Colonial American ancestors: the seventeenth-century founding families
If your American ancestry reaches the 1600s at all, it very likely runs through a small number of heavily documented founding families — because the colonial population was small and the record-keeping, in New England especially, was unusually thorough.
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The short version
- The period
- Roughly 1607 to 1700: Jamestown, then Plymouth in 1620, then the wave of settlement that filled the century.
- Why lines converge
- A small founding population married among itself for generations, so most colonial descent runs through the same families repeatedly.
- Best records
- New England town and church records, kept from the start and largely preserved.
- Hardest records
- Virginia and the southern colonies, where courthouse losses destroyed much of the early documentation.
Why colonial New England is the best-documented place in early America
New England towns recorded births, marriages, deaths, land grants, and church membership from their earliest years, and a striking proportion of that material survives. Combined with a founding population small enough to be studied exhaustively, it produces some of the most complete family reconstructions available anywhere for the seventeenth century.
The consequence for descendants is pedigree collapse on a regional scale. The colonial New England founding population was small and married largely among itself for several generations, so anyone with deep New England ancestry typically descends from the same founding families along many separate lines at once. Finding one colonial ancestor usually means finding a dozen.
Virginia and the southern colonies are a different story. Records were lost across many counties — to wartime destruction in 1864–65, to courthouse fires before and long after, and to simple neglect. The losses are county-specific rather than regional, so the first thing to establish is whether the county your line runs through is a burned one at all. Where it is, research leans on land patents, wills, and surviving parish registers, and reaches firm ground less often.
One pattern is worth knowing before you start, because it will save you months. A striking number of colonial families carry a famous story that turns out to be younger than the family: Penelope Stout's shipwreck and rescue first appears in print in 1765, more than a century after the events; Elder John Strong's Welsh pedigree was published in 1871; Anneke Jans's royal descent was manufactured in 1878 alongside a scheme to sell shares in a lawsuit. In every case the documented life is quieter than the legend, and the records behind it are real. Learning to tell the two apart is most of what colonial research is.
Colonial settlers in the catalog
Early settlers of New England and Virginia whose documented descendant lines survive.
Captain Anthony Eames
Arrived 1634Dorset emigrant who reached Massachusetts in 1634 and settled at Charlestown, then Hingham; the 1645 dispute over his militia captaincy grew into the impeachment trial of Deputy Governor Winthrop.
Check if Anthony Eames is your ancestorDeacon Samuel Chapin
1598 – 1675Springfield settlerDevon-born settler first at Roxbury who moved to Springfield about 1642 and served that frontier town for decades as deacon, selectman, and magistrate.
Check if Samuel Chapin is your ancestorJoseph Loomis Sr.
d. 1658Arrived 1638Emigrant from Braintree, Essex, who sailed on the Susan and Ellen in 1638 and landed at Boston; by 1639 he had settled at Windsor, Connecticut, on land along the Farmington River.
Check if Joseph Loomis Sr. is your ancestorReverend John Lothrop
1584 – 1653Arrived 1634Independent minister jailed in London for illegal worship who came on the Griffin in 1634, gathered the church at Scituate, and in 1639 led part of it to found Barnstable.
Check if John Lothrop is your ancestorReverend Joseph Hull
d. 1665Arrived 1635Somerset minister who sailed from Weymouth in 1635 with about twenty-one families and settled Wessagusset, renamed Weymouth; later at Barnstable and Maine, he died at the Isles of Shoals.
Check if Joseph Hull is your ancestorStephen Bachiler
d. 1656Arrived 1632Aged Hampshire preacher who arrived on the William and Francis in 1632, gathered the first church at Lynn, and in 1638 helped found Hampton, New Hampshire, before returning to England.
Check if Stephen Bachiler is your ancestorThomas Hazard
Newport 1639English origins undetermined; he first appears at Boston in 1635, was one of nine signers of the Newport settlement agreement in April 1639, and served Portsmouth, Rhode Island, as a disposer of land.
Check if Thomas Hazard is your ancestorTristram Coffin
d. 1681Nantucket 1659Devon emigrant of 1642 who held office at Haverhill, Newbury, and Salisbury, then in 1659 joined the purchase of Nantucket and served the island as chief magistrate.
Check if Tristram Coffin is your ancestorAnne Dudley Bradstreet
1612 – 1672Winthrop Fleet 1630Crossed on the Arbella with the 1630 Winthrop Fleet and settled at Ipswich, then Andover; The Tenth Muse, printed at London in 1650, made her the first woman living in England's American colonies to publish a volume of poetry in English.
