Faulkner Line Highlights

Alex's last name is Faulkner. This name comes from his mother's paternal line and is Scottish! We were able to trace this line back to the 1600s, and along the way found some interesting tidbits and anecdotes. 

"Brown-Falcon,-Vic,-3.1.2008" by jjron - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons 

The surname "Faulkner" comes from the occupational name "Falconer," one who hunts with falcons. The earliest Faulkners in America were actually Falconers! Alex's 8x great-grandfather Patrick Falconer (1658-1692) arrived in New Jersey from Scotland in 1684. He married Hannah Jones (1669-1717), whose family had already been in the New World for generations.

Through Hannah Jones, the family has some distinguished colonial roots. According a history of the New Haven colony, her father William Jones (1624-1706) participated in hiding the "Regicide Judges" from crown prosecution in 1661. These men, Whalley and Goffe, had been among the Parliamentarians who sentenced King Charles I to death after the second English Civil War; when the monarchy came back to power they escaped to New Haven and were sheltered by the colonists. Meanwhile, Hannah Jones' mother was Hannah Eaton (1632-1707), the daughter of Theophilus Eaton (1591-1657), making Theophilus, the famous first governor of New Haven who was re-elected every year until his death, Alex's 10x great-grandfather. (As a side-note, Theophilus' brother Nathaniel, Alex's 11x great uncle, was the first person in Massachusetts tried for witchcraft.)

Patrick Falconer's son Patrick Faulkner (1692-1735) was born the year of his father's death. He married Deliverance Cooke (1695-1781), whose grandfather (Alex's 9x great-grandfather) Thomas Cooke (1615-1692) was one of the first men to set foot in the brand-new New Haven colony under Theophilius in 1637. The family saw New Haven merge with the Connecticut colony in 1664. 

During the American Revolution, Patrick and Deliverance's son Charles Faulkner (1731-1803), Alex's 6x great grandfather, served in Captain Vaill's Coast Guard near Guilford, Connecticut. He was wounded in 1781 by "a marauding party of British"* who landed on the coast. Due to his heroism, the nearby Faulkner's Island where his family lived may (or may not) have been named after him! The island may have been named after Charles, or the whole Faulkner family, or may have been named as a translation of its native name, "the place of the great fish hawks"; like the name of its residents, it morphed with time from Falconer's into Faulkner's. (*The most information we were able to find about this incident came from a self-published book by a Guilford author, Joel E. Helander; the book is The Island Called Faulkner's, published 1988, ISBN 0-935600-09-4. The self-publishing makes it a little suspect, and we have not yet been able to track down Helander's sources and check them out.)

Charles Faulkner's grandson Jeremiah Faulkner (1802-1885) married Jane Catherine Hewitt (1809-1884). Here, with Alex's 4x great-grandparents, the Hewitt and VanBenschoten lines enter the family tree from Jane's father and mother respectively. Both have long and distinguished histories in America. 

The Hewitt line came to Connecticut about 1650 with Alex's 10x great grandfather Thomas Hewitt (1630-1662), who, after marrying and having two children in the colony, was lost at sea in the West Indies in 1662. His widow petitioned the general court in 1670 to be able to remarry, since he had not been seen in eight years.

Thomas Hewitt's grandson Benjamin Hewitt (1688-1761) married his first cousin once removed Ann Palmer (1683-1760). The ancestor they had in common was Walter Palmer (1585-1661), Alex's 10x great grandfather. Walter was one of the founders of Stonington, Connecticut -- but was most notable for being charged with manslaughter in 1630, shortly after he arrived in Massachusetts from England. The book New England: The Great Migration and The Great Migration Begins, 1620-1635, describes the trial this way: 

On 28 September 1630 a coroner's jury met to "inquire concerning the death of Austen Bratcher ... dying lately at Mr. Cradock's plantation." The jury found "that the strokes given by Walter Palmer were occasionally the means of the death of Austen Bratcher, & so to be manslaughter." Palmer was bound over for trial on 19 October, but at that court the case was continued to 9 November, at which time a trial was held and the jury found Palmer not guity.

