Archive:The Ancestry of John Whitney
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The Ancestry of John Whitney, by Henry Melville
Melville, Henry, A.M., LL.B., The Ancestry of John Whitney: Who, with His Wife Elinor, and Sons John, Richard, Nathaniel, Thomas, and Jonathan, Emigrated from London, England, in the Year 1635, and Settled in Watertown, Massachusetts; the First of the Name in America, and the One from Whom a Great Majority of the Whitneys Now Living in the United States Are Descended (New York, NY: The De Vinne Press, 1896).
Note that the gentle Whitney family of Whitney-on-the-Wye, Herefordshire, may be ancestors of John1 WHITNEY of Watertown, but provably not in the way Melville alleges. For details explaining why the connection alleged by Melville is not credible, see two articles, one by Jacobus and another by Reed. As a result, only the parts of this work which discuss Thomas WHITNEY of Westminster and his apparent son John1 WHITNEY of Watertown, namely Chapter VIII, pp. 207-259, and a couple of the pedigrees in the appendixes, pp. 263-276, and probably some of the early generations, are pertinent to American descendants.
Due to the poor quality of the illustrations in the copy of the book used for this transcription, they have not been further copied for inclusion herein. The captions of those illustrations have been included, however.
- Title page, frontispiece, Preface, dedication, heraldry, Table of Contents, Appendixes, List of Illustrations, and Introduction.
- Chapter I (Part 1, Part 2): The Origin and Early History of the Whitney Family.
- Chapter II: The Whitneys of the Thirteenth Century.
- Chapter III: The Whitneys of the Fourteenth Century.
- Chapter IV (Part 1, Part 2): The Origin and Early History of the Whitney Family.
- Chapter V (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3): The Whitneys of the Sixteenth Century.
- Chapter VI: The Last of the Whitneys of Whitney.
- Chapter VII: Collateral Whitney Families.
- Chapter VIII (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3): The Ancestry of John Whitney.
- Appendixes.
- Index.
Copyright © 2002, 2006 The Whitney Research Group
