PGM: What are the origins of Ralph Wheelock?

Question

I was wondering if someone from the Puritan Great Migration project could take a look at Ralph Wheelock.  I'm pretty sure that his parents are considered to be unknown.  There is a baptism record, but no evidence really to connect it to the Ralph Wheelock that came to America.  Also, there's also lots of information in there, that could use some consolidation/clean up.

I'm happy to help, but not really clear what's appropriate since the profile is project protected.

Thanks for any help/guidance!

Comments

(And while we're at it, we should clean up the profile; looks like a huge cut-and-paste from someone's personal family file that looks to be copied from other sources.)

In the meantime, I'll go check to see what Anderson has to say about him.

EDIT: He's not covered by Anderson. I'm going to check the journals...

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M,  Do you have to something on Wheelock, either a printed genealogy or a journal article?

I did a little preliminary clean and hunt for copy/pastes.

The goal is to write a biography that is supported by sourced facts, in our own words, not the words of someone else.

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And... I'm not having much luck finding published research about his origins. Nothing obvious in the journals database of americanancestors.org (NEHGS).

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I'll compile the list from the Great migration Directory, will take a few minutes.

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This page will have all of these listed and hopefully a link https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Sources-GMB

DeTR Dedham Town Records 1:32
DeVR Dedham Vital Records 1
DeChR Dedham Church Records 5
MBCR Mass. Bay Colony Reecords 1:374

SPR Case #1339 Suffolk Probate records

Parker-Ruggles 459
NGSQ 74:3-6 (Natl Gen. Soc. Quaterly)
Medfield History 506-7
NEHGR 152:3-23 and 311-12. This is not online, permission to publish online was not received.

 

 

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re: last item: any current member of NEHGS can request a copy of published articles that are not online for the reason Anne states. I requested that article, and it came in minutes! I just finished reading it, taking notes, etc. It contains some clues to Ralph Wheelock's origins. I'll write that up in a separate post.

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I didn't know that

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Thank you for the help!!

I know that unfortunately, Ralph Wheelock isn't in some of the standard sources. The Wheelock Genealogy website provides a pretty good overview of avail information.  I'm gueesing that some of what's in the profile was cut and past from there.

 Bio, with some sources: http://www.wheelockgenealogy.com/pages/ralphbio.htm

Bibliography: http://www.wheelockgenealogy.com/pages/bibliogr.htm

Discussion of evidence on his birth/parents:

http://www.wheelockgenealogy.com/pages/mysteries.htm

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Wow progress happening while I was replying in the last comment. You guys are amazing.

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Interesting about: http://www.wheelockgenealogy.com/pages/mysteries.htm

While it makes reference to the 1998 NEHGR article about the Clarkes, it doesn't mention George Barber as brother-in-law in Ralph's will. Nor that Ralph Wheelock was witness to a Clarke will, nor the information about Ralph's matriculation, which places his birth closer to 1605. 

Odd.

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Some of that info is mentioned in the source in the bio of Ralph Wheelock and not in the Wheelock mysteries section...

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Quote: "Ralph Wheelock's will refers to George Barber as his "brother-in-law". This led to the speculation that the maiden name of Rebecca must have been Barber. But it is shown in the article that George Barber married Rebecca Clarke's sister, Elizabeth Clarke, thereby explaining the reference in Ralph Wheelock's will."

 

Answer 1

== Clues to Origins ==

The following is extracted from "The English Ancestry of Joseph Clark (1613-1683) of Dedham and Medfield, Massachusetts," in NEHGR 152 (1998)

• Ralph Wheelock, in his will, calls George Barber of Dedham brother-in-law. George Barber married Elizabeth Clark.
• Robert Charles Anderson, while researching something else in 1986, came across the marriage of Ralph Wheelock, clerk, to Rebecca Clark 17 May 1630 in Wramplingham, Norfolk. (This is the NGSQ 74:36 reference... I'm a member, I'll go get it.)
  • Also in those same records was the 1631 baptism of Mary Wheelock, daughter of Ralph.
• Elizabeth and Rebecca were daughters of Thomas Clark, who in his 1637 will made a bequest to his granddaughter Mary Wheelock. 
  • Rebecca Clark (who married Ralph Wheelock) was baptized 26 August 1610
• Ralph Wheelock was witness to the 1630 will of William Clark "in his unmistakable hand" apparently.
• One source for Ralph's 1600 Shropshire birth is Tilden's History of Medfield, p 506. BUT:
  • Ralph W. graduated in 1623; 18 is a typical age for such graduation, bringing a likely birth year to 1605. 
  • Either Tilden or someone else (have to check) suggests that Ralph was brother to Abraham Wheelock, b abt 1593 in Whitchurch, Shropshire.
• No references for Wheelock were found in Archdeaconry of Norfolk or Norfolk Consistory Court will indexes.
• Someone claimed that Ralph, with wife and daughter (would have been Mary) sailed to New England in 1637 on the "Transport" but the author found no published passenger list.

Comments

Robert Charles Anderson, "Clark, Hunting and Wheelock Families...,"  in NGSQ 74 (1986):3-6

Doesn't add much to what I wrote above; does say that he found no other Wheelock records in Wramplingham 1600-1640.  Says that Ralph's children Gershom and Rebecca were born prior to immigration, so those should be sought in surrounding parishes.

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Also want to add that Wramplington is on opposite sides of England from Shropshire. I sincerely doubt that the Ralph Wheelock, supposedly baptized in 1600 in Shropshire is the same man as the Ralph Wheelock who marries Rebecca Clarke in Wramplingham.

