Two Lake Sisters

When you first begin doing genealogy research, the first thing you try to do is document your direct ancestors to the best of your ability or resources.  It isn't until later that you start to look a little more closely at the family ties that begin to emerge.

The Gallup genealogy is an extremely well researched and documented family line.  I think the first genealogy of the family was published in 1896.  I think that the majority of documented descendants of the Gallup family descend through John Gallup and Hannah Lake.  Hannah Lake was born about 3 July 1621 in North Benfleet, Essex, England and died aft 28 Feb 1680 in Ipswich, Essex Co., MA.  She was the daughter of John Lake and Mary/Margaret Reade.  She married John Gallup in 1642.  I am not sure when she immigrated from England.  I have seen the date of 1644 for her father's arrival in New England, but looking at the marriage date of Hannah, I suspect that it must be a bit sooner, because Hannah's oldest child was born in 1644 at the earliest.  There is also the date of 1635 that is on her gravestone, which I believe is probably closer to the truth...at least it was most likely before 1640.

Hannah married John Gallup in 1642 at the age of 21.  They very quickly started their family.  Their children were:

• Hannah Gallup b. 14 Sep 1644 in Boston, MA d. 20 Jan 1724 Norwich, CT m. Stephen Gifford
• John Gallup III b. Sept 1646 Boston, MA d. 14 Apr 1735 Stonington, CT m. Elizabeth Harris
• Esther Gallup b. 24 Mar 1652 New London, CT d. 30 Sep 1717 Taunton, MA m. Henry Hodges
• Benadam Gallup b. Dec 1655 Stonington, CT d. 2 Aug 1727 Stonington, CT m. Esther Prentice
• Christobel Gallup b. 1657 Stonington, CT d. 17 Sept 1754 Plainfield, CT m. Peter Crary
• William Gallup b. 18 Apr 1658 Stonington, CT d. 15 May 1731 Stonington, CT m. Sarah Chesebrough
• Samuel Gallup b. 1659 Stonington, CT d. bef 1687 m. Sarah Chesebrough
• Elizabeth Gallup b. 8 Mar 1662 Stonington, CT d. aft 1726 Westerly, RI m. Henry Stephens
• Mary Gallup b. abt 1664 Stonington, CT d. 1672-1687 Saybrook, CT m. John Cole
• Margaret Gallup b. 1668 Stonington, CT d. 1689 Suffolk, MA m. Joseph Culver

Hannah Lake lost her husband at the Great Swamp Fight at Narragansett Fort, South Kingston, RI on 19 Dec 1675 during King Philip's War and he is buried in a mass grave at the Fort.  There are also many other notables of New England families that died in the battle.  There were about 70 men who were killed including John Gallup as well as 300 or so of the Narraganeett tribe. Hannah is thought to have died on 28 Feb 1680 and she is buried at Whitehall Cemetery in Mystic, New London Co., CT.

Martha Lake was born about 20 Jul 1627 in North Benfleet, Essex, England.  I use the "abt" for many of the births that I see for these old families because most of the dates that we have are not of the actual birth but rather their baptismal which we is what we have as a written record.  Martha probably came over with her parents around 1635-1640.  Martha married Thomas Harris on 15 Nov 1647.  Thomas Harris was the son of Thomas Harris and Elizabeth Hills and probably came over with his parents in 1631 from England.  He was born on 25 Apr 1618 in Hatherup, Gloucester, England and died on 2 Aug 1687 in Ipswich, Essex Co., MA.  His occupation is listed as Ferryman.

I don't have as much on this family but here is the list of children that I have:

• John Harris b. 7 Jan 1653 Ipswich, MA d. 21 Nov 1732 Ipswich, MA m. Grace Searle
• Elizabeth Harris b. 8 Feb 1654 Ipswich, MA d. 1 Feb 1734 CT m. John Gallup III
• Margaret Harris b. 6 Aug 1657 Ipswich, MA d. 18 May 1750 Ipswich m. John Staniford
• Mary Harris b. 31 Jan 1660 Ipswich, MA d. bef 1696
• Ebenezer Harris b. 1663 Ipswich, MA d. 14 Apr 1751 Plainfield, CT m. Rebecca Clarke m. Christobel Crary (Christobel was the daughter of the above Christobel Gallup and Peter Crary)
• William Harris b. 12 Dec 1664 Ipswich, MA d. 31 Dec 1751 m. Sarah Newman

Martha & Hannah Lake are both my 9th great grandmothers.  I descend through Hannah's children John Gallup III and Benadam Gallup and through Martha's daughter, Elizabeth Harris.  I haven't untangled as much of the Harris line as I have the Gallup line, but I wouldn't be surprised that there might be more genealogical connections.

