Tuesday, February 12, 2019

Non-Great Migration Ancestors


This is part two of a two-part blog outlining my ancestors. In this one I will list my ancestors (that I have found so far) who were not part of the Great Migration, i.e. who did not come from England in the period 1620-1640 into New England. Because there are not as many here, I will give all the family names, rough dates of immigration, and country of origin.


My Russell Ancestors

Although there are people with the last name Russell in my family tree who were part of the Great Migration, they are ones who married into other family lines and are not the ones who passed along their name to me. My direct Russell line in this country began with my great*6 grandfather, Robert Russell, who emigrated from Scotland around 1750 into New York (*1). For the next several generations, Robert and his descendants lived in the stretch of NY, about 20-25 miles wide, between the CT/NY border and the Hudson River. It was not until after the Civil War that my great*2 grandfather, Walter Russell, moved less than 5 miles to the east into Connecticut.

During this period of time, the Russell men were marrying women from the same area of NY, thus connecting me to several other families. Some of these families were originally from England and who had been part of the Great Migration but who had since moved to the area around New York City. There were also some who were not part of the Great Migration. Records from NY are not nearly as available or complete as those from CT/MA. Thus, there are several family lines that I have not yet been able to trace back to their original appearance in this country. Nonetheless, here are the family names that I have been able to document:

·       Kipp/Kip – Hendrick Kip (de Kype) and his family emigrated to what was then New Amsterdam in the mid-1600s from the Netherlands.
·       de la Montagne – Jean Mousnier de la Montagne was born in France but had moved to the Netherlands and married there. He and his family emigrated in 1637.
·       Hunt – Thomas Hunt and his family came to NY from England in 1673.
·       Merchant – Francis Xavier Merchant came to NY from Switzerland in 1853.
·       Soan – Nancy/Anna Soan came to NY from Ireland in 1847.
·       Levy – My paternal grandmother was Vera Levy. Her grandfather, Alexander Levy, had come to NY with his parents and siblings from England in 1851. The Levy family were not English, rather they were Ashkenazi Jews who had emigrated to England from Poland and eastern Germany in the early 1700s (*2).
·       Isaacs – Alexander Levy married Phoebe Isaacs, was also an Ashkenazi Jew from England who had emigrated to NY in 1852 (*3).


My Pierpont Ancestors

My mother’s Pierpont family had been part of the Great Migration and had originally been in the Massachusetts Bay Colony until my great*7 grandfather, James Pierpont, was recruited by the Congregational Church in New Haven, CT in 1684 (*4). Being not only part of the Puritans who came from England, but a religious family and a preacher, the Pierponts had a much greater incentive to continue to marry into other Great Migration families. Thus, this side of my family tree is composed nearly entirely of English families who were part of the Great Migration. Here are the only exceptions that I have located:

·       Few – My great*2 grandmother, Sarah Shilling Few, came to the US in 1849 with her parents.



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