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Good question, M. Cole, and amazing work in response by Jilliane, Anne, and others.

As to Ralph of Shropshire marrying Rebecca of Wramplingham, that does sound unlikely, until we note that Ralph studied at Cambridge (Clare Hall, now Clare College, per Tilden, p. 506). The chance to study at Cambridge is worth what was then a long trip.  It's less than 60 miles from Cambridge to Wramplingham, up what's now the A11, a road that has been there since Roman times.  Ralph may have met Rebecca in Cambridge, or perhaps he did some preaching in or near her hometown and they met then;  that's just speculation.

Tilden provide no information about Rebecca other than her name and her death year, 1680, three years before Ralph.

Tilden notes that Ralph was a dissenting preacher (no doubt dating to his Cambridge days), says he preached frequently in New England, though never a settled minister.  A glance at the vital records of Medfield--which he maintained--reveals that he married just about every couple married in that town during its first 40 years, prehaps including the marriage of his son Benjamin to Elizabeth, daughter of Samuel Bullen.

I'll be in East Anglia for a week in July, and will add Wramplingham to the itinerary.

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Thanks, Halsey.  Rick Sullivan also mentions that he was ordained near there shortly before being married.

I did some searching on Abraham and created a profile for him.  (Fascinating life):https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Wheelock-933 

Interesting article (if you skim through some of academic history):  “Abraham Wheelock, Arabist and Saxonist.” Biography, vol. 8, no. 2, 1985, pp. 163–185. JSTOR-

-Abraham married in 1632
-His will names a son Abraham and four daughters.
-Disputes that he could have been the father of the younger Ralph as suggested by Venn and suggests that maybe these younger Wheelock's attending Cambridge were Ralph's (the immigrant) children.

Baptismal records for Campbridge on Familysearch show that there was also a Gregory Wheelock in Cambridge at that time.

• Father: Gregory: Children baptised: Ralph (1629), Ann (1635), Joane (1633), , Margery (1635 -d. 1635), John (1637)
• Father: Abraham, Children baptised: Abraham (1634), Clement (1639), Thomas (1632 - d. 1635), Sara (1637), Jeane/Joan (1642),  Ann (1647).

 

*And then I found this letter which says that Ralph (or at least a Ralph) and Abraham went to the same grammar school and that records in Whitchurch don't start until 1620.http://http://wheelock.one-name.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Whitchurch-Letter-1983.pdf

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Tilden's work has been updated by that 1998 NEHGR article. Rebecca's baptism has been found as well as her 1630 marriage to Ralph Wheelock. See my notes above. So he could not have been born 1629 son of Abraham or anyone else. You really should get a copy of the 1998 article.

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Well, I'm pretty sure he's someone's son :-)

Sorry, my notes probably aren't clear.  There are two Ralph Wheelock's in Venn's Cambridge database.  He suggests that the older Ralph is possibly Abraham's brother, and younger Ralph possibly Abraham's son. I don't think anyone has suggested parents for Ralph (the older) or for Abraham.

I think its interesting to see the baptisms in the area around that time and with the recurring names the possibility that Gregory, Abraham and Ralph were related.  More of interest for future research, I suppose,

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Are either the senior or the junior considered to be the PGM immigrant?

From analysis of the various records (for example being about 25 at known and documented marriage in 1630), the immigrant Ralph Wheelock would have been born about 1605.

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Just looked at the book. Where does that data come from?

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>Sr. is considered to be the immigrant.

>The Cambridge publication has a long section on sources, but nothing that specifies where specific facts come from. I would think that if the College record mentioned his place of birth that the NEHGS articles would have mentioned it. For the personal histories for Emigrants to New England they worked with J Gardner Bartlett of Boston.     (https://archive.org/stream/alumnicantabrigipt1vol1univiala#page/n20/mode/1up)

Maybe it came from the Memoirs of Eleazar Wheelock (published 1811). The Wheelock Genealogy website mentions this, and suggests that the information could be from the family bible. Although, I wonder if maybe  year the birth was calculated based on family tradition about how old Ralph Wheelock was when he died.

https://books.google.com/books?id=QTYFAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA11

Unfortunately, nothing that points to a definitive primary record.

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I went ahead and removed some duplicate text and rearranged things to try and consolidate the various sources and update with links and more info.  

I was reading the Editing guidance for PGM, and wondered if it would be okay to go ahead and work on a summary of a will to replace the full text that's in the profile now.  I believe the transcription is actually a copy and paste from wheelockgenealogy.com anyway.

Answer 2

Note that he IS in the Cambridge Alumni Database, which gives a baptismal date of 1600 (just Shropshire and the year): link to db

An image of the original book, John Venn's Alumni cantabrigienses,  on which the database was based: link at archive.org.This source suggests that his father might have been Cambridge alumnus Abraham Wheelock, based on dates and affiliations.

Where did  Venn get the baptismal information?  The other entries don't have it.

Comments

By the way, I see him assigned  Joseph Wheelock/Elizabeth Rogers as parents in a lot of junk trees -- ancestry.com, genii -- but not on any reputable sites, or with sources.  It seems to be an attempt to connect him up to the original Shropshire family.

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He must have been using the other published info on Ralph.  See the note here (https://books.google.com/books?id=zAV98m0cyl4C&pg=PA401) that Ralph Wheelock's record didn't include age at matriculation.

P.S. How did you hide the link in your post?