|
,
EDUCATED GUESSES
Descendants of Thomas Place of Dorchester, Mass.
FOREWORD
It is fitting that we should know next to nothing about Thomas, the patriarch of this family of families, and that the connections to his ancestors and children should be based on educated guesses. Were it not for educated guesses, based on circumstantial evidence, the PLACE FAMILY would consist of a couple hundred fragments, few of which would cover more than four generations, with fewer still reaching back beyond the 1850 Federal Census.
Yes! We realize that genealogists insist on documentation. We do not consider ourselves to be one. We do not consider the current document to be either a PLACE FAMILY GENEALOGY or a PLACE FAMILY HISTORY, although it is certainly closer to being the latter than to the former. We know we have not identified all of the children of Thomas and Dinah Place; hence, we have omitted the word, “The” from the subtitle.
This is clearly a work in progress. There are enough educated guesses herein to challenge the editor and others for decades to come. It is only fair to point out, however, that the editor’s educated guesses have lead more serious researchers to documentation that proved his points and in many instances proved earlier researchers – and accepted sources -- to have been wrong.
While know next to nothing about Thomas, we know even less about his children. Still, we feel we can build a case that would stand up in court that we have not only identified Thomas Place of Cambridge and Dorchester, Massachusetts Bay Colony, as the Thomas Place of Drypool and Sculcoates(*), Yorkshire, England, but that we have identified his ancestry with reasonable certainty and three of his children in America beyond a shadow of a doubt.
THOMAS PLACE
There would be little point in developing a family tree or a record of his descendants for an individual unless and until the identity of that individual has been established. Let us, therefore begin by examining such clues as we have managed to gather regarding Thomas.
Thomas Place married Dyonis / Dinah Lyllewhite in Drypool, Yorkshire, England, on 29 May 1614. Thomas had buried his first wife, Emmett, on 24 April 1614, and her newborn daughter, Frances, on April 29. Frances (recorded as Francis) was christened on April 13th. Thomas and Emmett had two known older children – Susannah (6), christened at Drypool on 28 August, 1608, and Elsabeth (4), christened at Drypool on 3 Feb 1610. We believe that a son, John (2), was born in 1612 – but not in Drypool. We believe that Enoch Place of Dorchester and Kingstown, Rhode Island, born around 1631, was also a son of Thomas and Dyonis/Dinah, even though there is no record of his christening at Drypool. (
*) The last record of Thomas in Yorkshire is that of the burial of Sarah, daughter of Thomas, in Sculcoates, Yorkshire, in 1630 (the record notes “bapt. 1627, but does not say where) and a seond daughter of the same name in November, 1634. This suggests that this Thomas may have been a first child of the subject Thomas, born abt 1606. It is important to note that several members of the Lillywhite family were recorded at Sculcoates in this period.
This is important because the date of Thomas' migration is not known. He could have been in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as early as 1630. On the other hand, if he had been in Sculcoates in November, 1634, he could not have left England before the spring of 1635.
|
