Re: Depuy Family Research Project

Hell, Mr Wood:

I see in your signature that you have Skinner, Kenney/Kinne, Lord, and Nickerson in your tree. I suspect Nickerson is there due to Hattie/Harriet Nickerson.

I'm sorry to tell you, but Hattie/Harriet Nickerson is a phantom. No number of proliferated Ancestry.com member trees, online family webpages, ged.coms, and erroneous IGI entries will breath life into her. Genealogy isn't about consensus.

This post will give you an idea why it's not possible for her to have existed. Carefully evaluate the dates. Her "parents" did exist, but they didn't marry until after Hattie was supposedly born and didn't emigrate until well after that fictional birth date. 1620 is terribly early for ANY European child to be born in CT. There's the occasional tree that sports varying info (born in MA, born in 1627, etc.), but the basic fact remains that Ann Busby and William Nickerson never had such a child.

"Bio of WILLIAM-1 NICKERSON (d 1690) MASS"
http://genforum.genealogy.com/cgi-bin/pageload.cgi?lord::nickerson::648.htmlhttp://genforum.genealogy.com/cgi-bin/pageload.cgi?lord::nickerson::648.html

* There are multiple threads in the Nickerson forum and in the Lord forum that address this issue.

* If you don't believe those threads, read the article in the "Nutmegger":

"Connecticut Nutmegger",
v.32 no.2 Sept.1999, p.189
"The Fictional Hattie (Nickerson) Lord".

* If you don't believe a scholarly journal, then call the Nickerson Family Association in Chatham, MA on Cape Cod. It is a highly organized group that emphasizes scholarship in their research. They verified to me that they know of no Hattie/Harriet Nickerson in North America during the 17th Century. There are several who crop up in the 19th Century, but they have no connection to the Lord family.

I absolutely LOVE Cape Cod and would be thrilled to descend from Nickerson-Busbys, but alas, it's not so.

William Lord was obviously married to 2 women, but as far as I know, the identity of the first remains unknown.