Sturdy Stuff

Today I visited the Temecula library for the first time (It's beautiful and has a wonderful genealogy collection!) and did some research in the series of books titled: Mayflower Families Through Five Generations.  There are separate volumes for many of the passengers, including the three that are of interest to me and my husband:  Francis Cooke, Stephen Hopkins and John Howland.  

I was able to confirm the line from Francis Cooke and Stephen Hopkins for the first five generations, but the information I needed on John Howland was not available.  Now I have to go to the Los Angeles Public Library to find a book on the Landon family, and Mary Ann Landon, who  is the crucial link between the most recent five generations and the five I have already confirmed.  While I don't have any doubts as to Tony's connection to the Mayflower passengers, I am seeking iron-clad documentation and this book should provide it. 

Later, I came home and worked on the Schulien side of my family.  My mother's maternal grandparents were Schuliens.  Joseph Schulien, my great grandfather, was born in this country shortly after the family emigrated from Germany but I had not found an immigration date for his parents, and my usual sources online were not leading me anywhere.  So I began going in the "back door" as I often do. 

I looked up immigration dates for each of the children and came across one passenger list that could be viewed in its entirety.  On the list were the names of Joseph's mother, father and siblings on June 29, 1852.  Although they had come from Germany, the ship they traveled on had departed from Liverpool, England.  They must have traveled across the channel to England, and either stayed there for a while or left immediately for America.  The 4 children ranged in age from 10 years to 9 months. 

Today's genealogy quests reinforced something I am finding again and again. Our ancestors were made of sturdy stuff.  Whether they risked everything in 1620 to come to a land that was completely unknown and most likely very dangerous, or whether they left the dire economic conditions in mid nineteenth century Germany in the hopes of starting over in America, they set out with courage, determination and faith.

I couldn't help wondering how many of us would have the courage and the stamina to do what they did.

Beyond astonishment

In an earlier post I said there was more to come about the connection between my husband's ancestors and my ancestors who came to this land nearly four hundred years ago.

I've already written about Tony's direct descent from at least three Mayflower passengers, and my connection to William Ring, who would have accompanied the Mayflower but for the leaky boat on which he was traveling. In searching further, I found another group of my ancestors from the early colonial period, by the name of Doane.  John Doane, who became a Deacon in the church, is my tenth great grandfather. He came over to Plymouth around 1630 with his wife Ann and one child.  Later, they had more children.  One was named Daniel, and he is my ninth great grandfather. 

Daniel married twice, according to records of the time.  The name of his first wife is unknown, though she is considered the mother of all of his children.  Genealogists have long speculated about the name of his first wife.  Many believe her name is Constance Snow, the daughter of Constance Hopkins and Nicholas Snow.  There are strong reasons to believe this as one child's name was Constance, possibly after her mother and grandmother, and because of a book written several years later on the families living in that area at the time.  In that book, Constance Snow is identified as the wife of Daniel Doane. 

Now this is significant to me for one reason only.  Constance Snow was the granddaughter of Stephen Hopkins, a Mayflower passenger.  If this information is accurate, then Stephen Hopkins would be my 11th great grandfather.  As he is also my husband Tony's direct ancestor (his 9th great grandfather), that would mean we share a common ancestor and we can both call Stephen Hopkins "Grandpa."

I told you it was spooky!

More astonishment

After finding the Mayflower connection in my husband's family, it made me want to push further back in my tree, although I didn't expect to find any ancestors who had traveled on the Mayflower. Like my husband's family, mine was mostly Catholic, and I knew that at least three branches, including my father's Irish ancestors and my mother's German and Belgian ancestors, had all come to this country in the mid 1800s.  Only my paternal grandmother's family, which I knew little about, offered a possible route back to the time of the early American colonies.

The search for these ancestors was quite time consuming.  After all, with each generation, the number of ancestors doubles.  And I had to trace the family back 13 generations to my 11^th great grandparents.  (Just to clarify how many 11^th great grandparents one has – it's over 8000.)  Of course, many of the lines came to a dead end in the 1700 or 1800s, but a couple of lines kept going. 

