This post is a bit different because I can't see any reasonable way to break this bit of family history down into generations. My eighth great grandparents in this family are Daniel Southwick and Esther Boyce. But Daniel's story is part of the larger story of his parents, so I am including them here, too.
Daniel Southwick (1637 - 1718) My eighth great-grandfather.
Born: 14 May 1637 in Salem, Essex county, Massachusetts Bay Colony, Colonial America
Died: 9 February 1718 in Salem
Father: Lawrence Southwick
Mother: Cassandra Burnell
Siblings:
John Southwick, 1623
unnamed infant, 1628
Anna Southwick, 1630
Josiah Southwick, 1632
Deborah Southwick, 1634
Mary Sarah Southwick, 1636
Provided Southwick, 1641
Married: Esther Boyce in 1663
Children:
Lawrence Southwick, 1664
Esther Southwick, 1665
Hannah Southwick, 1667
Elizabeth "Betty" Southwick, 1668
Daniel Southwick, Jr., 1671
Eleanor Southwick, 1674
Mercy Southwick, 1676
Esther Boyce My eighth great-grandmother.
Born: 1640
Died: ??
Father: Joseph Boyce
Mother: Ellinor ?
This is all I found about Esther and her family.
Lawrence Southwick (1594 - 1660) My ninth great-grandfather.
Born: c.1594 in Telnal, Staffordshire, England
Died: 13 May 1660 at Shelter Island, Suffolk County, New York Colony, Colonial America
Father: Edward Southwick (Edward's parents were John Southwick and ? Follet)
Mother: Anne Shelley
Siblings:
Edward Southwick, 1596
Anne Southwick, 1598
Richard Southwick, 1601
Dorothy Southwick, 1603
Elizabeth Southwick, 1605
Henry Southwick, 1608
John Southwick, 1612
Matthew Southwick, 1619
Married: Cassandra Burnell on 25 January 1623/4 in Kingswinford, Staffordshire, England
Children: (see Daniel's siblings above)
The story is that Lawrence came to America in 1627 to see what it was like and then returned to England for Cassandra. They may have traveled back to America on the Mayflower in 1630. Those dates don't match other historical records.
Cassandra Burnell (1598 - 1660) My ninth great-grandmother.
Born: 1598 in Lancashire, England
Died: 10 May 1660 on Shelter Island, Suffolk County, New York Colony
Father: Humphrey William Burnell
Mother: Margaret Burnell (Margaret's parents were Edward Burnell and Sarah Lambrite)
The easiest way to learn the quick story of this family is at Wikipedia.
There is more in-depth information at this site. Some of it gets kind of boring, but there is some interesting stuff there, too, especially the part about the courts trying to sell Daniel and Provided into slavery.
And go here to read the poem "Cassandra Southwick" written by John Greenleaf Whittier. He used Cassandra's name but the poem is about Provided Southwick, who did have a very poetic name.
This link, while not perfect, is a more interesting version of the family history.
Greetings from a descendant of Lawrence & Cassandra Southwick. Can you tell me where you found the exact date of 13 May 1660 for Lawrence's death? I've been searching for a legitimately-sourced date, and thus far the best I've seen is "the spring of 1660" in several secondary sources. (Various online posts confuse the date of his will -- made in July of 1659 -- or the date it was probated -- November of 1660 -- as indicating when he died.) All input appreciated.
ReplyDeleteVery best wishes, Christopher Childs
[ email options: spiritsterrain (at) gmail (dot) com, OR
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Hi, Christopher. No, I’m afraid I can’t remember. I’m not good at that kind of record-keeping. My mother had some information before she died and I took over. She may have come up with it. Most of her research was through LDS sources. Or it might have been on geni.com. The possible source that jumps to mind right now, though, is the monument on the island where they died. Actually, someone has changed something on geni.com that now calls into question my descent from him. I am currently living in a mess as I try to decide what to keep and what to purge in preparation for selling my house and moving, so my whole genealogy collection has already been packed away. I’m sorry I wasn’t more helpful.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the response. The most authoritative secondary source is the 1881"Genealogy of the Descendants of Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick” (available online), which states in three separate places that the Southwicks died in “the spring of 1660”. This is accepted [in a guest blog post at marybarrettdyer (dot) blogspot (dot) com/2013/01/shelter-island-mary-dyers-last-earthly (dot) html] by Johan Winsser, the excellent biographer of my paternal forebears Mary (Barrett) Dyer -- the Quaker martyr hanged in Boston in mid-1660 -- and her husband William. Mary came to Nathaniel Sylvester's house on Shelter Island in late December of 1659, or shortly thereafter; any spring, 1660, death date for the Southwicks implies a rather remarkable meeting of my maternal Quaker ancestors and my paternal Quaker ancestress some 270 years before my parents met one another. Rather bittersweet under the circumstances, since all three would be dead by the close of the first day of June; but to me, quite moving. Author Beth Powning ("A Measure of Light" -- Mary's story) believes that Mary would have helped nurse the Southwicks in those last weeks or months, as they suffered through the last stages of the effects of their earlier starvation and exposure. ... A date of May 13, 1660, for the passing of Lawrence -- implying May 16 for Cassandra, known to have died three days later -- strikes me as very likely; if you ever do figure out where you came up with that, please do post, or email!
ReplyDeleteBTW I recommend checking your lineage on WikiTree [wikitree (dot) com], the free site which is where I log all my serious research. No site is perfect, but many WikiTree profiles of early generations are subject to review and oversight by project groups, and the odds of accuracy are somewhat higher than on Geni, Ancestry, MyHeritage, etc. If I can be of any help at all please do not hesitate to let me know. (And best wishes for your home sale and for your move.)
ReplyDeleteThank you. I will try that when I get settled. I have run across many very obvious errors on geni.com. It’s not geni; it’s the people using it. But am I the only one who realizes that a woman of 120 years of age can not possibly be the mother of that baby? I find that and 5 or 6 year old parents more often than is comfortable. It will be nice to have another source to check.
DeleteThat is interesting. I have found two or three different incidences where my lineage separates and then comes back together 100 or more years later. Whenever I read of them, I have to wonder if the younger generations knew that they were reuniting the family. Of course, I always wonder whether my paternal grandparents had any idea that they were both descendants of long lines of kings and queens in England and Scandinavia. Unfortunately, they had both passed away before I discovered this so I couldn’t ask, but I doubt it very much.
ReplyDeleteI've spent some time last night & today trying to follow your lineage down from the Southwicks. I think we are in fact cousins via that connection, despite whatever change(s) someone made on Geni. While there are a couple of generations for which I can't find original, primary records (e.g., NH record of Abraham as father of James Wilson Wilkins), the secondary evidence seems fairly strong. It may take me a little while to complete, but I'm going to add missing profiles on WikiTree so that they will be there when you have time to take a look.
ReplyDelete