Hi All, I came across some wills in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (NEH&GR) last week, and they were eye-openers! Most GEDCOM files posted to the 'net show William Bird and Mary Woodhall as the parents of Thomas Bird of Dorchester, MA (1613-1667). Thomas Bird married Ann [Withington?] and their descendants were the Birds of Massachusetts. This descent from Thomas and Ann is well-documented in vol. 25 of the NEH&GR. This information regarding Thomas' parents is completely wrong. In the NEH&GR, July 1884, pp. 305-308, wills are transcribed in the regular column "Genealogical Gleanings in England" by Henry F. Waters. These columns are also published in a collection by the same name, publ. separately in 1969 by Baltimore Press. The wills are for members of the Woodhall family and other related families, and the Bird family is also mentioned extensively in these documents. In the wills, we learn that William Bird died in 1568, that he had four children with Mary Woodhall, and that she subsequently married William Woodhall (a distant cousin). By William, Mary had four children: William, Thomas, George, and Mary. She then had thirteen MORE children with William Woodhall. All seventeen children were raised as one family, with William Woodhall apparently treating the Birds and the Woodhalls as his own children equally. However, we learn that this particular William Bird died in 1568 (a date also confirmed by a church inscription in the church of Walden, Essex.) Clearly, this William Bird did NOT father the Thomas of Dorchester, who wasn't born until 1613. There is another, later, Mary Woodhall, dau. of Edmund Woodhall (son of William Woodhall and Mary Woodhall, above -- thus the first Mary's granddaughter) also described in the will on p. 306, but it is made evident by a later will that she married a man named Thomas Goad, J.D. A tantalizing clue may lie in the genealogy of William Bird and Mary's oldest son, William Bird (or sometimes shown as Birde), who became well-known as an attorney. He is listed as the executor in several related wills, and is a witness in many others. I believe that this is the same William Bird who was granted a coat of arms in 1606 and was "Dean of the Arches", presumably at Camden, in 1619. THIS William may be the clue to either Thomas of Dorchester or Thomas of Hartford, Connecticut. One other fascinating tidbit: Thomas Bird of Hartford (d. 1662) had a dau. named Mary, who married a John North. It turns out that John North of Hartford was the son of John Dudley North, K.B., fourth Baron North of Kirtling. It suggests that Thomas Bird's family was socially well-connected. The Birds of Denston, Suffolk were only 4 or 5 miles from Kirtling (although in a different shire -- the boundary is in between the two towns). Perhaps a focus on the Denston family in the mid to late 1500's might pay off! Anyway, sorry about the bad news regarding Thomas Bird of Dorchester's ancestry. We can now definitely rule out William Bird and Mary Woodhall as his parents. Best regards, Steve Bird The most important piece of evidence appears on p. 305, ---------------------------------------- Dr. Steven Bird Director of Orchestras University of Tennessee at Chattanooga