I've been lost for three days high up in the branches of Wayne's tree. It's been like a good mystery story...first I'm leaning one way and then I'm headed in another. And while I love a good mystery, I'm just not sure this one has an ending.
I've been researching in Wayne's maternal grandfather's tree, finding good success documenting the information Wayne's mom had given us years ago back to Amanda Neville, Wayne's great-great grandmother. I knew her father was James Neville and his father was James Neville but had only scant information on them and little else. Census records gave me the names of spouses and I was able to find some marriage information too.
The real mystery came in going beyond that. There were plenty of family trees on Ancestry.com that included fathers, grandfathers and even more but half of them had one series of names for the wives/mothers and the other half had an entirely different set of names. It wasn't second marriages; it was different people entirely. It didn't make any sense.
Late last night I stumbled on a reference to the book The Neville Family of England and the United Statesand I spent the morning downloading, reading and compiling about 70 pages from it. It traces the journey of John Neville who left Gravesend, England, in 1632 on either The Ark or The Dove on the first expedition to the planned colony of Maryland. The expedition was led by the son of Lord Baltimore and when they arrived on the shores of America some three months later, they established the first settlement in what later became the state of Maryland.
Parts of the book are the boring lists of names, birth dates and marriages of John Neville's descendants but a lot of it is in narrative form and quite interesting. Like the diary of a Catholic priest who was aboard The Ark and described the terrible storms they endured and his impressions upon arriving. And of Gen. John Neville and his son Presley Neville who served at different times with Gen. George Washington. They aren't Wayne's direct ancestors but Gen. John's brother James is (Wayne's 5th great-grandfather) and he also served in the Revolutionary War.
Pretty cool, huh? I should have stopped there.
But I didn't. And what I uncovered then was that there are plenty of people who think that John Neville, ancestor of Gen. John, Presley and our James, isn't the same John Neville who was on The Ark or The Dove. A letter written by Presley in 1803 but not discovered among his papers until 2003 claims our John Neville came from England all right but he didn't arrive until 1679 and he came to Virginia. He does, however, have an interesting story. He was kidnapped as a youth and brought to America for profit. Apparently it was a common practice at the time...a forced servitude as a clerk or overseer until you earned enough money to buy your freedom, assuming such a day ever came. According to the letter, John was educated and personable enough he escaped the servitude and went on to accumulate quite an estate in Virginia.
The mystery of why there are two sets of women's names matching up with the Neville men is solved but the bigger mystery remains: Which version is right? As much as I hate giving up the great story of the Atlantic crossing and a connection to Colonial Maryland, there's stronger proof for the kidnapped John Neville. I can definitely connect Wayne's James Neville to Gen. John Neville, and it's Gen. John's son Presley who wrote the family history about his great-grandfather being kidnapped and coming to America in 1679.
Now I can go back to what I was doing two days ago...trying to document James Neville's Revolutionary War service. Lucky for me, that's not a mystery...I've already got the records bookmarked.
Family history is so interesting but time consuming, isn't it? I hit a total brick wall for my Granny's granny; then on "Family Search" I found her maiden name with the birth record of an uncle of Granny - still can't find a marriage but at least it's one less brick! Family rumours have a great uncle emigrating to the USA and becoming a farmer and I still don't have evidence of that. My eventual aim is to produce some books for my siblings and children mapping out our history. How exciting to be able to trace your roots back to the first settlers though? One whole side of my family never moved from the town I was born! :-) Jude.x
Posted by: Jude.x | February 25, 2012 at 03:20 AM