Always Check Your Sources

For Thanksgiving I had initially created a post following the Swan family of Plymouth  Massachusetts back to the 11th Great Grand parents, Sarah Allerton and Degory Priest. This was quite a exciting find and I immediately started a blog post for the Thanksgiving Holiday about pilgrims. By happy accident when I was editing it with a disclaimer last night it was deleted.

While the initial research led the correct direction there was a oversight regarding the Swan and Swaine families that settled in Massachusetts  Both had daughters named Sarah born about 1665/70 with similar brood of children after marriage. The real key to discovering my unfortunate oversight was the marriage record of Sarah and her husband Joseph Norton which indicates the Swaine surname not swan as is seen for the Plymouth county records. Unfortunately the Swan woman from the Pratt(Priest/Allerton) and Swain  family convergence is often misspelled in her records as Swain.

Of course Pilgrim history is more exciting still this true family line seems to lead to fairly respectable people who immigrated to the US in roughly 1635 in the New Hampshire and Nantucket Bay area of Massachusetts. Nantucket had been sold by the Wompanoag people to Thomas Mayhew, one of the Plymouth Company owners, and it was not until he lost interest in the area and sold it that real colonization began there in earnest about 1659. Richard Swaine, of the correct line, was one of the purchasers who bought the land for "30 pounds and a beaver hat for Mayhew and his wife".

Grace Swaine, Daughter of Richard would later be accused of Witchcraft during the famous Salem Trials, along with her daughter eldest Mary Boulter. This finger pointing came after the death of a small child of John Godfrey died in 1680. Rachel Fuller originally accused of the crime gave many names under diress of questioning including Grace and Mary's. John Godfrey was apart of the Swan family from Plymouth by marriage. One of the motivations for accusing Grace and Mary is that they were the majority property holders of the Swain estate from Richard.

Ironically most of the Swaine family men went on to have thier hands in law and court. Further research will no doubt provide better details of the more current generations. Judgement errors like this both prove that I shouldn't mass record dive at night and that it is always important to check sources no matter how polished/legitimate the material looks.