Check if Anne Dudley Bradstreet is your ancestorAnne Marbury Hutchinson
1591 – 1643Griffin 1634Sailed from Alford, Lincolnshire, and reached Boston on the Griffin in September 1634; banished for heresy in 1638, she helped settle Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and was killed in New Netherland in 1643.
Check if Anne Marbury Hutchinson is your ancestorCatalyntje Trico
d. 1689Arrived 1624Walloon who sailed on the Eendracht in 1624 among the first settlers of New Netherland, living at Fort Orange, Manhattan, and the Wallabout; her sworn 1688 deposition records the founding.
Check if Catalyntje Trico is your ancestorColonel William Randolph
1651 – 1711Virginia colonialWarwickshire emigrant first recorded in Virginia in February 1672, who seated Turkey Island in Henrico County and served as county clerk, attorney general, Speaker of the Burgesses, and a founding trustee of William and Mary.
Check if William Randolph is your ancestorElder John Strong
d. 1699Ship unrecordedEmigrated in the 1630s — the familiar Mary and John story is family tradition, not record, and no passenger list names him; he settled at Hingham, then Taunton and Windsor, and served Northampton as its first ruling elder until his death in 1699.
Check if John Strong is your ancestorJohn Proctor
1631 – 1692Hanged 1692Salem Village farmer and tavern keeper, hanged on 19 August 1692 after he publicly doubted the accusers; a petition from 32 Ipswich neighbors failed to save him.
Check if John Proctor is your ancestorPenelope van Princis Stout
Story is traditionAppears in a New Amsterdam court record of 1648 and in Middletown, New Jersey, deeds with her husband Richard Stout; her famous rescue story rests on tradition first printed in 1765.
Check if Penelope van Princis Stout is your ancestorRebecca Towne Nurse
1621 – 1692Hanged 1692Salem Village matriarch, aged 71 and nearly deaf, hanged on 19 July 1692 after a jury's not-guilty verdict was reversed despite a petition signed by 39 neighbors.
Check if Rebecca Towne Nurse is your ancestorAnneke Jans
d. 1663Arrived 1630Sailed to New Netherland in 1630 for Rensselaerswyck; widowed, she married Dominie Bogardus and held the Manhattan farm whose title fed two centuries of failed claims against Trinity Church.
Check if Anneke Jans is your ancestorColonel Richard Lee I
d. 1664Arrived 1639Shropshire emigrant who reached Virginia in 1639 and rose to attorney general, secretary of the colony, and councilor, patenting land in York and the Northern Neck before his death in 1664.
Check if Richard Lee I is your ancestorGeorge Reade
1608 – 1671Governor's CouncilReached Virginia about 1637 in Governor Harvey's party, acted as secretary of the colony during Kemp's absence, and sat on the Governor's Council from 1657 until his death; he married the daughter of Nicolas Martiau, who patented the land Yorktown was later laid out on.
Check if George Reade is your ancestorGiles Corey
1611 – 1692Pressed to deathSalem Farms landowner who pleaded not guilty but refused to submit to trial by jury, and was pressed to death under stones on 19 September 1692 — the only person known to have been executed this way by court order in what became the United States.
Check if Giles Corey is your ancestorHenry Adams of Braintree
1583 – 1646Arrived c. 1638Came from Barton St David, Somerset, about 1638 and took a Mount Wollaston grant in 1640 for a household of ten; his Braintree line produced Presidents John and John Quincy Adams.
Check if Henry Adams of Braintree is your ancestorJohn Winthrop
1588 – 1649Winthrop Fleet 1630Lord of Groton Manor in Suffolk, he sailed on the Arbella in 1630 as governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company, settled at Boston, and kept the journal that remains the migration's core narrative source.
Check if John Winthrop is your ancestorMary Barrett Dyer
d. 1660Arrived 1635Married in London in 1633 and arrived at Boston in 1635; exiled with the Hutchinsonians to Rhode Island, she returned as a Quaker and was hanged on Boston Common on June 1, 1660.
Check if Mary Barrett Dyer is your ancestorMary Perkins Bradbury
1615 – 1700Condemned, survivedSalisbury woman condemned on 9 September 1692 for bewitching Timothy Swan; more than a hundred neighbors defended her, and she escaped jail and died at home in 1700.
Check if Mary Perkins Bradbury is your ancestorMary Towne Eastey
1634 – 1692Hanged 1692Topsfield farmwife freed from jail and rearrested two days later, hanged on 22 September 1692 after petitioning the court that no more innocent blood be shed.
