Infrequently Asked Questions
(To The Many Descendants - Messages About This Work)

   ---- How did you get interested in this?

   ---- Why did you start this project?

   ---- How did you decide where to start with this?

   ---- How extensive is it?

   ---- Does this genealogy contain errors?

   ---- Where in the world did you collect all this stuff?

   ---- Is all the information you have collected to be found here?

   ---- Do you intend to continue with this work?

   ---- How does anyone use the genealogy pages?

   ---- Are there any individuals in here I should be sure to read about?

   ---- Since you already have a web site why have you made this CD version?

   ---- Did you get much help from others?

How did you get interested in this?
     It must have in the mid 80's when I found myself with a free weekend in San Diego, California on a business trip. I had a cousin on my father's side living there whom I had never met so I decided to visit Florence Falconbury, the only child of Ward Gallup, my father's brother. With gracious enthusiasm, she and her husband Cecil received this total stranger to their well kept bungalow on Coronado Island. They were very nice people and we had much to talk about. Florence was quite curious about her uncle Winfield's side of the family but at some point the subject turned to the question of who our ancestors were.
     My father had never told me much about his ancestry except that his father's name was Elam and he had heard that we were Welsh, way, way back. I also recall once as a child sitting at an evening meal when something caused him to remark "We come from the Pilgrims.". I said "Mom, is that true?" and she replied "Well, so he claims."; and that was the end of that.
     As it turned out Florence Falconbury knew a whole lot about the Gallup ancestry.
     "Lynn", she said a little incredulously, "Didn't you know the Gallup's are an old New England family which originated in Dorsetshire, England?". Always ready to pass the blame, I replied that my Dad had never mentioned it, to which she responded with a certain disgust in her voice, "Well, our family first came to this land only a little while after the Pilgrims.".  At my questioning look, she proudly said that it was all documented in a book which was handed down to her from our cousin Myra Schaffer [a new name to me] who was daughter of our grand aunt Jemima Schaffer, daughter of Amos Gallup [an "Aunt Jemima" I had heard my mother mention but this "Amos" I knew naught of], and it had been Jemima's book, Florence said. Going to her bookcase she took down a book and handed it to me, The Genealogical History of the Gallup Family in the United States by John D. Gallup; pub. Hartford Conn., 1893. I was amazed. The very idea of my grandfather's name and his ancestors all printed up so fine and fancy-like in a hard bound book was something hard to reconcile with my father's near stony silence on the subject. [I can guess the reason, now. His mother, Georgia, died before Winfield was old enough to care about such things and Elam, his father, was not exactly a parent who inspired an interest in the subject.]  Aunt Jemima's book was well thumbed, even had old newspaper clippings glued to the fly-leaves - And it contained many feathers which Jemima had taken from her parrot's cage every time she needed a place marker, or so Florence remarked.
     For the rest of my visit I could not take my eyes off that book and I left Florence and Cecil with my first spark of interest in genealogy. Many years later, after Cecil had passed away and Florence had become old and frail, a package came for me in the mail; it was The Book. By then the Gallup Genealogy had seen a couple of new editions and I had them both on my bookshelf, but that book, the original 1893 one, the foundation document, was a real treasure. Information from it forms the core of the Gallup line presented here - It is a more reliable source document than any of its update editions which introduced typographical errors (the 1986 edition being particularly offensive in this regard).
     I think that I would never have become so involved with this compilation had it not been for the example set by our cousin Carol Cramer with her book "L. D. Miles". To begin with, it was apparent that Carol had done something quite significant for our posterity and that alone inspired me. Then there was one of our Miles Family Reunions where I used her book and the Gallup Genealogy to make some charts for us to look at. Up to then I had been gathering genealogical information from here and there but the reunion got me involved with using genealogical data base management software which increased my interest.
     The event which really gave me a taste of the fun of genealogical research was when I noticed in Carol's book the name "Theodia Parke" and I remembered that name from my research for the Gallup Genealogy. Wouldn't it be a kick, I thought, if we Gallup's were actually the product of an intermarriage between the two lines. Well, almost; the Theodia on the Gallup side married Benjamin Gallop, a distant cousin of Winfield Gallup, and the Theodia on the Miles side is a 6th great grandmother of Florence Miles. The two Theodia's are 1st cousins, once removed, so we Gallup's are "kissin' cousins" to the Mileses through these ladies. It wasn't an ancestral connection but it was nevertheless exciting to make any connection at all, and that got me hooked.
     [Years later I discovered another Gallup/Miles connection: Mary Williams, a 2nd cousin six times removed of Florence married Samuel Gore, a 1st cousin seven times removed of Winfield.]
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Why did you start this project?
