(Please note that the email address contains an underscore following the first letter. It is not obvious on the screen here.) —> —> WARNING: MISINFORMATION ABOUT OUR EARLY ANCESTORS is flying around the internet. It consists of inaccurate estimates, outright guesses and — worst of all — deliberate fabrications. Genealogy for the 90's makes it easy to adopt and spread other people's information about our immigrant ancestors. While no serious researcher wants to pass off undocumented data for fact, the popularity of collecting long pedigrees on the internet encourages everyone to do so. We need to be wary. We can protect our pedigrees from a great deal of outrageous misinformation just by remembering a few facts about the first two English settlements in the New World: — — ROANOKE ISLAND, 1584-1590. It was not a permanent settlement. No American families can legitimately trace their lineage to the English people left on ROANOKE ISLAND; those people all died there or disappeared. — — JAMESTOWN, founded in 1607. It was the first permanent English settlement in North America. Very few Americans can trace their lineage to the colonists along the James River in Virginia prior to 1625. A Pickerell fantasy illustrates the problem. It claims that a John Pickerell and his family came to Roanoke Island in 1590 and traveled into the area of today's Brunswick, Virginia. This is impossible. It did not happen. Please use the link below to refer to my report, JOHN PICKERELL OF NORFOLK COUNTY, ENGLAND. (Note: when that report is on the screen, clicking "Last Page" will access the End Notes. They contain important documentation.)
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