Lamb Ancestry

Related Families:
Smith (Badgley, Bohlman, Grant, Potter, Swanson), Black, Buttolph, Clevenger (Horner, Hendrix, Stone, Potter), Ferguson (Marshall), Gipson, Haley, Hoard (Heberlee, Traw), Norton, Schul (Badgley, Tietje, Barnes, Marshall), St. Germaine, Wyatt, Yarberry

Part VIII -
Mayflower Voyagers
The Winslow Family

"Families are like fudge - mostly sweet with a few nuts. "

Your Name
You got it from your father, it was all he had to give,
so it's yours to keep and cherish for as long as you shall live,
It was clean the day he got it, and a worthy name to bear,
When he got it from his father, there was no dishonor there,
So protect and guard it safely, for when all is said and done,
You'll be proud the name is spotless when you give it to your son.
-author unknown

If you could meet your ancestors
all standing in a row,
there might be some of them, perhaps,
you wouldn't care to know.
But there's another question
which requires a different view.
If you could meet your ancestors,
would they be proud of you?

This book is dedicated to the many descendants of Hezekiah Lamb and Hannah Small. They had 18 children, 16 of whom survived to adulthood. The photographs that I have of them, show a great deal of family resemblance. The men were handsome, and the women beautiful. Many of them lived to a ripe old age, with large families, many sets of twins. About some of the families of Hezekiah's and Hannah's children, I have very little information, and it doesn't seem likely I will be able to fill in the gaps very soon. The other connections may come to light some day.

When I began "shaking the family tree," I had little idea of the blessings I would find in the rich Quaker background. I started with the idea of collecting data on the immediate families of my father and mother. Since they were first cousins, their fathers being brothers, it soon became apparent that I needed to go back another generation to tell the full story. My first feeble inquiries were shots in the dark. Kind people directed me to other cousins. All were generous with their help. The longer I kept at it, the more it snowballed. Regrettably, there are two places where I have lost information. There are many places where more research would probably be profitable, but I have reached the age, where one should get ones affairs in order. However, after publication, I will continue to collect anything I can.

I make no claim of perfection in recording dates, names or spelling of names. I have tried to use only material from reliable sources and when conflicts appeared, I used the authority which seemed to be most trustworthy with the hope that errors may have been kept to a minimum. Outside of my own direct line, much of Part II, Part III, and Part VIII has been contributed by other people, whose work I have largely taken on trust, and tried to consolidate the different lines. Where I have found a conflict, I have made a notation, and indicated that it needs more study to straighten it out.

This genealogy database incorporates material from several other researchers who have kindly made their work public. If you find some of your work here, know that I am most appreciative. Please note that not all information has been verified by usual sources.

No doubt there will be errors and misprints. I earnestly hope that when these come to light, you will inform me, and give me the corrections so that I can correct my master copy, so that later copies will have the right information. I also ask that you will keep me informed of births and deaths and marriages, with biographies if possible, so that I may keep it up to date.

If the facts here recorded may prove helpful and of interest to others, I shall feel rewarded for my efforts. It has been a fascinating 50 year project. I want to especially thank my daughter, Coleen Cossell, my niece Tina Gordon, my grandson Jared Smith. If it hadn't been them, the internet form of my collection would never had been possible.

The Numbering System

The first section is devoted to the descendants of Hezekiah Lamb and Hannah Small. The numbering system is as follows: Each of their children is given a letter. James is A, Silas is B, and so on. The children of James will be given the A-1, A-2, A-3, etc. The children of Silas will be given the number B-1, B-2, B-3, etc. When there are 10 or more children in a family, the number for that generation will be in parenthesis, as K-(10), the number of Olive, the 10th child of Hale Hezekiah, who is K. Olive's tenth child, Annadel Gutscher, would thus be K-(10)(10), and her oldest child, K-(10)(10)1. In a list of ancestors, the generations may be numbered backwards.

This tells you where to find any member of the line, and permits additional information to be placed into the record without disturbing the numbering system. Each family is carried completely through before going on to the next. The second section is like the first. In the other sections, the numbering is the same, but sometimes without the use of the letter.

Confusion Of Dates

The Quakers used the Julian, or English calendar, which has March as the first month of the year. There was also a 11 day shift. After 1752, they used the calendar that is in use today. The Quaker records used numbers, such as 12-4-1734, or 1734-4-12, and sometimes, it is hard to be sure which is the number of the month and the day. Some records give 4mo, 12da 1734.

