Monday, November 10, 2008

Blogging Cousins, what a Treat!

When Wendy Littrell posted Political Road Map, which was her contribution to the 59th Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy, I'm sure she never thought she would discover a couple of cousins, albeit very distant ones. In one paragraph she talks about her 9th great-grandfather, Richard Treat, who settled in Wethersfield, in the Connecticut Colony. Richard Treat is my 11th great-grandfather and is also the 11th great-grandfather of Julie Cahill Tarr.

Richard Treat was born in 1584 in Pitminster, County Somerset, England and emigrated prior to 1641, settling in Wethersfield. He became a prominent citizen, involved in the governing of the town and the Connecticut Colony. Depending upon which "history" you read, Richard's first wife was named Joanna who was the mother of his children and Alice Gaylord/Gaylard/Galaud was his second wife who bore no children. However, "The Treat Family" published in 1893 and written by John Harvey Treat states that Richard married Alice Gaylard on April 27, 1615, in Pitminster. Also, "wife Alis Treat" is given lands in the will of Richard Treat. This would seem to indicate that Alice was his first and only wife and the mother of his children. Nothing like a little squabble in the family over who begat whom. . .

In Roadmap to New Cousins! Wendy provides her line of descent from Richard Treat. Julie does the same in Found Cousins. Below is my lineage back to the prolific Mr. Richard Treat. . .
In his will, dated February 13th 1668, Richard Treat gave his "great bible" to his daughter Honour Demon. I wonder which of her 10 children inherited it? John Deming (husband of Honor Treat) gives his "Great Bible" to his son John.

Disclaimer: No research has been done in original records for this lineage in the Colonial and Revolutionary War eras. Some of the published resources that were used are listed below, some with better source documentation than others. . .
  • The Treat Family: A Genealogy of Trott, Tratt and Treat for Fifteen Generations, and Four Hundred and Fifty Years in England and America. John Harvey Treat. Salem, Massachusetts, The Salem Press, 1893.
  • A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England, showing Three Generations of Those Who Came Before May, 1692, on the Basis of Farmer's Register. James Savage. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1860.
  • One Bassett Family in America with All connections in America and many in Great Britain and France : Principally an Outline of What the Ancestors Did to Help Make America : Mainly from original records heretofore unpublished. Buell Burdett Bassette. New Britain, Connecticut, 1926.
  • The Warner-Harrington Ancestry : The Ancestry of Samuel, Freda and John Warner. Frederick Chester Warner. Boston, Massachusetts, 1949.
  • Hale, House and Related Families. Donald Lines Jacobus and Edgar Francis Waterman. Hartford, Connecticut, 1952.
  • Dawes-Gates Ancestral Lines : A Memorial Volume Containing the American Ancestry of Rufus R. Dawes. Mary Walton Ferris. Privately Printed, 1943.
  • New England Marriages Prior to 1700. Clarence Almon Torrey. Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., Baltimore, 1985.
  • The history of ancient Wethersfield, Connecticut : comprising the present towns of Wethersfield, Rocky Hill, and Newington : and of Glastonbury prior to its incorporation in 1693, from date of earliest settlement until the present time. Based upon the Manuscript Collections of the Late Sherman W. Adams. Volume II - Genealogies and Biographies. Henry R. Stiles. New York, The Grafton Press, 1904.
  • A Digest of the Early Connecticut Probate Records. Charles William Manwaring. Hartford, Conn., 1904.
  • The Descendants of Richard Beckley of Wethersfield, Connecticut. Caroleen Beckley Sheppard. The Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford, Connecticut, 1948.
  • A Record of Marriages, Births and Deaths in Westfield, Mass., Prior to the year 1700. Emerson Davis. The New England Historical & Genealogical Record, Boston, July 1862.
  • Life of George Dewey, Rear Admiral, U.S.N., and Dewey Family History. Louis Marinus Dewey. Westfield, Massachusetts, 1898.
  • The Bulkeley Genealogy. Donald Lines Jacobus. New Haven, Connecticut, 1933.
  • Wethersfield Inscriptions: A complete record of the inscriptions in the five burial places in the ancient town of Wethersfield, including the towns of Rocky Hill, Newington, and Beckley Quarter (in Berlin), also a portion of the inscriptions in the oldest cemetery in Glastonbury. Edward Sweetser Tillotson. Hartford, Connecticut, 1899.
  • The Goodrich Family in America. Lafayette Wallace Case. Fergus Printing Company, Chicago, 1889.
  • The Jocelyn-Joslin-Joslyn-Josselyn Family. Edith S. Wessler. Charles E. Tuttle Company. Tokyo, Japan 1961.

2 comments:

wendy said...

Hey, cuz, thanks for posting your line! Yeah, I'm a little confused on who was the wife (1st or 2nd) - I take both with a grain of salt until I can actually see documentation - which probably won't be any time soon! The ancestor is the same anyway!

Julie said...

Thanks for posting, Becky! I too also show only Alice as Richard's wife, but do not have any documentation as of yet to support this. Maybe the three of us can solve the mystery!