Dear Cousins, When I first started putting my grand concept of American Crossroads down on paper, because of my own family research, I had decided there were two primary keys to the migrations and therefore, two primary keys to the families: The Delaware River Valley, and the Quakers. In each family I have investigated this has proved to be the case. This does not mean that our New England ancestors were not primary keys, just that their convergence with the Delaware River Valley settlers and/or the Quakers occurred later, and in different perimeters. In pursuing these ideas, I found names on both sides of my family regularly occurring in disparate clumps. On my paternal side in Maryland I found Mounts/Mounce in connection with Penningtons. On my maternal side I also found Mounts in connection with my Smith/Markham/Watts family in Virginia. I found Wallers connected with the Smith/Markham/Watts in Hanover and Orange Counties, Virginia, and also in Southside Virginia. I found (Dutch) Wallings from New York connecting with my Williams, who connected with my Smarts, Tuckers, and Emersons who connected with my Penningtons. I found Alleys connecting with Watts in SW Virginia and NW North Carolina and identified them as likely (Dutch) Aillings from NY, along with the Van Winkles whose Dutch ancestry has been very thoroughly researched. The Watts and Van Winkle connection has continued to the present time, here in Oregon. So, it was apparent that additional primary concepts for American Crossroads were needed to encompass working in loosely defined perimeters, and with Kinship Groups, rather getting tangled up in iffy research performed on single, specific surnames. This becomes self-evident when one considers some of the surnames found in the Delaware River Valley. Take a patronymic name, and consider how it might have evolved -- for instance -- Mounts or maybe even Mouns, Mons -- a Scandinavian name from the "Swede/Finns," as I call them. Mounts was used as a Surname and Forname, as is characteristic of patronymics. In Cecil County, some of these using it as a Surname married into the Biddle/Beadle/Beedle, etc. family, who in turn married into the Pennington family. In this locality Christopher Mounce became Christopher Anderson. Now who could have predicted that transition? (Anders is Donald in English.) Further confusing this issue is that in the very early colonial period some retained the patronymic system while others, even of the same family and generation, resorted to an anglicized system. Throw into the pot the vagaries of spelling in English, by people whose ear didn't encompass "foreign" nuances, and you have variants of the variants! In these circumstances it is easy to see that researching Kinship groups works much better than a simple surname approach. And remember too: always -- some of every variety stayed, while some rode on. Because the Delaware River Valley settlers and the Quakers were principally centered around Philadelphia I have focused heavily on the Philadelphia Perimeter and have sought to work outward from that as the basis of the earliest migrations. This too has proved essentially correct. I thought it likely that I would find a clump of Quakers and early families had converged along the Susquehanna River which would provide the BIG link in the chain. I thought Bucks county was a likely place, but I still didn't find precisely what I was after. In doing this grouping and re-grouping I don't focus on precisely defined boundaries (county or state) because the people themselves did not. The conflict, however, is that when you research you MUST focus on specific counties and states because that is the way the records are arranged. Similarly, to research you must focus on Surnames because that too is how genealogical information is arranged, although we all know it becomes terribly mixed up when you have to check five or six different name spellings to find the one family all those surname variants represent. So this becomes the total equation: History, Locality and Kinship lead us to a correct Identity. So, anyway, cutting to the chase, I go back, and search, and search again, checking out ideas on the internet, and use a search criteria of three or four surname combinations with a location and seeing what comes up. Google is just great for this. Now, I think I have found a real missing link/perimeter! Eureka! You are the Strongest Link! Hello! Last fall while I researched the Regulators of North Carolina, I came upon an article written about the "Jersey Settlement" in Rowan County, NC which made references to the people found in the original area of Hopewell township, Hunterdon County (now Burlington). Cousin Alice had told me about a Baptist congregation from New Jersey which was connected with the Jersey settlement. I had already looked at that, and decided it wasn't terribly significant. So I didn't pay much attention to the article that was included with the Regulators' pages. When I finally came back to it recently, I was stunned at how wrong I was. This article, written by Ethel Stroupe and published in the Rowan County Register, vol. 11, no. 1, February 1996, has so many good points, it just goes to show how much it helps to return to one's old sources and make new comparisons with new information. www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/mckstmerjersey.htm#author There are some minor things that are not quite on target, but in general, this article is very very good and very much a pointer to Hunterdon/Burlington County, across the Delaware from Bucks county, as a primary missing link for early locations of our migrating families. This certainly needs to become the next perimeter we need to focus on. Goodbye! Love, your Strongly Linked Cousin, Carolyn Carolyn McDaniel cmacdee@teleport.com ========================================= To send a message to the American Crossroads List: AMXROADS-L@rootsweb.com --- Visit American Crossroads --- http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~amxroads