Question

When did the surname Wall/Walls first arrive in North America and where?

Answer 1

The German New River Settlement had their Wall (Wahl) family arrive in 1737 & 38 from Rodheim Von der Hoehe, Friedberg (Hessen), Germany. They arrived in Philidelphia before making their way to Virginia.

Adam Wall , John Wall and Aphel WALL, Ship Winter Galley, Sept 5 1738 , Edward Paynter , master from Rotterdam last, Conrad Wall  arrived in  Philadelphia on ship St. Andrews Galley 09/26/1737" John Stedman Master, from Rotterdam last of Cowes" from Deal

Comments

Alice Wall(s) born Calvert County Maryland 1687 m/ George Sr. Wells born 1685 PG Maryland children George Jr. Wells born 1711 and Joseph Wells born 1713

Answer 2

WWW.Familysearch.org is a great place to search. I found this, Abigail's parents had to be here in or before 1671.

Be aware this and and an unknown percentage of the entries are User Submitted Trees; not true documentation.

 

Abigail Walls, born abt 1671 Woodbury, Litchfield Co. Connecticut, married Judson Hurd 5 Jan 1692.

Comments

Hi Tom, Not trying to hijack the thread or anything, but I have a little concern about the statement:
Be aware this and most of the entries are "User Submitted Trees" not true documentation.
While it is true, that information came from a "User Submitted Genealogy", as it is clearly labeled in a list separate from the records search results, I feel it's a stretch and a bit misleading to say "most of the entries" on FamilySearch are "User Submitted Trees".
Case in point, I cannot find, in a quick 5 minute search, any reliable documentation of Abigail Walls being in Connecticut in 1671...BUT I do see this:

"Massachusetts, Springfield Vital Records, 1638-1887," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/XPNJ-KMN : accessed 16 March 2015), Abigail Wall in entry for Benjamin Wall, Oct 1728; citing v 2 p 1, Hampden, Massachusetts, Springield City Hall; FHL microfilm 185,417.
This is an actual indexed transcription of the Death Record of Benjamin Wall, son of Abigail Wall, in Oct. 1728 from Hampden, Massachusetts.
You'll find at the bottom of the Index, a link to the actual scanned image of the original document.

Being I use these kinds of Indexed Records as sources all the time, I don't feel it is accurate to say "most of the entries" from FamilySearch are "User Submitted Trees".

In fact, in my experience, a very small percentage of the overall results I get from FamilySearch are listed separately as "User Submitted". I of course see these as suspect and use them only as 'clues'. Am I misunderstanding something here?
-P Rich

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How about I modify "most" to "an unknown percentage"? That would satisfy my concern and admit that an equally unknown percentage are true "Facts."

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Okay, I feel good about that statement then... ;-)

I'm sorry, I had no intention of being rude, even if a bit 'nit-picky'. I JUST wanted to clarify, as I rely pretty heavily on those indexed records...and if I needed to recalibrate my level of certainty because I was misunderstanding the nature of the records...
Thank You for all your valuable time and effort here at WikiTree!

-P Rich

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Not understood as rude, but as a correction. I'm fine with that.
My experience, I was looking for the mother of my 3rd GGF, found her on Ancestry, found that 10 family trees had her and thought "if ten people have this 'factoid' it has a high probability of truth."
Subsequently I realized they all had the same non-proven source. I'm still using her name but without documentation.

Answer 3

The Wall surname project at Family Tree DNA offers some insight. One group of Walls is related on Y-DNA to a group of Pittmans, and of the current set of Big-Y testers, the TMRCA estimate is 1720ad. This date will no doubt be revised as new testers join and have Big-Y results to compare. From known genealogies, it is not possible for the actual date to be much later than this estimate. It could be considerably earlier, though.

Another group in the project, unrelated to the above on Y DNA, has a TMRCA estimate of circa 1600ad. This is Group 02b in the project. There are currently a small number of testers with Big-Y results in this group, so the estimate is not very certain.

There are many different Wall lines, as proven by Y-DNA, so there is not one single answer to this question. More precisely, get a Y-DNA result, compare it with other testers in the Wall project, then see what can be concluded about how long that line has been in North America. https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/wall/dna-results

Another discussion of early Walls in America comes from researcher Lou Poole. He talks about four Wall families of southern Virginia in the 1600s. I found his report here https://poythress.org/family-studies/allied-wall-family-updated-by-lou-poole/

Answer 4

There are a batch of Wall that came over in 1635.    Wall-229

I believe they are the first.

Answer 5

I have no idea about arriving in America, but I have Walls ancestors in Orkney (Scotland) back in the 1700s. They may or may not have been descended from families named Wallace, but Walls is also a fairly well known Norse or Viking name as well.

Considering my DNA shows a high level of Scandinavian ancestry, I am inclined to go with the Viking origin.