The Van BenSchoten line may have came to New York when it was still New Netherland, but the Dutch surnames and church records have made it difficult to trace "back to the boat"; we have got as far back as the 1730s and still have not reached European emigrants. The highlight of this line is Hermannus Dumond/Harmonus du Mon (1730?-1778), Alex's 7x great-grandfather. Although he was not enlisted in the Revolutionary army, starting about 1776 in Delaware County, New York, he passed intelligence about Loyalist and Loyalist Indian movements to the colonial military, and in 1778 was killed for his efforts by a party of Loyalists from Schorarie.

Jeremiah Faulkner and Jane Catherine Hewitt's son was Lyman Faulkner (1833-1889), Alex's 3x great grandfather, who married Virginian Sarah M Stokes (1848-1927). For a long time we could not find any further information on Sarah Stokes' family; after a recent research breakthrough, we believe her mother was Mary Cool (1830-1904), who sometime after having children separated from her family and was marked as "insane" on the 1870 census. It is possible although unconfirmed that she died at the Western State Hospital asylum in Staunton, Virginia. If that is true she is buried in one of the property's many unmarked graves. Mary Cool's grandfather was William Matheny II (1759-1836), Alex's 6x great-grandfather; he was a Revolutionary War veteran who enlisted in Augusta County, Virginia, in 1777; later that year he was in the Battle of Brandywine Creek in Pennsylvania. He was wounded in the leg and taken prisoner for several days, but was soon removed to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He recovered from his wound but did not rejoin the army; despite this, he was granted a pension after the war.

Lyman Faulkner and Sarah Stokes' son Myron Jeremiah Faulkner (1877-1953) brings us into the 1900s and more recent memory; he is Alex's great-great-grandfather, his grandfather's grandfather. He married Sarah Sanford (1880-1926), who was his first cousin once removed through the common ancestors Jeremiah Faulkner/Jane Catherine Hewitt. The Sanford line is also long and includes many colorful early American characters; we have given it its own write-up of highlights. 

Myron Faulkner and Sarah Sanford had two sons, Lyman George Faulkner (1903-1946) and Curtis Lewis Faulkner (1907-2003). Alex's great-grandfather Lyman was born and raised in Delaware County, New York; he married Helen Sutherland (1900-1986), whose family history has its own section on our website here. Lyman had one son, Alex's grandfather George Richard Faulkner (1930), before he died unexpectedly in a tractor accident at age 43. Alex's grandfather George has talked to us about his family, his life, and his memories here.

These are only the highlights of the Faulkner history! For the complete picture, we have charts and reports for download.

Sanford Line Highlights

The Sanford line, part of the Faulkner side of the family, runs from England to the earliest New Haven, Connecticut, and Massachusetts Bay colonists all the way down to Alex's grandfather's grandmother, Sarah E Sanford (1880-1926), who married into the Faulkner name. These are some of the highlights of the Sanford family.

Founder's Bridge in Milford, Connecticut, from Dave Pelland of ctmonuments.net. The blocks to the left of this photo continue across the span of the bridge; each honors a Milford founder or founding couple.

Many of Alex's ancestors on his Sanford side were Puritans who came to America in the earliest days of the Great Migration in the 1630s; we have identified a good proportion of Alex's 10x great grandparents and higher, including a branch or two as far back as his 15x greats! Some of these ancestors appear on founder's monuments in historic Connecticut, especially the town of Milford. Here, there is a "founders' bridge" with monuments to the town's earliest settlers, on which Alex has three pairs of 11x great grandparents:

Thomas Andrew Sanford Sr (1608-1681) and Sarah Meadows (1615-1681)

Henry Botsford (1608-1684) and Elizabeth Woolhead (1614-1692)

Nathaniel Baldwin (1610-1658) and Abigail Camp (1625-1648)

and two pairs of 12x great grandparents:

Nicholas Camp (1592-1662) and Sarah Elliott (1500-1645) (Abigail Camp's parents)

James Rogers (1615-1687) and Elizabeth Rowland (1619-1709)

James Rogers arrived in the colonies with his family in 1635 and took part in one of the first serious settler-native military engagements, the Pequot War, in 1637, serving under Captain Underhill. We were briefly under the impression that his father, Thomas Rogers (1586-1638), was the Thomas Rogers who signed the Mayflower Compact; other people on ancestry.com certainly claim that he is. However, a little more research revealed that he was a separate Thomas Rogers who arrived in 1634 and settled in Watertown, Massachusetts. Unfortunately for us!