     Curiosity. I wanted to learn who the people were that we came from, our blood line. To a great extent it is our ancestors who have given us our health, longevity, intelligence, strength of character, and our patience (or the lack of it). In short, Dear Descendant, the you-that-is-you is because of them. Had just one of your ancestors you find herein not existed, you would not exist either! Fortunately, all of them survived infancy, as so many did not, and none of them drowned at sea as a youth, as so many did, and none of them died of smallpox or cholera before their family was raised, as so many of them died - So, you and I are here.
     We come from "hardy stock", an ancestry of diligent people, highly conservative and morally strong. It can be seen that they mostly had a strong sense of purpose and a determination to accomplish it. Pilgrims, they were, in truth and in metaphor; a reason for us to be proud.
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How did you decide where to start with this?
     The 1893 Gallup Genealogy and the update editions made available from the Gallup Family Association are called "single-name" genealogies. While a single-name genealogy commonly strives to provide the name of a spouse, and sometimes provides the name of the spouse's parents, that is about as far away from the family name as they go. So, while the latest edition of the Gallup Genealogy is wonderfully complete for the Gallup surname, it tells us almost nothing about the ancestors of our great grandmothers, yet the genes we carry which make us who we are came just as much from the distaff sides as from all those Gallup males. I decided that tracing out the ancestry of those ladies who were in my particular Gallup line would be my contribution to learning where our tiny branch of the extended Gallup family came from. It has been a rewarding activity for I have found much more of interest about our ancestry than can be found only in the Gallup surname. Clearly, those old Gallup men knew a quality woman when they met her, and the Miles side as well. We're pretty lucky to have such good genes.
     Beginning with my mother, the ladies our Gallup ancestors married were: Florence Miles, Georgia Dyer, Eliza Dingman, Jemima Gallup [a different one], Abigail Packer, Hannah Gore, Margaret Gallup, Elizabeth Harris, Hannah Lake and Christobel Brushett. There are some earlier Gallop women recorded in British documents but I soon learned I had to stop somewhere and Christobel was a natural choice; she and her husband John Gallop were the immigrants to America who started the Gallup line on this side of the Atlantic. (Even so, I found it too difficult to get her ancestry beyond a tenuous connection to her parents.) As a result of the intermarriages of Jemima Gallup and Margaret Gallup, three additional great grandmothers slipped into our Gallup line, Anna Hinckley, Jemima Enos and Esther Prentice.
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How extensive is it?
     This work documents over a thousand ancestors and around five-hundred ancestral marriages of the Gallup-Miles line, all of them proceeding back in time from just those thirteen families mentioned above. Adding the aunts, uncles, a few notable cousins, a few close collateral lines and the living descendants bring this genealogy to documenting over 6,400 individuals and more than 2,700 marriages. That's about three times the population of Sauk Centre, Minnesota, the town I grew up in!
     When I began the task of researching the Gallup line, I compiled all of our cousins as well but I soon found that to continue with cousins was heading toward an impossible goal. Among genealogists it is said that if you can trace your ancestry to Charlemagne then you are a cousin to everyone in the world; an exaggeration perhaps but close enough to make the point - Cousins accumulate like ants. More than one line in this genealogy can be traced back to the 1200's and three of them go back to old Charlemagne himself. [Check out John Booth, Anne Blount & Bridget Raleigh.]
      I soon gave up on the cousins idea. I mostly cut off my search after I had found our aunts and uncles. [Albeit with an exception here and there. It just wouldn't have been right to skip our cousin, old Ben Franklin, or our Gore cousins who survived or died in the Wyoming Massacre.]
     Though there are researchers who have taken many of our lines back to the 1400's, some back practically to the Dark Ages, beginning around the mid 1500's data from nearly all sources gets increasingly questionable and conflicting. I could say that all early sources are that way if it were not for one class of sources of early ancestors which are quite reliable, those that document royal and noble lines from professionally researched historical documents. Other ancient lines, like those traced by amateurs through royal offspring who married outside a royal line, are often supported only by "soft" sources. [Sometimes an amateur has the overwhelming desire to find a famous ancestor with the result that a key connection or two are fanciful.] Anyway, I generally did not accept data earlier than the late 1500's.
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Does this genealogy contain errors?
     Yes, guaranteed! And so, pretty often, do the genealogies prepared by professionals. There is probably no more overworked phrase in genealogical research than "This is a work in progress.". Translated, it means "This work has errors and omissions and I will never manage to fix all of them!".