Some of the older records supposedly had made the conversion. When I have not been sure, I have written it as I found it. I have tried to use the form "12 April 1834," when that date came after 1752. When one finds a conflict in dates, from one record to another it may be due to the use of the earlier calendar.

My Special Interests

in Quaker Genealogy, History, and Culture

In my genealogy pursuit, one of my focus areas has been my pride in my Quaker ancestry and connections. I take great pride in my Quaker heritage because Quakers or Friends are noted for far-reaching social, moral, and intellectual accomplishments that were greatly out of proportion to the small size of the denomination.

The Friends promoted a just utopian society based on tolerance, ethnic and gender equality, simple living, and thought processes guided by the Quaker meditative goal known as the Inner Light. Of course, the early Quakers did have some intolerant peculiarities in hopes of maintaining the unity of their faith, such as disownments for marrying outside the faith and other unacceptable behaviors, but they never advocated persecution or shunning. The early Quaker perceptions of social justice resulted in their unprecedented efforts at questioning social norms of their times such as slavery, cruel treatment of prisoners, the mentally ill, or social outcasts, unjust encroachment on the lives of American Indians, and gender and racial oppression.

I admire its intentions in fostering a return to the roots of the Christian faith. Furthermore, in a time when literacy and college education were rare in America, particularly the agricultural South, the Quakers advocated literacy and higher education for all, including women, African-Americans, and American Indians.

Like me, Friends had a deep interest in keeping records of births, deaths, marriages, relocations, personal conduct, and other events in the lives of their membership. This has resulted in people of Quaker descent having tremendous advantages in tracing their ancestry, particularly in the South, where many civil records were either destroyed or were lacking in the first place. Because early Quakers were required to marry other Quakers or else be disowned for marrying out of unity, alliances were formed between Quaker families in the East that followed them to other areas through the generational migrations, and people with Quaker ancestors generally have sizable portions of their pedigree that was of the Friends persuasion.

Three, out of my four grandparents, were birthright Quakers. The migrations of the family put them out of the Quaker sphere. Even so, the two grandfathers were ministers of the gospel, belonging to the United Brethern. One was still a minister when he died.

The Quaker Lambs were from Scotland, prior to settling in America in the late 1600s and early 1700s, generally in the Albemarle region of North Carolina, Tidewater Virginia,. They migrated through Ohio, to Indiana and Iowa, then Nebraska and Kansas. Other Lambs were from England who first settled in Massachusetts.

In 1663, England's King Charles II ceded the Carolinas to Anthony Ashley Cooper and seven other proprietors who had supported the Stuarts in ending the Cromwellian Revolution and returning Charles II to the throne. (In point of fact, a group of Virginians established North Carolina's oldest settlement along the Albemarle Sound in 1653--a full decade before the installation of the Lords Proprietor.) The Crown divided the Carolinas in 1691, although North Carolina would not receive its own governor for another twenty years. British, Huguenot, German, and Swiss settlers populated the North Carolina tidewater during the first half of the 18th century. Large numbers of Scots Highlanders and Scots-Irish, many by way of the Great Wagon Road through Pennsylvania and into the Shenandoah Valley, populated the western part of the colony. Eighteenth-century North Carolina was also noteworthy for its large Quaker population.

Nearly all of the main Quaker families from which we are descended are covered in books or articles in the North Carolina Friends Historical Collection at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina. Many attended, when it was called New Garden Boarding School. These North Carolina and/or Pennsylvania Quaker families include the Pearsons, Edgertons, Lambs, Coxes, Pikes, Mendenhalls, Marises, Newbys, Nicholsons, Hollowells, Perishos, Clare.

My parents have common American ancestors, especially since they both have descents from Quakers of Pasquotank and Perquimans Counties in North Carolina. Their families did intermarry with one another.

By my estimates, I can confidently state that over 75% of my known American ancestors of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries were of the Friends persuasion.

I must admit being delighted in having so much Quaker ancestry not only because of the Friends' reputation for moral uprightness and intellect, but also because Quaker records are easy to trace and so many of my Quaker family lineages have already been researched and/ or published. Moreover, because the Quakers were so intermarried and generally migrated to other places together, they have been easy to trace and find multiple connections to. It is truly a small world when it comes to tracking the interrelatedness of Quakers in America. It is fascinating that so many people of Quaker descent can be traced back to a few of my many Quaker immigrant ancestors.