Other Sanford ancestors, Alex's 13x great-grandparents Thomas Lord (1585-1678) and Dorothy Bird (1588-1676) arrived in Massachusetts in 1635, then joined Reverend Thomas Hooker's party in founding the town of Hartford, Connecticut, where they are honored on the founder's memorial. Also on the founder's memorial are their daughter Ann Lord (1614-1688) and her husband Thomas Stanton (1616-1677), Alex's 12x great-grandparents. (In a very Kanye West-esque side note, Thomas and Dorothy's first daughter, Ann's older sister, was named Thank Ye. Thank Ye Lord. Oh boy.)

[As a sidenote, one Sanford ancestor who is not on a founder's memorial but deserves to be remembered is Lydia(?-1654), Alex's 12x great-aunt, who was married to Thomas Gilbert Jr (1611-1662) the son of Alex's 12x great-grandfather Thomas Humphrey Gilbert Sr (1589-1659). In October 1651 Lydia Gilbert was indicted for witchcraft, charged with betwitching a man into fatally shooting her husband's employer in a hunting accident three years before*. She was most probably executed for this "crime" in 1654, although firm records of her death and burial have not been found; of course, some romantics believe she escaped prison and left the colony. Unlike Virginia and Massachusetts, Connecticut has not issued posthumous pardons for its citizens executed for witchcraft. (*Source: The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut, John M Taylor.)]

The result of all these Puritan founders' intermarriage was eventually Thomas Sanford (1732-1814), Alex's 7x great grandfather. He married Lydia Clark (1733-1817), whose Puritan heritage also runs back to the Great Migration. Her ancestor John Beecher (1594-1637/8) was Alex's 12x great grandfather, and one of the earliest men in the New Haven colony in 1637; tragically, he died over the winter of 1637-1638, before his wife Hannah and son Isaac arrived in the spring. Both Hannah and Isaac remained with the colony for the rest of their lives.

Thomas Sanford and Lydia Clark had a son, William Sanford (1765-1814), who married Huldah Hull (1767-1834). This pair of Alex's 6x great grandparents were distantly related (fourth cousins) through the Milford-bridge-monument Thomas A Sanford; Huldah descended from his first wife Dorothea, while William descended from his second wife Sarah (for yet another wrinkle, the two wives were sisters). Huldah's father Elijah Hull (1734-1811) had fought in his youth in the messy settler-native/British-French military engagement, the French and Indian War. He served in Col. Andrew Burr's regiment, Capt. John Barnum's company, "for relief of Fort William Henry and parts adjacent, August 1757."

William Sanford and Huldah Hull's son, William S Sanford (1804-1878), married Harriet Dumond (1810-1892), whose family came from the Dutch area of New York. Her great-grandfather was Harmonus du Mon/Hermannus Dumond (1740-1778), the same spy for the colonial military discussed in the Faulkner highlights post!

William and Harriet's son Cornelius D Sanford (1830-1907), Alex's 4x great-grandfather, fought for the Union in the Civil War, first in the 12th regiment of the New York state militia and later in the 7th infantry regiment of the regular army. He married Sarah M Faulkner, his third cousin through their common Revolutionary spy ancestor Harmonus du Mon/Hermannus Dumond. 

