Genealogical Fate: Shadrach Hapgood and Wolstone Brockway

I know there are genealogists who come from families that have had genealogists already.  Great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. who did some of this work in the past.  Not me.  I've been pondering that and why I seem to descend from families that no one has ever researched.  Maybe most genealogists feel this, but I seem to have these families that have existed in New England for almost four hundred years, that no one has bothered to give a good write-up for.  Certainly no family of mine in the 18th century has that.  Occasionally, there are 17th century families that have wonderful write-ups for which I am, indeed, grateful.  Two come to mind:  My Brockways and Hapgoods were thoroughly researched and resolved by Dean Crawford Smith and Melinde Lutz Sanborn in their six volume set of Dean's ancestry.  Those families were similar to the ones I tend to research.  What was in print was wrong and there were these clues to go on and they followed them.  In those two examples they even found the English origins of those families.  

See:

•  "Dorothy (--), the key In Our Search For Shadrack Hapgood" by Dean Crawford Smith and Paul C. Reed, NEHGR 150 (1996):141-156.
• "The Ancestry of Eva Belle Kempton 1878-1908: Part I, The Ancestry of Warren Francis Kempton 1817-1879" by Dean Crawford Smith (Boston, NEHGS, 1996). 
• "William and Elizabeth (Brockway) Harris of Lyme and Colchester, Connecticut" by Gale Ion Harris TAG 70 (1995):233-8.
• "The Ancestry of Emily Jane Angell 1844-1910" by Dean Crawford Smith and Melinde Lutz Sanborn (Boston, NEHGS, 1992).
• "William and Mary Briggs of Boston and the Connecticut Valley" by Gale Ion Harris NEHGR 151 (1997):87-101.
• “Wolston Brockway of Lyme, CT, with Further Analysis of His Associations” by Gale Ion Harris NEHGR 162 (2008):37-46, 140-48.

Comments

[Dave Morehouse, CG]

Martin, this my experience as well. I lose several lines during the genealogical "Dark Age" before the Civil War, mostly involving poor families on the move who were more interested in surviving than preserving family history.

I envy those who are descended from genealogists. On the other hand, think of the fun we have working out problems rather than having the solutions handed to us!

Best holiday wishes,

Dave