Tuesday, September 30, 2014

The Gardner Annals, Vol I No 2

This post introduces the second issue of The Gardner Annals (Volume I, Number 2). This issue provides a look at part of an extended family; as well, ahnentafel charts (fully sourced for births and deaths) for two individuals cover six generations. In one case, the ahnentafel is fully defined. Several Cape Ann families are represented.


The Gardner Annals supports the interests of the Thomas Gardner Society, Inc.'s purpose: to honor the accomplishments of the Cape Ann party and to promote, and to sponsor, scholarly research of a cultural, biographical, historical, and genealogical nature, with an emphasis on, but not limited to, the origins and the lives of New England immigrants.

Submissions of articles for consideration are encouraged: algswtlk[at]aol[dot]com.

Remarks: Modified: 11/21/2014 

11/21/2014 - Switlik, John M. "John Sayward/Soward of Gloucester/Ipswich" The Essex Genealogist (TEG) Vol. 34, No. 4, November, 2014, page 210; In 1791, John Graves of Ipswich, MA married Elizabeth Sayward. Who was she? To answer that question, we need to look at Elizabeth’s parents. The article shows that her parents were John Sayward and Elizabeth Leatherland, of Ipswich, and, then, answers the question: who was John Sayward?

Includes ahnentafel of an aunt of Dr. Frank A. Gardner, author. An earlier article covered his grandmother, Lucy Foster Wilson. Next up, his grandfather, Benjamin Brown Gardner.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Marriage of Thomas and Margaret

Dr. Frank A. wrote the following over 100 years ago: Various writers, including Rev. Joseph B. Felt, have stated that her maiden name was Fryer (or Friar), but the writer has thus far failed to find the authority for this statement.

Today, we can announce that the "authority" may have been discovered. That is, Rev. Felt may have been correct; even though, we do not know how (from whom?, etc.) he got the information (early 1800s) for his assertion.

Where was this authority found? In the records of the Sherborne parish. Attached is an image from the record of April 1617 that shows Thomas Gardiner and Margaret Frier marrying on the 28th. Not only do the records show this, they have the following: the birth records of Thomas, Richard, George, and John; Wills of interest; and more, We have Margaret's parents: Walter Friar and Grace Mullins. And, there is a record that may show Thomas' parents: Thomas Gardner and Christine Saule.


All this information was discovered within the last week by a researcher, John Cook of Minneapolis, who only recently (comparatively) completed his link to Thomas Gardner through son Richard. He had written with queries about what we knew about the origins of Thomas. We had a discussion of the "whence" issues (also, what we know).

Too, we mentioned John Gardner's push to get Gov. Lovelace to allow the use of the name of Sherborne on Nantucket. Part of this tale came to us by the Folger family. There was opposition on Nantucket to the re-naming, of course.

Now, speaking of Sherborne, you can find the marriage of Thomas and Margaret on this list of marriages in the parish from 1600 to 1619.

   http://www.opcdorset.org/SherborneFiles/SherborneMars1600-1619.htm

Sherborne will be a focus of concentrated work, for awhile. Some of the records have been transcribed. OPC Dorset has a nice starting page.

   http://www.opcdorset.org/SherborneFiles/Sherborne.htm

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To recap the issues, a little, we can start with the Two Wives. Earlier viewpoints accepted that there had been two wives following Felt and others. Recent work (NEHGS) called that notion into question. As in, the modern claim was that Margaret was not the mother of the children. Granted, the NEHGS work mainly used already existing sources.

But records are expected to settle these types of arguments. With the Internet and records being digitized and indexed, we can expect that a lot more material will be coming around that can be scrutinized to firm up what we know (or to raise more issues).

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In this case of this marriage and the related families, expect that more information will be provided as we go along with respect to provenance of the sources, the methods used for search, the actual before and after view related to the transcription, and more.

Too, one task will be to follow what was known or thought through the years which provides us somewhat of a trace.

Finally, a closer tie needs to be made between the Thomas and Margaret of the marriage with the kids who were born shortly thereafter.

Remarks: Modified: 09/25/2018

09/25/2014 - Sherborne? Well, for one, capital of Wessex so it was the main stomping ground of Alfred the Great. ... Also, we need to get more material about John's knowledge (learned from his parents). I do remember seeing a book in Salem (at the Essex Institute) that mentioned Sherborne. It had "Captain John" in the title.

09/26/2014 Added Thomas, Jr. to the list of births. The firstborn, of course. ... About Felt, he had access to Rev. Hubbard's work and notes. Was it there that he saw this? Or, being only 150 years removed (closer than we are), perhaps, some scuttlebutt was around and about. ... The key item is that the information comes via son John.