Cornelius and Sarah's son George Washington Sanford (1854-1933), Alex's 3x great-grandfather, bore a patriotic name. He married Martha J Streeter (1859-1916), whose Americana street cred was not bad either. Her paternal side had only arrived in America after its independence, but her mother's side stretched back through Revolutionary War veterans Charles Wesley Bellows (1754-1839), who fought on the Massachusetts line, and Merry Seymour "Seymour" Kelsey (1751-1816), who fought with New Hampshire forces; both men are Alex's 6x great grandfathers. Seymour Kelsey's line, like the Sanfords, includes Puritan immigrants from the heyday of the Great Migration in the 1630s, including Alex's 10x great-grandfather and New Haven co-founder Matthew Gilbert (1615-1684); Alex's 11x great-grandfather, follower of Reverend Hooker, and co-founder of Hartford, William Kelsey (1600-1680); and one extremely interesting historical figure, Nicholas Desborough (1612-1683).

Nicholas, Alex's 11x great grandfather, was born in Essex, England; he arrived in the colonies during the Great Migration and fought in the Pequot War in 1637. He followed Reverend Hooker to Hartford, Connecticut, married sometime in his late twenties and had five daughters; after the death of his wife in 1670 he remarried. He should have lived out his last years in peace. However, only a few months before his death in August 1683 he was charged with witchcraft. Cotton Mather, an influential Puritan minister held in large part historically responsible for the Salem witch trials which began in 1692, accused Desborough and wrote about the accusations in his Magnalia Christi Americana, Vol 2:

In the year 1683, the house of Nicholas Desborough at Hartford, was very strangely molested by stones, by pieces of earth, by cobs of indian corn, and other such things, from an invisible hand, thrown at him, sometimes thro' the door, sometimes thro' the window, sometimes down the chimney, and sometimes from the floor of the room (tho' very close) over his head; and sometimes he met with them in the shop, the yard, the barn, and the field.

There was no violence in the motion of the things thus thrown by the invisible hand; and tho' others besides the man, happen'd sometimes to be hit, they were never hurt with them; only the man himself once had pain given to his arm, and once blood fetch'd from his leg, by these annoyances; and a fire in an unknown way kindled, consum'd no little part of his estate.

The case was dropped prior to Nicholas' death (the craze of the Salem witch trials had not quite reached its peak, and I believe these accusations sounded fantastical even at the time) -- but what a stressful thing to deal with in your last few months of life!

George Washington Sanford and Martha J Streeter's daughter was Sarah E Sanford, who married Myron J Faulkner, Alex's great-great-grandfather, melding the Sanford and Faulkner stories together into one.

Sutherland Line Highlights

The Sutherlands are Pop-Pop's mother's side of the family. They came to America from Scotland in the early 1800s, and were mostly farmers. 

In Scotland, Clan Sutherland is a Highland clan in the far north of Scotland. Their motto is Sans Peur, French for "without fear."  Their crest shows a cat-a-mountain salient proper, sometimes supported by two savages wreathed head and middle with laurel, holding batons in their hands proper. The Sutherland tartan is in shades of blue, green, red, and white; it closely resembles the tartan of the Black Watch, or the Forty-Second Royal Highland Regiment, of which the Sutherland Clan were founding members.

The County Sutherland. By Zacwill6 on Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 3.0

The Sutherland crest badge. Public domain.

The Clan Sutherland tartan. Public domain.

The earliest Sutherland we know of was Alex's 5x-great-grandfather Adam Sutherland (1775-?), a farmer in the Scottish highlands. He was born into a Scotland a generation past the Jacobite uprisings, in which the Sutherlands had supported the British. It is probable that he and his family would be affected by the Highland Clearances of the 1700s and 1800s, in which large numbers of small-scale highland farmers were abruptly evicted from their traditional lands to clear the way for large sheep pastures. The Clearances destroyed much of Highland Gaelic culture, and even in the 21st century more highlanders live in the Scottish Lowlands, North America, and Australia than in their ancestral clan lands.

Sometime between June and November 1842 three of Adam Sutherland's children traveled to America: Alex's 4x-great-grandfather George Sutherland (1813-1884), and his younger siblings Adam (1820-1899) and Euffan (1822-1905).

George was a blacksmith who traveled with his wife Agness Cleland (1814-1852) and two children, Margaret and George. A third son, Alex's 3x-great-grandfather Adam (1842-1926) was born on the voyage to America. His family joked that he wasn't a Scotchman but an "Oceanian."

