In a message dated 12/13/2004 11:19:44 PM Central Standard Time, hubfam@earthlink.net writes: 'Sorry to say that nearly all the information cited as facts in the messages below can be contraverted by reading the following source: Richardson, Douglas."The English Origin and Ancestry of the Parker Brothers of Massachusetts."NEHGR vol. 153[January 1997] commencing on p88. Gene and List: This article in the NEHGR is not gospel either. Everything that we find printed is one person's opinion - unless we have the original birth, marriage and death documentation for all parties involved. The 1883 NEHGR article by Rev. Edward G. Hodgeman "The History of Westford, Massachusetts, 1659-1883" AND The 1860 publication by James Savage, "The Genealogical Dictionary of The First Settlers of New England, Showing Three Generations of Those Who Came Before May, 1692, On the Basis of Farmer's Register" BOTH state that Abraham was the first of the Parker brothers to come to America, first settling in Charlestown and then joining with his brother James in moving to Woburn approximately 1639. James was married there in 1643 and Abraham in 1644. But they had both been well established by the time of their marriages. My point is simply that unless the ship manifests are found, none of us can be 100% certain of who came first. We know the time frame of when the brothers were here, there is documetation that they did indeed come to Massachusetts so I will not split straws over who came first. And historians differ in opinion as we have just seen. Now Gene gives another mother for the Parker Brothers: "The popular notion that the mother of those boys was Ann Gelly is not correct. She was Anna/Ann Snagges who m. 1st Richard Sybley/Sibley." We now have 1. Mrs Margery Parker 2. Joane Drake 3. Ann Gelley 4. Anna/Ann Snagges What documentation is available to establish any of these 4 women as the wife of John Parker? There are Parish Registers in Great Burstead to show the marriage of Ann Gelley to John Parker and the births of all the known children are attributed to "John and Ann Parker" in Great Burstead. Granted, we have no evidence that this is OUR John Parker, but the years of birth for the children match those provided in records of the men as adults. And we have no evidence that Ann Gelley is the mother named Ann in all of these births. However, again, we have the marriage in the right time frame and the proper location noted in parish registers. I find no such evidence for a marriage of Joane Drake and John Parker, nor anyone named Margery. Personally, I will have to do some more research regarding the newly provided information of an Anna/Ann Snagges-Sybley/Sibley. Possibly Gene would be so kind as to provide us with a reference to shorten the quest. I have never seen or heard this name mentioned before. Mention of Margery as the mother of this particular John Parker does not fit with the 1999 NEHGR article about the Parkers that indicated that his mother was Mary Wheeler and his father was John Parker. Unfortunately my copies of the above-mentioned NEHGR articles were destroyed in a bizarre mishap on the interstate, and I have never obtained additional copies so I can not cite the page numbers - I simply had them cross-referenced to my own personal paper files. Again, we need to discuss these things and not state that one person is right and another is wrong as we have not seen the original vital documents which are the only absolute proof. Jo Hogle