[Merry Whitney wrote: Is there not some way, though, to confirm or refute whether this Thomas, if we do know he was the father of John-1, was also the grandson of the Sir Robert Whitney (died England Aug. 5, 1567) who married Sybil Baskerville, and great-grandson of the Robert Whitney (died May or June, 1541) who married Margaret Wye? ] This is where the DNA analysis discussed earlier on this list might come in handy. Of course, it couldn't prove that Thomas descended from either Robert, as even a precise match would mean only that they shared a Whitney ancestor, not that they're in the same line. Samples taken from male-line descendants of John, Henry, Samuel, and the "Whitneys of Whitney" might establish whether these are four (or three or two) separate families, or one big happy coming down from some paleo-Whitney. (Whichever is the case, "unconnected" Whitneys could find some consolation here, too.) A March issue of The New Yorker ran an article by John Seabrook in which he and some other Seabrooks in the U.S. and England found they were indeed distant cousins. Cheers, Ron Kyser