Eventually I found an ancestor by the name of "William Ring" (1580-1621), my 11^th great grandfather.  He was a passenger on the Speedwell, a ship that accompanied the Mayflower as it departed on its journey across the Atlantic.  Unfortunately, the Speedwell was not seaworthy and had to turn back and William Ring died in Holland the following year. His wife Mary Durrant (1590-1631) eventually came to America with their children, in the year 1629.

One of the children was Andrew Ring (1618-1693) and he married a woman named Deborah Hopkins, another daughter of Stephen Hopkins. Stephen, as you may recall from my previous post, was an ancestor of my husband, and  a passenger on the Mayflower.

Therefore, it turns out that a relative of mine, who but for a leaky boat could have come over with the Mayflower, married a relative of my husband's who did come to America on the Mayflower, nearly 400 years ago.  To be specific, my 10^th great grand uncle married my husband's 8^th great grand aunt. 

Think about that.  Two English families who wanted to escape religious persecution in England made plans to travel on two ships to America.  One family managed to make it across on the most famous sailing ship in our nation's history.  The other had to come later.  These families then became connected through marriage.

Centuries passed and the families continued, branching into many different directions.  Within each family was a small branch that ended up 3000 miles away in the state of California.  And somehow, a young man from one family and a young woman from the other, having no idea their families had ever known each other, met, fell in love, and married.   

Spooky!

But there's more…..

An astonishing discovery

Once I learned about my husband's Ruby ancestors, I traced more lines on his mother's side of the family.  One of his great great grandmothers was a woman named Mary Ann Landon (1820-1889).  Tracing her line led to one amazing discovery, followed by a disappointment, followed by an even more amazing discovery.

I traced the family back seven generations from Mary Ann Landon to her father Samuel Landon to his mother Experience Cooke, to her mother Rebecca Edgerton, to her mother Experience Bearse, to her mother Experience Howland, to her father John Joseph Howland, to his father John Howland.

When I learned that  John Howland (1592-1673) and his wife Elizabeth Tilley (1607-1687) were both passengers on the Mayflower, as were Elizabeth's parents, John Tilley (1571-1621) and Joan Hurst (1567-1621), I was dumbfounded and certain the information was wrong.  He couldn't be related to anyone on the Mayflower.  After all, his ancestors were Catholic, as were mine.  And Catholics did not come to this country on the Mayflower.  But I had forgotten that my husband's mother converted to Catholicism and that her ancestors were not Catholic.

Still, I found the possibility hard to believe so I went over my records again, and sure enough, there was a glitch.  One of the names in the line is a controversial figure.  The person in dispute is "Experience Howland" whom the Mayflower Society does not recognize as a verifiable link in the ancestry chain.   

Even though some genealogists believe there is a good case to be made for the existence of Experience Howland, I realized this is not something that could be proven, so I returned to my research to see if anyone else from my husband's family came from the early 1600s.  

I found three more Mayflower passengers and this time, the information was not in dispute. 

Again, the trail started with Mary Ann Landon, only this time it led back through her great grandfather Elisha Cooke, instead of her great grandmother, Rebecca Edgerton.  From Elisha Cooke, the line went to his father William Cooke, to his father Jacob Cooke II, to his father Jacob Cooke I, to Francis Cooke (1584-1663), a passenger on the Mayflower.  His wife, Hester Mahieu (1585-1666), did not accompany him but came later with the children, one of whom was Jacob Cooke I, who later married a woman named Damaris Hopkins. Her parents, it turns out, were also Mayflower passengers, Steven Hopkins (1581-1644) and Elizabeth Fisher (1595-1639).

 

While this discovery astonished me, as no one in the immediate family had any knowledge of a Mayflower connection, I was still skeptical.  I had found a glitch in the first trail.  Perhaps there was a glitch in this one. 

Then I received a message through ancestry.com from a third cousin of my husband, someone he had never met.  The man, who has been doing genealogy research since the mid 1980s, had seen my husband's family tree on ancestry, where he also has one, and he wanted to talk. He had information to give me and wanted to ask some questions about my husband's branch of the family. I learned from him that my discoveries were accurate and that my husband's mother's family is definitely descended from Francis Cooke, Steven Hopkins and Elizabeth Fisher of the Mayflower.

But there was still more to discover-- this time on my side of the family-- and to say that it blew me away would be understating it.