Willey's of Penobscot, Maine

+3 votes
180 views
My grandfather told me that there were three brothers who migrated from England around the 1640's.  Would like to get their names.

 

Great grandfather moved from Penobscot, Maine to Hannibal, Missouri. Henry Holmes Willey
in Genealogy Help by Living Willey G2G Rookie (230 points)
edited by Living Willey
Do you  have Henry Holmes birth year and the county or city in England?
There is no town in Maine of Preboscot. There is a Penobscot, though.
You are correct of course Paula.  Thank you for the correction.

Henry Nathan Willey, Jr.

2 Answers

+3 votes
I have all I know on my tree is you can see it.  I am new and not quite sure how the site works yet.

Henry Holmes was born about 1880 more or less.

He did not come over from England but his ancestors did.  

We have the Willey's  coming from England in the 1640's
by
+3 votes
As Paula noted, it will be useful to explore alternative spellings of places; and I have found Maine census-takers spelling my ancestors names Wiley, Wilie, and Wylie.  The -scot suffix was used in Abenaki place names referring to large rivers, or possibly the estuaries at the mouths of such rivers.  The two best known are the Penobscot near Bangor, and the Presumpscot near Portland.  There may have been others whose Abenaki names were not preserved by Europeans.

Records of European genealogists seem very sparse concerning the European fishermen living along the Maine coast through the 16th and 17th centuries.  The French and Indian Wars destroyed most records of the Maine coast during the first century of your Willey's North American residency.  My Wylie ancestors were living near the Kennebec River estuary and appear to have arrived from Ireland in the 1740s during the famine of the great frost which, although today less remembered than the great famine a century later, actually killed a larger percentage or the Irish population,
by AL Wellman G2G6 Mach 1 (19.8k points)
I also have run into the variant spellings as you did.  It is amazing that Henry Willey was used for generations in some form or another.  The other day, I got something saying we were related to Queen Elizabeth.  I have a coat of arms for the Willey's that is hand-carved and hand-painted with ermine, a crown and a deer's head atop counterchanged chevrons. Which I ordered back in 1962 from England.

There is another Willey coat of arms that says "Fides" or faithful but is not as elaborate as the one I have.  I have found that there is no such thing as a family crest but that and individual has to prove to the House of Peerage that they are indeed Willey and then a design is made for the client.  Interesting side-thought.

Thank you for your comments.

Henry Nathan Willey, Jr.
Do you have the name of a spouse, child, or parent also? That usually helps to find the correct person.

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