As I was growing up I heard rumors that we were descendants of Mayflower passengers, but like many of us I had no time or inclination to pursue it. In 2013 I visited my aging mother in California who was downsizing into a retirement community. At that time she gave me a book containing all of the research by my Aunt Jean who had passed away in 2008.
I immediately became fascinated with the history of my mother’s side of the family.
There were lots of photos, family data sheets, and notes indicating that we were descended from four Mayflower passengers, and even a cryptic note that we were descended from King Edward I.
I decided to start tracing our ancestry in earnest, starting with Mayflower passenger George Soule. I subscribed to the requisite Ancestry.com account and contacted our state Mayflower historian to see what I needed to join. Through a lot of diligent research, ordering of vital records, and help from the state historian I received my Mayflower certificate on 11 March 2015.
As documented in my Mayflower application, John Anthony married Abigail Soule and bore Sarah Jane Anthony Aplington, my 4th GGM. As I was researching my George Soule lineage, I became fascinated with the Anthony family line. They’re ancestors of English origin were traced back to 1495. Sarah Jane’s Anthony’s 6th GGF was reportedly Dr. Francis Anthony who attended Cambridge and developed “Aurum Potabile” or potable gold as a universal cure for everything. It was also believed we were related to Susan B. Anthony. But I quickly noticed were some problems with this lineage.
- In looking through the Anthony lineage documents and Ancestry.com family trees, I saw over and over that Sarah Jane Anthony’s grandfather, Seth Anthony, was born in 1757. The same documents and Ancestry trees showed Seth was married to Charity Haskins in 1775. Seth would only have been 13 years old. There was some evidence that they did get married in 1775, so Seth’s date of birth must be wrong.
- I was not able to find any ‘direct’ evidence that John Anthony, my 5th GGF, was the son of Seth Anthony. It was Charity Haskins, Seth’s wife that connected our family to the Mayflower passenger Thomas Rogers and King Edward I. So it was important to confirm the relationship between John Anthony and his father, Seth Anthony.
Virtually all of the documentation I was finding had no citations or explanation for any this. I was concerned that much of the lineage may be incorrect and I wasn’t related to this branch of the Anthony family at all.
I dedicated the next 2 years of my research to answering these two questions:
- What was Seth’s date of birth? How could Seth Anthony, born 1757 have married Charity Haskins in 1775?
- Was my know ancestor, John Anthony, the son of Seth Anthony? There was no primary direct evidence or documents showing John to be the son of Seth.
As I looked back through my Aunt Jean’s research, I saw several references to a Mildred C. Mathews along with a copy of a letter from Mildred that stated, “I knew that Job Anthony lived at Taunton [Mass.] for many years; his son, Seth, grew up there, and married Charity Haskins, and their children, including our John Anthony, were born there. Seth and Charity moved their family to Delaware County, New York, 1786/88 (according to the tax records), which was shortly after the Revolutionary War.” And in the next paragraph she wrote: “In the meantime, the Soules, Jacob & Maribah [Abigail Soule’s parents] and their family had moved to Blenheim, Schoharie County, New York, and so John Anthony and Abigail Soule got together. Years later, about 1832, John and Abigail, moved to Broome County, the little town of Sanford—“. Mildred was a cousin of my Great Grandmother.
Interestingly enough, while I was researching my George Soule lineage, I found two newsletter articles from Mildred C. Mathews published on the Soule Kindred In America website written in the 1970s. The first article written in 1973 contained a notarized affidavit stating that there was “a notebook kept by Lillie Hall Davis Johnson. It contains much family information, and locks of hair of many members of the Aplington and Anthony families. This is known as “The Hair Book”, and is now in possession of Lillie’s daughter, Lena Davis Brown, of Almena, KS. Lillie was the granddaughter of Sara Jane Anthony Aplington.”
Thinking if I found The Hair Book it would answer my research questions, I wrote an article for the Soule Kindred Newsletter with an appeal for information on the whereabouts of this notebook.