     The work of professional genealogists is set apart from amateurs, like me, on the basis of one thing, their sources. "Families without sources are fantasy", they say, so the professionals do not make any ancestral claim until they can make a case for it which will stand the scrutiny of their colleagues. The evidence they seek is what are called "primary sources", like birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, church records, wills, land records, tax records, private personal journals, even notes made in family Bibles (if they are old enough), i.e., the more or less "official" sources. Sources from other kinds of documentation such as old letters, history books, genealogies prepared by non-professionals, family lore, etc., even census data, are classed as "secondary sources". Some professionals define information as just "hearsay" if it does not come from a primary source but that is a little extreme I think. Nevertheless it points up the importance given by the professional genealogist to searching for primary sources.
     There is another characteristic of many (but certainly not all) professional genealogy researchers. Those of them who are really conscientious will not accept a source quoted or referenced by another person; they must see it with their own eyes. More on this as it relates to my research may be read in the next section.
     While the quality range of primary sources is high, all of them being very good to excellent, secondary sources range from quite good, like the Gallup Genealogy, down to pure fantasy, like someone's privately published family history claiming an ancestor Foulgaris The Flatulent, King of Thur, born 350 AD.
     Do the professionals use secondary sources? Absolutely! They would all be out of work if they did not.
     Beginning around the mid-1800's there has to be increasing reliance on secondary sources because the earlier the research the fewer are the primary sources to be found. All sources, especially primary sources, simply dwindle away due to the vicissitudes of time. In fact, only comparatively few genealogies, no matter who researched them, can extend earlier than the 1600's without complete reliance on secondary sources.
     The difference between the professional and the amateur with regard to the use of secondary sources comes down to, first, the diligence of the search that has been made for a primary source before accepting a secondary source, and second, not accepting a secondary source without the corroboration of another secondary source  - The more corroboration the better.
     So, dear Reader, please keep in mind that every single ancestral contention in this or any genealogy is subject to being refuted (or reinforced) the instant some new document is found!
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Where in the world did you collect all this stuff?
     This compilation comes mostly from high quality secondary sources, with primary sources being used whenever they could be found without exhaustive searching, but there are questionable sources, too, particularly where lines extend into the 16th century. It would have been wonderful to have used only primary sources, or secondary sources of the highest quality, but I can hardly imagine how long it would have taken even a professional genealogist to exhaustively search for them in support of every contention in this work, probably decades. I just don't have that much time left to spend on it, nor the inclination. The sources I have sought are the best I could find with reasonable effort. I have relied heavily on the work of others but I have sought the same information from multiple sources so that I could choose from those compilations which appeared to have been the most carefully or professionally developed. If I came to a person for whom the best information I could find seemed suspicious, was grossly in error,  or ridiculous [like being married after they were buried, or baptized before they were born, or born from their mother's grave] I treated it as unknown.
     Don't conclude from this that there is necessarily anything "professional" about my technique - The true professional genealogist would be revolted at the idea of using the work of a non-professional even though knowing that it will probably turn out the same after he, the professional, duplicates the research.   We're speaking of three things here: Credentials, Method and Attitude.  These are what separate the professional from the amateur.
     Virtually the entire Miles side of this genealogy is taken from the book "L.D. Miles" by my first cousin [and dear friend] Carol (Bickel) Cramer. I have included the corrections and additions Carol gave us at the last reunion and I have found a few typos and fixed those but there is only one ancestral line of hers that I was able to extend before my attention returned to working on the Gallup side.
     Carol has spent years and years researching the Miles line for the highest quality source documents; her work is thus of a much higher quality than mine. What is more, hers was a more difficult task to begin with. I have been fortunate that the Gallup ancestors all came to New England very early and then tended to stay there. Only when the American frontier was the Hudson River valley did they gradually venture farther into the unknown - about as far as the western edge of New York state and south a bit into Pennsylvania. The Miles ancestors were more adventurous it seems and got themselves more spread out - And much harder to find.
     My work has depended primarily upon heavy use of the internet where more and more genealogical research data is appearing daily but I have also depended upon many phone calls and letters to City Clerks and Town Historians. In two instances I actually hired professional genealogists in situations where I had run into particularly blank walls.
     The largest genealogical data base in the world, by a wide margin, is that maintained by the Latter Day Saints Church, the Mormons, "LDS" for short. Their records fall into two categories, source documents and family lines. Generally speaking I have not exclusively used LDS family lines except as a starting point or as a last resort because the Church has never required its family line contributors to reveal their sources; yet it offers profound spiritual encouragement for its people to do genealogical research. The net result has been that a large amount of questionable family line material is in the LDS files. However, to be completely fair, many LDS researchers are conscientious professionals and their family line contentions are just as valid as any to be found. At worst, the LDS material is better than nothing because somebody, someplace, got the information from somewhere so, after I have fruitlessly explored other paths, I have used it.