The family settled in Delaware County, New York, in an area full of other Scottish immigrants, near what is now the town of Andes. In 1870 they bought a farm on Cabin Hill which passed through several generations of Sutherlands; many are buried in the Cabin Hill Cemetery. The Bloomville Mirror of July 7, 1859, described Cabin Hill like this:

A little ways out from the meeting house is a rock that hangs out of the bank about high enough for a man to stand under. It was used for a cabin by the men when they were cutting the road over this hill through the woods, before civilization had leveled the forest: and from this it derived its name "Cabin Hill." It is considered by most of its people a very hard hill to cross over.

It is I think one of the healthiest places in all Yankidom-- there always being a pure fresh air. It is high above its neighbors and they will be sleeping in darkness and losing the best part of their time, while the sun is shining in splendid brightness on this hill and its inhabitants improving it.

Adam Sutherland the younger, Alex's 3x-great-grandfather, was a blacksmith and farmer on Cabin Hill like his father George. He married fellow Scottish immigrant Ellen J Scott (1846-1896), who had come to America with her parents when she was six months old. They remained in Delaware County all their lives, although several of their children moved to Tama County, Iowa, and began farming there.

Adam and Ellen's first son was Alex's 2x-great-grandfather George Robert Sutherland (1868-1943), like his father a farmer on Cabin Hill. He married Jane Isabelle "Jennie Bell" Beckwith (1866-1942), whose mother was a Scottish immigrant but whose father's family had a longer history in America. George sold the Cabin Hill farm in 1942.

George and Jennie Bell's second daughter was Helen Sutherland (1900-1986), Pop-Pop's mother and Alex's great-grandmother. She grew up on the family farm at Cabin Hill, worked in Delaware County as a
teacher until she saved up enough money to attend Muskingum College and get her B.A., and graduated in 1927. Afterward she continued teaching in Delaware County, and married farmer Lyman George  Faulkner (1903-1946) at the Cabin Hill Parsonage in 1929 when she was 28. They had one son together,
Alex's grandfather, the next year. Lyman was killed in a tragic tractor accident when his tractor rolled on a hill in 1946. Helen continued teaching in Margaretville until she remarried to retired farmer and lifelong bachelor John Elliott Tuttle on September 2, 1952, when she was 52 and he was 65. They moved to Schoharie where, among other hobbies and work in the community, she compiled a Sutherland family history that has been invaluable in our current understanding of the family. It may be downloaded in our resources post. She and John had long lives together.

Beckwith Line Highlights

The Beckwith line begins with Alex's great-great-grandmother "Jennie Belle" Beckwith (1866-1942), who married George Robert Sutherland (1868-1943); Helen Sutherland was their daughter. There are several distinct stories about the history of the Beckwith line. The shortest involves the Civil War; the largest involves Scottish immigration; and the longest involves the Dutch American colony of New Netherland.

The seal of the Dutch colony of New Netherland. Public domain.

The shortest and the largest stories are those of Jennie Belle's parents, John Beckwith (1829-1913) and Elizabeth Nicoll (1827-1893).

The largest story, meaning it affects the largest chunk of the family tree, is that of Elizabeth Nicoll (1827-1893), Jennie Belle's mother. Elizabeth was born in Kinrossshire, Scotland. She and her parents and siblings immigrated to New York about 1840, in a very similar situation to that of the Sutherlands. The families even settled in the same area of Delaware County. 

The shortest story comes from John Beckwith (1829-1913), Jennie Belle's father. His own father, Joseph Beckwith (1801-1865), was born in New Bern, North Carolina, but by about age 25 had moved to Andes, in Delaware County, where he would marry, have children, and live out the rest of his life. Possibly because of records disruption in the Civil War, no other information is yet available on Joseph Beckwith's early life, siblings, or parents, and the Beckwith name line (that we know of) ends with him.

John Beckwith's father's line is the shortest story, but his mother's line is the longest story. Anna Ostrander (1800-1890) came from a long line of residents of Ulster County, New York, who had lived there since long before the Revolution -- long enough ago that the place was still called Esopus and was under the colonial control of the Dutch.

