This week in 52 Ancestors in 52 weeks, the prompt is “Favorite Find” – there are so many stories, photos, and other finds that I could use for this week, but I am deciding to re-blog my post about my ancestor William Durkee, the first Irish Catholic to settle in Massachusetts. He is one of my favorite finds. His courtship and marriage to Martha Cross, the daughter of the quite litigious and very Protestant Robert Cross, are chronicled in detail in Essex County, Massachusetts court records, which includes facts, hearsay, and lots of gossip as testimony!
My more recent immigrant ancestors were from in and around Gort and Peterswell Parish in Galway, Ireland, and from Klingenmünster in the Südliche Weinstraße(Southwest Wine Route) district in Germany. I have to go back an additional eighty-five years to find my next immigrant ancestors, they were Kennedy and Murray Scots-Irish that came to British Colonial America about 1770 from Ballintoy, Antrim, Ireland. I do have a few German ancestors that came from Germany in the 1750’s. And I have several additional German ancestors that came to British Colonial America via England in 1710. The English transported nearly 3,000 German Palatines in ten ships to New York in 1710. However, I have a huge amount of Colonial American ancestors that were here even earlier, including a few Mayflower Pilgrims. Although many of my Colonial ancestors were from England, I also have some that were from Scotland, Wales, Germany, The Netherlands, France…
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