Ancestry.com has announced an update to the online database, The
Great Migration Begins: Immigrants To New England, 1620-33. This monumental
reference now includes nearly one thousand sketches, each dedicated to a single
immigrant or an immigrant family, arriving in New England between 1620 and 1633.
Each sketch contains information on the immigrant's migration dates and patterns,
on various biographical matters (including occupation, church membership, education,
offices, and land holding), and on genealogical details (birth, death, marriages,
children, and other associations by blood or marriage), along with detailed
comments and discussion, and bibliographic information on the family. The latest
update to this database has added ten new sketches to this work.
Robert Charles Anderson is the author of "The Great Migration
Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-33, vols. 1-3," published by the
New England Historic Genealogical Society in 1995 with further updates in the
works. This is a monumental effort. I believe that, once completed, Anderson’s
"Great Migration" series will become the best reference available
for early New England genealogy and history studies. Volumes 1 through 3 are
available online now at Ancestry.com. (The Great Migration: Immigrants to
New England 1634-1635, Volume I, A-B and Volume II, C-F are also
now available but only in printed form.)
I find the electronic version to be much more useful than the
printed version, as it allows you to search ever word. To illustrate this point,
I always look for references to my own surname when looking at early New England
references. None of my Eastman ancestors are listed in the index of The Great
Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-33 since the first immigrant
of that name arrived some time later. Therefore, I would expect volumes 1 through
3 to be of no use to me; however, I searched through the online database looking
for all occurrences of the name Eastman and was surprised to find a reference.
In this case, it was a listing of a land transaction in later years made by
one of the early immigrants:
On 6 August 1667 "Jarrett Haddon of Salisbury, planter,
sold to Nathanell Eastman of the same "all
that my sweepage lot of marsh now lying & being at a place commonly
called the beach" in Salisbury [NLR 2:98].
The reference of [NLR 2:98] points to Norfolk County Land Records,
Volume 2, page 98. Now I know where to go to find the original record.
To access the online version of this great reference, you must
be an Ancestry.com subscriber. Once you have subscribed, you may access the
database at: www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/inddbs/4714.htm.
Dick Eastman Online
