Thanksgiving is coming this week already. Our family has lots of ties to early New England. There are both Pilgrims and Puritans of the 1600s in your family tree. I could not find any direct ancestor on the Mayflower passenger list, but many who came during the Great Migration soon after from both the Shaw and Knowlton lines. (Okay, so I looked at my father’s line and his family leads me back to William Brewster, one of the elders of the Mayflower Pilgrims. Thanks, Dad.)
Anyway, here is a short history lesson on the difference between Pilgrims and Puritans, both of whom settled in Massachusetts. Happy Thanksgiving! click on the picture below for the article.
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Our 10th great grandmother was an innocent victim of the Salem Witch Trials. Hanged by the Puritans for witchcraft on July 19, 1692.
Essex County Massachusetts Genealogy Facebook writes: Just so any of the many descendants of Susannah North Martin, a convicted and executed victim of the Salem Witch Trials are aware, the portion of Interstate 495 in Amesbury is now designated the Susannah North Martin Highway. The signs are posted on or very near where her old farmstead is bisected by the highway. This was the result of hard work of many of her descendants, of which I'm proud to be one. Your memory lives on Great Grandmother. Found this map on Pinterest of the Shaw clan lands in the Scottish Highlands. Note that Balmoral Castle, owned by the British royal family, is located in Shaw territory.
Found a couple of family photos on a genealogy database called Family Search. Must have been posted by distant cousins. The first is a photo of Thomas Houston Shaw (1862-1933 called Harry—Grandpa Jones’ father) and his son Charles Allen Shaw (1886-1969–2 years older than Grandpa Jones.) So to my generation of cousins, they are Great Grandfather and Great Uncle.
Our 13th great grand aunt and mother of Henry VIII.
On 11 February 1503, Elizabeth of York, Queen of England, died in the Tower of London. http://bit.ly/2eBAGSe It was her 37th birthday. The daughter she had born nine days earlier also died. Elizabeth was a pivotal figure in the resolution of the Wars of the Roses. As the daughter of Edward IV, she commanded the loyalty of those Yorkists who had been unhappy with the deposition of her brothers and her marriage to Henry VII brought York and Lancaster together. Elizabeth inherited the good looks of her famously attractive parents but also the Yorkist tendency to plumpness. She bore seven children in total, but only three lived beyond 15. Her husband and children mourned her death sincerely. She is buried in Westminster Abbey in the fabulous tomb carved by the Italian sculptor, Torregiano. I confess I stole these photos from another Facebook group.
Katherine Swynford was the mistress and later third wife of John of Gaunt with whom she had 4 children. Their marriage legitimized their children. According to the article, it was one of the great love stories of their age. Their daughter, Joan, led to the York and Tudor lines of English kings. This handsome fellow is our 17th great grandfather.
From the Medieval England Facebook Page: 3rd February 1399 624 years ago, John of Gaunt 1st Duke of Lancaster died in Leicester Castle aged 58; he was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. The son of King Edward III, he was born in Ghent, Belgium but the English pronounced his birthplace 'Gaunt'. John was a powerful and hugely influential figure. He fathered at least 5 illegitimate children, 4 of whom were named Beaufort, after one of his French castles; they were ancestors of Lady Margaret Beaufort, the matriarch of the Tudor dynasty..... The Brooks side of the family of great grandfather Harry Brooks (1860-1928) and his wife Jennie Dunn (1860-1944) has had me stymied. I have not been able to trace him back much further than his possible grandfather, Samuel Brooks (1791-1872), who is buried in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, in the same cemetery as George Dyer Brooks (1828-1891) who may be Samuel’s son and Harry’s father. I’m making an assumption here that since Harry and Jennie were from Lewistown, then they are related.
What I did find is a coat of arms and a little history which traces the Brooks surname back to the Scots Irish of Northern Ireland. I thought it was probably an English surname. (Sorry this is an ad—I’m not selling anything, but the article is informative.). Click on the coat of arms for more info. One of the precious treasures that I found in my mother’s house that was sitting in a cupboard just where she left it was Mom’s favorite go-to cookbook. You can tell the recipes that she used by how dirty the pages are. It is the 1944 edition of the American Woman’s Cook Book. The page for her chocolate chip cookie recipe is falling out of the book. That is the recipe for the cookies that she baked and took to all the family events when we used to get together with her brothers and sisters and our cousins. The other dirtiest page is her cherry pie recipe. We had two cherry trees beside the house and every summer, we picked the cherries that we could rescue from the birds eating them or the neighbor boys playing basketball who picked them as they played. I remember helping Mom pit those cherries at the kitchen table with their juice staining my t-shirts. There is also an addendum to the cookbook titled Wartime Cookery on how to cook with the shortages and rationing during World War II. Those were the days when civilians were encouraged to grow their own victory gardens for food. One section is a how-to on using honey as a substitute for sugar for making desserts and canning their own jams and jellies.
I have photographed a few samples of handwritten recipes that I have collected and included here—my Mom’s peach pie, Aunt Marge’s Nut Roll, and Aunt Donna’s Strawberry Scones. All good memories to be preserved. This biography of our 8th great grandfather, Obadiah Holmes, showed up in my timeline today. He was whipped 30 times by the Puritans for his religious beliefs. His accusers couldn’t silence his preaching while he was being whipped. He moved to the more liberal colony of Rhode Island as a Baptist minister.
https://landmarkevents.org/the-death-of-obadiah-holmes-1682/?fbclid=IwAR31TqKLCWL9a0z0nfoXLJmuCAZQKGpphaqzc1KGYl5kO9F0E1DCfpyDkLM |
Bonnie EastonHi! I am a Jones cousin, daughter of Evelyn Jones Easton. Since retiring as a reference librarian after 20 years, I have become a genealogy addict. Our ancestors want to tell us their stories.
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