Dear Lori, Will and List Members, The Delaware Penningtons come from the Maryland Penningtons. The South Carolina/ Georgia, etc. Pennington descendants of Abraham come from the Maryland Penningtons. The West Virginia Penningtons come from them. What is needed with Pennington research is concerted, coordinated effort on them. There are a few Pennington researchers who HAVE been making such an effort for a very very long time. My own copying of Maryland information took two years at the archives in Annapolis. Sybil Hampton who has been earnesly working and coordinating the Maryland and Delaware Penningtons unfortunately is not on the internet. (Sybil's address: 1007 Ivy Lane, Waldorf, MD 20602.) Ric Blake publishes a WVA newsletter, and he and Sybil have published a book on their WVA families. The Maryland Penningtons have been so distorted and messed up in computer lists and gedcoms on the internet and in the LDS records I dispair that we can ever untangle them. A great deal of information which was speculative has been taken as fact and inserted into these lists. No evidence, no references, no attempt to research the lines has been done -- just copying and recopying the same mistakes from one list onto another. I just encountered another one on KindredKonnections. Abraham and John Pennington (John who lived near Northeast -- the northern part of Cecil County) were presented as father and son, when Abraham was John's brother as evidenced by John's will. There is no Maryland family group that has not been tainted by this sloppy, speculative, error-ridden, garbage genealogy. It has nothing to do with mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. It is a matter of presenting something as fact when NOTHING has been done to verify that it is fact. Pluck a name out of a list and put him down as a son. Pluck a wife out of a family and put her down as a sister. It makes no sense. Robert Pennington married Mary RYLAND (Oct 13, 1716) and in 1718 was given a plantation by John Sr. and Alee Ryland "out of natural love for thare daughter of the marriage celebrated between Robert and Mary." (MD deeds, VOL III, p. 187) The ownership of that property and it's passing in the Pennington family continued throughout the 18th century. The subsequent deeds refer to the Rylands and to the relationships and so do the probate records. Yet in these spurious listings Mary HYLAND is given as Robert's wife instead of Mary RYLAND and so I suppose it will continue into eternity. The name Hyland Biddle came into the Pennington family when there was an intermarriage of Biddles/Beadles and Penningtons. It did not come from a marriage of HYLANDS and Penningtons. There are about fifty other things just like this. Next month I will begin teaching a genealogy course for the local college. If anyone is interested in an e-mail course, and how to do real genealogical research, please contact me. Lori, if you want to help solve the Maryland/Delaware puzzles, copy every Pennington, every variant, every allied name -- i.e., Biddle, Savin, Rothwell, Ryland etc., etc., etc. from the records you have, and post them to the list. Another person will then post the DATA he has copied. This is supposed to be what a research project is about. This is how we will overcome, piece by FACTUAL piece. Good genealogy comes out of people working together to compare notes, ideas and insights. This is the essence of what family is about, and the essence of how genealogy promotes networking, interaction and progress. Due to a variety of ills in my life -- financial, medical and computer -- which sometimes seem unending, I am unable to participate to the degree I'd like. I am going to try and set up my own webpage and put the MD info I've collected on it. I have a chronology I've put together along with a summary of each family detailing why I think what I do about each given name (in an effort to distinguish one from another and sort out who is really who.) My problem is that my computer broke down, and I've been unable to access my WordPerfect files since. In addition, I'm using a borrowed monitor. Then I broke my arm. But I do care, I do want to help straighten things, and I would love to participate to the degree I can. Your cousin, Carolyn