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Is all the information you have collected to be found here?
     Yes and no. All of the information has been included which I thought was historically interesting or would become so in a few decades. Some information has been excluded which seemed fanciful or was just inappropriate for a genealogy. Probably the only area of information I might expanded concerns the sources for what is presented here.
     The version of this genealogy which I published on the internet had all birth dates and birth places removed for descendants who are possibly still living.  Additionally some biographical "Notes" were either removed or edited. (The standard in these times for safe-guarding the privacy of individuals is being set higher each year by our litigious society. Someday we may hear of a telephone company defending itself in a lawsuit for having published their phone book.) This information has been restored for the CD version.
     In 2005 I published this genealogy in a three-volume set with limited distribution; it contained all the information I had at that time. It also contained errors which readers of the book(s) called to my attention. The CD version contains all the information to be found in those books plus more which I found after the books were published, and it corrects all errors known to me as of the date noted at the bottom of this page.
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Do you intend to continue your genealogy research?
     Cousin Carol once remarked to me that it appeared I was going to be the one "to continue with the Miles genealogy". Well, in a word; "No". Carol's work has been much more that of a professional genealogist than mine. She has spent countless hours looking through source documents for evidence and I do not have the patience to continue her work to the standards she has set for it; I believe I will leave that up to one of our Miles descendants. As for the Gallup side, I have taken it about as far as I can.
     Of course, I will still maintain my master file and I am keenly interested in correcting errors in it and adding information on new descendants so please let me know if you have any information for me. If I learn something new or discover an interesting anecdote I'll put it on the web site (if it still exists then) or perhaps someday I'll make an update of this CD.
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How does anyone use the genealogy pages?
     These pages contain my entire database of individuals. It is presented in the form of Family Groups (technically called a "Family Register"). A Family Group contains all the information I have about any one set of parents including background notes, if any.  The names of their children are also presented and more information about each of these may be found by clicking on one of their names. From a Family Group page you can also go to a list of sources associated with a family by clicking on one of the superscripts (if any) following the name.
     Before you can visit a family group you must, of course, have a name in mind. The opening page of the genealogy gives you a choice between two indexes: By picking a Name out of a loooong list of every name in the genealogy (somewhat tedious) or by first specifying a Surname list and then picking the whole name from that.
     You will sometimes find within the genealogy that a christening date and place is given for a person, usually when the actual birth date is unknown. The term "christening" as used in this work means baptism or any similar form of religious dedication ceremony. It does not refer to the particular method used, e.g., anointing or immersing.
     Quite often you will see dual years which are successive, e.g., 1748/1749. This is standard practice for dates in the months January and February up to March 24th for all years prior to 1752. Until that year the Colonies and England continued using the old Julian calendar (Even though the present day Gregorian calendar was established in 1582.), on which the first day of the year is our March 25^th.
     Dual dates having a span greater than one year, like 1595/1610, means that the year is uncertain but believed to be on or between those boundaries.
     Lastly, for those of you wishing to determine your own ancestral line there is some help for this which you will learn about as you proceed into the actual genealogy pages.
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Are there any individuals here I should be sure to read about?
     As it turned out, none of our people were breathtakingly important notables in American history. With apologies for my failure to bring new evidence on the Miles side, I have found a few Gallup ancestors who did manage to make it into the history books. You might read the Notes on the following couples: Bridget Raleigh & John Cope, Peter Folger & Mary Morrill, John Howland & Elizabeth Tilley, Mary Barrett & William Dyer, Anne Marbury & William Hutchinson, William Marbury & Agnes Lenton, Obadiah Gore, Jr. & Anna Avery, Obadiah Gore, Sr. & Hannah Parke, Christopher Gore & Rebecca Payne, Thomas Coleman & Susannah, Mary Coffin & Nathaniel Starbuck, Tristram Coffin & Dionis Stevens, Thomas Gardner & Margaret Fryer, Richard Gardner, Sarah Shattuck and, of course, old John Gallup of Mosterne, the immigrant.
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