Genesis of the Project
The idea of the Great Migration Study Project came to me in 1976. That year was, of course, the bicentennial year, and genealogy was about to experience a boom as a result of the many bicentennial activities and the phenomenon of Alex Haley’s Roots.
I had been involved in genealogy for about three years and was specializing in colonial New England research. Having spent the previous decade in an academic environment, I was appalled to find the lack of up-to-date bibliographic and other reference works in genealogy that I had been accustomed to finding. The colonial New England genealogist first went to the Genealogical Dictionary of New England by James Savage. Savage was one of the first skilled, analytic genealogists, but his four-volume set was published during the Civil War and does not reflect more than a century of subsequent research. Other more specialized reference works were also showing their age, such as Austin’s Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island, Noyes, Libby, and Davis’s Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire, and the various works of Charles E. Banks, especially Planters of the Commonwealth and the Topographical Dictionary.
Although much new research appeared in book form (mostly as genealogies devoted to the male-line descendants of one immigrant, or as volumes that trace all ancestral lines of a chosen individual), the most important new discoveries were scattered through the pages of a handful of the most respected journals, such as the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, The American Genealogist, and the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record. Until very recently, there had been few comprehensive indexes and other finding aids to help the researcher find his or her way through this mass of published material.
I concluded that there was a profound need for a comprehensive literature search—a survey of early New England families research that has been carried out over the last century and a half. The end result would be a series of sketches—one per immigrant—that would set forth the current status of research on the family. The researcher would be saved the effort of digging through hundreds of references to find out what was already known, and would be saved the wastefulness and embarrassment of duplicating work.
Although the sketch would take its initial form from published secondary materials, every statement would be verified, as much as possible, from original sources. This would frequently require additional research to adjudicate discrepancies among two or more existing secondary sources. The sketch would therefore be supported by a wide and complete range of citations to both primary and secondary sources.
The basic idea rattled around in my brain for more than a decade, but it wasn’t until the late 1980s that I felt confident enough to seek out a sponsor for the project. In the spring of 1988, I drafted a prospectus and presented it to Ralph Crandall, executive director of the New England Historic Genealogical Society. I expected to wait six months or more for the Society to decide whether to support my proposal. To my surprise, Ralph contacted me within a month and asked me when I could get to work. The NEHGS board, especially Dean Crawford Smith and Bill Fowler, was highly supportive and wanted the project to begin as soon as possible. Work on the Great Migration Study Project officially began on 15 November 1988. It was designed to be a self-supporting project, meeting all expenses from book and newsletter sales and from donations directed to the Project.
Structure of a Sketch
After gaining a sponsor, the next step was to design a format for the individual sketches. After some experimentation, the information was organized into five sections. The first section was a relatively brief group of entries that gave the basic migration data for the immigrant: origin (last known residence in England or elsewhere in Europe), migration (date of first arrival), first residence (in New England), removes (migrations within New England), and return trips (temporary or permanent return visits to England; also migration to other colonies).
The next section, frequently the longest, was a group of biographic items: occupation, church membership, freemanship, education (including any indications of literacy), offices (civil and military), and estate (mostly land transactions, tax assessments, and probate proceedings).
Next came the strictly genealogical section of the sketch: birth (frequently an estimated year of birth based on various life events), death, marriage, children (including first marriage, death, or related information for those who did not marry), and associations (known relations by blood or marriage to other immigrants, or clues to such relationships).
The fourth section, "Comments," could be brief and simple or lengthy and complicated. This section was a place to provide data that did not fit into any of the above categories. It was also the repository of detailed argumentation needed to prove, for example, the identity of a spouse or an immigrant’s children. There may also have been a need to expend some verbiage in resolving, or attempting to resolve, discrepancies in the original records or in the secondary accounts of the immigrant.
Finally, a bibliographic note provided an opportunity to list the most important published treatments of the immigrant and his or her family, and to offer a thumbnail evaluation of each of the sources.
