What I Know, Don’t Know, and Would LIKE to Know About Jonathan Millet of Voluntown, New London, Connecticut

 I recently pulled all the papers and digital images from my files for Jonathan Millet, born about 1740, resided in Voluntown, New London, CT from at least 1763 to at least 1774; may have resided for a time in Pennsylvania, and who resided from (possibly) about 1790 until his death in 1798 in Palmyra, Ontario County, New York.  I was surprised at how much information I had on this gentleman and his family.  Also recently, someone posted to a query on the Millett Message Board that was written by someone twelve years ago, which I had participated in.  So, here we go with “What I Know, Don’t Know, and Would LIKE to know about Jonathan Millet.

What I know:

1.        Jonathan Millet married Jennet Edmond were married 1 September 1763 in Voluntown, Connecticut.  Source:  Voluntown CT Vital Records, Vol. 1, pg. 117

2.       Jonathan and Jennet had the following children, as listed on this same page of the Voluntown Vital Records:

a.       John Millet, born 29 September 1764

b.      Barbery Millet, born 22 February 1766

c.       Andrew Millet, born 29 November 1767

d.      Hannah Millet, born 18 November 1769

e.      Samuel Millet, born 2 February 1772

f.        Daniel Millet, born 2 February 1774

Additionally, we know there were other children born to Jonathan and Jennet as they are mentioned in his will, filed in Palmyra, Ontario County, New York in 1798:

g.       Anna (born after 1774)

h.      Nancy (born after 1774)

i.         Jonathan (born between 1777-1798)*

j.        William (born between 1777-1798)*

k.       Alexander (born between 1777-1798)*

*Jonathan, William, and Alexander were listed as “under age 21” in Jonathan Sr.’s 1798 will.  

3.       Jonathan Millet Sr. died in Palmyra, Ontario County, New York between 24 September and 15 October, 1798.  Jonathan’s will was dated 24 September 1798, and on 15 October, 1798, the list of goods, chattels and credits were prepared by John Swift and presented to the Court on 2 November, 1798 by Samuel Millet.  Both of these documents name him as “deceased.”

4.       Jonathan may have participated in the attempted settlement in Wyoming Valley, Pennsylvania.  Several county and town histories indicate he was one of the families who attempted settlement there, and came to Palmyra, Ontario County, New York about 1789-1790. Perhaps Pennsylvania is where Jonathan and Jennet’s last five children were born.

5.       Jonathan may have been the son of a sea captain who perished at sea when he was young.  On page 478 of The Douglas Genealogy, compiled and written by C. H. J. Douglas, c. 1879, there is a brief summary of this family. Some children are left out, and there are a few errors as far as where some of the sons settled.  Being so early in our history, I’m not holding my breath that anyone will be able to confirm or verify this.

What I don’t know, and what I’d LIKE to know (since they are really one and the same)

·         Jonathan’s birth information.  I don’t know if he was born in Voluntown, or if he was born in England or somewhere else.  I don’t have a birth date for him, so have been using “about 1740,” as have many other researchers.  I’d LIKE to have this information, but not sure it is possible given the early dates involved.  I don’t know for sure who his parents were, and would like to know that, too.

I also don’t know anything about Jonathan’s sojourn in Pennsylvania, but I’d LIKE to.  On my “to-do” list is to study out the early history of the Wyoming Valley, Pennsylvania issues.  I’ve seen some lists of settlers in this area and time frame, but have not seen our Jonathan or any other Millet's on any of these lists.

Next up:  His children.  While attempting to learn more about which of his sons I am descended from, I've spent the past 17 years collecting as much information on them as I could.  For some of these children I have an amazing amount of data; for others--not so much.  As my "cousin" Char used to say in her emails: 

"More Later"

We Get a Computer!

When my babies entered first grade, I suddenly had more free time on my hands, other than time spent volunteering at their school.  I decided it was time to get back to genealogy.  So off to my local Family History Center I went.  Some things had changed since I left it in 1987, after my Aunt Elsie had passed away.  Computers had come onto the scene, and I was clueless.  With the help of the volunteers at my local Family History Center, I began entering my data into PAF.  At long last, I knew what computers would be useful for!

Finally, in early 1995, we were ready!  We had spent the previous few months window shopping and studying out what we thought we wanted.  A friend of ours built computers in his spare time, so we parted with our $$ and had him build us our first computer.  At the same time I ordered PAF 2.1, which was a DOS-based program and cost $30.  I happily began entering my previous research into PAF, thinking that would be about all I could do with a computer, other than word documents, etc.

My brother, who has been my computer guru for these sixteen plus years, told us we needed the Internet.  He got us signed up with Prodigy.  For our money, we got either 5 or 10 hours of online time a month, and I can’t remember now for sure what we paid, but I think it was about $10 a month.  One night, trying to figure out what to do with “The Internet,” I got the brilliant idea to see what I could find by typing the word “genealogy” into the Prodigy search box.

