Glaittli

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Hatfield/McCoy

Sorry about my other posting, but I type much faster than this screen can register the text, then I transmitted before it had registered - and lost a bunch of it.

What I was trying to say in the "lost part" was that all these surnames (Hatfield, Ebel, Smith, Winans, Melyn, Ogden, etc.) were from Holland or Belgium where they went to escape religious persecution in France, Spain and (yes) England, especially between 1649 and 1660 when Oliver Cromwell was in charge (not a nice man !). You should be able to find records of births, baptisms, marriages, and deaths for these families in the Dutch Reformed Church in NY City or others nearby.

THANK YOU for straigtening me out on a simple fact that I had overlooked. I have been asking everyone if they knew a surname ABEL for Alice who married Thomas Hatfield, with no results. I completely forgot it might have been spelled another way - until I saw your EBEL posting. EBEL is pronounced exactly like English ABEL, but it didn't register with me until I saw your note.

I have some things to fill in the blanks for you, but I'm confused about some of my own info, gathered from here and there after reading THOUSANDS of these postings and my own notes.

The two brothers Matthias Hatfield (my direct ancestor) (1624-1687) and Thomas (? 1624-____?) came to America in the early 1650's and were the progenitors of all the Hatfield's in North America. Matthias is my mother's direct line, so I have him all the way down to today.

Do you know their father was Thomas Hatfield b.ca. 1600 probably in Yorkshire, Eng, who married May 1, 1621 Anna (Hampton ? Hinton ?) Cox in England, she probably from a Dutch family ? This Thomas in turn seems to be the son of a John Hadfelde/Hatfield b.ca. 1564, the same year Shakespeare was born ! The spelling Hadfelde is also Dutch.

The only thing I knew about the younger Thomas was that he married on Nov 27, 1671 an Alice Abel (your Ebel) TROTTER. I had nothing else to go on. I found it strange that a man born 1626 would wait until 1671 (at age 45) to marry, but then I started to think that either (a) his birthdate was wrong or (b) perhaps Alice was not his first wife and was much younger, and that Trotter might be her previous husband's name. If your DOB of 1653 for her is right, I think option (b) is partly right, BUT she was only 18 at time of marriage to Thomas, so was likely NOT married before this, so Trotter was probably her true surname, OR perhaps she WAS born an Ebel but was "adopted" or otherwise taken in by a family (person ?) named Trotter.

Do you have any info about this being a second marriage ? If so, who was the first wife ? I know from other info in later generations that he HAD to have children, but no info on how many, when born, and the first 3 or 4 generations after Thomas. If this was Alice's second marriage, was 1653 her true DOB or was it somewhat earlier ? Might she have married Trotter at 17 or 18 and then he died in accident, battle, etc ?? So many questions, so few answers ...

One interesting thing - I know it is one line from Matthias or Thomas (I think Matthias) which eventually spun off to KY and TN in the 19th century and was connected to the "McCoy" clan and the "feud". Given your surname, are you connected to the McCoy's through Nancy b. 1863 who married into the Hatfield family ? If you have the line from Joseph Hatfield who m. (2nd) Rachel Smith, down through Anderson "Devil Anse" H, I'd like to see how it goes. This is not my direct line, so I have not spent much time on it so far.

Anyway, on the EBEL front, I now believe Alice is somehow connected with the Smith's in the following generation (b. 1675-1690 ?) who came down from (Capt ?) John Smith 1580 founder of Taunton, Plymouth Colony and down to Abel/Ebel Smith b.ca. 1670. I think this Ebel got his Christian name from a father, or more likely his mother's maiden name. Ebel Smith's daughter Deborah Smith b.ca. 1705-1710 married ca. 1735-1740 Matthias H's grandson John Hatfield (your Thomas' great-nephew). John and Deborah were parents of Margery Hatfield b. 1747 who married 1764 Jacob Tooker (1740-1827). This was the "coming together" of the two big lines down to my mother. Their daughter Deborah Tooker then married (1st) a Van Tuyl, then (2nd) a _______ ? Smith, who I think was related to her own gr-grandfather Ebel Smith. Are you confused now ?

I also believe this Smith connection down another line through Rachel Smith eventually led to the Hatfield-McCoy saga.

Anyway, nothing else in the EBEL postings so far relates to any of our information, so we will have to see who answers some of our questions as time goes by.

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