Myth into History: Genealogy for my families

With a new year already ten days old, I want to write more.  To incorporate it with my current genealogy research, I thought to write some blog pieces for family on our family.  I had thought about it a while ago and didn't feel I had enough information.  I have finally realized I will NEVER have enough information. So, I am beginning, as I had the idea a long time ago and just want it to take off.

Before I forget, I need to start with how I started with my interest in family history.

I grew up in a small town in eastern Washington State, with a few stops elsewhere which widened my world view.  When I was 5 and a half my parents moved us to the Netherlands for a year.  I went to a Dutch Montessori Kindergarten with my brother.  Yes, they spoke Dutch and hence, we kind of did too.  We returned to Washington State the year later and my world view had been changed.   When we were in 4th and 3rd grade we moved again to Connecticut.

In Connecticut we were exposed to US history like never before.  One day when my class had a field trip to Mystic, my mother mentioned that I was related to John Wayne and the Billingtons on the Mayflower.   That was probably the beginning.   I don't believe I ever got to do a family history project for school. I always heard about classes that did that, and my kids were basically the same.  Never got to do it.  I felt cheated! 

Around the time I graduated from college, my family headed east for a huge family reunion.  It was a Zimmerly Morrison reunion as the two families that melded to be one.  Now, those of you who know John Wayne's real name will realize this is how I am related to the Morrisons. And it is by marriage. I have cousins however who are related by blood.  And they are cool stories which I will get to later.

I got a copy of my Dad's cousin's genealogy notes for his family.  His mother's family went way back... especially her father's family which the cousin had researched.  Edythe Zimmerly Stephens had done a smash bang job of family history long before the computer and Internet.  Yes, lots of research and amazing information from libraries, books, wills and government records!

When we moved to the greater Washington DC area in late 1988,  I got a research pass for National Archives  and went into do some research. I was really very intrigued by my husband's history. His grandfather had given me a lot of data that I wrote down, but I wanted to find proof to understand the story better.  I found that proof and the census intrigued me.

I eventually got a copy of family tree maker and started putting in information.  It was an on again off again project that  wove its way through years of my life.  Woven again by moves overseas and the time consuming efforts such moves are.  Rather than researching the family, soon we were adding to the family and rather than researching and documenting health and illnesses, we were knee deep in the fighting of illness.  The next foray was a celebration of health and I committed to the future by digging more into the roots.  The Internet opened up and while in Finland I combed rootsweb and usgenweb  in their early stages trying to find more of my father's mother's family.   Thanks to researchers on message boards I was sent in the right direction and kind of linked her family to a large family which we have purportedly linked to Sweden from a Royal expedition in 1654 to Delaware. 

About this time I also made contact with a third cousin who is an established researcher who was straightening out issues with early Zimmerly  family history. We have stayed in contact and have still to meet!

I am realizing that as I write, each little part needs expanding.  Ah, wonderful, more things to write about!   But where I am heading in my head is that, last year in searching for another part of my paternal Grandmother's family, I reached out to a researcher who had information on our Preston line.  She believed we were related and that she came from the last relative I had found's sister and that I could build a circumstantial file of proofs to proof the relationship.  Her research on her part of the family (that we did tie into) reached back to a Revolutionary War patriot, who hadn't been documented for DAR, and his history went back even further with family tie ins to the Salem episodes.

Our conversations on email  encouraged my cousin to send her documentation into DAR and she became a member.  I am still sitting on all of this, believing I will take another line into DAR as it will be easier to work with!   But with the same year being the advent of Ancestry DNA, I decided to jump in as a way to compare Ancestry autosomal with the Family Tree DNA Autosomal which I had convinced some people to take.

Well,  my first actual family tree link with genetics proved the link to Salem.  I matched genes with a person who seems to only match my family tree in the Jacob Towne line.  We both are great great....  grandchildren of Jacob Towne.  And this story will go further enough to tell you that Jacob Towne was the brother of three of the condemned women in the Salem witch trials.   Rebecca Towne Nourse, Mary Cloyse  and Sarah Estey, (spellings differ at times).   Rebecca and Mary died,  Sarah survived due to the halt of trials and executions. 

I am still chewing on this. I have figured out a few more distant cousins via DNA.  Much is way back, but we all have little parts of those individuals which link us as family.  This DNA research makes history real in  a way it hasn't before. I am tugged into the story a bit more. I want to find the proofs, the written story to back up the writing I carry in me.  Somehow, the poetics of the GACT alphabet soup  warms the spirit of history within me.