Lawrence Compagna - English Roots: Genealogy for North Americans of English Descent

Genealogy for North Americans of English Descent

By Lawrence Compagna

Second edition copyright 2019

All rights reserved.

All photographs and illustrations containedin this book are either in the public domain or labeled as CreativeCommons.

Edited by AMC

Published by Candco Publishing, a divisionof the Candco Corporation.

Robert Frost

Note to reader:

As you go through this book, keep in mindthat there is a glossary in the back. If any of the terms usedconfuse you, a definition or explanation may be available in theglossary that can clear things up.

Perhaps your lastname is English?

Or perhaps your dear mothers last name wasEnglish?

Or maybe you just know that you have Englishblood, and you want to know more about this part of your familytree.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I am here tohelp!

Amy Leigh Mercree

My name is Lawrence. Iam an average guy.

I have a good job, three children, and myhome is unspectacular. I like sports, reading, and going for longwalks on the beach. I am really, really average. I even lookaverage except for my really nice glasses. They make me lookreally nerdy.

I have a passion for genealogy, but even thatis unremarkable; I read somewhere that researching ones ancestorsis one of the most popular pursuits on the internet.

What is not usual is what I have done with mygenealogy hobby I was able to trace thousands of my directancestors and push my line back beyond the middle ages, arguablyright back into the time of the Romans.

Before I tell you about that, and providesome advice so that you can do the same, let me tell you how I gotstarted.

One day, many years ago, my cousin wasvisiting my house. After describing her recent trip to the EastCoast, she unfolded a piece of paper and laid it down on the coffeetable in front of me. I picked it up and looked at it. It was achart showing my namesake ancestors and their wives going back tothe early seventeenth century. Each generation was listed, I thinkthere were ten. At the top of the chart was my great, great - keepgoing for eight times or so - grandfather Mathias.

I was amazed. We knew our ancestors goingback for four hundred years? I did not know it was possible.

This was back when the internet was stillrelatively young, the technology having been born a decade or soearlier. Its use in genealogy was still in its infancy as well, somost genealogical research was still done the hard way in personat an archive. This is what my cousin had done. She had a fewscanned original documents to go along with the chart. One wasparticularly interesting - it was a ships manifest from the year1664. In that year, my ancestor Mathias came to the New Worldaboard a ship called the Black Holland.

Mathias was among the first Europeans in theAmericas, and as I would realize later, it was for this reason thatour descent from him was remembered because he did somethingbrave, adventurous, and spectacular - he was among the firstEuropeans to colonize an alien place they called the NewWorld.

After my cousin left, I became fascinatedwith the chart she left behind. However, it only listed my onebranch of my family tree was it possible to flesh out my entirefamily tree? Even more intriguing, was it possible to push myancestry even further back then Mathias?

My obsession for genealogy was born.

• Isabel Allende

If you are readingthis book, I assume a few things about you: One, you have Englishancestors. Two, you have a passion for genealogy. Third, you have acomputer - this is important because you may uncover so manyancestors that you cannot keep up with just pen and paper. Fourth,you are adept at using a computer, or are willing to improve yourskills in this area. Fifth, you are comfortable navigating the vastamount of genealogy resources that are now available on theweb.

My final and most critical assumption is thatyou were born and raised in either the United States or Canada.

If this describes you, then you are in luck.I will help you uncover hundreds or even thousands of your directancestors, and - with just a little luck - even royal relatives.Together, we may push your family tree back to the middle ages, andyou will uncover all sorts of interesting characters along theway.

Mohsin Hamid, Exit West

Aside from knowingthat your last name is English, or that you have some Englishancestors, what you may not know is the number of generations thatyour people have been in North America?

Your kin may have come recently from England,as did my maternal grandfathers family. They arrived at the EllisIsland Immigration Station in New York in 1905 aboard the beautifulpassenger liner the SS City of New York, which at the time wasthe largest and fastest liner on the Atlantic.

The SS City of New York

It is more likely, however, that your Englishancestors arrived in the Americas long before my maternalgrandfather did. The vast majority of you will be descended fromthe English pioneers - the first European settlers of the UnitedStates and Canada.

Thus, the first place to start your researchis to talk to the elder members of your clan to try and get a senseof where your forefathers and foremothers came from and when. Ifnobody seems to know, it may be that your family has lived in thishemisphere for over three centuries.