life Daniel Cushing, who was about fifteen years old in the mid-1630s, compiled "A list of the names of such persons as came out of the town of Hingham, and towns adjacent in the County of Norfolk, in the Kingdom of England, into New England, and settled in Hingham, in New England." Cushing listed the immigrants by family, in chronological order of arrival. The earliest came in 1633, with a few more in 1634, 1635 and 1637. The bulk of the passengers (133) came on the Diligent in 1638. More than two hundred persons are enumerated by Cushing.
This list begins with several members of the Hobart family, along with a few others, who arrived in 1633, this has been taken by some as the date of settlement of Hingham. But all those who came in 1633 and 1634, as well as Rev. Peter Hobart, who came in 1635, settled first in Charlestown. Records for all these persons are complete and continuous in Charlestown until the summer of 1635, when many of them made the move to Hingham. We are left, then, with the first appearance of Dorchester-connected settlers in 1634, followed by the great influx in 1635 of immigrants from old Hingham, some coming over from Charlestown and some directly from England.
Returning to the development of the standard town institutions, we find that Hingham was grouped with Boston, Roxbury, Dorchester and Weymouth when the system of Quarter Courts was established on 3 March 1635/6 . . . On 13 December 1636, Hingham was grouped with the same four towns when the three military regiments were organized. These groupings were the basis on which Suffock County was organized seven years later.
Although other newly settled towns were granted a brief moratorium from paying taxes to the colony, Hingham was not so lucky. On 3 September 1635 and again on 3 March 1635/6, the town was assessed £6. Hingham was assessed £8 10s on 1 August 1637, £24 on 15 November 1637 and £36 on 12 March 1637/8. The increase in the size of the tax payment did not reflect an increase in the wealth of the town, but a fixed proportional share of a larger colony levy; Hingham continued during this period to be ahead only of Weymouth in the tax tables.
On the day that Weymouth and Hingham were both given their formal English names, Weymouth was allowed immediately to have a deputy at the General Court, but Hingham did not have this privilege so soon. The first recorded appearance of a deputy from Hingham was on 25 May 1636, when Joseph Andrews and Nicholas Baker were sent. And finally, the town reached full maturity when on 12 March 1637/8 Thomas Loring was "allowed to sell wine & strong water."
Hingham began granting lands in 1635, the records of which survive in three forms. Although all were compiled at about the same time, we can make some suggestions as to the order in which they were created. The first was probably the volume in which the grants were arranged by the type of lots which were granted, generally on a given day. As it now exists, this volume begins with houselots granted on 18 September 1635, the first to Thomas Wakely. On separate pages there are grants of planting ground, Broad Cove Meadows, Great Lots and other types of parcels.
The remaining two sets of records are rearrangements of this first volume with the various lots grouped together according to grantee. The last volume is arranged in a similar way, but is more extensive, partly because it contains later transfers of land beyond the original grants from the town. That this volume was created after the first volume mentioned above and probably after the second, is indicated by the details given in some of the entries. In the first two volumes noted above, for example, in the entry for Andrew Lane we find that his houselot is described as being "next to Nathaniel Baker, his brother-in-law, to the westward," whereas in the last volume described the information about the marital relationship has been omitted. Similar information on several other early settlers appears in other entries in the first two volumes, but has also been omitted from the third. As we see so frequently, we are never safe in examining just one version of a set of records, when two or more versions exist.
Despite these omissions, however, the third volume described is in many ways the most useful. First, it is easily the most legible of the three sets of originals. Second, it groups together all the land granted to an individual, along with the dates of the grants, information that is not included in the second volume.
This third volume also allows us to see at a glance what constituted a typical set of parcels granted to one person. Joseph Andrews, for instance, was given a houselot of five acres, a Great Lot of twenty-four acres, a planting lot of three acres, four acres of planting land, eight acres at Rocky Neck, five more acres of planting land, two acres for a small planting lot, eight acres of salt marsh, and two acres of fresh meadow. The last of these lots was granted in 1637, and all the rest in 1635. We are not surprised to find that the assortment of types of parcels is very much like what we find in other Massachusetts Bay towns.
Bangs, Jeremy. 17th-Century Town Records of Scituate, Massachusetts, New England Ancestors, Winter 2002.
Seventeenth-Century Town Records of Scituate, Massachusetts, is a project I stumbled on unexpectedly. . . . I asked to see the oldest documents but the request did not fit into the logic of ordinary inquiries. "What family are you interested in?" was the friendly response.
Genealogical questions could be answered using index cards created as a WPA Project, but there was not any real catalog. Having no genealogical question, I randomly gave the name of Hatch, an early Scituate family [one of ours!]. The present owner of the Hatch house had recently invited me to see the unusual central chimney there, with a hiding place built into the stack between the fireplaces on the ground floor, presumably as a refuse in case of burning and looting of King Philip's War were ever repeated. The "Hatch" filecards came in a drawer with other family names in their alphabetical vicinity, accompanied by dates and documentary references. Clearly the earliest volume was "C-1" starting in the 1630s!
C-1 was brought to me, with the advice that it was mostly too difficult to read. When I replied that it didn't appear to present any problems, archivist Dorothy Langley and her assistant Carol Miles asked if, in that case, I'd type it for them. I agreed to do just that - transcribe the records that began in 1633.
Seventeenth-Century Records of Scituate, Massachusetts fills three thick volumes. Comparable material from other towns in the Old Colony of Plymouth scarcely yields a third of the information for any single town. Scituate was the largest town in the colony, although you would never guess so from the slight attention it receives in colony histories and almost total silence about it in such books as Bailyn, Rutman and Cronon.
The first volume is the "Town Book." It documents a variety of activities in the area that included not only present-day Scituate, but also Norwell and parts of Marshfield, Hanover, Pembroke, Hanson, and Hingham. [It contains] six documentary groups:
- Town relations with the colony.
- Grants of land made by the freeman of Scituate
- Land Transfers
- Boundary Agreements
- Highways and other roads
- Miscellaneous - indentures of servitude, receipts, damages, etc.
The book as composed gives clues to the history of society seen in interaction by its constituent landowners. Temporal continuity is absent from the manuscript's original disorganized arrangement. To show the sources and events they describe in historical order, I summarized the documents as "regests," an old archival term for summaries that include all names and locations and other significant information, usually arranged chronologically.
The same categories proved useful for the second manuscript volume also, the Conihasset Partners' Book. The partners were shareholders in the Conihasset Grant, a distinct area occupying the northern part of present Scituate, from Scituate Brook to The Glades, extending westward south of Bound Brook.
A brief introduction in each volume narrates the history of Scituate. The first covers the period from the town's beginnings around 1633 to the end of the 1640s. It begins with the first assignment of house lots along Kent Street, continuing as the town expanded towards First Herring Brook. After the initial settlement, the land was perceived to be inadequate, so the story includes the movement of half the settlers with their minister John Lothrop to Barnstable in 1639. Scituate split again, when some people founded a new congregation led by Lothrop's eventual successor, Charles Chauncy. Chauncy attempted to exclude about half the town from the church covenant. Even though Chauncy had peculiar ideas about baptism, insisting on full immersion, he baptized infants and so was not a Baptist. In fact, the Baptist controversy in Scituate, almost a commonplace of New England history, proves imaginary. Instead, we discover a reflection of the Hingham election controversy, when Scituate's William Vassall and others protested in London that they were being deprived of their rights as free Englishmen by the exclusion (by New England's Congregationalist clergy) of non-Covenanted members from baptism, communion, and suffrage. This exclusion had implications for future land grants as well! The economic well-being of families hinged on a theological point.
The third volume contains Town Meeting minutes and Treasurers Accounts, augmented by thirty-one appendixes taken from a variety of non-government sources further illuminating Scituate life.
Benson, Richard. Colonial New England & New York Research: The Sources are Different, New England Ancestors, Summer 2003.
When New England families moved to upstate New York after the Revolutionary War, they often intermarried with descendants of early New York families.
For New England:
Compiled genealogies must be used with caution. One hundred years ago, compilers did not have access to vital, probate or land records without traveling from town to town and county to county. Many genealogies were compiled primarily from correspondence with descendants, which makes them most valuable for data on persons born in the early nineteenth century who were personally known to the correspondents.
Printed vital records for towns or digitized records. Where there are no vital or probate records, deeds can be used to track a family.
For New York:
There are practically no published vital records since the colonial government did not require towns to maintain them. Much of the Hudson River Valley was owned by patroons - manorial lords - who leased land to settlers. Settlers who did not own land left no deeds, and since there was no land to be passed to heirs, many did not write wills or leave other probate records.