One such example of Pennsylvania Quaker immigrants with very well-traced, prolific descendants was George and Alice Maris, who came to Pennsylvania in 1683 to escape religious persecution. From their six children, the traced descendants of George and Alice Maris now number over 100,000, and among the famous people who descend from them include Richard Nixon, Al Gore, the writer O. Henry, frontiersman "Buffalo Bill" Cody, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, and statesman John Foster Dulles. It is also noteworthy that George Maris' ancestry has been documented back to the 1400's in Worcestershire, England, and the graves of two of his ancestors are still extant in a churchyard there.

But it was not just the Marises who established prolific American dynasties. Among my North Carolina immigrant Quaker ancestors with sizable progeny, those who stand out include Peter and Rachel Newby Pearson (he from County Cumbrian, England) and her grandparents on both sides (the Newbys and Hollowells); Jacob Overman, said to be from Germany; Thomas Jessop from Yorkshire, England; Timothy Clare and Henry Lamb from Scotland, and William and Elizabeth Bundy, probably from Wiltshire, England. Among the Pennsylvania or New Jersey settlers, they include the children of Thomas and Joan Stroud Mendenhall of Wiltshire, England; Thomas and Sarah Stephens Edgerton from Colledine, Ireland; and Daniel McPherson from Inverness, Scotland. Among the settlers of Massachusetts Bay, they were Edmund and Elizabeth Simpson Nicholson from Cumberland, England.

Those of us with sizable Quaker ancestry all owe a great debt of gratitude to the genealogists and historians who preceded us, in particular the late William Wade Hinshaw, whose multi-volume Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy has been an extraordinary genealogical accomplishment, though it is far from complete in its tabulation of all Quaker meeting records.

Throughout history, people have been criticized, ridiculed, or persecuted for having the audacity to question mainstream norms and acceptable standards of their times. Our Quaker ancestors were a prime example, whether it was during the early days when Quakerism was founded by George Fox in England during the 1650s as a reaction against the stringent laws of the Established Church, or during the early 1800s when many Quakers took strong stands against slavery by forming organizations such as the Underground Railroad in a southern society where they were ostracized or punished severely.

Our ancestors had a lot more adversity to face in standing up for their principles, and in the American tradition of rugged individualism, they showed great fortitude in taking risks to maintain or improve life for themselves and their families. It is our duty to perpetuate and honor this heritage of survival and righteousness.

The Quaker of Olden Time

by: John Greenleaf Whittier

The Quaker of the olden time!
How calm and firm and true,
Unspotted by its wrong and crime,
He walked the dark earth through!
The lust of power, the love of gain,
The thousand lures of sin
Around him, had no power to stain
The purity within.

With that deep insight which detects
All great things in the small,
And knows how each man's life affects
The spiritual life of all,
He walked by faith and not by sight,
By love and not by law;
The presence of the wrong or right
He rather felt than saw.

He felt that wrong with wrong partakes,
That nothing stands alone,
That whoso gives the motive, makes
His brother's sin his own.
And, pausing not for doubtful choice
Of evils great or small,
He listened to that inward voice
Which called away from all.

Oh! Spirit of that early day,
So pure and strong and true,
Be with us in the narrow way
Our faithful fathers knew.
Give strength the evil to forsake,
The cross of Truth to bear,
And love and reverent fear to make
Our daily lives a prayer!

.....................

John Greenleaf Whittier

How Green Was My Valley

by Richard Lewellyn

"I saw behind me those who had gone, and before me, those who are to come?

I looked back and saw my father, and his father, and all our fathers, and in front, to see my son, and his son, and the sons upon sons beyond.

And their eyes were my eyes.

As I felt, so they had felt, and were to feel, as then, so now, as tomorrow and forever?

Then I was not afraid, for I was in a long line that had no beginning, and no end, and the hand of his father grasped my father's hand, and his hand was in mine, and my unborn son took my right hand, and all, up and down the line that stretched from Time That Was, to Time That Is, and is not yet, raised their hands to show the link, and we found that we were one, born of Woman, Son of Man, had in the Image, fashioned in the Womb by the Will of God, the Eternal Father.

I was of them, they were of me, and in me, and I in all of them."

My Special Interests in Quaker Genealogy, History, and Culture

The Quaker of Olden Time by: John Greenleaf Whittier

How Green Was My Valley by Richard Lewellyn

My Special Interests

in Quaker Genealogy, History, and Culture

The Quaker of Olden Time

by: John Greenleaf Whittier

How Green Was My Valley

by Richard Lewellyn