Check if Mary Towne Eastey is your ancestorRoger Williams
d. 1683Lyon 1631Left London and landed at Nantasket on the Lyon on February 5, 1631; expelled from Massachusetts for his views on conscience, he founded Providence in 1636 on land bought from the Narragansett.
Check if Roger Williams is your ancestorSusannah North Martin
1621 – 1692Hanged 1692Amesbury widow first accused of witchcraft in 1669 and cleared by the courts, then tried again and hanged on 19 July 1692 after refusing to confess.
Check if Susannah North Martin is your ancestorThomas Hooker
1586 – 1647Griffin 1633Born at Marefield, Leicestershire, and silenced as a lecturer at Chelmsford, he reached Boston on the Griffin in September 1633 and led his congregation overland to found Hartford in 1636.
Check if Thomas Hooker is your ancestorJohn Eliot
1604 – 1690Lyon 1631Arrived on the Lyon in November 1631 from Widford, Hertfordshire, and preached at Roxbury for nearly sixty years; his 1663 Massachusett-language Bible was the first printed in British North America.
Check if John Eliot is your ancestorMartha Allen Carrier
d. 1692Hanged 1692Andover farmwife blamed for a 1690 smallpox outbreak, hanged on 19 August 1692 after her own children were coerced into testifying against her; she never confessed.
Check if Martha Allen Carrier is your ancestorPeter Bulkeley
1583 – 1659Susan and Ellen 1635Rector of Odell, Bedfordshire, until silenced under Laud, he embarked on the Susan and Ellen at London in May 1635 and founded Concord the following year as its first minister.
Check if Peter Bulkeley is your ancestorRoger Conant
1592 – 1679Arrived 1623Baptized at East Budleigh, Devon, he reached Plymouth in 1623, a decade before the main Puritan wave, and led the old planters from Cape Ann to Naumkeag in 1626, the settlement later renamed Salem.
Check if Roger Conant is your ancestor
Showing the 32 best-known of 38 in this category. A tree search checks your lines against all 38.
How to check a colonial line
The records are good, but so is the volume of bad published genealogy about exactly these families.
- 1
Get to 1700 first, then slow down
Nineteenth-century records are comparatively easy. The real work is the stretch between about 1700 and 1750, where documentation thins and errors creep in. Do not rush it to reach a famous name.
- 2
Use town and church records, not family histories
New England town vital records and church registers are contemporary evidence. Published nineteenth-century family histories about the same people are riddled with errors and wishful connections.
- 3
Expect the same names repeatedly
Colonial families reused given names across generations and cousins married cousins constantly. Two men with the same name in the same town are frequently different people, and conflating them is the classic colonial research error.
- 4
Adjust expectations for the South
If your line runs into Virginia or the Carolinas, courthouse record loss may simply have destroyed the evidence. Absence of a record in the South is much weaker evidence of absence than it would be in New England.
Rememberkin does the mechanical part of this automatically — every line, every generation, checked at once. Run the search free.
If your line reaches the 1600s
A proven line deserves better than a screenshot
When Rememberkin confirms a colonial ancestor, it can print the whole line — every generation between you and the settlement, with names, dates, and portraits.
- Every generation between you and them, documented
- The relationship named plainly — 9th-great-grandfather, not a guess
- Printed as a wall chart or bound into your family book
Questions people ask
How do I know if I have colonial American ancestors?
Trace your line back through the 1800s and see whether it reaches New England or the Chesapeake before 1700. If it does, you very likely have multiple colonial ancestors rather than one, because the founding population was small and intermarried heavily.
Why do so many Americans descend from the same colonial families?
Because the founding population was small and married among itself for generations. Genealogists call the effect pedigree collapse: the same founding couples occupy many separate positions in a modern descendant's tree, so finding one colonial ancestor usually reveals a cluster of them.
Which colonial records are the most reliable?
New England town vital records and church registers, kept contemporaneously from the earliest settlement and largely preserved. Published nineteenth-century family histories covering the same families are considerably less reliable and should be verified rather than cited.
Why is southern colonial research so much harder?
Record loss — wartime destruction in 1864–65, courthouse fires before and long after, and outright neglect — wiped out early documentation across many Virginia and Carolina counties. The losses are county-specific, so the first step is checking whether your county is a burned one. Where it is, researchers lean on land patents, wills, and surviving parish registers, and lines more often reach a genuine dead end.
Other ancestors worth checking for
See how far back your colonial lines actually reach
Rememberkin traces every line you have and shows the documented colonial ancestors behind them.
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