10/03/2014 -- Comment posted to WikiTree (Thomas Gardner).

10/13/2014 -- Tabula raza, and more, will be of concern.

07/12/2015 -- Okay, turtle speed. But, we get there. Announcing a new project: Sherborne, Dorset. No doubt, it is about time. When finished with the data collection and analysis, we will present the strongest story (the prerogative of the family) that the facts, and abductive reasoning, will support. As such, we hope to demonstrate some very much needed research viewpoints.

08/01/2018 -- The past few days, I have been on WikiTree. We are looking at settling issues for the profile of Thomas (and his spouses). These profiles are being set up and maintained by the Puritan Great Migration. Expect an update blog post within the next day or so. Notice the recent comments (the 'unknown' is because I juggle many email accounts and was in the wrong one - it's not that I'm old).

08/28/2018 -- After some discussion, we settled that we had Margaret's folks, her baptism record, the marriage announcement, and baptism of their kids, prior to them leaving Sherborne. So, we have the post "Margaret, anew" which updates "How many wives?" Now, the question moves to whether or not we have the right couple (Children with what wife?, Further discussion).

09/15/2018 -- Gardner Research published four articles in The Essex Genealogist. These were republished in The Gardner Annals which just released Vol. IV. Last fall, we printed TGA Vols I and II. Soon, we will print Vols III and IV. Included with the TGA were Gardner's Beacon issues. Of late, we have experimented with one approach to a database, namely WikiTree using Dr. Frank's information. As mentioned in that post, we have established that Thomas had two wives as we found information about the marriage of Thomas and Margaret in Sherborne, Dorset, UK.

Sunday, September 21, 2014

Diversion, Gloucester - Charles Olson

First, how could Gloucester be a diversion? In fact, it is where the Cape Ann crew, led by Thomas Gardner (1624), spent their "almost" idyllic time. And, it is from there that the crew, now led by Roger Conant (1626), went to Naumkeag, soon to be Salem. So, the area ought to be of interest to the TGSociety.

Further, the area was visited by people from Winthrop's boat (1630) when they were partying in celebration of making a successful voyage. Notwithstanding that, the place (Essex County's southern shore) was seen as disagreeable, so the power core moved west. Those who partied at Cape Ann, picked, and enjoyed, the fresh strawberries (extolled by Anne Dudley Bradstreet) of June. And, there are many more stories to tell.

Speaking of which, in the context of earlier research, I ran across Charles Olson (Worcesterite by birth, but Gloucesterite by choice) a couple of times. Then, I ran across him, again, today on another topic. This time, I stopped to look more closely.

And, the look motivated several things, a couple that we follow up on here. The following links are a good introduction. The first link is to a guide; the last two are a description of a meeting and a book review. The other three are to Charles' own writings (small sampling).
Having run across this, the notion strikes me that we need to encourage, support several types of works that would relate to Thomas and the Cape Ann crew. And, this approach would allow for a better presentation of insights in a persistent manner (not talking technology). 

Now, that is a fairly open bit, yet, we'll contrast it further (below). However, there is enough given to motivate (I might dabble myself).  

[Note: 07/15/2015 -- see Remarks] As opposed to some more logistic/numeric approaches (consider, if you would, the emphasis on DNA (and similar studies) to fill in our being as it has been framed and given to us by the collective of our ancestral mix), we need to not lose our soul, so to speak (no disrespect to genealogy's attempts to make itself more empirical). Too, though, the above suggestion would help in creating emergent views from the minimal basis (see earlier reference to Tabla Raza). We also used paleoichnology as an example; principally, the ability to use knowledge, plus limited data, to develop a reasonably founded view of a complex system, such as were the dinosaurs.

This is sketchy, from certain aspects. It is not from the tone of someone such as Charles.

Aside: Essex County, of course, is the principal focus, where we let Salem (rightly or wrongly) shine (Gardner's Beacon has many meanings). We mentioned Ipswich, earlier. As it were, Gloucester was as important in that research (adjointness). So, we are giving it more attention. But, there will be more to come: Newbury and the other northern "buries" (several); Lynn, of course; Andover, well, we did mention that; and more.

Remarks: Modified: 04/23/2021

09/21/2014 - Idyllic? No church, no state, benign leader, adults surviving, effectiveness on display. First occurrence within the English culture? Albeit, short of duration. As Roger brought John L. and more. When Roger came, the boisterous group was not cowered by the elements nor by the American Indians. ...

