The 400 Year Story Of An American Family: Characters, Communities, & Contributions

This book is primarily about the American ancestry of Theodore and Anna Wray Lee. In every instance, our family benefited from a new start in America, and our ancestors, some with humble beginnings, thrived, prospered and grew. Our American story is about families that played active and sometimes leading roles in communities as constables, councilors, representatives, and jurists. They were close to the land and worked as farmers, millers, coopers, wheelwrights, and blacksmiths. They fought in every war, especially as part of their colonial militias, and as minutemen in the Revolution. They were the frontier faithful, church members, deacons, elders, pastors, baptismal sponsors and witnesses, and missionaries. They were, foremost in their own minds, mothers and fathers, grandparents and great grandparents, daughters and sons, sisters and brothers and cousins, nieces and nephews, and always connected to extended family and community. The family has many stories about those who fit in well and had a sense of belonging where they were. Others were activists who challenged practices that they saw as unfair, and succeeded in many ways to serve their communities according to their conscience. Much of the American environment in which our family developed included European political, economic, cultural, and spiritual influences that the immigrants brought with them. In many respects, these European characteristics are evident in how our society operates to this day. The union of the Reverend Theodore and Anna Myrtilla Wray Lee brought together two ancestries that were different in important ways. The Wray line we have traced back to Ireland and Ulster Province, and that provides a Scots-Irish thread to the story of the family's character and make-up. The Lee line originates with the union of Reverend Theodore's parents, William Newland and Maggie (van Arsdale) Lee. William Lee's ancestry goes back to the founding of Connecticut, and this was a family of English origins. The van Arsdales go back to the early years of the Dutch colonization of what were then New Amsterdam and Breuklyn in New Netherlands, and are now Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York. Many of our ancestors were in the first group of colonists in the towns that they co-founded. It was common for these original immigrants to have been born in the 1500's. The 98 ancestors born in the 1500's includes these earliest pioneers and their immediate forbearers. In addition, this book contains the genealogical and historical information from before 1500 for 22 individuals. The families traced back into the Reformation and even the Middle Ages are illustrative of various sociological, economic, and cultural patterns that help us understand the character and values passed on to the emigrants to America. War, famine, economic collapse, atrocities carried out in the name of religion, and constraints on social mobility all spurred our ancestors to embark on their voyages to America. We have traced the migrations from Europe to America of 58 ancestors. Of these original emigrants, 51 arrived in the 1600's, while seven arrived in the 1700's. These migrations follow six distinct patterns. Our ancestors from England primarily immigrated to Connecticut, and some had Pennsylvania as their destination. All of our Scots-Irish ancestors found their way to Western Pennsylvania. Our emigrant ancestors from Germany had destinations in both Pennsylvania and New York. Our emigrants from France went to New York and then New Jersey. Our ancestors from the Netherlands also immigrated to New York and New Jersey. Our ancestors who were from Denmark, Norway, and Belgium immigrated to New York. At each step along the way we have discovered a rich narrative of the family history, and its strong connection to the communities it helped form. This is a narrative that always involved a new frontier, a push forward into an ever newer world.

• | Author: Paul B. Lee
• | Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• | Publication Date: May 15, 2017
• | Number of Pages: 560 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 1535471697
• | ISBN-13: 9781535471695