Often, church records are the foundation of early New York research. Depending on the church, baptismal records are particularly valuable since they usually list the father, the mother's maiden name and the names of sponsors.
A challenge to the use of these records is that because Dutch, German, and English ministers often spelled names phonetically, all possible spellings must be checked. The name Cool was spelled Kool, Kohl, Coel, Cohl and Cole.
Often the first children of a couple were named after grandparents, and the grandparents, if still alive, frequently were sponsors at their baptisms. This tradition can provide strong evidence of a baby's grandparents. However, the naming pattern had drawbacks. If a Peter Cole had four sons, he usually would have four grandsons also named Peter Cole. This presents the problem of sorting out the various Peter Coles.
The New York Genealogical & Biographical Record has been published quarterly since 1870 and contains a wealth of information on early New York families.
New York had centralized probate until 1787 and abstracts of these wills have been published.
Betlock, Lynn. Marriage: A Civil Institution in Seventeenth-Century New England, New England Ancestors, Spring 2005.
While the facts contained in the marriage records are essential to genealogists, it is also worthwhile to consider the wedding ceremonies that led to all those records.
The overriding motive of New England's founders - both the Separatists at Plymouth Colony and the Puritans who established the Massachusetts Bay Colony - was to practice a pure form of worship, based on the teachings of the Bible. While the Pilgrims and Puritans believed that the marriage solemnization - the taking of a covenant in the sight of God - had profound religious significance, they did not view it as a church matter. In his 1645 work, The Way of the Churches of Christ in New England, theologian John Cotton wrote "that we should worship the true God with true worship, such as God hath ordained, not such as man hath invented."
And in the view of both groups, the marriage ceremony in England owed much too much to man's invention. The Church of England administered marriage as an elaborate religious rite, and enforced the publication of marriage intentions, parental consent, and registration. In critiquing the Anglican marriage service, the Pilgrims and Puritans opposed the phrase, "with my body I thee worship," because worship was due only to God and they protested that the practice of Holy Communion elevated the service into an ecclesiastical sacrament. Fundamentally, objections to a church ceremony stemmed from its perceived lack of biblical precedent. John Robinson, pastor in Holland to the Pilgrims, wrote in his Justification of Separation of "almost twenty severall scriptures and nine distinct reasons grounded upon them, to prove that the celebration of marriage, the buryall of the dead, are not ecclesiasticall action, apperteyning to the ministry, but civill and so to be performed."
When the Separatists left England in 1609 and moved to the city of Leiden in Holland to escape persecution, they found a new model for marriage there. Two Dutch provinces had established civil marriage as early as 1580. Civil marriage was created - first in Leiden - to give equal treatment to couples not marrying in the state church (the Dutch Reformed Church) so that their children wouldn't be considered illegitimate for the purposes of inheritance. A number of Pilgrims were married by the Leiden magistrates. [William Bradford married his first wife in Amsterdam] The Dutch example set an important precedent that would later be used as one of the justifications for civil marriage in New England.
The first marriage in Plymouth Colony - and likely in all of New England took place on May 12, 1621, after the disastrous first winter. Edward Winslow's wife had died seven weeks earlier and Susanna White's husband had died three months earlier; the two chose to merge their households and remarry. Twenty-five years later, William Bradford wrote about the event in Of Plimoth Plantation: "May 12 was ye first marriage in this place, which according to ye laudable custome of ye Low-Countries, in which they had lived, was thought most requisite to be performed by the magistrate, as being a civill thing . . . and most consonante to ye scripturs, Ruth 4, and no wher found in ye gospell to be layed on ye ministers as a part of their office . . . And this practiss hath continued amongst, not only them, but hath been followed by all ye famous churches of Christ in this parts to this time, -- Ano: 1646." This introduction of the Dutch practice of civil marriage into New England represented a major innovation in the English legal world, not adopted in England itself until the 1830s.
Edward Winslow was imprisoned by Archbishop William Laud for performing civil marriages. According to Bradford's history, Winslow "tould their lord[shi]ps yt mariage was a civill thinge, & he found no wher in ye word of God yt it was tyed to ministrie. Againe, they were necessitated so to doe, having for along time together at first no minister; besides, it was no new-thing, for he had been so maried him selfe in Holand, by ye magistrates in their Statt-house." Despite this defense, Archbishop Laud used this issue to jail Winslow for seventeen weeks in London's Fleet Prison.
Now firmly established in Plymouth Colony and beyond, civil marriage was written into Massachusetts legal statutes in 1646; "As the Ordinance of Marriage is honourable amongst all, so should it be accordingly solemnized. It is therefore ordered by this Court and Authority thereof that no person whatsoever in this Jurisdiction, shall joyne any persons together in Marriage, but the Magistrate" or a designated stand-in.
In practical terms the process toward marriage began (if the couple had been living under their parents' protection) with the consent of their parents - or failing that, the consent of the magistrate. Next, the marriage intention was published three times. In Plymouth Colony (and in the rest of the New England colonies, in varying detail) it was to be published in "meeting," or if there was not meeting scheduled, posted for fifteen days in the usual public place. The intentions (or banns) had to be published before a marriage could take place; the colonists tried to guard against "disorderly marriage" - secret or bigamous marriages. After this step, the date of the wedding was chosen, "commonly for a date in November, which was the favorite season in Puritan New England."
Throughout New England, an important pre-marriage ritual followed. Known as a pre-contract, contraction, betrothal or espousal, this custom was usually led by a minister who preached a sermon - neither the minister nor sermon was permitted at a wedding service. David Hackett Fischer writes that this ceremony "was a great event in a small New England town. The intended bride was commonly invited to choose the text for the minister's sermon with all the care and attention that a young woman in the twentieth century would select her bridesmaids' matching dresses and shoes. The pre-contract allowed for a formal waiting period from betrothal to marriage. Distinct from a mere engagement as we understand it today, the betrothal had a real legal significance, giving the couple a status somewhere between single and married. For instance, in the Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Haven colonies, an "espoused wife" would be subject to the same punishment as a married woman would be for adultery, while a single woman would be much less severely punished.
And finally, prior to the marriage, the parents of the couple - if it was a first marriage - would determine the marriage portions on both sides. Often this process consisted of protracted and determined financial bargaining. A dowry was an essential element of the marriage equation; in Massachusetts Bay in the 1630s, even paupers were granted a marriage portion by the colony.
Court records document, in rich detail, how early New Englanders went to court to claim their rights when they perceived that they had been violated, at all stages on the road to marriage. Court cases recount an endless variety of violations, from children suing their parents for denying them permission to marry, to betrothed spouses who refused to go through with the marriage ceremony.
In the early decades of New England settlement, weddings were quiet affairs that usually took place at the home of the bride. There was no standard marriage ritual or text; the bride and groom expressed their intentions in words fitting the occasion - but we don't know the exact words they used. No written seventeenth-century New England marriage covenants are known to exist, but historian Edmund S. Morgan believes that the wedding couple simply promised to take each other as husband and wife.
Early New England marriages did not include the use of wedding rings. Pilgrims and Puritans had long objected to the use of a ring in the Church of England ceremonies, because of the connections to Roman Catholicism and the lack of a biblical precedent. Cotton Mather wrote in 1726, "In former Ages there was, and still in other Places, there is much stress laid upon the Wedding Ring. In other Roman Rituals, there is a Form of Benediction used by the Priest upon it . . . We shall only say, that in the Weddings of New England, the Ring makes none of the Ceremonies."
A celebration normally followed the wedding, which included prayers, the signing of psalms, and a dinner. A 1637 Massachusetts Bay Colony law demonstrates that marriages were indeed out-of-the-ordinary events. The law, which generally forbade the sale of buns and cakes, made an exception for "such cakes as shalbee made for any burial, or marriage, or such like speciall occasion." In addition to the bridal cakes, wedding guests could enjoy a cup sack-posset, made of milk, sugar, sherry and other ingredients.
The final step in the matrimonial process was the registration of the marriage. As with parental consent and publication of the banns, registration was the responsibility of the town government. A 1646 Plymouth Colony law ordered that each town clerk keep a register of the day and year of every marriage, birth and burial. Every married couple was required to report its marriage to the town clerk within one month of the ceremony. If the couple failed to do so, a three-shilling penalty was levied for neglect. The town clerk compiled all the registrations once a year and submitted a written report to the general court each March. The laws of other New England colonies regarding registration were similar to those of Plymouth.
