Not Far Enough - 52 Ancestors #6

I'm going to stretch the meaning of the prompt again this week to tell the tale of a bad man who tried to outrun his past but it caught up with him anyway! 

The bad man in this case was the Rev. John Lyford and he wasn't my ancestor but connected to my ancestor's family (I'll explain later). 

On the surface, Rev. John Lyford appeared to be a Godly man who traveled to the Plymouth Colony to minister to the Pilgrims in that community. However, the colonial leaders soon discovered that he was allied with the Church of England and maligning the Separatists in his letters to England. Once Governor Bradford found out, Rev. Lyford apologized. A little while later, it became evident that he hadn't changed his ways and he was banished. 

But that was just the start of Lyford's secrets. His wife, Sarah, came forward to tell of his infidelity, even fathering a child out of wedlock with another woman before she married him. She couldn't keep any maids because of his sexual harassment and molestation of them. 




Eventually, the BIG secret was revealed. The reason Rev. John Lyford had to leave his previous ministry in Ireland and come to the colony was that he had raped a girl in the parish while she attended pre-marital counseling with him! The woman's husband "tooke some godly friends with him, to deale with Liford for this evill" (Bradford's Journal). He had to leave in fear of even greater punishment. 

After leaving Plymouth, Lyford bounced around from Nantasket (Hull, MA) and Cape Ann to Virginia, where he died in 1638. He was a truly evil and despicable man! He could run but he could not go far enough to outrun his bad behavior! 

So what's my connection to this scoundrel? His wife, Sarah, married as his second wife, my 11th great-grandfather, Edmund Hobart. 

Edmund Hobart & Margery Dewey (first wife)

Line 1:
Nazareth Hobart - daughter of Edmund & Margaret (Dewey) Hobart
Martha Beals
Samuel Dunham
Ebenezer Dunham
John Dunham
James Dunham
James Dunham 
Florilla Dunham
Nina King Ellingwood
Annie Florilla Gibbs
Fern Lyndell Cotton - my grandmother

Line 2:
Rev. Peter Hobart - son of Edmund & Margaret (Dewey) Hobart
Elizabeth Hobart
Joshua Ripley
Hezediah Ripley
Joshua Ripley
Joshua Ripley
Nancy Ripley
Galen Blake
Charles Galen Blake
Harriet May Blake
Clayton Leonard Blake - my grandfather

NEHGR 1848
Wikipedia
http://minerdescent.com/2012/01/19/17th-century-premarital-sex/

Gambling on research

Almost all my family lines trace back to immigrants who came to New England before 1650 so when I find an oddball, it's really fun. There are so many people researching and writing about early New England that it's not very difficult to find the records and even some stories for those ancestors. When I research the oddballs, I think I learn more about doing genealogy because I have more obstacles to overcome. 

Here are a few of my oddballs - because they came to the U.S. (relatively) recently.

2nd Great Grandfather George Gibbs who came from Prince Edward Island and married Nina K. Ellingwood in 1884. I have little information about his family or what town they came from on PEI. Their daughter Annie married Ray Everett Cotton, Fern Lyndell Cotton married T. Richard Carter

4th Great Grandparents John & Ann (McClure) Williamson who came from Manorhamilton, County Leitrim, Ireland in the 1820s with two children and settled in Bethel, Maine. Daughter, Rebecca married Elias Mellen Carter. Their son Augustus Mellen Carter had a son Edward Mellen Carter who was my great-grandfather. Williamson isn't a typical Irish surname but Ancestry.com says it can be Northern English, Scottish or Northern Irish. Manorhamilton is at the very top of Ireland just before the border of Northern Ireland. 

4th Great Grandfather Reverend Edward Millford Whittle who came from the South. He was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1766 but there is evidence that he lived with his mother in Alexandria, Virginia before moving to New England and eventually to Maine. His parents are reported to be from Ireland but I have found no records to support that claim. Ancestry.com says most Whittles are from Lancashire, England. His daughter Martha married Moses Yates; their son Gilbert W. Yates was the father of my great grandfather, Estes Gilbert Yates. 

4th Great Grandfather William Yates who came to New Hampshire around the time of the Revolution but where he came from is subject to debate - even among his children and grandchildren. The History of Paris by Howard Lapham says he came from Portsmouth, England to Boston and then to Maine. He met his wife in New Gloucester, Maine and then he can be traced from Hebron to Norway to Greenwood, Maine. He was a farmer and a Methodist preacher. His children and grandchildren contradict one another on many points from where he was born (Scotland or England) and whether his parents migrated with him and whether he was "bound out" as a boy to work for another farmer. William married Martha Morgan and had Moses Yates, the husband of Martha Whittle above. 

These are my most recent immigrant ancestors. Researching outside my comfort zone of New England and researching outside the U.S. is challenging but it's like gambling (and about as addictive) where you know that most of the records you look at are not going to be "winners" but when you find a bit of information about your ancestor, no matter how small, it's like winning the lottery and it keeps you going. I feel like the more I find out, the more questions I have that I want to research...good luck everyone!

Thanks to Chris Dunham for posting these pictures of the gravestones of William and Martha Yates on the Maine Genealogy Network.