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?

---- What happened to some of the descendant's information you collected?

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

---- How does anyone use these web pages?

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

--- Did you get much help from others?

--- Who is maintaining this website?

How did you get interested in this? -- (top)
     It must have around 1975 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 a thing about his ancestry except that his father's name was Elam and he had heard that we were Welsh, way, way back, or so he thought. Florence knew a whole lot more, it turned out.
     "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 (Gallup) Schaffer, daughter of Amos Gallup (two more people I had never heard of), and it was Jemima's book. 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 plucked from her parrot every time she needed a place marker.
     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 our last Miles Family Reunion 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 thing that really gave me a taste of the fun of genealogical research was when I noticed in Carol's book the name of a Theodia Parke and I vaguely remembered seeing that same name in 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 very distant cousin of mine, and the Theodia on the Miles side is my 7th great grandmother. The two Theodia's are first 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.

Why did you start this project? -- (top)
     Curiosity. These are the people we come from, our blood line. To a great extent it is these 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 the 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. And 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 all 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.

How did you decide where to start with this? -- (top)
     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.
     Beginning with my mother, the ladies our Gallup ancestors married were: Florence Miles, Georgia Dyer, Eliza Dingman, Jemima Gallup, 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.) On account 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.

How extensive is it? -- (top)
     This work documents about 750 ancestors and 400 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 6,300 individuals and more than 2,700 marriages.
     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 the Gore cousins who survived and 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 lines from professionally researched historical documents. Other early royal lines, like those traced by amateurs through royal offspring who married outside a royal line, are often supported only by "soft" sources. Sometimes there is just a dominating desire to find a famous ancestor with the result that a key connection or two are totally fanciful. For these reasons I generally did not trace lines as they extended into the 1400's. (Unless I was dominated by the desire to have a famous ancestor. (:-)

Does this genealogy contain errors? -- (top)
     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 I will never manage to fix them all!".
     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 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 "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 to searching for primary sources in serious genealogical research. 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. Only comparatively few genealogies, no matter who researched them, can extend back beyond the 1600's without reliance on secondary sources. The difference between the professional and the amateur with regard to the use of secondary sources comes down to the diligence of the search that has been made for a primary source before accepting a secondary source, and not accepting a secondary source without corroboration - The more corroboration the better.

Where in the world did you collect all this stuff? -- (top)
     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, or 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 was still 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 anything "professional" from my technique - The true professional genealogist would be revolted at the idea of using the work of a non-professional, even though had he or she done the work it might have turned out about the same. We're speaking of two things here, Credentials & Method.
     Virtually the entire Miles side of this genealogy is taken from the book "L.D. Miles" by my first cousin (and dear friend) Carol 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 primary source documents. Her work is of a much higher quality than mine on the Gallup side, and her's 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 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 adventuresome, and got themselves more spread out - And 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 used the results from many phone calls and letters to City Clerks and Town Historians. In two instances I actually hired professional genealogists 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. Generally speaking I have not exclusively used information from LDS except as a starting point or as a last resort, the reason being that the Church has never required its genealogical contributors to reveal their sources, yet it offers profound spiritual encouragement for its people to do genealogical research. The result has been that a large amount of questionable material is in the LDS files. However, to be completely fair, many LDS researchers are conscientious professionals and their genealogical 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.

What happened to some of the descendant's information you collected? -- (top)
     I intend some day to publish this work in book format or on CD-ROM for limited distribution. When I do it will have a second part with information about the descendants of Leroy D. Miles, Sr., Elam D. Gallup, and a couple of other lines as well. For these public web pages I have removed all birth dates and biographical notes for descendants who are possibly still living.  The standard in these times for safe-guarding the privacy of individuals is being set higher each year by our litigious society and we might someday hear of a telephone company defending itself in a lawsuit for publishing their phone book. Accordingly, any descendant who wishes to have their name removed from this genealogy should get in touch with me and I will comply - No argument.

Do you intend to continue with this work? -- (top)
     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. 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 you descendants. As for the Gallup side, I have taken it about as far as I can. If I learn something new or discover an interesting anecdote I'll put it on these web pages. Of course, I will be always eager to correct errors - So let me know when you find one.

How does anyone use these web pages? -- (top)
     These pages contain the entire database of individuals. It is presented in two forms, Family Groups and Pedigrees. A Family Group contains all the information I have about any one set of parents and their children; the Pedigrees are in chart form beginning with the selected individual and proceeding back through the ancestry of him or her. The Pedigree chart gives only minimal information about each individual. The first page of either form of the genealogy will give you a path to an index of surnames from which you may select the person of your interest. In the Family Group pages, you will be taken to a sources page if you click on one of the superscripts (if any) following a name.
     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 other form of recorded 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 to March 24th for years prior to 1752. Until that year the Colonies and England continued using the old Julian calendar, on which the first day of the year is our March 25^th. (Even though the present day Gregorian calendar was established in 1582.) Dual dates having a span greater than one year, like 1595/1610, means only that the year is uncertain but is believed to be between those boundaries.

Are there any individuals here I should be sure to read about? -- (top)
          As it turned out, none of our people were breathtakingly important notables in American history. With apologies for my lack of effort to those of you who did not descend from the Gallup 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. 

Did you get much help from others? -- (top)
     My wife Carol and my son Jack have certainly given me the most help toward completing this task. For years they have had to observe only the back of my neck as I worked at the computer, and often dealing with my completely divided attention whenever a matter came up that needed me. I thank them very much indeed for giving me the unfettered freedom to get this done.
     This is a work that simply could not have been possible without the help of many others. Besides the singularly immense contribution of our cousin Carol Cramer for the Miles side, I would like to give credit and my thanks to the following people who were a great help to me; there have been many others who contributed as well:

Alice Gedge
Angela Day
Ara Inez Ray
Brenda Hawkins
Carmen M. Johnson
Carolyn E. Smith
Charles W. King
Dawn Willis
Floyd Smith
Frank Dyer
Jeffrey Capizzi
Jonnie Jarrett
Joyce Gore Locke
Judy Martin
Leah Blumberg
Leah Grant
Lambert Martin
Larry Chesbro'
Larry L. Kimmel
Marge Rice
Nancy Hauser
Nancy Ann Norman
Paul Nance
Richard Martin
Robert Gore
Susanne (Sam) Lucretia Behling

And my special thanks to the following who opened the door to whole family lines when I was really stumped:

Violet Sunderland - The Gore line.
Josephine Fuller - The Patchin line.
Muriel E. Gartner - The Dingman line.
Jocelyn A. Hubbard - The Packer Line.
Eugene Bouton - The Dyer Line.
(Eugene is long, long dead now but the fruit of his life-long passion
for collecting family data in his home town of Jefferson, NY, is gratefully ours.)

Lynn Gallup
February 2003
Edina, Minnesota

Who is maintaining this website? -- (top)
          Lynn Gallup passed away Tuesday August 11, 2020. Please read his obituary below.  Lynn Gallup's grandson, Jared Wong, is now hosting and maintaining this website.  Please see the contact page if you'd like to get in touch.  It would have been a shame if this resource and one of Lynn's life's works were lost to future generations, so I wanted to ensure it was hosted in some capacity.  The copy of this website and database is from a CD dated March 2006.

Obituary

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