Our Family History

Welcome to our genealogy site!

We're so pleased you dropped in to visit our site. We've worked for years on this family and its connections to our ancestors. These trees encompass Royal, Presidential, Quaker, Native American, Mayflower and Jamestown lineages all the way back to the beginning of written history. The 9000+ biographies under the notes sections are the treasures of this site. The human genome project has determined that we are all related to each other by the year 1200. It is my sincere hope that you find out how we are cousins. Enjoy.

The Chosen

This is the caption for your image

We are the chosen. In each family there is one who seems called to find the ancestors. To put flesh on their bones and make them live again. To tell the family story and to feel that somehow they know and approve. Doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts but, instead, breathing life into all who have gone before. We are the story tellers of the tribe. All tribes have one. We have been called, as it were, by our genes. Those who have gone before cry out to us: Tell our story. So, we do. In finding them, we somehow find ourselves. How many graves have I stood before now and cried? I have lost count. How many times have I told the ancestors, "You have a wonderful family; you would be proud of us.". How many times have I walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me? I cannot say. It goes beyond just documenting facts. It goes to who I am, and why I do the things I do.

Discover Our Family

Pocahontas

Her story from her tribes point of view, is very different than the Disney version of her life. Both accounts agree that she was part of an entourage that provided food to help save the fledgling Jamestown in their first year of survival. According to "The True Story of Pocahontas", she was sent by her father to show that the natives came in peace and wished to be friends. She was repaid by being kidnaped by the British, only to be converted to Christianity, taken to England to drum up monetary support for the Jamestown Colony, married to John Rolfe, died and buried in England at the mere age of 21. The English ignored the fact that she had a marriage to an Indian husband by whom she had 2 small children at the time of her entrapment by them. Her daughter, Ka-Ochee, was our direct ancestor.

Stephen Hopkins

Stephan was the only person on the Mayflower who had also already been in Jamestown. The original ship he was on going to Jamestown, was stranded on an island they named "Bermuda" after a great storm. The stranded passengers built 2 long boats by 1610 and pioneered them to Jamestown. Amazing! Read more about him here to find out why he returned to England and then came again on the Mayflower!

Marmaduke Coate

He was the ancestor whose story got me interested in family tree research when I was about 9 years old. His best friend when he was little was a girl named Mary Jane Coppock. She was captured by Indians. When he was 18, he had the bravery to ride from tribe to tribe until he found her. He bought her for his horse, bridle, and saddle. He then married her at what was thought to be an Indian ceremony. They are my great, great grandparents.

Charity Wright Cook

Charity was a Quaker Minister. She would ride on horseback all over our country before, during, and after our Revolutionary War ministering to the women. She'd come home long enough to be with her family for about a year, have another child, and then leave her husband and family to continue raising their 11 children total to continue her work as a minister. Her husband had to be a liberated man to support her as he did.

Peter Lester

He is one of a couple of our immigrant ancestors who came with William Penn in 1682 and built his home in what became Chester, PA. Peter is the ancestor of many American Presidents. If he is your ancestor also, you are cousins with many of our Presidents too. Find out which Presidents by following his descendant lines.

Ann Alcock Foster

She was accused of being a witch in the Salem Witch trial hysteria in the late 1600's. Ann was one of the first. Her daughters were accused of that as well, one of whom we descend from. The latest theory I've heard is that the rye they grew had a fungus that caused hallucinations causing this great fear that the devil was amongst them.

Remember Allerton

Every Thanksgiving we now honor Remember Allerton and her family who came on the Mayflower. She was but five when traversing the ocean. Remember would have been six at the first Thanksgiving. As you probably know, half of the persons on the Mayflower died in the first winter. Her mother was amongst them. Her father, Isaac was the assistant to the first governor of their fledgling settlement from 1621-1624.

Ancestor's Name

Your text about the above ancestor, place or reference goes here.

The Bones of My Bone

The bones here are bones of my bone and flesh of my flesh. It goes to doing something about it. It goes to pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish. How they contributed to what we are today. It goes to respecting their hardships and losses, their never giving in or giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their family. It goes to deep pride that the fathers fought and some died to make and keep us a nation. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us. It is of equal pride and love that our mothers struggled to give us birth, without them we could not exist, and so we love each one, as far back as we can reach. That we might be born who we are. That we might remember them. So we do. With love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence, because we are they and they are the sum of who we are. So, as a scribe called, I tell the story of my family. It is up to that one called in the next generation to answer the call and take my place in the long line of family storytellers. That is why I do my family genealogy, and that is what calls those young and old to step up and restore the memory or greet those who we had never known before. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were doing it for us. It is of equal pride and love that our mothers struggled to give us birth, without them we could not exist, and so we love each one, as far back as we can reach. That we might be born who we are. That we might remember them. So we do. With love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence, because we are they and they are the sum of who we are. So, as a scribe called, I tell the story of my family. It is up to that one called in the next generation to answer the call and take my place in the long line of family storytellers. That is why I do my family genealogy, and that is what calls those young and old to step up and restore the memory or greet those who we had never known before. by Della M. Cummings Wright; Rewritten by her granddaughter Dell Jo Ann McGinnis Johnson; Edited and Reworded by Tom Dunn, 1943.

Mother's Side