Fifteen colonies

 TL;DR -- When Dr. Frank was working on his research, over one hundred years ago, the limitations of the time are apparent. Now, with the internet and its communications, we can do a much better job. Part of this will be covering the wide-spread of the U.S. and beyond. And, the Carolinas will be one focus. Fifteen colonies? Will be looked at next. 

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No doubt, our focus was New England, from the beginning, due to the Cape Ann connections. So, that perspective might be attributed to we being newbies to this type of research. However, it was not long before we were looking west and south. One pull was following New England movement thus, with Virginia being an early destination for people who kept moving. We learned early of some of the parallels between the two regions, especially those of the time of the Revolution (250th coming up). We will have a coming post on this theme. 

Recently, after running into a Boston-themed blog (once again; first saw it several years ago), we got to thinking of the regional comparisons. An event was the motivator: getting gunpowder from English stores. Turns out that there is a similar story in the south. One noted source is J. F. Dorman who wrote Adventurers of Purse and Person, Virginia, 1607-1624/25. He writes that George Jackson of Norfolk (later Williamsburg) is known to have accomplished such a feat. We will look into that further. 

J.F. Dorman, 
on Virginia/Bermuda connection

For now, we are leaving a comment about the Virginia connection since there were comments related to that before (the "Boston 1775" blog dates back to 2007). 

..., Pointer to comment made by TGS Researcher ... 

But, another issue comes to fore that had not been considered. We had been looking mainly at Virginia as a hub of entry. Then, we expected to be seeing migration south to the Carolinas. On looking more closely, we see two relationships that need attention. 

For one, Bermuda was connected with North Carolina; then the Bahamas were similarly associated with South Carolina. Our main view of the Bahamas was their use as a backdoor, early on, when someone wanted to leave and come over but could not get the required permission. So, they staged themselves through the Bahamas. However, now we know a little more and saw that some tried to get Bermuda involved in supporting the Patriots. Assuming there was similar efforts with the Bahamas, we could have had fifteen colonies rather than thirteen. Different dynamics? 

Incidentally, these historical bits come up from following families as they moved. Some can be confirmed, albeit the further west that one goes, the harder the chore. What we see, though, is that the clues are there: albeit, many east coast mindsets think of the woods outside of coastal New England as the frontier. 

We beg to differ: Frontier century. 

Back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when Dr. Frank was working, he mainly did his own line plus those that he heard from. But, our work is finding people widely scattered. Case in point is the lowly grave out west of a descendant of the Mayflower crew as well as being of Cape Ann. We'll feature him in the next post. 

Remarks: Modified: 06/11/2022

06/11/2022 -- Added pointer to the comment to the Boston 1775 post on Bermuda as source for gunpowder, from the British store of such.