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. . .

• Richard Treat (1584-1670)
• Honor Treat (1616- ?) and John Deming, Sr. (1615-1705)
• Honor Deming (abt 1643 - aft 1701) and John Beckley (abt 1642 - abt 1696)
• Catharine Beckley (1684-1768) and Daniel Dewey (1680-1717)
• Sarah Dewey (1712-1782) and Benjamin Goodrich (1717-1787)
• John Goodrich (1754-1834) and Abigail Price (1754-1827)
• Bela Goodrich (1777-abt 1864) and Sally Church (abt 1780 - abt 1831)
• Abigail Goodrich (abt 1805 - aft 1882) and James Joslin (abt 1796 - aft 1850)
• Lysander Price Joslin (1825-1899) and Lydia Robison (1825-1899)
• Malissa Joslin (1849-1937) and William Brubaker (1843-1912)
• Charles Romain Brubaker (1871-1945) and Maude Catherine Wise (1877-1953)
• Hazlette Brubaker (1902-1984) and Rolland Victor Phend (1893-1991)
• Virginia Phend and Jack Wiseman
• Me

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.

My Greatest Genealogical Find Ever?

Craig Manson recently wrote about his Greatest Genealogical Find Ever. I've been pondering the question since I read his post. But, after years of researching, it's difficult to pinpoint just one discovery as the "greatest find", there have been so many wonderful discoveries. That's kind of like asking a parent who their favorite child is. So, this isn't necessarily my "greatest find ever" but I thought it was pretty neat.

Nine of my ancestors traveled to New England together on the same ship! They were 3 year old Sara Marvin, 10 year old John Kilbourne, and 8 year old Nathaniel Joslin, and their parents, of course. I've often wondered if the families knew one another before sailing to the new world? If not, did they get acquainted while on the journey?

In the spring of 2005 I dabbled for a bit in "researching" some of my New England ancestors. I'm not sure that you could really call it "research" in the truest sense, basically I was reviewing information that I'd been given by other researchers on my Goodrich and Joslin lines. One of my Goodrich cousins, Gerald (a 3rd cousin 3 times removed), had written some family newsletters in 1979-1980 and I had been given the copies that had been in my grandmother's files. In his newsletters he wrote a little about each of the lines that connect to our Goodrich ancestors among which are Marvin and Kilbourn.

As I read the name of the ship, the Increase, a bell kind of went off. I had seen that name somewhere before. Turns out another set of my ancestors, the Joslin family, also came on the Increase at the same time.

I located the transcriptions of "Hotten's Lists" on the English-America website. That website is no longer active, but the passenger list for the Increase (or Encrease) and other early-arriving ships can be found on the websites of the Winthrop Society and Mayflower Families.

The Marvin family included Mathew, age 35, his wife Elizabeth, 31, and children: Elizabeth age 11, Mathew age 8, Marie age 6 years, Sara age 3 years, and Hanna age 6 months. Two more children, Abigail and Rachael, were born in Hartford. Elizabeth reportedly died in 1640. Mathew married a second time. The were among the first settlers in Hartford and Norwalk, Connecticut Colony.

The Kilbourne family consisted of Thomas, age 55, his wife Francis (maiden name Moody), 50, and their five children: Margaret age 23, Lyddia age 22, Marie age 16, Frances age 12, and John age 10. There were also two children, George and Thomas, who had come over the previous year. Thomas was reportedly killed in an Indian attack in 1637. They were among the first families to settle in Wethersfield, Connecticut Colony.

Thomas Joslin (the surname was written as Jostlin) and his wife Rebecca were both 43 years old. Traveling with them was Elizabeth Ward, a maid-servant, aged 38; and five of their seven children: Rebecca, 18; Dorothy, 11; Nathaniel, 8; Elizabeth, 6; and Mary, a year old. They first settled at Hingham but by 1654 had settled in Lancaster, Massachusetts Bay Colony.

On October 4, 1648 Sarah Marvin, now 17 years old, would marry William Goodrich in Hartford. They would settle in Wethersfield, Connecticut.

On March 7, 1715/16 their grandson, Benjamin Goodrich (1688-1742) would marry Grace Kilbourn (1693-1764) who was a granddaughter of John Kilbourne.

Now, jump ahead a hundred and ten years or so to about 1825 in Delaware County, Ohio. There we have James Joslin, a 4th great grandson of Thomas and Rebecca (and 3rd great grandson of Nathaniel Joslin) marrying Abigail Goodrich, a 4th great granddaughter of Sarah Marvin and William Goodrich (and 5th great granddaughter of of Thomas and Francis Kilbourn). Whew! Sure hope I've got that right! And I hope I didn't lose you along the way...

So, how did they meet in Ohio? The Joslin descendant's arrived in Delaware County about 1816 via Canada and Vermont. The Goodrich family (John and his son Bela, among others) left Connecticut about 1803 and settled in Franklin county, in the area that bordered on Delaware county.

New England Ancestors but no known Presidents

In honor of Presidents Day, Randy Seaver has posted quite an impressive list of his Presidential ancestors.

I've got 'a few' New England ancestors too, mostly in Massachusetts and Connecticut but don't know if there are any Presidential connections. In the Goodrich line are Price, Dewey, Beckley, Deming, Orton, Treat, Kilbourn, Bulkeley, and Brownson. Through the Joslin line there is Whitcomb, Gardner, Tarbell, Bowers, Waters, Linton, King, Wilder, Gardner, and Mason.

To be honest, I have not done very much research in original records on these folks. Much of my information on them comes from books that have been compiled by other researchers, some well documented, some not. I did spend quite a bit of my spare time for about 3 months early last year trying to find the parents of Abigail Price who married John Goodrich in 1776 in Wethersfield, Connecticut. That led me down a path to some fascinating people but it was the wrong tree. So, I've been concentrating on my Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland ancestors while saving my New England ancestors until I retire and (hopefully) have more time to devote to them. I'm looking forward to the quest!