Hi Charles, ALl mine came in through PA (or ended up there!). We'll have to make you our resident expert and keeper of the flame of the New England Scotch Irish. Keep sharing your interests -- others will connect with you, maybe not for years. They'll find you via the messages in our archive. Be sure to check our archives -- the last couple years -- for info on where these folk came from in Ulster published by a list member and esteemed scholar. I think an article was published in the Scotch Irish Journal as well. A million pardons but I am very busy today and don't have time to do more checking for you without ending up in the Dog House and blowing my schedule for the rest of my life <grin>. >I'm interested in Thomas HOMES and brother John HOMES, both of Coleraine who are mentioned in Bolton's "Scotch-Irish Pioneers." Off the top of the head, check HOLMES at all time. There was no such thing as standardized spelling of any words in the 1700s. Surnames were spelt phonetically. I didn't make this up -- we're constantly lectured on this by genealogy experts in free columns, expensive books, genealogy ocean cruises, etc -- they do their best to educate us on the ONE SINGLE BIGGEST reason we screw up and don't bag our man: We think spelling matters! Only to us. If you came to me as a client here's what I'd do. I'd vacuum up all the info I can find. You can do this very fast by using NHHGS's website, www.usgenweb, www.ancestry.com, Heritage Quest, www.genealogy.com (has on line a lot of their CDs -- so you don't have to buy each one and you don't need to get a new line of credit when you find out the boogers changed location on yah!), etc. Meanwhile read as much as you can about local history and records. My experience has taught me that MASS records are VERy VERY VERY important. VERY. You need to locate published MASS records -- gov records, records of the French and Indian Wars like muster lists and lists of guys scalped and of ladies hauled off to Canada by the Indians -- looking for the surname and any info about people living near them or that their children married. You need to check out indexed manscript collections that you can get to via film or car. You need to learn how to do research. I learned this in graduate school. It is the single most useful thing I ever learned, after reading. I can learn ANYTHING, EVERYTHING. No doors are closed to me. I learned how to use a published book to locate the bibliography in the rear and then to pursue books and ms's in the bibliography to access more and more and more info. And more....anyway, esp with the internet, it's a critical skill for us all to learn when we are stuck -- like we all are here -- with doing research into families that has never been done before. It ain't like plugging yourself into a Mayflower immigrant -- they've 'been done'. You can spend your time debunking the latest theories, looking for obscure ms's buried in Providence that totally rewrite the Great Migration info. No. You will find that there's not a lot out there. You are starting from anew. You also want to read "The Resarcher's guide to American Genealogy" and stuff that will tell you how to establish a creditable proof. If our ancestors could tame the wilderness, we can do this. They asked the INdians for info on what plants to eat, which cured what disease, and so ons. We got these gurus who write these books to help us as well as our innate genetic tracking skills. SOmeone asked why I didn't write the idiots guide to Scotch Irish genealogy. Idiots can't do this. I might write "How to do Scotch Irish genealogy if you are willing to work at it" and teach some "Scotch Irish genealogy boot camps", but I think the idiots need to confine themselves to reading Mr. Kennedy's very entertaining and lovely books. I read them too and enjoy (Like Bill Kennedy's "Faith and Freedom: The Scots-Irish in America"). They are at amazon, waiting buyers. They will bring you up to speed fast on the bad old days when the Indians killed your wife and 5 children and made off with your hog. Glad I don't live then. I'll post a bit more when I catch up, but I must break some bad news. I was doing some work for a client on surnames. McJames (McSheamus McHamish, etc), McThomas, etc. In I think it was Bell "Book of Ulster Surnames" -- donno, I learned that HOLMES could be McThomas. If you know some Gaelic you can figure that one out. McThomas (an English version of a Gaelic surname spelled and pronounced different), was sometimes anglicized as SOAMES. So be sure to inspect the surnames of those around him for possible rellies back in Ulster whose name was already changed a big. It'll help with the DNA study. > I don't know when they made it to Massachusetts. Thomas died at Dracut 1726 and there isn't any information on him there. Brother John was the administrator of Thomas' probate, which occurred at Cambridge, Mass. Probates rarely ID where the person was born. You might be able to figure out when he landed by researching deeds in the area. Or beyond the area to Boston. For hints see the immigration course at www.genealogy.com/university.html . I always get hints from there. Maybe I'll begin my will "I Linda, born in the Rustbelt of PA in <CENSORED>, who lived in the following places at the dates noted....." but I doubt it. > I feel that the brothers may have been sons of a Hugh Homes who signed the petition to emigrate to Massachusetts 1718. > > Is anyone researching Thomas, John or Hugh, in Coleraine or Massachusetts? Check the MS collections at NEGHS? IF you join, you can ask questions of their experts, one of which I know is Scotch Irish. He may know and what he knows is much more useful that what we know here. He's an expert. Also you might consider starting a free website and list and message board focused on determining what we DO know of these New Englanders and sharing. That's speed up everyone's work. You can get free space at www.rootsweb.com. The point is there is more stuff on these guys buried in odd corners of publications and in libraries than you can probably track down in your life. Some of it is in PRO over in England, and would take years to find. Forget that. Some is in Belfast. Also expensive. SOme is in New York, info hauled off by descendents trying to find a warmer place with fewer Yankees. And Minnesota! California! Some is in collections like the Draper collection. I donno! but having spent a long time sifting through it, the more you find the more you figure out you can do. If you reach a point where you don't know where else to look (like now), you need to do some research -- reading - to find more places. Up till they came, these guys are just more New England colonials. SO ditch the ethnic thang and become the local expert on New England genealogy. Seriously -- you need to find every clue you can so you can build a profile of this person. That's about the only way to know for sure you found him when you think you find him in Ulster. Finding someone of the same first name and last name does NOT establish identity. Just because the puzzle piece fits doesn't mean it's the right piece. You need more evidence, like does it match the pattern? Linda Merle ________________________________________________________________ Sent via the WebMail system at mail.fea.net