re: #266 freetoken

Yup. There’s that black hole of the time before about the War of 1812 back to Jamestown, where unless the woman was from a very well off family who wrote lots of land deals and wills and such, one just can’t trace the woman’s ancestors, because we don’t know the maiden name.

And also, in some of the colonies, the women didn’t even have legal rights to their own children.

I was able to tap into some genealogies that were done in the late 19th century which provided information on a couple of my lines from way back when in the US, including maybe a Mayflower connection. It is claimed by lots of people, but is dependent on a marriage where the records were lost so I suspect the “Ruth” in question isn’t the Mayflower descendant she is claimed to be. It doesn’t matter that much to me-the important fact is that my ancestors were kicking around New England in the 1620s and being early colonists tells me something about who they were and what their lives were like.