What I got was a whole world of genealogy Message Boards!  I decided to tackle some of my “dead-end” families by perusing the Message Boards, then posting my own messages.  I seriously wanted to find out more about my gg grandmother, Mary Millet, who had married my gg grandfather, Samuel Henry Johnson, then apparently died shortly after the birth of my great grandfather.  I crafted a query containing what little I knew about her, and was pleasantly surprised to get an answer from someone who was researching her own Millet line, although she wasn’t sure if it was the right one or not.  She snail-mailed me photocopies of the research she had done which fit into my family, and gave me plenty to think about as she suddenly opened up a whole new family for me.  Unfortunately, after about a year of correspondence, she gave up her research to have one of those “surprise” babies, born some 14 years after her last daughter.  A few years ago I wrote to her mailing address to let her know what I had found since then, but never got a reply.  I hope one day she’ll find her way back to research—she was a darn good researcher and I miss her insights, even after all these years.  It’s time to write again, this daughter ought to be a teen-ager by now.

The second thing I wanted to find was my husband’s Allen family.  His parents had researched to no avail, in an attempt to get further back than the little bit of information they had on two generations.  Lester Otis Allen was my husband’s grandfather, he had deserted his family when my father-in-law was very young and any family members who knew anything about him refused to divulge that information.  Lester’s father was Newton Allen, and that’s about all they knew.  I posted to the Allen Message Board on Prodigy and voila!  Someone had a book (The Allen Family, Descendants of John and Amy Cox Allen) and my father-in-law was in the book!  So was his whole Allen family plus other lines, clear back to 1694!  I bought the book, my first genealogy-related purchase (other than the PAF software).  Best $40 I ever spent!

A year later my brother decided we needed the “real” Internet, which was a good thing, since clearly the time limitations put on us by our Prodigy plan were not enough anymore.  Enter Rootsweb’s mailing lists (where I “met” cousins who took my Johnson’s back to 1600 for me);  a Kansas history mailing list, where I was invited to participate in the USGenWeb Project in July 1996; and more.  In 1996 there was very little genealogy data online.  I feel fortunate to have discovered Internet Genealogy back in its beginning stages, so I’ve had time to grow with it.  Not sure how well I’d be able to grasp all that is there for us now, if I were just beginning my online research.  MUCH easier in small bites!

Next:  What I know, don’t know, and want to know about Jonathan Millet.

An Introduction:

I’ve been reading lots of blogs over this past year, as well as attending genealogy-based webinars, mostly courtesy of Legacy.com. I’ve been thinking about starting up a blog about my family history research. I actually did another genealogy blog several years ago, but it’s been several years since I’ve added anything to it. So I’m going to start again, and hopefully I’ll be more diligent about adding to it on a regular basis.

 Blogging about my family history research will kill two birds with one stone:

 1. Fulfilling the nudges from a guilty conscience which tells me I should be doing this
2. Putting on paper what I know about various ancestors, complete with sources; what I don’t know about them; and what I would like to know or learn about them. That will help me realize what I know and what my next steps could/should be.

 Back in January of 1995, we got our first computer. It had a whopping 8 mgs of RAM, and I believe it was a 486 (not sure what—and hubby is at work so can’t ask him for more details), and we paid about $1,800 to have a friend build it for us. Comparable computers from the store ran $2,500 to $3,000, and this was pretty hot stuff for 1995. For years my in-laws wanted to buy us a computer, but we had no idea what we’d do with it at the time. This was before 1987, as that’s the year my mother-in-law passed away.

When my youngest children (twins) were entering first grade back in 1990, I decided it was time to pick up the research I had put aside to raise the last three of our six children. A few years later, it was becoming apparent that at long last I had a use for a computer. I had started family history research back in 1968, as a young mother of a six-week old baby girl. My mother’s youngest sister, “Aunt Elsie,” had compiled a basic genealogy of the family. She had also followed one of the first rules when starting out (which I learned later on): Ask family members what they know! Her aunts and uncles were getting older, and she was wise enough to start asking them about their family—what they remembered, what memorabilia they might have, etc. She made a copy for each of her sisters. When I read my mother’s copy, I took it and don’t think Mom ever saw it again. It became the basis for my own research, and I was privileged to work with Aunt Elsie to extend our information back several more generations, until Aunt Elsie passed away in 1987. Boy, wouldn’t she have loved this computer age! My research was kind of “on-again off-again” as we raised our six children.

 No Internet back in those early days. Research was done by writing to court houses, cemetery associations, relatives, etc., and waiting in hopes you’d hear back from them quickly. Research was also done through the LDS church, although in those early days they didn’t have the local Family History Centers to send microfilms to like they do now. You had to actually go to Salt Lake.

 In June of 1971, Mom & I took my two daughters (ages 3yrs. & 18 months) and our dog Benjie, on a van trip back to Marysville, Kansas—her home town. I was able to meet one of her uncle’s, as well as many of her cousins. I spent an afternoon at the old Courthouse copying down marriages out of the ledger books, and some more time at the local newspaper office, copying down obituaries and what-not from the papers. Back then, copy machines were fairly new, and small towns just did not have them yet. Then I got an unexpected bonus: Heading home, Mom thought we’d come through Salt Lake and then head north to get back to Portland (our home). And she agreed to watch the darling daughters so I could spend a few hours at the Family History Library! I don’t remember for sure just what I copied from microfilm, but I’m sure if I dig deep enough in my paper files I might still have that information.

 Since this is getting a little long, I will stop here, and cover the “Computer Years” in the next blog. I hope that one will be ready to go in the next day or two.

 After that, comes “What I Know, Don’t Know, and Would LIKE to Know about . . .”

And my first subject will be: Jonathan Millet of Voluntown, New London, Connecticut (ca 1740-1798).