I've been trying a number of different angles in search of my long lost Grays. I spent a couple of weeks just searching and reading everything I could find on any and all Samuel Grays .... and got absolutely nowhere.
Then I got in touch with a distant cousin from the Hurlburt line of the family. He had done a fair amount of digging into our tree and had some suggestions for me. He figured the route to go was via the Mortons. It's been said throughout that Moulton and Morton were interchangeable, and since Capt Jesse's wife was Sarah Moulton and most of the time people tended to marry within their own village, church or family it stands to reason that likely Jesse and Sarah grew up together.
I filled in name after name in the Morton section of the tree ... right back to Charles Morton. He was born in 1478 in Bawtry, England and is apparently my 14th great grandfather. But no trace of a male Gray in any of his descendants.
Charles Morton
(1478 - 1531)
is your 14th great grandfather
son of Charles Morton
son of Robert Morton
son of Anthony Morton
son of George Morton
son of George Morton
daughter of Ephraim Morton
daughter of Joanna Morton
son of Anne Gray
son of Edward Tinkham
son of Seth I Tinkham
son of Seth II Tinkham
daughter of Jacob Norton Tinkham
daughter of Peninnah Tinkham
daughter of Lottie Jestings
son of Helen Geneva Gray
Ok ... so if the connection isn't there, where is it? I decided to continue on this line of thinking but stick with the "Moulton" spelling of the name and see if I could find any more information on Sarah's immediate family. This is another elusive bunch. Her father is recorded as Wells Moulton jr, married to Kezia Goodwin. His father was Wells Moulton sr, married to Abigail Bean. Another difficult line to trace. First I figured that Wells was actually short for William, not a big stretch there but a little goes a long way when searching through names that don't line up.
But I'm nothing if not persistant. Kezia Goodwin isn't too much of a challenge, being more recent and from Nova Scotia it was pretty easy to draw a quick line through the Goodwins right back to 1550.
Abigail Bean was another story. I knew her father was Joshua Bean, but that was about it. Finally I hit gold ... I found documentation showing that Abigail Bean married Wills Moulton on 10 Jan 1726-7. Along with that I found her siblings, parents, grandparents ... 4 generations back so far. Still nothing further on Wells/Wills/William sr but I do have Wells jr's siblings now too, so that's a help.
As I've reached each generation I've been originally trying to just focus on gathering as much info as I could on my direct ancestors with intent to fill in siblings and extra information later. The problem with that is, as I'd already discovered in other branches, many times we have cousins marrying cousins, or closer. Now I've decided it'll be much easier on me in the long run to just fill in as many details about each branch as I can find as I go along ... just in case I need to double back to link up other names.
The thing with that is as I fill in siblings and their spouses I end up reading journals and wills and other historical comments on people that are so distantly related to me that it's crazy. But besides crazy it's also so incredible interesting ... very cool how one community can branch out into so many different families. I've found some names that I didn't expect ... like Rebecca Nurse. As an example of a relative of a relative of a relative she is the mother-in-law of the sister-in-law of my 7th great grand uncle. Try and wrap your head around that one! Along with her is John Proctor, another similar type of distant relative.
So while I am very much enjoying all this reading and discovering my roots, I'm not a whole lot closer to figuring out where Jesse came from.
The search continues ......