Fundamental changes to the marriage laws and marriage practices occurred after 1686, when all of New England's original charters were revoked and royal government was established. Civil marriage was no longer required; ministers could perform marriages in their respective towns.
Betlock, Lynn. New England's Great Migration, New England Ancestors, Spring 2003.
In 1988, the New England Historic Genealogical Society initiated the Great Migration Study Project, conceived and directed by Robert Charles Anderson.
The Great Migration Study Project uses 1620 - the date of the arrival of the Mayflower - as its starting point. The year 1620 marks the founding of Plymouth Colony by the Separatists - the most extreme Puritan sect. (While more moderate Puritans sought only to purify and reform the Church of England, the Separatists severed all ties to it.)
The peak years of the Great Migration lasted just over ten years - from 1629 to 1640, years when the Puritan crisis in England reached its height. In 1629, King Charles I dissolved Parliament, thus preventing Puritan leaders from working within the system to effect change and leaving them vulnerable to persecution. The Massachusetts Bay Colony, chartered in the same year by a group of moderate Puritans, represented both a refuge and an opportunity for Puritans to establish a "Zion in the wilderness." During the ten years that followed, over twenty thousand men, women and children left England to settle permanently in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. IN 1640, when Parliament was reconvened, attention was redirected from the New World back to the old and migration to New England dropped sharply.
Seventeenth-century conditions in England caused hundreds of thousands of emigrants to leave England and seek new homes elsewhere: in Ireland, the Caribbean, and the other colonies of North America. For sheer numbers and longevity, these movements to other regions dwarfed New England's "Great" migration. But the term "Great Migration" was coined for a reason: it reflected the greatness of the endeavor's purpose rather than its size. The immigrants who came to New England differed from immigrants to other regions in a variety of ways, all stemming from their fundamental desire to obtain spiritual rather than economic rewards. Unlike colonists to other areas, those who migrated to New England had known relatively prosperous lives in England. In fact, it was a greater economic risk to leave than to stay. Form the colonists' perspective, they traded economic advantages and stability in a corrupt England for a more precarious economic situation tempered by the opportunity to live more pious and worthy lives in a Puritan commonwealth.
Motivated primarily by religious concerns, most Great Migration colonists traveled to Massachusetts in family groups. Consequently, New England retained a normal, multi-generational structure with relatively equal numbers of men and women. At the time they left England, many husbands and wives were in their thirties and had three or more children, with more yet to be born. This situation contrasts with that of the southern colonies, which were populated primarily by single young men.
Great Migration colonists shared other distinctive characteristics. New Englanders had a high level of literacy, perhaps nearly twice that of England as a whole. New Englanders were highly skilled; more than half of the settlers had been artisans or craftsmen.
Unlike colonists of other regions, the Great Migration colonists were primarily middle class, and few were rich or poor.
An important rite of passage for all Great Migration colonists, and one that further bound them together as a group, was the voyage to Massachusetts. The majority of emigrants lived within a few days travel of a port of departure. Ships left from several points along the English coast, including London, Bristol, Barnstaple, Weymouth, Plymouth, Southampton, Ipswich, Great Yarmouth, and Gravesend. Most emigrant ships left England in March or April, allowing sufficient time for the journey and the ship's return trip to England before cold weather began again. An average ocean crossing lasted from eight to ten weeks but the time of the voyage could vary greatly, from a trip of just thirty-eight days to one of six months.
Once in New England, the settlers usually spent a minimum of several weeks - frequently the entire first winter - in the port town at which they arrived or another established town. After gathering information about possible places to settle, they dispersed to towns throughout the colony, sometimes moving several times before finding a permanent residence. Most chose to move to a new town, generally one less than two years old. The key to success was arriving early enough after a town's founding to become a proprietor and share in the original land distribution, administered and controlled by the town. Proprietors received the best and largest land grants, as well as rights to share in future divisions. This share in future land divisions was extremely important to the settlers because it ensured viable economic futures for their children.
In order to best secure these rights, towns limited the number of possible proprietors. Once the limit was reached, the town was considered closed. In Dorchester, this process happened quite early - in 1636, just six years after its founding. Twenty-two towns, from Maine to Rhode Island, were closed or entry was drastically restricted within the first ten years of settlement. Fortunately for new arrivals, the frontier continued expanding and many new towns formed during the lifetimes of the original settlers. Settlement expanded from Boston, to both the north and south, along the coast. The colonists first occupied land cleared by previous Native inhabitants. After these more desirable areas were taken, settlers moved into increasingly difficult terrain. Twenty-three towns in Massachusetts were founded in the 1630s, and these towns, as well as those settled in succeeding decades, provided a stable and secure land distribution system for the immigrants.
Another aspect of life in New England proved noteworthy: the remarkable health and longevity of the population. Many colonists lived to the age of seventy, and a substantial number lived to be eighty. Both male and female settlers in New England lived significantly longer than their English counterparts. This longevity is no doubt due to a variety of factors: dispersed settlement patterns, lack of epidemic disease, the healthful effects of a "little ice age," clean air and water, possibly a better diet, and the original good health of most immigrants. Also, infant childhood mortality rates were lower in New England, and the settlers produced large and healthy families - most having seven or more children. Accordingly, New England experienced tremendous population growth within the lifetime of first generation settlers.
Overall, Massachusetts Bay Colony settlers were able to attain a comfortable living for themselves and assure some measure of economic success for their children. Most owned houses and land, as well as a sufficient amount of livestock, farm equipment, and household goods. (Interestingly, with their disposable income New Englanders chose to forgo the purchase of silverware, pottery and other household goods in favor of books - principally the religious books that were so key to Puritanism.) If few in New England were wealthy, few lived in poverty either. Most settlers lived in circumstances similar to their neighbors and if one colonist was more prosperous than the rest, this prosperity was likely to manifest itself in a greater amount of land rather than a most ostentatious way of life. Both the community's spiritual outlook and the material conditions experienced by the first generation in New England fostered a uniquely communal and stable way of life. The commitment to life in a Puritan commonwealth on which the Great Migration colonists staked everything when they left England had indeed paid off.
Today's descendants of Great Migration settlers are fortunate to have a wealth of resources to add to their knowledge of the their ancestors' lives. Using the Great Migration Study Project's detailed individual sketches in conjunction with broad historical studies, genealogists can hope to capture some of the personalities and motivations of ancestors who lived nearly three centuries ago.
Carmack, Sharon. Introducing Your Guide to Cemetery Research, New England Ancestors, Summer 2002.
Cemeteries are the one place where you can be the closest to your ancestors, both physically and spiritually. While it is always a thrill to find names in historical documents, nothing can beat finding your ancestors' names carved on a tombstone and knowing that their remains are just six feet or less below your feet. You are likely treading on the same ground where they and their families once walked, looking at the same headstones they looked at before they died. Here you have physical evidence that your ancestor existed. But there's much more to visiting your ancestors' gravesites than meets the eye.
For ancestors who died before the late-nineteenth century, discovery where they were buried may require more creativity. You need to know the locality where the ancestor died, since this place was likely where the person was also buried. Shipping bodies to distant locations didn't become feasible until about the time of the Civil War, simply because there was no good method of preserving a body for transit. So your early ancestors were probably interred fairly close to where they died.
Some researchers, however, may not even know when and where their ancestors died, let alone where they're buried. From determining an ancestor's final resting place to decoding mysterious headstone symbols, Your Guide to Cemetery Research shows you how to help fill the holes in your family history research. Chapters discuss records of death; locating graves, cemeteries and their records; searching a cemetery; bringing home a tombstone - legally; cryptic clues in the bone yard; American burial customs and cemeteries; cemetery transcription and preservation projects; and making cemeteries a family affair.
Crandall, Ralph. Around New England: Visiting Historic Villages, New England Ancestors, Holiday 2000.
Among New England's greatest resources is its historic heritage. It is on e of the oldest regions of immigrant settlement in America and therefor rich in history and nostalgia.
Plenty of eighteenth and nineteenth-century homes, monuments, and churches still stand as visual reminders. History confronts us with centuries-old cemeteries, original and reconstructed meeting houses and venerable college campuses.
One of the most important things we can do as genealogists is understand the time period and circumstances in which our ancestors lived.
Plimoth Plantation, "The Living History Museum of Seventeenth-Century Plymouth," is located a few miles from the original townsite, which is now buried under the streets of the current harborfront town of Plymouth, Massachusetts. Planners, contractors and craftsmen have been meticulous in every aspect of of historical recreation - from zealously researched building methods to appropriately-stitched articles of clothing. In fact, once inside the seventeenth-century village, no one will even understand anything you talk about beyond their time period.