Now if you do a little research into Hannah and Martha's ancestry...there is a certainly a surprise or two.  If it is correct, their line includes Kings of France, England and Germany going back to at least Charlemagne. Personally, I think anytime you try to go to much past 1600, you run into a lot of trouble with proof.  

Maternal Lines - Gallup

When I first started researching my family history seriously…one of the families that really interested me was the Gallup family.  My great grandfather was the son of Edith Gallup and Orlando Gage.  Edith herself was a bit of an enigma herself.  When she married Orlando Gage, she was 28 years old – probably considered by most as an old maid schoolteacher.  By the time she married Orlando, she was pretty much alone in NY as most of her family had traveled west to Nebraska.  The story I always heard was that she was afraid of the Indians.  I think that marrying a widower with four children might have been a little scarier than the Indians in Nebraska.

I knew that Edith was the daughter of Silas Gallup and Phebe Montanye – but I didn’t know much about the family beyond that.  As my research began before the internet was a popular source of material, my only real place to research was my local library.  I have to admit that the research pickings are pretty slim here in Lewiston, ID and I had no access to a large genealogy library anywhere in the immediate vicinity.  So, I started looking through the books available and found some Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) books that had numerous entries about the Gallup family.  Since I really didn’t know much beyond Edith’s parents – it was a lot of information with little connection to what I currently knew.  I remember that it wasn’t too long after that when I had the chance to talk with my great uncle about the family.  He simply looked at me and asked me why I hadn’t looked at the Gallup Genealogy.  He got me his copy of the Gallup genealogy and a whole new world opened up.

This particular copy of the Gallup Genealogy was published in 1966 and I must say that this was the first professionally printed genealogy that I had seen.  My great grandfather had a copy of a Gage genealogy that I had poured over and it was likely a self-published genealogy judging by the paper and typestyle.  At the time – I was terribly naïve and inexperienced.  I had no idea that there had been researched, documented and published genealogies about several different families that had been professional published since before the start of the 20^th century.  The Gallup Association had published its first genealogy in 1896.  The one that I had in my hand had been published in 1966 and I was later to learn that another Gallup genealogy had been published in 1987.  So, I had in my hands a genealogy that answered my questions about my Gallup family ancestry.  I must say that I was glad to have a computer program to record the generations back…because there were a few too many cousins who married each other. 

So…here is my family line:

• John Gallop m. Christobel Bruschett
• John Gallup m. Hannah Lake
• John Gallup (III) m. Elizabeth Harris & Benadam Gallup m. Esther Prentice
• Nathaniel Gallup m. Margaret Gallup  & Benadam Gallup Jr m. Eunice Cobb
• Nathaniel Gallup m. Hannah Gore & Nathan Gallup m. Sarah Giddings
• Silas Gallup m. Sarah Gallup
• Ebenezer Gallup m. Susan Harden
• Silas Gallup m. Phoebe Montanye
• Edith Gallup m. Orlando Gage
• Ora Silas Gage m. Florence Christine Shawver
• Helen Marian Gage m. Frank Stewart Johnson

 I have been fascinated with the maternal lines in my family.  You are fortunate while doing genealogy to be able to find information on these lines.  Under many circumstances, the women’s maiden names are not recorded.  Sometimes you can make a guess on the surname because many times a son will have the first or middle name of the mother’s family.  The Gallup family was the first maternal family line that I researched…and I learned a great deal genealogy by exploring that book.  During the next six weeks, I spent hours upon hours every day entering the data into my genealogy program.  At the time, I was unemployed so I had lots of time.  By the time I had finished – I had entered 13,000 names into my database.  I learned several things of importance in genealogical research.

