Jamestown & Colonial Virginia

Forget the Mayflower and Plymouth, Massachussetts this Thanksgiving. Jamestown, Virginia was the first permanent English settlement in North America.

English settlers founded Jamestown and the colony of Virginia in 1607. Around 7,000 people would arrive in Virginia between 1607 and 1625.

Find your earliest Virginian ancestors with these books in the Genealogy & Local History Room.

Adventurers of Purse and Person, Virginia, 1607-1624/5
Genealogies of the earliest settlers in Viriginia through at least three generations.

Jamestowne Ancestors, 1607-1699: Commemoration of the 400th Landing at James Towne, 1607-2007
A list of all residents of Jamestowne Island from 1607-1699. The lists include information the time period the person resided in Virginia and their place of origin.

Jamestown People to 1800: Landowners, Public Officials, Minorities, and Native Leaders
Provides a thorough history of Jamestown and colonial Virginia. Includes in-depth biographies of  colonists and members of the native populations living in and around Jamestown.

Virginia Immigrants and Adventurers, 1607-1635: A Biographical Dictionary
Short biographies of the earliest prominent Virginian settlers.

Look for even more colonial Virginian resources in the Genealogy Room including vital records and local histories.

2020 Mayflower

American Ancestors just unveiled their new 2020 Mayflower website to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the 1620 Mayflower voyage.

The website includes biographies of Mayflower passengers, information on Mayflower descendants, and resources for proving your lineage. More features and material will be added to the site periodically.

Mayflower Descendants

Do you have Mayflower ancestors? The General Society of Mayflower Descendants can help you find them. The Society was founded in 1897 and strives to publish authoritative genealogical information about the Pilgrims and their descendants.

The Genealogy & Local History Room contains a few publications from the Society of Mayflower Descendants including the Society of Mayflower Descendants in the State of Illinois. We have three editions in the Lundberg Collection: 1925, 1947, and 1962.

These volumes list members of the Society living in Illinois and includes their genealogies back to passengers on the Mayflower.

The books also include histories of the pilgrims and information about the Illinois chapter of the Society of Mayflower Descendants.

Searching for early American colonists

During the Thanksgiving holiday season, we often think about the first colonists in America.

Searching for your early colonial ancestors can be tough though. There are few online resources or digitized records for colonial genealogy research but here are a few books from our collection that can help with your search:

• The Original Lists of Persons of Quality, 1600-1700 by John Camden Hotten (online resource)
• Passenger and Immigration Lists Bibliography, 1538-1900 by William P. Filby 
• A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England, Showing Three Generations of Those Who Came Before May 1692, on the Basis of Farmer’s Register by James Savage 
• New England Marriages Prior to 1700 by Clarence Almon Torrey
• Dutch Colonists in the Americas, 1615-1815 by David Dobson
• A List of Emigrants from England to America, 1718-1759 by Jack Kaminkow

These are only a few resources in our collection. We have early vital records, passenger lists, and local histories for specific colonies too. We also have records on Mayflower and Jamestown ancestors.

And don't forget to look in the Lundberg periodical collection. Many early records and town histories are transcribed by local historical and genealogical societies and published in their journals and newsletters.

Find Your 17th Century New England Ancestor With NEHGS

Colonial American research can be really tough but the New England Historic Genealogy Society has a lot of great resources on their site that can help. In particular, they have a nice collection of online seminars that can help you get started with your New England or colonial research.

The above video is a recording from an NEHGS meeting earlier this month. David Dearborn discusses key reference works, records, and databases that can help with finding your 17th century New England ancestors.

Pilgrim Ancestry

According to the New England Historic Genealogical Society, about twenty to thirty million people are descended from the Mayflower pilgrims. One hundred and two pilgrims sailed to the New World and arrived near Cape Cod, Massachusetts in November 1620. Almost half of them died that first winter and still millions can claim ancestry from these original fifty pilgrims!

If you are interested in discovering your Mayflower ancestors, you can first search through the surnames of Mayflower passengers. The following are the eligible names compiled by the General Society of Mayflower Descendants.

John Alden	Francis Cooke	Priscilla Mullins
Bartholomew Allerton	John Cooke	William Mullins
Isaac Allerton	Edward Doty	Degory Priest
Mary (Norris) Allerton	Francis Eaton	Joseph Rogers
Mary Allerton	Samuel Eaton	Thomas Rogers
Remember Allerton	Sarah Eaton	Henry Samson
Elinor Billington	Moses Fletcher	George Soule
Francis Billington	Edward Fuller	Myles Standish
John Billington	Mrs. Edward Fuller	Elizabeth Tilley
William Bradford	Samuel Fuller	John Tilley
Love Brewster	Samuel Fuller (Son of Edward)	Joan (Hurst) Tilley
Mary Brewster	Constance Hopkins	Richard Warren
William Brewster	Elizabeth (Fisher) Hopkins	Peregrine White
Peter Browne	Giles Hopkins	Resolved White
James Chilton	Stephen Hopkins	Susanna White
Mrs. James Chiltonn	John Howland	William White
Mary Chilton	Richard More	Edward Winslow

If you think one of these pilgrims might be an ancestor, you can search to see if your family has been included in a lineage book. The General Society of Mayflower Descendants has published the three volume work Mayflower Descendants Through Five Generations which you can use in the Genealogy & Local History Room.

Other Mayflower-related resources the library owns includes:

Mayflower Marriages
Mayflower Increasings
The English Ancestry and Homes of the Pilgrim Fathers
Families Directly Descended From All the Royal Families in Europe and Mayflower Descendants 

Visit the General Society of Mayflower Descendants for information on joining the Mayflower Society and visit the Illinois' chapter for information on local Mayflower-related events.

New genealogy book: "Transatlantic Voyages, 1600-1699"

This is a new genealogy book at the Glenview Public Library:

R929.34 DOB GENEALOGY - Transatlantic voyages 1600-1699.2nd ed., by David Dobson. Clearfield, 2008.

(Annotation from www.genealogical .com)
"Virtually no official European passenger records exist for the 17th century. Fortunately, scholars like Peter Wilson Coldham have been able to reconstruct English passenger lists from shipping records in various British archives and libraries. Although the nations of northwestern Europe established shipping links with North America and the West Indies as early as the 1600s, records of those voyages are fragmented and scattered throughout archives on both sides of the Atlantic.
The new book by colonial immigration authority David Dobson brings together evidence of voyages from Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and the Channel Islands to North America and the West Indies during the 17th century. Using primary and secondary sources in Europe and America, Mr. Dobson has compiled evidence of voyages between the aforementioned countries and America--in either direction--from 1600 through 1699. We know that many of the vessels cited were in fact the ones taken by early European settlers of colonial America. The ports of origin in Europe identified by the compiler may well indicate the localities whence the first emigrants originated and, therefore, places where genealogical research may be conducted. The record entries are arranged alphabetically and give the name of the ship and its captain, ports of embarkation and/or arrival, dates, the source of the information, and a few high seas anecdotes.

Since the publication of the first edition of Transatlantic Voyages in 2004, Mr. Dobson has uncovered many more voyages and vessels. This expanded edition lists nearly 1,400 transatlantic voyages--20% more than in the original."