As a family historian, you need to be careful not to ask genealogical questions of the Pilgrim actors. As an example, if you inquire after a woman's parentage, she will answer you correctly if historical records have given us names. If there is no historical record of her father or mother, the actress will not know it either. In playing her role, however, she obviously would know her parents' names and will need to "invent" something to answer your question.
The Plymouth Public Library is a genealogical gem with enthusiastic employees who are both knowledgeable and eager to help researchers.
Mystic Seaport, in Mystic, Connecticut, appropriately calls itself "The Museum of America and the Sea." Although the prime focus is 19th-century New England, its resources cover much more of our nation and its history. The link that people will find here is the great impact of the sea on American history in general and their own family's past.
The G.W. Blunt White Library encourages patronage from serious scholars but is open to the public free-of-charge. It, too, represents a national viewpoint. A fascinating range of materials includes ship's pictures, Lloyds registers, yacht club rosters, and a manuscript collection of over 700,000 items - logbooks, diaries, documents from whaling and shipping industries and various family papers.
Daly, Marie. Disease & Our Ancestors, New England Ancestors, Holiday 2002
In comparing our lives to those of our ancestors, twenty-first century Americans often look at technological progress as the most striking difference. But the greatest change has occurred in the longevity of life and the incidence of disease. In the nineteenth century, twenty percent of all infants died before the age of one year, compared to 0.69% in 2000. The average life expectancy of people in 1840s Boston was twenty-one years, compared to a U.S. average of seventy-seven years in 2000. In 1840, the leading causes of death were contagious diseases, whereas in 2000 they were diseases of old age: heart disease and cancer.
Few physicians could distinguish among diseases that resulted in similar symptoms. Until Louis Pasteur developed the germ theory in 1878, most people believed that illness was due to deadly miasma arising from standing water and swamps. Even when they had associated polluted water, filth, and poor sanitation with the spread of disease, they failed to recognize the role of insect and rodent vectors. In fact, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, most diseases were thought to be the responsibility of the individual and solely the result of lifestyle factors.
Immigrants brought with them their acquired immunities to European endemic diseases. The earliest colonists were protected from epidemics by the low density of population, the distances between settlements and the long transatlantic journey. But gradually the population grew and the second generation did not acquire immunity to these endemic diseases. Contagions later considered childhood diseases, such as measles, diphtheria, scarlet fever, chicken pox, and mumps, started to affect the adult population, very often with lethal effects.
With the arrival of Europeans to the New World came the "Great Speckled Monster," or smallpox, one of the greatest scourges known to mankind. Since its emergence in 10,000 BC, smallpox has killed up to 100 million people and left another 200 million blind and scarred. . . . After Edward Jenner developed smallpox vaccine in 1796, the smallpox virus was eradicated.
Transported to the New World aboard slave ships, the mosquito-borne diseases of yellow fever and malaria "proved a lasting threat to the eastern seaboard of North America." In 1793, yellow fever struck Philadelphia with particular severity, leaving over four thousand dead. Matthew Carey reported, "Many never walked on the footpath, but went into the middle of the streets, to avoid being infected in passing houses wherein people had died. Acquaintances and friends avoided each other in the streets, and only signified their regard by a cold nod. The old custom of shaking hands fell into such a general disuse, that many people were affronted by even the offer of a hand."
Industrialization and urbanization led to an increase in many endemic diseases such as tuberculosis, commonly called consumption, and cholera. In crowded waterfront neighborhoods, water supplies were contaminated by sewage, and food supplies by insects and rodents carrying germs from sewers. In 1854 British scientist John Snow determined that contaminated water was linked to the incidence of cholera among London neighborhoods.
Civil death records - establishment of state registries varies from state to state. Massachusetts began keeping statewide records in 1841. However, many cities and towns throughout the country kept their own records before the states.
Church burial records - many churches entered into a register the burials in the church graveyard.
Cemetery inscriptions - often provide the name of the deceased and his or her date of death - sometimes they also include birth day, and place of birth and death. However the data should be regarded with caution, since the source is often a relative of the deceased and the tombstone may have been erected years after the actual event.
Probate records - deaths can also be associated with court records such as wills, administrations and guardianships.
Federal mortality schedules - from 1850 through 1900, federal census mortality schedules were published for many states. These schedules list the person who died in the previous year, and in some cases give additional information such as occupation or cause of death. For instance, the 1900 census mortality schedule for Minnesota includes names, color and sex, age, marital status, month died, cause of death, and physician. In some states, the data was added to the state vital records at the end of the year.
Newspaper notices & obituaries - in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, not many ordinary people had extensive death notices published in newspapers. Many entries provide only the name of the deceased, his or her age, and the date of death. Deaths by unusual circumstances might have been more newsworthy (entries such as "melancholy accident kills six).
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| Elizabeth Royall |
After the invention of cameras, many families photographed their dead loved ones in their caskets.
Dearborn, David. Ancestors on the Move: Migrations Out of New England, New England Ancestors, Spring 2002.
When John Dearborn left his home in Wakefield, New Hampshire, in the 1790s for western Pennsylvania, making a small contribution to American history was probably the last thing on his mind. Nevertheless, John's decision to abandon the safe and familiar confines of New England for the frontier put him in the vanguard of what was to become a vast westward movement emblematic of nineteenth-century America.
The journey west, whether undertaken by foot, horseback, wagon, or boat, was slow and arduous. It is hard for us to imagine, in this age of coast-to-coast air travel, cellphones and email, that for some, like John Dearborn, moving west meant cutting off all ties with family. According to a written account, "tradition . . . says, that when he started for the west on foot, one of his [younger] half-brothers, who was much attached to him, went several miles to keep him company, after which none of the family ever received any account of him."
Most of you who belonged to NEHGS and trace some of your ancestry back to New England do so through lines that migrated west after the Revolution. One of the most universal genealogical problems faced by many of you is the "brick wall" ancestor, whose trail runs cold in upstate New York in the early nineteenth century. If you have been involved with genealogy for a decade or more . . . these "dead end" ancestors are nothing new.
There are several reasons for this quandary:
- The simple fact that your ancestor was migrating creates a disjuncture: he was born in one place but you first find him living in another. Assuming that your ancestor's birth or baptism in New England was recorded, how do you find proof of a connection between the birth/baptism of the person of that name, with your ancestor living elsewhere.
- The period between the Revolution and the Civil War, when most of the migration westward out of New England occurred, is the most difficult period of all in which to trace ancestors. After the Civil War, record-keeping (especially of vital records), the survival of personal documents (letters, family Bibles, etc.), and stories handed down from elderly relatives, make the last 140 years much less fraught with pitfalls. Tracing ancestors before the Revolution, provided that they were in New England, is actually easier because 1) there were fewer people the further back you trace, 2) families were more sedentary and 3) there is a better chance of finding something in print on the family, either in a genealogy, local history, vital records, or the Register.
- Not only do the migrations themselves make it difficult to "connect the dots" of your ancestor's life; record-keeping was usually not up to the task of creating documents of genealogical value. Compared to other regions of the country, New England is a veritable goldmine of records, especially because births, marriages and deaths were kept by the town clerks. . . . Once your ancestors chose to leave New England, they entered the realm of relatively bad record-keeping.
When searching for your migrating ancestor, always keep in mind the genealogist's Golden Rule: work from the known to the unknown. A corollary caveat is the notion held by many genealogists with some New England ancestors, that not only must their "dead ends" go back to New England families, they must also descend from "Great Migration" 1620-1640s) immigrants. Even in New England, not all families living at the time of the Revolution trace back to the early 1600s, and the proportion of eighteenth-century immigrant ancestors you will have increases greatly if they lived in New York or points south and west.
To understand how and why our ancestors left New England, it is necessary to understand New England geography and the history of how it was settled. The first settlements took place along the coast where there was safe anchorage. Those places with the best harbors that had access to drinking water and were easily defensible were the most successful. This is why we see the earliest settlements at Plymouth, Boston, Salem and Gloucester, Portsmouth (New Hampshire), Newport, Providence, Saybrook and New Haven. By the time of King Philip's War (1675), the area of settlement included much of the coastline of southern New England, all of the coastal plain, as well as the lower Connecticut River valley. By the end of the French and Indian Wars (1763), virtually all of southern New England was settled. Northern New England was a totally different matter. Not only was the possibility of attack by the French and Indians a continuing threat, but geography and climate were against would-be settlers. Aside from the coast, the land is mountainous and ill-suited to farming. The major rivers in the area (the Connecticut, Merrimack, Kennebec, Androscoggin and Penobscot), along with the parallel mountain ranges, all run from north to south, making east-west travel difficult. Hence, from historical times to the present, the bulk of New England's population has been in the three southern states, with the lion's share in Massachusetts, followed by Connecticut.
