Primary Source Research
As I research, I am looking for "primary sources" for any individual. A "primary source" is a record that is written down at the time an event happened, i. e., when a child is christened or baptized, the minister or clerk would make a record of that event right after it happened.
Another example of a "primary source" would be when the clerk or minister would write down the "bans" or the actual marriage right after it took place. An "official" record.
The date of a burial could be a "primary source", written down when the burial took place, but the information on the death certificate or burial record is not necessarily a "primary source". For instance, someone could state the deceased individual was born on "such or such " a date, but that would not be considered a "primary source", because the accuracy of the data would depend on so many variables.
Anyway, it is important that we understand "primary sources" and "secondary sources", and "other sources", etc. as we engage in Family History Research.
We cannot treat all sources that we run across as "primary sources". Just because information appears in print, does not automatically make that information correct. We must study, and judge, and even sometimes, make educated guesses, as we attemp to "document" our family.
After I decided to work on the Woolsey family and "document" it, I first attempted to put into some kind of order the family of Richard Woolsey and Nancy Plumbstead. After three years, I'm still working on that family.
I do believe I have their son Joseph Woolsey, who married Abigail Schaeffer, and his sons and daughters quite correct, but I am still working on that.
After about one year, I decided to tackle our immigrant ancestor, George Woolsey (Joris Wolsij). I searched out every reference to him that I could find. Almost every quotation about him refers back to the article by Benjamin W. Dwight, in 1873, which appears in the New York Genealogical and Biographical RECORD, Vol. 4, etc. In the same year, Theodore Dwight Woolsey (who had given a great deal of data to Benjamin W. Dwight), finished a History he was writing.
Unfortunately, neither of these two gentlemen quoted any "primary sources", for their work, especially for any reference before George Woolsey, the Immigrant.
Well, they used the date of 27 Oct 1610 as the date of George Woolsey's birth, and quoting George Woolsey's marriage record, stated that he was born in Yarmouth, England.
Now, this is a pretty straight-forward date. There are no "ifs ands or abouts" here. 27 Oct 1610. That should be a fairly easy date to find.
The Family History Library here in Salt Lake City has a fine microfilm collection of the Parish Registers of England, so I thought that would be a good place to start. I ran into a few problems right at the start, but none of them were insurmountable. One needs to know the name of the church where one's ancestor was christened. I found no record which named the actual church where George Woolsey was christened.
O.K, a set-back, but with research, it can be overcome. So, I determined to search the church records of Yarmouth, (Great Yarmouth), Norfolk, England. However, there are over 80 churches in the Yarmouth City area. I was able to eliminate those churches whose records started too late, but there were still over 50 churches whose records needed to be searched.
Because I am retired, and I have the time and interest, I tackled this job and put in many 8, 10 and 12 hour days searching these records. I started with the largest parish in Yarmouth and checked the Parish Registers for christenings for 27 Oct 1610. I found no Woolseys in that date. I then checked every entry for one year before and one year after that date. Again no Woolseys.
I then checked every pertinent Church Parish Registers for all the other Churches in Yarmouth. No Woolseys. I then expanded my search in circles around Yarmouth and checked another 40-50 Parish Registers for that date. Nothing was found.
Now I had been searching for several months and was getting quite discouraged and frustated. What had happened to that "straight-forward" date of 27 Oct 1610? Where had it come from?
I then went back to the United States sources and checked every early source (again) I could find. They all pointed back to Dwight and Woolsey, as above. Well, perhaps they had access to some family information that is no longer available. That is possible. But I wasn't about to give up.
Then I found a reference to the Delafield Genealogy by General Delafield, who had a short reference to the Woolsey family. He said that George Woolsey was baptized in 1616 in St. Lawrence Parish, in Yarmouth. You can imagine my excitement as I prepared to search the St. Lawrence Parish in Yarmouth!
However, I soon discovered that there is NO St. Lawrence Parish in Yarmouth. Back to square one. I then discovered that there was a St. Lawrence Parish in Ipswich, Suffolk County, England, where the Cardinal, Thomas Wolsey, was from.
So, I carefully and assiduously studied the St. Lawrence Parish Registers in Ipswich, but found no 1616 date with Woolseys. In fact, I never found very many Woolseys at all. I then checked out the 27 Oct 1616 date again for the St. Lawrence Church in Ipswich, but found nothing. Back to square one again.
But I was convinced that George Woolsey was born in Yarmouth, because the Dutch records most often meant "born at" when they used the word "VAN". So back to the Yarmouth Records, this time searching for the 1616 date.
At that time, Yarmouth was known as Great Yarmouth. I decided to check the Registers of the largest Parish in Great Yarmouth. I had already checked the Registers for the 27 Oct 1610 date and had found nothing. This was a very large church, with several ministers and helpers and clerks. The handwriting was very small and cramped and crowded close together on a page. To make it more difficult, it required a "high-magnification" microfilm reader to read this small script. But I started looking for a christening on 15 May 1616 in the Registers of St. Nicholas Parish, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England.
You can imagine my surprise, my joy, my relief when I found, under Christenings, on 15 May 1616, the following:
George Wolsey 15 May 1616, son of George and ffrances
I then found the christenings of two of George's brothers but that is a different story.
Because of this find (and others in Norfolk) I have discounted all Woolsey information that has been printed, published, written, handed down, conjectured, imagined, made up, before George Woolsey, the Settler, our Immigrant ancestor, before he came to America.
Benjamin W. Dwight titled his early genealogy, "The Descendants of Rev. Benjamin Woolsey of Dosoris". I believe that here is where some careless researchers got the idea that there was a Rev. Benjamin Woolsey of Yarmouth to America. There was NO Rev. Benjamin Woolsey of Yarmouth. There was NO Rev. Benjamin Woolsey who married a HOOK girl. There was NO Rev. Benjamin Woolsey, an uncle of George Woolsey.
There is no documented line from our Immigrant ancestor George Woolsey back to the Cardinal, Thomas Wolsey. People have taken a few names, stuck them together and called it a "pedigree".
I will repeat my earlier offer, of $100, for a documented line back from our Immigrant ancestor to the Cardinal, Thomas Wolsey.
Sincerely,
Wilford W. Whitaker
HOME
|
|