This is my original introduction from the fall of 1998
My name is Tom Murphy. Last summer I finally decided to get serious in my "plan" to trace my roots. For the most part it is very slow going, with just enough progress to keep me from giving up. Most of my lines currently peter out in the fifth or sixth generation.
My grandfather's grandmother, however, had the sense to be born into a well-researched family of Massachusettes Puritans and Revolutionary War veterans. None of Martha's direct ancestors seem to have been Mayflower passengers, but several of their siblings and cousins married Mayflower descendants.
In the next few weeks, I hope to add more pages which will allow you to trace Martha's family, and perhaps find a connection to your family. Eventually I will also add pages with the results of my research along my other lines.
It's been over a year since I updated, but I finally found the time.
I have since learned more about Colonial Massachusetts and the Puritans. I have learned about the Winthrop Fleet, and the Great Migration of which it was the harbinger. Most of Martha's ancestors were part of the Great Migration, and not a few were in the Winthrop Fleet.
Several ancestors were invoved in incidents during the series of "Indian Wars' which began with King Philip's War and continued through the French and Indian War. The most notable of these was Mary (White) Rowlandson. Others included Thomas Sawyer, Jr, Peter Joslin, Ann (Hudson) Josselyn, Nathaniel Wilder, and Henry Kirley.
Revolutionary War veterens include John Joslin, Joshua Pierce, and Joshua Goodrich
A brief word of warning: all of my sources were secondary (I found them on the Internet or received GEDCOMs in my e-mail in response to queries. There are some discrepancies from one to the next. The most common differences are in dates. I chose dates from among the listed ones almost arbitrarily. Treat them as guidelines rather than proven dates.
There are a few other places where I had to choose as well. One example is the name of Martha’s mother. The Pierce Genealogy calls her Abigail Taylor. The Descendants of John White... describes her as Abigail, daughter of Jabez and Abigail (Stone) Wood. In this case it is easy to imagine that she was a widow when she married Sylvester Pierce, but the assumption may be unwarranted. There are other cases where there is no way that the two persons can both be the same parent of a particular person. In cases like this, I tried to end that branch with the last certain person, but I may have missed a few.
Another thing I may have missed was bad merges. When I started cleaning up my files I found a lot of people with three or four spouses with the same name, birthday, and wedding day. I cleaned up all that I could find, but I am sure that there are still many that are hiding in corners that I haven’t examined closely yet.
I've collected links to the sites of others who are related to or researching some of the same lines. Find them listed here.
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