Whether our migrating ancestors were from New England or elsewhere, one of the principal motivators for their leaving was the allure of free or cheap land. Thus, as they migrated, they tended to skip over areas that were already settled, because the choicest lands, along rivers and major routes, were claimed by the earlier arrivals. When New Englanders started moving west in large numbers beginning in the 1790s, most passed right through the Hudson and Mohawk valleys, in favor of unclaimed lands further west.
As more and more families arrived in an area, the frontier was pushed further west. . . . Western Massachusetts and Connecticut contributed by far the greatest number of westward migrants. If you have good reason to believe that your "brick wall" ancestor was indeed from New England, this is the area from which he most likely came. The principal destination of many of these settlers was, at least initially, New York.
While the westward flow did not become significant until after the Revolution, the New England-New York connection dates back to the earliest days of colonial settlement. In 1640 Gravesend on Long Island was founded by arrivals from Massachusetts Bay. Southampton was established in 1656 by about forty families from Lynn. . . . Westchester, Dutchess and Orange counties in New York saw large waves of migration from Fairfield and Litchfield counties, Connecticut. Many of these settlers or their descendants intermarried with the local population of Dutch, Huguenot, Scotch-Irish, German, and English backgrounds.
Migrants traveled west by land or water, whatever was most direct or convenient. The earliest overland routes were Indian footpaths widened and improved by the early settlers. The rights of way of many of these, such as the Boston Post Road (to New York City), still survive today.
While travel was difficult and the frontier was still dangerous and thinly populated, the rate of in-migration was a relative trickle. Once the frontier was pushed west and the trappings of law, order and civilization reached the area, the influx increased. . . . Improved means of transport made the decision whether to stay or move west an easier one. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 heralded an unprecedented exodus from New England, though the canal was soon superseded by the coming of the railroad, which made mass movement even easier.
It is important not to overlook the role of Vermont in westward migration. Although serious settlement of Vermont did not begin until after the French and Indian War, it filled up rapidly in the next forty years. Most of the arrivals were from Connecticut and central and western Massachusetts, with a little spillover from New Hampshire. The newcomers found life there hard - heavily-forested hilly land, thin stony soil, and poor weather. Beginning with the War of 1812, a combination of hard economic times and bad weather, culminating in 1816, the "Year of No Summer," resulted in a mass exodus. Many Vermonters got no further than the New York counties of Washington, Warren, Essex, Clinton, Franklin, St. Lawrence, and Jefferson, but large numbers also went to Chautauqua County in far western New York, or to points even further west.
A less-traveled route but one that should still be noted is the one leading north out of New Hampshire and Vermont to what was called Lower Canada, now Quebec, specifically to the area of Quebec just over the Vermont border, known as the Eastern Townships. The Townships were under British rule but were virgin territory - even the French-speaking native Quebecers had ignored the area. By the 1820s the Eastern Townships were, genealogically speaking, an extension of northern New England. Americans had only to take the oath of allegiance and they were permitted to settle.
National events caused some to grapple with their political convictions during the War of 1812. Nathaniel Dearborn, a native of North Hampshire, when he served in the Revolution. By the 1790 census he had moved to Corinth, Vermont, but by 1800 had settled with his family in Barnston, Lower Canada (Quebec). His peaceful life came to an end during the War of 1812 when Nathaniel refused to affirm his loyalty to the crown. Stripped of his lands, he then moved with his sons to Spencer, Tioga County, New York, where he lived to the age of ninety-six.
The majority of westward migrants tended to follow parallel lines of latitude. Thus, the most popular areas of Yankee settlement were upstate New York, the northern tier of Pennsylvania, the northern parts of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, plus Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa. Few ventured south of the Mason and Dixon Line or the Ohio River. Similarly Southerners also moved westward roughly in their own latitudes. Most early settlers of Kentucky and Tennessee hailed from Virginia and North Carolina, most early Missourians were from Kentucky . . .
Does this migration mean that New England was depopulated? Not at all. While the populations of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont were essentially stagnant from the Civil War until World War II, population grew rapidly in southern New England.
However or whenever your ancestors went west, understanding the migration and settlement patterns peculiar to the areas where they lived will make it easier for you to decide on the best strategies and sources when you begin your quest for their New England origins.
Suggestions for further reading on migrations out of New England:
- Rosenberry, Lois Kimball Mathews. The Expansion of New England: the Spread of New England Settlements and Institutions to the Mississippi River, 1620-1865, 1900.
- Holbrook, Stewart H. The Yankee Exodus: an Account of Migration from New England, 1950.
- Russell, George Ely. New Englanders in Maryland, The Genealogist, 2, 1981
- Thorndale, William & William Dollarhide. Map Guide to the U.S. Federal Censuses 1790-1920, 1987.
- Dept. of Commerce & Labor, Bureau of the Census. A Century of Population Growth from the First Census of the U.S. to the Twelfth 1790-1900, 1909 reprinted 1989 - contains a very useful table of surnames borne by at least 100 white persons, tabulated by states and territories, in the 1790 census.
- Coddington, John Insley. Migration & Settlement Patterns in Colonial New England, Mayflower Quarterly Vol. 46, 1980
Duffy, Laura. Diaries in Your Family History Research, New England Ancestors, Winter 2002.
"Your ancestors may be sitting on our shelves" is a catchy phrase used by the New England Historic Genealogical Society to invite visitors to the research library and ultimately to its membership ranks. . . . they may discover even greater rewards within the Society's R. Stanton Avery special collections department. There, inside acid-free boxes and oversized file folders, are more than just ancestral names, but entire lives preserved within diaries and journals.
One of the challenges of describing a diary collection as extensive and significant as the one archived at NEHGS, is the difficulty of choosing the diaries of greatest interest to a broad audience. The collection encompasses nearly three hundred diarists representing a wide range of occupations, geographic regions, and subjects. Ministers top the list, representing the most prolific profession, followed closely by accounts from those in military service - from as early as the French and Indian War.
Subjects vary greatly, from religious or political to professional and social.
Genealogists are accustomed to learning date and cause of death from a town clerk's notation in a record book. A direct account by a father adds a dimension of personal grief to the event. It also shows how distant news was slow in arriving.
Journals often become scrapbooks. Inside this particular volume, [Nathan] Niles has pasted his orders to report to various vessels during his career.
. . . there are also diaries either too ill-preserved or illegible to interpret. Occasionally, you may encounter one written entirely in code. According to the NEHGS catalog, the notebooks of Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705) contain "sermon notes, exercises . . . clergyman's comments on his activities, predominantly in shorthand."
In that same vein, the reader of an old diary may find that somebody has already deciphered the penmanship and transcribed or even published the diary. After painstakingly interpreting the following entry for John Thomas, I found it had already been published as a Register article. I therefore strongly recommend that you ask the resident archivist or thoroughly search the collections relating to the author before undertaking a difficult translation.
We often luck into finding that someone in the past has faithfully recorded and preserved something that otherwise may have deteriorated over time. While a transcription can save the researcher some effort, it is always wise to double-check the original if possible. It is also extremely rewarding to view the original handwriting and aged pages once touched by the author.
Diaries are sometimes found on loose pages, but most are written within a bound journal or logbook. As the printing industry matured, special books were published for the specific purpose of journal-keeping. One small book found in the collection of Katherine Elizabeth Chapin Higgins is embossed as "A Line A Day" book explicitly designed for brief notes recorded on a daily basis for a five-year period. Each page is dated and then divided into five sections, one section for each year. It is promoted as a "comparative" diary and prefaced with a nice summation of a diary's purpose.
You have neither the time nor the inclination, possibly to keep a full diary. Suppose, however, out of the multitude of matters that crowd each day, you jot down in a line or two those most worthy of remembrance. Such a book will be of the greatest value in after years. What a record of events, incidents, joys, sorrows, successes, failures, things accomplished, things attempted.
If you are interested in browsing a diary online, there is an exceptional example on the DoHistory website, developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's popular work A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary 1785-1812 is available there, accompanied by digitized pages of the original and tips on how to decipher handwriting. It is an excellent way to experience the difficulties and joys of reading a historic diary without worrying about the wear and tear of fragile documents.
Freeman, Robert. The Second Great Migration: Migrations into Greater New England and Beyond, New England Ancestors, Holiday 2006.
