Introduction
The Crawford ancestors who lived in Massachusetts are fascinating to me because I lived in Cambridge where several ancestors lived, and have literally walked in their footsteps. The Sawtells lived right across the street from my last home in Cambridge. The Griswold's lived just a block from my lab at Harvard. The Gibson's lived 1/2 mile from my home, and I passed by their land hundreds of times, both walking, biking, and driving. The Errington's lived a block from Harvard Sq., and at least 3 of them are buried in the cemetery in Harvard Sq., which I have walked by many times. The Stones lived 4 blocks from my home in Belmont. In Arlington, Lexington, Concord, and Sudbury, I have driven many times past land and houses once owned by ancestors. I've learned more about the early history of Massachusetts in researching my ancestors than I learned in my previous 38 years living here.
Minnie May Welch, wife of John D. Crawford and mother of James D. Crawford, was born in Beloit, Kansas to Charles Francis Welch and Dorothy Lucinda Crowther. Even though the family lived most of their lives in Colorado, Minnie, Charles, and Charles's mother, Abigail Heywood, all died in Beloit. But both of Minnie's parents were born in Massachusetts: Charles in Lunenburg and Dorothy in Andover. In fact my brother John has identified over 200 of their ancestors, spanning 10 generations, who lived and died in Mass. Most of them came during The Great Migration, the 20 years between 1620 and 1640 when approximately 6,500 families or 20,000 individuals came to Massachusetts from England. There were 1,000 families by 1633, and another 1,300 families in 1634-1635.
Our ancestors were strong participants of this wave of immigrants: over 145 of our direct ancestors came to Mass during that decade, making up almost 1% of the total Great Migration! They were mainly middle-class tradesmen: millers, farmers, blacksmiths, carpenters, weavers, and coopers; a few were in the upper class as wealthy merchants, ministers, and even a member of the British Parliment. Some stood out for their prominence in society, but many were little noticed except perhaps for birth, marraige, and death announcements in the town records. But there is no doubt that taken as a whole, our ancestors helped shape the future of the Colony of Massachusetts, and in particular were instrumental in founding the towns of Concord, Hingham, Marlborough, Lancaster, Bedford, and Nantucket, and prominent in the founding of Cambridge, Watertown, Charlestown, Woburn, Newbury, Sudbury, Stow, Scituate, and Hadley. One more indicator of the influence our ancestors had on this country is that descendents of these ancestors include seven U.S. Presidents: John Adams (via Joanna Hoar of Braintree), John Quincy Adams (ditto), James Garfield (via Edward Garfield of Watertown), Calvin Coolidge (via Jonathan Hubbard of Concord, Susanna Blodgett of Woburn, and Edmund Rice of Sudbury), George H. W. Bush (via Thomas Brigham of Cambridge), George W. Bush (ditto), and Abraham Lincoln (via Sarah Lyford of Hingham and the grandfather of Thomas Lincoln of Hingham). They also include Ralph Waldo Emerson, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century (one of the daughters of Rev Edward Bulkley of Concord married an Emerson).
The following map shows where the Minnie May Welch ancestors settled when they first arrived from England. Watertown, Charlestown, Concord, and Hingham were by far the most popular destinations for them. They lived in Hingham for 6 generations, and in Concord for 7 generations, before moving west to Lunenburg and remaining there for another 5 generations. This is a much different pattern than the Crawford branch of our ancestors, where each generation moved to the frontier land of the growing country: one generation in Pennsylvania, the next in Kentucky, the next in Missouri, and finally the next in Colorado. The Massachusetts ancestors obviously liked the towns they lived in, and were content to stay put. Click on the map to open up in it's own window.
The images below represent the ancestor tree of Minnie May Welch. There are 285 of her ancestors represented, of which 163 were immigrants. [There are several branches that we have no information on, so the numbers should be larger.] Abbreviations used are: "b." birth, "d." death, "i." immigration. The first, round chart can be printed on letter paper. The other charts are sized to print on legal paper. The left row of names on the last six charts are the same as the names in the outermost ring of the round chart. Click on each one to open up in it's own window. Make sure you view them at 100% zoom to ensure the text is legible.
