Re: My Lineage from Joseph
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In reply to:
Re: My Lineage from Joseph
6/03/01
Hi Distant Cousin Rick,
Thanks for the note of encouragement...I had wanted to get these notes posted for a couple of years already, but hadn't found the time to do so. I don't this it is the definitive answer to all questions, but there is a lot of suggestive evidence still around and I hope it encourages others to go looking in western England someday. Thanks also for the posts about your lineage...I had already found them and was going through them to see if I had your branch complete in my records.
Obviously not complete, but pretty close as far as Jane Peaslee+Joshua Page part of it went, I think. It turns out I have very similar records to those of Robert Peaslee out in San Jose, whose son Mark has posted them on the web in a very impressive effort:
http://www.best.com/~mpeaslee/genpage.htmhttp://www.best.com/~mpeaslee/genpage.htm
This is because we used the same sources of Lamphere, Poor and the rest, although I have since been able to add about 5-10% on my own with additional research, and there exists many of Richard Peasley's research notes from the 1980's yet to be added which is probably another 5-10%. (I have copies of some of these and Paul Peaslee in Massachusetts has the complete set). I have spent some time in LDS libraries and such looking up print records and census records which are fascinating, but way too time-consuming if one has to hold down a job as well!My next hope is that by using the web, and places like this genforum we can fill in a lot more of the missing branches.For example, I was fascinated to find the post from Brad Peaseley, which confirms my suspicion that there was a southern branch of the family...probably from Lord Calvert's line that settled in the Virginia colonies about the same time, or even earlier than Joseph.Since we have about 2000 descendents from Joseph in the database named Peaslee/Peasley (losing most of the female lineage), I often wondered why there aren't more relatives from the Virginia line. The ones that I have found could only number in the several hundreds, and they were all spelled Peasley. Now I think a good explanation could be the variation in spelling from the 17th century...perhaps there are several hundred Peaseley's around as well. This would be interesting to explore.
One other discovery like this that I made in the library looking at 1810 census records in New Hamshire, is that many of the census indexes, or the census records themselves misspell Peaslee or Peasley as Pearlee or Pearley.The handwriting visible on the microfilm is pretty ambiguous at best, but I found several examples where Peaslee's had disappeared from the index, only to show up as Pearlee's...or some other variation. I think that with infinite time on the census records it would be possible to fill in some of the missing lineages.
One of my goals with this "hobby" is to try to match the records we are generating with the several thousand Peaslee/Peasley names that exist around the US and Canada today. There are roughly 2000-3000 surnames like this in the various databases you can buy on-line...and one summer 10 years ago I actually did a phone book search in a big public library for a week and found about the same number...and it appears that we are all related to Joseph or a small fraction are related to the southern line.With the advent of computers, census records and the internet it should be possible to match a good number of these names up with their lineages.Obviously this goal will take a few decades to realize, but posts like yours sure do help.
Another fun thing to do if you ever want to see the enormity of the task...go to any search engine and search for Peaslee or Peasley on the web these days. Alta vista just found 4993 and 4792 hits respectively, while just 5 years ago, there were less than 500 hits total!
Anyway, I'll send email directly if I find some records that could use information from your lineage....if you have found specific dates and such for various parts of the line that I am missing I'll be sure to ask. Thanks again,
Cousin Graham
More Replies:
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Re: My [Graham's] Lineage from Joseph
8/17/01
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Re: My [Graham's] Lineage from Joseph
Graham Peaslee 9/15/01
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Re: My [Graham's] Lineage from Joseph