The term "Great Migration" has come to represent the inflow of English people to New England from 1620 to about 1640 . . . Historians and geographers have identified cultural regions called "Greater New England" and "New England Extended" as the area that experienced this "Second Great Migration." An understanding of the bounds of these broader areas at any particular time is essential for genealogists trying to track a family forward or backward in time.
Albion's Seed by David Hackett Fischer lists the following indicators of regional culture: language and speech; architecture and building; family; marriage, gender and sex; child naming, nature and nurture; old age and death; religion and magic; learning and literary; food; dress; sport, work and time use; rank and wealth; settlement and association; and power, order, and freedom.
Other authors, such as Lois Kimball Mathews and Stewart Holbrook . . . emphasize New Englanders' concern with education, religion, family, work, invention, thrift, town layout and government.
The first scholar to describe systematically the massive migration of New Englanders across the northern rim of the United States was Lois Kimball Mathews in The Expansion of New England. The history of New England is not confined to six states; it is contained in a greater and broader New England wherever the children of the Puritans are found.
A second useful source is Stewart Holbrook's Yankee Exodus. With only the briefest glance at the early movement of New Englanders into New York, Holbrook begins with the migration into Ohio and traces it to the Oregon and Washington territories. Holbrook wrote that Mathews' book "concerned itself . . . chiefly with the numbers of Yankees who migrated . . . It did not tell who they were, what set them in motion . . . I simply wanted to know why the emigrated, and where o, and how effective they were in their new homes."
Geographer D.W. Meinig was apparently the first (in 1986) to use "Greater New England" for parts of the country whose culture derived largely from early Puritans and Separatists. In addition to areas mentioned by Mathews and Holbrook, Meinig included in "Greater New England" portions of Nova Scotia settled by New Englanders (beginning in 1758) - after the original French settlers were expelled by the English.
For most time periods, "Greater New England" can be defined quite precisely. By 1770, a few years before the American Revolution, "Greater New England" included portions of Nova Scotia, Long Island, northern New Jersey, and the Hudson and Mohawk River valleys of New York. Thirty years later, by the end of the century, the westward movement of "Greater New England" had already penetrated into central and western New York.
With time, distance, and contact with other Americans, the culture of these New Englanders adapted to new circumstances. Geographer Wilbur Zelinsky used "New England Extended" to delineate new areas in the Midwest and Upper Plains, often near the Great Lakes, where a modified New England culture was dominant or influential.
Geographer John C. Hudson, working backwards from census data and local histories, was able to research the birthplaces of early Midwestern settlers. He delineated core and peripheral areas of Yankee influence in the region from Ohio to the Dakotas and Kansas, lending a more precise definition to ideas proposed earlier.
Knowledge of the extent of migration from New England at particular times in American history can aid genealogists in three ways.
First, then families suddenly disappear from New England records, knowledge of a given stage of New England expansion can narrow the search for later residence. Census data, especially after the inclusion in 1850 of each family member, age and birthplace, provide an important tool for analytical studies.
Second, researchers trying to trace earlier generations of families who lived in particular areas of Greater New England can make an informed guess about their ancestors' geographical location, based on those of neighbors and generational patterns of movement.
Third, the concept of "Greater New England" can organize and limit the scope of a genealogy. Genealogists conducting one-name studies may wish to define both a time period and geographic area. A carefully considered geographical scope may help focus the genealogist's objective and place reasonable bounds on needed research.
Greene, David. Needful Things: Genealogy & the Future, Part II, New England Ancestors, Winter 2002.
The most obvious change in genealogy during the past generation - indeed, it has enveloped us - is computers and cyberspace. It is now possible to exchange, at the speed of electronic impulses (whatever that may be), facts - and, far too often, errors - at an amazing rate. It is now easy for practically anyone to download files from the Internet larded with errors that we hoped had been scotched generations ago. Indeed old errors have gained new life.
It is important that NEHGS is continuing to support its traditional, rich publication program in what we have now been trained to call "hard copy." The number of books of great value recently published by the Society is amazing.
And we must acknowledge with gratitude the outstanding contribution that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - the Mormons - has made to the relationship between technology and genealogy, and of course to genealogy itself. Having the database called the International Genealogical Index in the first place was wonderful, and now having it only a computer click or two away from our desks is even better.
Out of print books are being made available on CD-ROM (remember this was written in 2002, in 2019 we can look for them on Google Books or the Internet Archive).
And primary sources are being digitized and placed online. The early Essex County, Massachusetts deeds are now available in this form, and NEHGS has plans to make the records of Quincy and Groton, Massachusetts, available on its website. Census records are also available.
Of course, changes bring a price, usually results that we could not predict. I have mentioned that the Internet has revived many old errors disproved sometimes as long as a century ago.
The Internet is a great free-for-all, in both senses: Most of it is free and people fight constantly on it! That is a large part of its value, but it also means that practically anything can be put on it. Some of it is charming; I'm amazed by the number of people who seriously believe that human civilization came from aliens from outside the solar system and who have created very handsome websites trumpeting that discovery. But some of it is dangerous, like the sites that deny the sufferings of the Jews during the Holocaust. There is almost no control to keep error - genealogical or otherwise - off the Internet.
And the Internet is impermanent: sites are fluid and disappear and reappear seemingly at random. And even CD-ROMs have a limited life-span, one that is still uncertain but in any case shorter than that of books and journals printed on acid free paper.
We must never forget that all these things - "needful" or otherwise - are tools and that for the foreseeable future - though I've already said that I'm not a prognosticator - books, journals, and the printed word will remain the best way to ensure that human knowledge continues and grows. We must also recognize that genealogy is far better off with electronic media and cyberspace, despite all the errors (and truths) they disseminate with lightning speed. Human beings destroy and create in far more than a biological sense, and ultimately, whatever our tools, all endeavor must depend upon the qualities of the human mind and on our ability to view others, even those in the distant past, with understanding and compassion, and to realize that human wisdom is not limited to one time or place. These considerations will remain true no matter what surprises the future is certain to hold for all of us and for the field to which we are all devoted.
Hartman, Christopher. Book Notes: Taverns & Drinking in Early America, New England Ancestors, Winter 2005.
"Taverns in early America ran the gamut from the elegant to the mean and nasty, from those that catered to every need of society's elites to those that the locals and travelers who used them could only hope to survive." - from the Introduction.
Review of Salinger, Sharon. Taverns & Drinking in Early America, Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2002.
[The author] argues that the cultural and political implications of the public house were fundamental to our development as a nation. Her book is a social history that shows that in the colonial period, the frequent intermingling of social classes within the tavern setting (most often rural taverns) was coupled with an inherent fear of this trend by the colonial elites who formulated legislation and handed out tavern licenses.
In seventeenth and eighteenth-century American culture there was a curiously symbiotic coupling of the tavern and the typically severe and sober church. The "public" house also became a meeting place for business transactions, current affairs, and political debates - in some ways resembling the old country store where men would gather and play checkers while discussing the latest town gossip. "Taverns . . . were the centers of business and social life and by, the 1760s, had also become faorum of outrage against harsh measures imposed as the Crown sought to reassert its claim to complete control over colonial life and enterprises."
Hoff, Henry. Methods for Identifying the English Origins of American Colonists, New England Ancestors, Holiday 2005.
1. Reference in English will - a will proved in England names a relative in America, usually with a place.
2. Reference in other English document - for example, a 1644 court case involving land in Burgh Castle, Suffolk, mentions Edward Goffe in New England, and further research showed that he was from nearby Ipswich, Suffolk. Correspondence is also a possibility.
3. Reference in American document - a will or other document created in America names a relative and/or place in England.
4. Traditional place of origin - investigate family lore of a particular county or town in England searching through parish registers.
5. Know place of origin - listed in a compiled genealogy, but may need additional research to confirm or expound upon.
6. Family migration - the colonist immigrated with a wife and children, and a search of the International Genealogical Index reveals the marriage of the colonist and/or the baptisms of the children in England. Further study can confirm a match.
7. Unusual names - unusual combinations of first and last names may allow a tentative identification, but what appears to be an unusual name, like Philemon Whale, may or may not be.
8. Association with others - the colonist has a close association in America with a family or a group whose origin is known.
9. Serendipity - coming across New England names while reviewing English records for a different problem.
Leclerc, Michael. Crossroads of Migration: Researching Western Massachusetts in the Walter E. Corbin Papers, New England Ancestors, Fall 2003.
In the R. Stanton Avery Special Collections Department at NEHGS lies one of the most comprehensive manuscript collections in existence for western Massachusetts: the Walter E. Corbin Papers. Commonly referred to as the Corbin Collection, these materials have proved invaluable to researchers working in this area of the state.
