Maggie wrote: > Which brings me to another thought: I have seen a Pierre Blanchard > identified as the father of Thomas, [the one who emigrated to America in > 1639] but I haven't seen any good evidence for this. Have any of you > out there got any? We've had lots of discussions on this point, but no one has come forward with any such evidence yet. In fact, there is negative evidence, thanks to Fred Hartley, who did a search for a "denization" (i.e., a naturalization) of Thomas Blanchard and found none. Since Thomas was a yeoman farmer in Hants, he had to be a native-born Englishman or a naturalized one, so the implication is that he was born in England. You can read Fred's posting on the subject in the archives (1996). > We have documentary evidence that Thomas sailed from > England, with his place of origin given as Penton Grafton, Hants, > England, [this from the passenger list of the "Jonathan"]. Actually, there is no passenger list, and he didn't come from Penton Grafton, but we do have documentary evidence (lots of it) for the voyage of the "Jonathan" and some of the passengers. Penton Grafton is where his then wife Agnes was born, but Thomas and family lived in Goodworth Clatford before emigrating. You can read more about all this in the archives, too. John