07/15/2015 -- Paleoichnology deals with "trace fossils" which have been found. Some findings have more to tell us than others might. However, the sparsity of the fossil has not impeded conjectures that, then, allow modern models to come about. And, some of these are fairly elaborate. ... Do we not, as a public consumer, take a lot of these at face value? Oh, how would we be critical if not an expert? ... Now, similar techniques can get various labels that are more pejorative than not. Say, "wishful" thinking of families about their ancestors. Reaction to that has caused over-emphasis, we will show, on supposed "empirical" methods (even though, the deepest look ought to make one aware of quasi-empirical concerns). ... So, in our new work (Sherborne, Dorset), we will be using abductive means which were legitimatized by a Thomas descendant, namely Charles Sanders Peirce. ... Stayed tuned.

08/29/2016 -- More on Cape Ann, 1623.

06/06/2018 -- Need to prepare for 2023/4. Some, of literary inclinations, have looked back 200 years: American Jeremiad. But, we need to go back to the Cape Ann times and before.

01/05/2019 -- About the same time as I wrote this, a site via WordPress appeared: Enduring Gloucester. How did I miss this? I guess, the focus on the western expansion that still has tales needing telling. There are posts on Charles Olson.

01/13/2019 -- Left a comment about this post at the Gloucester post.

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Gardner's Beacon, Vol. IV, No. 3

Recently, we introduced The Gardner Annals & Research. The use of Annals has several meanings, one of which was demonstrated in Vol. I, No. 1 and has been a regular feature of Gardner's Beacon issues since late 2012. Another use relates to reports of activities and, as we will allow, presentation of research results.

Our purpose is to have material available on-line to support work related to the extended family of Thomas and Margaret Gardner. At the same time, some of the research work sponsored by the Thomas Gardner Society, Inc. will appear in The Essex Genealogist (esog.org).

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In regard to research, we will publish a list of open issues regarding the first three generations (let's say, in order to set an initial limit) that require attention. Now, what might be an issue? Well, it can be of a range of things that we hope becomes more clear as we gather material.

Some of the issues have already been addressed in posts in this blog (say, How many wives?). Of late, there have been many queries about origins, or the "whence" issue. Today, a researcher pointed to a source for the baptism records of son, Thomas and George, implying, of course, that Thomas, Sr.'s location would be known.

Too, though, one emphasis has been on collecting all of the Gardner-related works (and their conclusions) that have accumulated over the years. Of these, some have stood the test of time. Why this is so needs to be explained. Others may have some element of truth but are problematic.

As an aside, the method would cover all. If something is swampy, then it'll be noted as such.

Pet peeve: People running down research paths, learning lessons, taking what they want, but, then, leaving no records as they venture elsewhere. Some things seem to be quicksand; markers ought to be left behind in these areas. Now, how this type of thing might be done is not clear. Is it necessary? That can be shown, given enough time.

By the way, hence we have the leaning toward on-line access and marking.

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See Vol. IV, No. 3 of Gardner's Beacon for a consideration of interests and goals of the Thomas Gardner Society, Inc. related to research and publication.

References: see Sources (Current Issue)  

Remarks: Modified: 09/19/2014

09/19/2014 - Ann Downing and Sarah Kimball are mentioned as being subjects of further research. One of Sarah (Kimball) Leatherland's grandmothers was Sarah (Whipple) Goodhue (yeah, Stories from Ipswich). Upcoming article in The Gardner Annals and TEG 34 (November).

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Next Gardner's Beacon issue

The next issue of Gardner's Beacon, Vol. IV, No. 3, is in the works. Per usual, there will be an update to the historic record in the "annals" format. Also, some details regarding the Corporation are provided.

A couple persons of interest who are mentioned in the issue are Ann Downing who married Joseph Gardner. They are an example of those who did not leave offspring and whom we ought to make a special effort to remember. Ann is a fascinating subject and will be featured again.

Perley provided maps of Salem with his book. On one map, he used Ann Bradstreet to mark the owner of a lot. Ann had married Simon Bradstreet after Joseph was killed in the Pequot War. It was her property prior to the marriage and belonged to her mother, Lucy, earlier.

Perley took the time to trace transactions for the property, including partitionings done during Joseph's time and later. When Ann died, part of the estate went to Joseph's heirs who were sons of his brother, Thomas.

Another interesting person is Sarah (Kimball) Leatherland who raised her kids after her husband, John, died when the kids were young. Sarah had to later go to court to get custody for son, John, who then joined, at a young age, the Ipswich military during the time of the French & Indian war which event some claim was practice for the later conflict with England.            

Remarks: Modified: 09/15/2014

09/15/2014 -  More references use Lucy than not.