The majority of these resources pertain to central and western Massachusetts. Seventy-seven villages and towns from this area are included, as well as ten other scattered towns from Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Ohio and Iowa. Most of the records cover the period 1650 to 1850. Over two-thirds of the sixty linear feet are copies of primary records. The remainder contains genealogies compiled from secondary sources and notes on the collection as a whole. There are also many photographs of individuals, buildings and localities.
Western Massachusetts was a great crossroads of migration, both south to north and east to west. In the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth centuries, many individuals moved north from Connecticut and Rhode Island to settle new lands in Vermont. In addition to these migrations scores of people moved westward during this period from the heavily-populated east.
At the turn of the twentieth century, NEHGS . . . received funding from the Massachusetts Legislature to publish for the "official series" of Massachusetts vital records prior to 1850. While Worcester County and the eastern counties were well document through the project, only a portion of the towns in western Massachusetts were covered.
Corbin's transcribing method was meticulous. Copying into everything from large bound volumes to individual index cards, he documented carefully the sources of all transcriptions. In addition to recording the source title, he gave a brief physical description of the original and noted the dates on which he transcribed that material.
Church records, such as the Williamsburg Congregational Church Records 1773 to 1840 contain a wealth of useful information. They include baptisms, marriages, funerals, lists of members, notes on church meetings and notes on those members baptized elsewhere. An interesting feature of the bills of mortality in this church is the inclusion of causes of death - a rare occurrence in the eighteenth century.
A large portion of the Corbin Collection consists of cemetery transcriptions. Many came from cemeteries overgrown at the time and in danger of disappearing. A large number of stones transcribed here may have been lost to the ravages of time or vandalism. In addition to simple transcriptions, the Corbins often drew pictures of stones to illustrate how the inscriptions appeared. They also noted the materials from which the stones were constructed.
Corbin's work moved beyond town and cemetery data - he also examined and transcribed a large number of other records. These miscellaneous items include - among many others:
- list of Middlefield 1762 to 1850 containing maiden names of wives
- copy of Index to Hampshire County Soldiers & Sailors in the War of the Revolution
- Admissions to the Hitchcock Free High School in Brimfield
Prescott, Laura. Cemetery Resources Around New England, New England Ancestors, Fall 2003
Cemetery associations around New England are dedicated to preserving the former and preventing the latter.
The Association for Gravestone Studies (AGS) is a national organization based in Greenfield, Massachusetts. It will give you a better understanding of gravestones as an art form and preservation of the same.
- A Very Grave Matter - New Hampshire, Maine & Massachusetts
- Cape Cod Gravestones - Barnstable County, Massachusetts
- Connecticut Gravestone Network - preservation projects in Connecticut
- Massachusetts Cemetery Directory - USGS information for locating cemeteries
- Vermont Old Cemetery Association - locations of cemeteries and other resources
- Eagle Scout Projects - cemetery projects, billion graves projects
Rappaport, Diane. New England Court Records: Finding Your Ancestors in Justice of the Peace Files, New England Ancestors, Holiday 2005.
In early New England, courts played a central role in the lives of all citizens. "Going to law" was the common remedy for disputes large and small - from the complicated business affairs of trans-Atlantic merchants, to neighborhood squabbles over insulting remarks or wandering livestock.
But researchers often overlook court records, and many family historians have little experience with this valuable resource, perhaps because:
- they assume legal documents are difficult to read
- they doubt that their own "law-abiding ancestors" ever found themselves in court
- they do not know where to look
Justice of the peace files are particularly interesting, but like most other court records, they teen to be underutilized.
Throughout New England, into the twentieth century, the local Justice of the Peace (JP) played an extraordinarily important role in the legal system. For many people, the JP was the first, or only, court official they encountered. He (they were all men, until recently) handled minor civil and criminal matters - trying cases without a jury, imposing fines for wrongdoing, ordering sheriffs to seize property in payment of debts. He took depositions and prepared written summaries of testimony for cases pending in the county courts. He performed marriage ceremonies, drafted wills, witnessed contracts, and performed many other duties requiring a local legal authority. Sometimes the JP was a trained lawyer, but not always, and he often held court at his own house, where he kept his records.
This home-based informality is part of the reason why justice of the peace records can be so hard to find today. Unless the JP (or his descendants) passed the records on for safekeeping at the local town hall, library or historical society, the files might wind up with other family papers in a home attic or basement.
Records can include court summons, court orders, writs of attachment and writs of execution (conclusion of a trial or case).
New England Court Records: A Research Guide for Genealogists & Historians by Diane Rapaport includes:
Part I - Understanding the Basics - key concepts about American law, types of courts and legal documents
Part II - Getting Specific, State by State - chapters for each New England state summarizing the history and structure of courts and lists of court records available in courthouses, archives, books and microfilm
Part III - Sampling the Sources - provides practical research examples.
Rising, Marsha. Genealogists Adore Cemeteries: A Guide to Massachusetts Cemeteries, New England Ancestors, Summer 2002.
My husband took me to a cemetery on our honeymoon. I should have refused. This visit was my introduction to genealogists and their weird ways, which include a fascination with communities of the dead.
Cemeteries are simply good places to visit. They are quiet, with few people and many interesting things to see and do.
My husband Dean and I also like to look for unusual tombstones, both old and new. We try to put families together by looking at grave placement, chronology of dates and similarity of stones.
NEHGS microtext librarian David Allen Lambert's new book A Guide to Massachusetts Cemeteries, solves the problem of finding interesting burial spots. David Lambert spent fifteen years locating each cemetery in Massachusetts and determining where the records, transcriptions or publications relative to each cemetery are housed. To determine these facts, he tried first to contact a local source, but if he received no response, traveled to each location to find the most current and reliable information. The result is a perfect reference for genealogists who adore cemeteries.
It includes the name of the cemetery, date founded or first burial and if graves have been moved.
Roberts, Gary. Genealogical Thoughts #8: Major New England Genealogical Periodicals, NEHGS, 12/14/2000 blog entry
1. The New England Historical & Genealogical Register (NEHGR) - the oldest continuously published such journal in America. Articles reflect the standards of their time; most are accurate and authoritative, but many of the first 100 years lack will or deed abstraction and have sometimes been superseded.
2. The American Genealogist (TAG) - national but with a preponderance of New England articles. TAG was the major organ of the "Jacobus revolution" in standards of documentation and of the "back-to-primary-sources" school of early twentieth-century genealogists.
3. The New York Genealogical & Biographical Record (NYGBR) - mainly New England articles, best material on Jonathan Edwards family in print.
4. National Genealogical Society Quarterly (NGSQ) - many New England articles, several 1980s articles on Plymouth Colony families.
5. The Genealogist (TG) - publishes articles of any length on any century or area, including English origins.
6. Essex Institute Historical Collections(EIHC) - over 100 volumes well indexed regarding Essex County, Massachusetts sources records.
7. Mayflower Descendants (MD) - Much Mayflower source material and Cape Cod vital records.
8. Mayflower Quarterly (MQ) - Mayflower families.
9. The Connecticut Nutmegger (TCN) - largely sources records and a large query section.
10. Connecticut Ancestry (CA) - formerly Bulletin of Stamford Genealogical Society - source records and some genealogies, mostly of Fairfield Co., CT.
11. Vermont Genealogy ed. by Robert H. Rodgers and modeled to some extent on New Hampshire Genealogical Record; contains Vermont source records, compiled genealogies, book reviews, etc.
12. NEXUS - bimonthly newsmagazine of the NEHGS, divided into events, news features and columns.
13. The Great Migration Newsletter - includes studies of various early records and towns, news about the Great Migration Study Project.
Siemiatkoski, Donna. The Mary & John Revisited - 1985, probably Nexus, 1985
Most genealogists know that an extra dimension can be added to those names and dates on one's pedigree charts by an actual visit to one's ancestor's village. While not as a academically demanding as research in libraries and records centers, this type of research thrives on a sense of adventure and a sensitivity to the environment and can yield feelings of the heart which the mind alone would not discover.
Last May eighty-three Americans from all across the nation had the opportunity to enhance their sense of family history in this way by participating in the Mary and John tour, co-sponsored by Family Society Tours and the Descendants of the Founders of Ancient Windsor. Our purpose was to visit the West Country homes, villages and churches of the passengers on this ship, which sailed from Plymouth in 1630, to get a better understanding of the social, economic and spiritual conditions in England at the time of the Great Puritan Migration.
