I am updating my electronic records on
the Rootsweb hosted John Clark 1740 website, my Ancestry Cornish
Family tree, this blog, and purging my papers. I have many things to
post, so I will post here and on Ancestry to my Cornish Family Tree
under the subject of the post.
My Bedford and Pound Ridge surnames are
Clark, Weed, Westcott, Scofield and many more. My goal is to
eliminate my piles of loose genealogy papers and notes, and clean up
my records on Ancestry.
Because the Ancestry tree was built in
spurts, over time, and using Ancestry's "hints" and
borrowing from other trees, some information may be inaccurate. For
the past two years I have scrutinized information more carefully. I
have added a lot of information, but where you find few sources, the
information may have research pending.
Ancestry has recently added tags
("unverified," "actively researching," etc.) to
make it obvious to the page viewer that verification may be pending.
I have spent months reviewing sources
as near to original as possible. I have learned to review published
accounts with skepticism where those accounts contain lineages of
hundreds of people when it is obvious the author/authors could not
have researched those many people. I have found that some authors
make numerous assumptions about relationships within a particular
surname. Most of the grossly negligent genealogies were published in
the late 19th century.
There are very early historical
accounts that are sure to yield pieces of the Clark puzzle. The
review of which demands patience, time, and the ability to trace the
various lines. I only have electronic copies available to me. There
may be many early resources I do not, and will not, have available to
me.
My goal is to assemble a well-sourced
and most probable scenario of our earliest New England forefathers
for the time period 1620-1740; the four generations in question. Two
of those generations, perhaps William, Sr. and William, Jr. of
Bedford and Stamford, should be focused on first. Collecting as much
fact as possible should make the picture of those two generations
more clear.
From there, it would be wise to study
the family groups and allied families to formulate a scientifically
sound hypothesis about the earliest two or three generations to
determine when and where they immigrated to New England.
I find myself without a collaborative
research partner, so this mission will not be a speedy one. Also
interfering with my progress, is sorting through old notes and papers
on the dozens of family lines I have chased over the years. Future
research is focused on the Bedford Clark line only.
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