In the 1660s, ancestors of Anna Ostrander's paternal grandfather settled in Esopus. The earliest Ostrander was named Pieter Pieterzen Ostrander, Sr (1630-1663), Alex's 9x great-grandfather. Other ancestors had names like Tryntje Van de Lande, Joosje Willemsen Noortryk, and Hendrick Van Bommel. At about the same time, ancestors of Anna Ostrander's paternal grandmother settled in areas of New Netherland like Kings County, New York, and Bergen County, New Jersey. These ancestors have names like Geertje Denyce Dircksedr, Nicolaas Jansen "Claes" Romeyn, and Lammetie Bongaert. Most records from this period are well-preserved church records, but are actually in Dutch, frustrating this English-speaking researcher to no end. 

The colony of New Netherland was established in 1614 as a private business venture to take advantage of the North American fur trade, hence the beaver on the colonial seal. It was settled slowly at first, in conflict with its neighbors New Sweden, New England, and the Native Americans, but its population grew quickly after the 1650s. Citizens of New Netherland enjoyed a larger degree of religious tolerance and more civil liberties than their New English neighbors. The value of New Netherland's location, its fur trade, and its growing port city of New York meant that other colonial powers -- England especially -- looked at it with envy. Alex's Ostrander ancestors would have been affected by the loss of Fort Amsterdam (and thus the whole Dutch colony) to England in 1667; they would have been aware of the Second Anglo-Dutch War that led to the Dutch re-taking New Netherland in 1673, and probably disappointed by the final relinquishment of the area to England that ended the Third Anglo-Dutch War in 1674.

A century after the Anglo-Dutch wars, Anna Ostrander's father and Alex's 5x great-grandfather, Petrus (Peter) Gideon Ostrander (1768-1843), fought in at least one and probably two more of them. Petrus did have a common name, so there is no guarantee that he is one of the multiple Peter Ostranders on the New York Revolutionary muster rolls, especially since he was only fifteen at the time. However, during the War of 1812, Peter Ostrander appears on the New York State Militia payroll as a private in Captain Van Voorhis's company, Colonel Carver's regiment. We have also found a military equipment claim that ties directly to Peter Gideon Ostrander after the war, leading us to accept that despite his common name, the Peter Ostrander on the militia payroll was probably Alex's Peter Ostrander. 

Faulkner and Sutherland Documents

Do you want ALL the information we've gathered, not just the highlights? You've got some options!

Email us for free viewing of our tree on ancestry.com (username myfavoritefaulkner). Visually, the ancestry.com interface has one of the best ways to present reams of information in an organized fashion. You can see attached sources, pictures, documents, and a feature called "lifestory" for each individual that incorporates historical events into their timeline. Its only downside is that without a membership or an invite to view-only, it's pretty locked down (which is an upside for privacy) -- so let us know if you want to see it!

OR

We have some PDF reports and charts for you to download! They are auto-generated from the information we've collected, so forgive us for stuff like punctuation being wonky. Links should open in new window, then you should be able to right-click and choose "download." 

Download the basic Faulkner pedigree chart, which starts from Alex's great-grandfather Lyman George Faulkner and presents four generations of his ancestry in easy visual form.

Download the streamlined Faulkner ancestor report (no siblings included), which starts from Alex's great-grandfather Lyman George Faulkner and includes every ancestor we know in outline form.

Download the expanded Faulkner ancestor report, which like the streamlined one starts from Lyman George Faulkner -- but this one includes siblings/children. We haven't spent as much time on the non-direct ancestors, and in some cases have spent no time at all, especially the farther the tree goes back, so we don't guarantee their reliability.

Similarly, download the basic Sutherland pedigree chart, which starts from Alex's great-grandmother Helen Sutherland, or the streamlined Sutherland ancestor report, or the expanded Sutherland ancestor report.

Are you missing your copy of the Helen Sutherland family history book? We have scanned it for you; download the first half and the second half (split for file size reasons). 

We also have descendency reports (the ones that start from Ye Olden Days and work to modern times), but because they show living people like our immediate family and our various living cousins, they are over in the password-locked Faulknerickson section. Email us for access!