At Bridport we saw the sanctuary where the Thomas Ford, Aaron Cook, Nicholas Denslow, Henry Way and John Gallop families worshipped, including the font where their children must have been baptized. Some of these family names are still in the community, according to plaques commemorating veterans of World Wars I and II.
We spent the middle of the day in Fitzhead, where English and American members of the Rockwell family commemorated the marriage of the family's founders, William Rockwell and Honor Newton, four hundred years ago this year. [July 19, 1585] Inside the church a local genealogist reported her finds on the Matthew Grant, William and John Rockwell, Thomas Stoughton, and other families, including known and possible connections to other colonial families.
. . . we traveled to Exeter's St. Sidwell's Church, the last parish served by the Rev. John Warham before his departure for America. In what most participants consider the highlight of the tour, the children of St. Sidwell's School presented a skit. Based on the Memoirs of Roger Clapp, this well-researched skit depicted Clapp joining Warham's group, the people's thoughts as they considered the implications of leaving England forever to follow God's call into the wilderness, the day of prayer and fasting that preceded their departure from Plymouth, the prayer and preaching every day aboard ship for ten weeks, their abrupt arrival at Nantasket, their eventual safe landing by longboats at Dorchester, their settlement there, and their eventual trek westward to the Connecticut Valley. The play closed with John Warham's prayer saying hie hoped he had been faithful to his call, and recalling his days at St. Sidwell's. All of us were moved by this accurate and sensitive portrayal of our ancestors' hopes and fears.
On Pentecost Sunday we worshipped at St. Peter's in Dorchester, where the Mary and John company had been gathered by its pastor, the Rev. John White in 1630. At the end of the service the vicar and his assistant used the two altar candles to light small candles that we each held, symbolizing the bearing of the light of Christ from that church across the ocean by our ancestors.
On the next day we went to Plymouth where we saw the "Mayflower" steps, explored the ancient shops and streets and took a boat ride into the harbor.
Most of the group flew to Boston, where we cruised on Boston Harbor on the 355th anniversary of the Mary and John's arrival and saw the site of the landing of the longboats at Savin Hill Beach in Dorchester, where we recited the same words that our ancestors did when they arrived on that spot - the Twenty-third Psalm. We worshipped at the First Parish Church where we again lit the candles, symbolizing the light of Christ being borne in the hearts of our forebears across the ocean.
We then journeyed the hundred miles to Windsor where we were greeted by town officials, the fife and drum corps, and townsfolk. We lit our candles for the final time in procession to the First Church in Windsor. At our Farewell Dinner Rev. Peter Marshall spoke of the positive Puritan characteristics of love, openness and commitment - to God and to each other.
Thus we concluded our tour, not having gathered as many facts as one might on a research tour, but, by traveling as a community, as our ancestors did, into their villages and churches, we absorbed a feeling for their world that we shall all treasure - and pass along to our descendants.
Sypher, Francis. Joshua Tefft an "English Indian:" Documents from King Philip's War, New England Ancestors, Spring 2005.
Joshua Tefft was an English immigrant who married Wompanoag woman and fought against the English in King Philip's War. The article includes references to texts concerning his role in King Philip's War.
Letter by Maj. William Bradford (1624-1704; of the Plymouth Colony troops in colonial forces and our grandfather), addressed to the Rev. John Cotton (1640-1699; son of the Puritan divine), dated at Newport, January 20, 1675/76; . . . Providence men brought in an Englishman, taken with the Indians in driving away cattle, brought him to the head quarters, who confest he ran away to the Narragansetts some weeks ago, belonging to Petesquanset, and carrying powder to the Indians, was in the fight at the fort, shot at the English. He certifies of their flight, and what number were slain, -- and that they were counselled by one of Philip's chief captains to go to him, where they shall want nothing -- to secure their wives and children, and then go down upon the English, which counsel they have taken it seemeth . . .
The Englishman that was taken had his doom yesterday -- to be hanged and quartered, which was done effectually.
In other words, he had been judged, found guilty, and the judgment ("doom"), or sentence, was effected ("done effectually"), i.e. carried out.
Travers, Len. The Thwing Index: Inhabitants & Estates of the Town of Boston, 1630-1800, New England Ancestors, Fall 2001
When Annie Haven Thwing (1851-1940), the daughter of a Boston coal merchant, reached her mid-thirties, she became curious to know "where my ancestors lived, who were their neighbors, and what the neighborhood was like." She found it impossible, however, to contain her project, and she spent the next thirty years researching the geographic and built environment of Boston from 1630 to 1822. Tracing people and their properties through deed, probate, and the recently printed town records, enlisting church records, diaries and graveyard epitaphs. Thwing painstakingly built an index consisting of some 125,000 catalog cards. These she used to publish, in 1920, her classic The Crooked & Narrow Streets of the Town of Boston, 1630-1822.
Ullmann, Helen. Meandering Through Massachusetts Records, New England Ancestors, Fall 2000.
Research in Massachusetts - A Basic Checklist
✔Vital records, both town & state
✔Churches & Cemeteries
✔Newspapers, obituaries
✔Census records, federal & state
✔Compiled genealogies
✔Finding aids
- Torrey's Marriages Prior to 1700
- American Genealogical Biographical Index
- Periodical Source Index
✔Town, county & state histories
✔Local Records
- town meeting records
- warnings out
- local tax records
- local historical societies & libraries
- county records, land, probate, court
✔Military Records
✔Diaries, biographies
University of Oklahoma Law Center. The 1629 Charter of Massachusetts Bay, website, 2000, no longer extant - see: 1629 Charter of Massachusetts Bay
Winthrop Society. The Freeman of Massachusetts Bay, 1630-1636, website
Worthley, Harold. Congregational Church Records: Less & More Than Meets the Eye, New England Ancestors, Holiday 2004
Capitalizing the word Congregational focuses us historically on those churches planted early in the seventeenth century in Old Colony (Plimoth), the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, and settlements that today are part of Connecticut.
Baptisms - infant baptismal entries are the only place in Congregational records that give the names of parents. Baptism initially required evidence on the part of one or both parents of church membership. After 1662 there were actually two categories of infant baptism recorded in many of these churches. The first was the traditional practice, while the second were baptisms administered to children under the terms of the "Half-Way Covenant." To explain: when early Congregationalists realized that many of their children were not undergoing the conversion experience required for church membership and afraid lest their children would fall away from the church, some ministers and congregations allowed baptism on the faith of the child's grandparents, the parents promising to acknowledge a faith not yet their own and a lifestyle acceptable to Puritan mores.
Admissions to church membership - by 1636, applicants for church membership were required to meet three requirements: "historic faith" (formal knowledge of the promises of God to His chosen as revealed in Scripture and taught in catechism and sermon), and outwardly blameless life, and a Pauline-style conversion experience which could be described to and judged by the church members as to its probable validity. Admission might also be attained by a letter of transfer from another Puritan congregation, although virtually no such files of letters have survived, apart from occasional notations in the church records. The same holds for letters of dismission recommending a member moving out of town to another church.
Marriages - for most of the seventeenth century, Congregational ministers did not officiate at weddings, since marriage was considered a civil contract to be witnessed by a magistrate. Even when clergy began to solemnize weddings (just before the beginning of the eighteenth century), church records were kept erratically, leaving genealogists to hope that the town clerk's records of marriage intentions will supply the missing data. Even when church records do take note of a marriage, the names of the bridal couple's parents and attendants are never given.
Deaths / funerals - these events sometimes are noted in church records, but more often go unremarked. Town records, cemetery records and diaries may be useful sources.
Mormons generally have not filmed other - and sometimes rewarding - parts of church records, namely, the reports we call the running records of church meetings, a vital part of Congregational activity. These tell, often in detail of the periodic elections of the local church's officers, of delegates appointed to attend councils in other congregations, of offenders against the moral and doctrinal code of the church being disciplined, and more. Neither did the Mormons film the records of local churches' auxiliary organizations - missionary societies, Sabbath School, and others.
Finally, there's a whole category of "church-related" records, the records of the parish or religious society. When a Puritan town became too large and busy to handle the material (worldly) concerns of the local church, a separate organization would be created to deal specifically with those extra-spiritual matters (minister's wages, building and maintaining the meeting house, utilizing and protecting lands set apart for income, managing bequests). Membership in such a society consisted of the town's males twenty-one years of age and older, which practice made the new body eligible for legal incorporation and so better equipped to deal with material needs of the church and ministry at law.
Church records may still be housed in the town clerk's office or turned over to the church. A goodly number of local churches have placed their records in the keeping of the Congregational Library and are listed under town names on its website.
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