• Families tend to intermarry – there will be multiple families that you will have to pay attention to get the full picture.
• Pay attention to the siblings of your ancestor and their families – they are likely to pop up again in your research.
• There is always more to learn and there is always more to the story.
• Sometimes multiple children will have the same names in a family.  If a young child dies, very often the next child will have the same name. 
• Pay attention to the female lineages – you never know when one of them might lead you to a Mayflower ancestor (Eunice Cobb)

Not everyone is going to be as fortunate to find a family genealogy.  Even if you do, it is important to try to find the supporting information to see if you as a researcher come to the same conclusion.  When I first started trying to find out something about Edith Gallup – I never imagined that her family would be so complicated and so interesting.  I am always finding new stuff to look at and marvel at in this large and impressive family.

Presidential Trivia

One of my curious activities a few years ago was writing an article for the Pennington Pedigrees on Presidential genealogy.  I have to say that it was a fun article for me to write.  If you are interested in Presidential genealogy, the first and best resource that you should look at is the work of Gary Boyd Roberts.    I believe that he is the expert on all things genealogy related to our Presidents.

Here are some interesting facts to consider…there are two presidents who share more lines in common than any other with 18 lines.  It is no surprise that it is George Herbert Walker Bush and his son George W. Bush.  They probably share genealogy with a lot of people.  I share several ancestors with the two of them including: John Gallup & Hannah Lake, John Howland & Elizabeth Tilley, Thomas Pope and Sarah Jenney.  When you throw Barbara Pierce Bush into the mix, I also share the ancestors of Fernando Thayer and Huldah Hayward. 

Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Gerald R. Ford share 17 ancestral lines in common.   I share a common line of Edmund Rice and Thomasine Frost with Calvin Coolidge.  It is no surprise that many share lines with Franklin Delano Roosevelt – I have the following: John Howland & Elizabeth Tilley.  I also share a line with Gerald R. Ford (aka Leslie Lynch King) of William Wilbore and Martha Holmes.

I could go on with several Presidents and common ancestral lines…but you will find if you have New England ancestry then you probably can connect to a President of the United States. Also of interest is that the fact that there are several who share no common lines with any other President.  These Presidents include:

• Thomas Jefferson
• James Monroe
• Andrew Jackson
• James K. Polk 
• James Buchanan
• Andrew Johnson
• Chester Arthur
• William McKinley
• Woodrow Wilson
• Dwight David Eisenhower
• John Fitzgerald Kennedy
• Ronald Reagan
• William Jefferson Clinton

You might find it interesting that our current President shares ancestral lines with seven other Presidents including:  James Madison, Harry Truman, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and both George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush.

Our Presidents have come from a lot of backgrounds and families both wealthy and poor.  They have been lawyers, Police Commissioners, Generals, tailors, and farmers.  You may like some better than others – but they are an interesting lot to look at.  You might find it curious that President Obama is not the first President to have his nation of birth questioned.  Chester Arthur was thought by some to have been born in Canada and not the United States.  Chester Arthur’s father owned a farm 15 miles across the border and some speculated that he was not a natural born citizen.  Chester Arthur went so far as to change his birth year to 1830, since his father was well established in Vermont at that time.  

It is also interesting to note that when Grover Cleveland first became President, he was bachelor.  He married a younger woman named Frances Folsom who was 21 years old and the youngest first lady we have ever had.  They had five children and four lived to be quite old, the last one died in 1995.   We know of the two sets of fathers and sons (Adams & Bushs) but there was also a grandfather and grandson – Benjamin Harrison was the grandson of William Henry Harrison.  

There was also one President who was administered the oath of office by his own father in a Vermont farmhouse.  Calvin Coolidge’s father was the local notary public and the oath was done early in the morning after hearing of Warren G. Harding’s death.  Everyone knows that John Fitzgerald Kennedy is buried at Arlington Cemetery, but did you know that William Howard Taft was as well.  Taft was also the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court after his term as President and he himself administered the oath of office to two Presidents.

So as many of us enjoy a day off on President’s day – you might look up one or two on your computer and learn something about them.  You might be surprised at what you find!