Thanks to other Researchers the last 100 years:
- I have traced all 8 of my great-grandparent families arrivals using compiled genealogies, census, deeds, wills and estate papers, six of the families came to Colonial America before the 1776 Revolutionary War, living in 7 of the 13 colonies, with the last two families coming in 1881 before the opening in 1886 of the Statue of Liberty or the 1892 opening of Ellis Island.
- There are two castles, the FOULIS Castle in Scotland and Tretower Castle home of Roger VAUGHAN of Wales that may be connected with my ancestors. There were other FOWLIS/FOLLIS castles in Scotland and a Thomas FOLLIS, was a Burgess in 1641 Jamestown, Virginia.
- I have traced 10 of my 16 great-great-grandparent families arrivals to Colonial America, 4 others families are identified.
- I have traced 15 of 32 gr-gr-great-grandparent families arrivals to Colonial America, 7 others families are identified
- My maternal THURSTON's were in Massachusetts in 1637 and paternal FOREMAN's on Long Island, New York by 1645.
- A THURSTON may have married a descendant of Myles STANDISH who came over on the ship Mayflower to Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts. I have yet to verify this information.
- I now have over 40,000 known relatives in 31 generations which some researchers claim family data back into the 1300's.
- Average age of all relatives is 57 years 6 months, direct ancestors average 68 years which is higher than the predicted life span
- Over 6,500 surnames are in my family tree so far.
- Seven ancestors are Revolutionary War veterans, with family members in every war since.
- Several ministers, deacons, colonial and pioneer family cemeteries, and original land purchasers from the President of the U.S.
- My oldest ancestor is 97 year old maternal fifth great-grandfather Simon ESSIG 1754-1852 a Revolutionary War Veteran of Pennsylvania and Stark County, Ohio. His father Wendell may have been of similar age.
- My third great-grandfather George ROYER may be my oldest ancestor at 99 years 10 months and 8 days dying June 19, 1876 according to two different published obituaries. The problem is someone in the family gave him a modern granite tombstone which gives his age as 90 years 1786-1876. The ROYER book also discusses the conflict over his age. Either someone in the family wanted him to be near 100 years old, or someone wanted to hide his true age?
- My oldest paternal ancestor is 91 year old fourth great-grandfather Martin KINGERY 1774-1865 of Union County, Indiana.
- A couple of distant relatives have recently lived to over 100 years of age!
- I have photographed several thousand ancestor, sibling and relative tombstones along with finding most of their obituaries back into the mid 1800's, copied and organized with 65,000 photographs and digital document images in Adobe Album with cemetery data hyperlinked to Excel spreadsheets and beginning to insert digital images into Word documents as family, state, county and cemetery books.
- In 2005 I took 12,000 digital images of census records, death records, deeds, obituaries, tombstones, wills and more. I am still analyzing and processing the information. I also discovered and expanded several families including: ANGEL, CARY, CRAMER, ESSIG, HECKMAN, HINSEY, SCHNERR, THURSTON and VAUGHAN.
Many paternal ancestors are Scots-Irish, Welsh and English. Married into German-Swiss Church of the Brethren families in southern Ohio and Indiana in early 1800's. Maternal ancestors, except for early arrivals in 1600's, were German-Swiss Church of the Brethren with several families originally German Lutheran. All German-Swiss families in America since the founding of the Church of the Brethren in early 1700's left European religious persecution. Some descendants continued moving west, crossing the Mississippi River, stopping in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and traveling as far as Oregon and California before 1900. At least two family descendants participated in the 1849 California gold rush.
"If you don't know where you've been, then you can't know where you're going". If I knew our family histories growing up, or if my dad or other deceased relatives had known, would it have changed our lifes and choices we made? I ramble on my Musings page. If you would like to leave comments go to my guest book page.
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