The Great Migration Newsletter
In addition to the preparation of sketches which would eventually be gathered into a series of books, a second publication began in 1990: the Great Migration Newsletter. The newsletter was intended to carry out three missions: to convey information on the Great Migration and the Great Migration Study Project; to build a constituency for the Project; and to generate revenue to support the Project. The newsletter has performed successfully in each of these areas.
Each quarterly, eight-page issue has four sections. The largest, the "Focus" section, covers the center four pages and generally takes an in-depth look at one of the Great Migration towns, examining the process of land granting, the formation of the church, the vital records of the town, and similar issues.
Each issue has a lead article, which may investigate a class of records (such as passenger lists or lists of freemen) or explain a particular piece of the research strategy (such as the proof and documentation of marriages). The seventh page of each issue is entitled "Recent Literature" and provides brief summaries of Great Migration-related articles and books. Finally, part of page two is reserved for the "Editor’s Effusions," in which I write about the progress of the Project.
A couple of years ago, the first five volumes of the Great Migration Newsletter were compiled and printed in a single volume with a cumulative index. The newsletter is currently at the end of its eighth volume.
The Project’s Accomplishments
Although the Great Migration Study Project was intended to cover all immigrants to New England from 1620 (the arrival of the Mayflower) through 1640 (the coming of the English Civil War when the annual rate of migration dropped dramatically), we decided very early to treat New England immigrants in several stages. (It should be noted here that for much of the seventeenth century, most of the towns on Long Island were part of New England. They had been settled by New Englanders who gave their political allegiance to either Connecticut or New Haven colonies. Thus, they are also included in the Project.)
The first stage covers the years from 1620 to 1633. Although it is nearly two-thirds of the time period of the Great Migration, this stage represents only about one-sixth of the total immigrants. The three volumes covering this period, entitled The Great Migration Begins, were completed in 1996. More than nine hundred sketches, from Daniel Abbott through Elizabeth Wybert, are contained in this set.
The second series of volumes, now in progress, covers only two years: 1634 and 1635. The number of sketches to be completed for this two-year period is nearly twice the number for the first series. Six volumes will be required to complete this second series, at the end of which approximately half of the Great Migration immigrants will be treated.
Two excellent genealogists, George and Melinde Sanborn have joined me for the second series. At the beginning of work on each volume, the primary responsibility for each sketch is assigned to one or another member of the group, and as the work proceeds, we discuss any problems that may arise.
The first volume in the second series, covering the letters A and B, was published in the fall of 1999, and the second volume, comprising the letters C through F, is in the advanced stage of production and will be published late in 2000.
Future of the Project
At its most basic state, the work is somewhere between one-quarter and one-third complete. The second series should be complete by 2005. The remaining immigrants will probably be divided into two additional series of volumes, one covering the years from 1636 to 1638 and the last covering the years from 1639 to 1643. This closing date of 1643, three years past the 1640 decline in migration, is intended to provide an opportunity for the 1639 and 1640 immigrants to appear in the colony records, as there are very few passenger lists for these years.
Two areas of change and improvement should be noted as well. First, efforts are constantly underway to improve and expand the information included in the sketches. The Great Migration team frequently makes trips to various repositories to find the original records behind many of the published primary sources we use. For example, in producing The Great Migration Begins volumes, we were constantly frustrated because, while the Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire includes hundreds of abstracts of depositions that gave the ages of the deposers, it rarely provides location information of the depositions. We have determined that some of them are in the Baxter Manuscripts, published in several volumes of the Second Series of the Collections of the Maine Historical Society. Attempts to locate the remainder of these depositions continue.
Second, we are looking at additional media for presentation of the information generated by the Great Migration Study Project. Currently, the New England Historic Genealogical Society and Ancestry.com are taking steps to create both CD-ROM and online versions of The Great Migration Begins. We hope these new channels of distribution will make the Great Migration Study Project available to a wider body of genealogical researchers.
Robert Charles Anderson, FASG, director of the Great Migration Study Project of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, is also the co-editor of The American Genealogist and a member of GENTECH Lexicon Working Group.
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