Unfortunately, I was never able to locate The Hair book, but I did get a response to the article from an aging cousin, Bill Colwell, who knew Mildred C. Mathews. He seemed to think the notebook was sold at an auction after Lena Davis Brown passed away. But he did mention, Dian Nash, a niece of Mildred Mathews, who lived in Klamath Falls, OR, and that she may have some of Mildred’s documentation. I was able get enough information through Google to write Dian a letter asking for any information she had on the Anthony family. I was really hoping she might know the whereabouts of The Hair Book. In September of 2015 Dian answered my response via email and she confessed she knew nothing about The Hair Book, but she did indicate that she found a binder from her Aunt Mildred which was filled with information on the Anthony family line.
I decided at that time, I needed to learn more about how to do genealogical research. I signed up for the Boston University Genealogical Certification course in the fall of 2015. My research skills went through a complete transformation after successfully completing the course. I realized that it was more important than ever to find “evidence” to “prove” my Anthony lineage.
Over the next several months I went about looking for everything I could find online about the Seth Anthony Family and his father, Job Anthony. I subscribed to the many research websites, including Ancestry.com, NEHGS, New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, Geneanet, and the many free research sites available. In my research I was unable to find anything definitive or new until I found something on Geneanet, a French owned genealogy website. The Las Vegas, NV Branch of the Genealogical Library published something called The Hartford Times Genealogical Queries, Answers, and Note File in the 1980s. I found several 1987 queries about the Anthony family members, including Job and Seth Anthony. It seems like someone else was trying to answer my research questions. But the queries were only signed with the initials D.K.M.
At the same time I contacted numerous historical societies, genealogical societies, and libraries in NY and MA to see what I could find on Job, Seth, and John Anthony.
In June of 2016 I decided to visit Dian Nash in Klamath Falls, OR, to see what was in her binder from her aunt, Mildred Mathews. At first glance, it appeared to contain a lot of useful research and copies of many letters written by Anthony family members. It was an awful lot to copy, but Dian said she had no need for that information any longer and gave me the complete binder. I was surprised and very thankful!
I spent several weeks looking through Mildred’s binder. It contained a lot of information about Job and Seth Anthony, but nothing that would directly answer my research questions. Mildred’s research stopped in the mid 1970s and she died in 1982. But in the early 1970s there was some correspondence between Mildred and a New York Genealogist named David K. Martin, who had some theories about the birth date discrepancy for Seth Anthony.
At some point it dawned on me that David K. Martin may be the D.K.M that published the queries that I found archived on the Geneanet website. I was able to find an email for a David K. Martin in New York, and proceeded to try to connect with him. I had no idea if he was still living or not.
Fortunately, Mr. Martin responded and informed me that he still lived at the same address in West Chazy, NY, but hadn’t done any further research on the Anthony family since the 1970s. After some initial correspondence, he sent me several pages of his initial documentation showing his research, the reasoning behind conclusions, and most importantly, his sources.
Now I was getting somewhere. After completing the Boston University certification, I sent out a query to the alumni email group asking some questions about my research and sources. There was still no direct evidence to answer my research questions, but one alumnus suggested to start looking at the siblings of Seth and John Anthony. Another pointed to some research papers listed in the NEHGS archives written by John Gould Anthony in the late 1800s. These papers contained information about Job Anthony and his siblings. Another alumnus was kind enough to request those research papers at NEHGS and photograph copies for me.
Through all of my research, I was able to find several related 19th century manuscripts, census records, tax records, Quaker meeting records (the Anthony’s were Quakers), Civil War era letters from Anthony family members, cemetery records, court documents, probate records, deeds, church records, New England birth, marriage and death records, and township and county histories where Job, Seth, and John Anthony lived.
Now, using the knowledge I learned in The Boston University classes, I needed to put all of this information into a coherent format and try to answer my original research questions.
Here the results can be found for Job Anthony and Seth Anthony.
You will see that there is very little “direct” evidence to prove the conclusions to my original research questions, but there is enough substantial “indirect” evidence that I feel comfortable in my conclusions based on the five steps of the Genealogical Proof Standard:
- Conduct a reasonably exhaustive search
- Cite sources completely and accurately
- Correlate and assess the evidence
- Resolve any conflicts
- Arrive at a conclusion