"I Found You, Kunta Kinte!" (or something like that....)

My grandmother, Addie Francis Burrill Dow, always insisted that we had Indian blood - or at least, that was how she said it. It was before the whole "Native Americans" thing had come about, as she passed away when I was 6 in 1967, and the native population was still reeling after almost 300 years of being "the enemy". She didn't seem to know how far back that the blood ran, but she and several of her children had the darker skin, black hair and brown eyes that came with it.

When I lost my dad to lymphoma in 1980, I made my first attempt at finding my roots, spending hours in the Fogler Library at UMO studying "The Book of Dow". It was a somewhat failed attempt at "finding my roots" because of one simple word: "conjuncture".  It seems that Robert Piercy Dow, one year before my dad was born, had ruled James Parker Dow as the son of Alexander Dow of China, Maine "by conjuncture", as James had passed away in 1876, there were no other Dows in the area, so therefore he MUST belong to Alexander.....

I ignored the word "conjuncture", traced Charles Dow all the way to a Thomas Dow who arrived here in 1639, and I thought I was done.

Until my uncle told me that, to the best of his knowledge, James wasn't Alexander's son.

Back to square one, and when I wasn't getting anywhere on James, I started on Addie and her "indian blood", finding the Mayflower romance of John Alden and Priscilla Mullen leading to a Burrill marrying their granddaughter and a "founding fathers of Corinna" gig. Not much else was available online, the Maine State Historical Society and the Maine Room in the Portland Library got VERY tired of seeing me - and there was not one mention of any "natives" in what I had available.

In 2002, I joined Ancestry.com, hoping to find more information. On James Dow, there was nothing. But on my grandmother's tree.....

I've been slowly plodding along, seeing each member to "the Old Country" before I give up on that line. As my aunt told us many moons ago, I've found the Scottish ancestor, the English ancestor, the Irish ancestor, the French ancestor, a couple of unexpected Dutchmen.....

And then, pay dirt!

There I was, about to give it up for the night, when the name "Margaret Oinguina Diguina Wampanoag" caught my eye - married a full year before the Mayflower came to these shores. Her father, Quanequina Chief Wampanoag and mother, Ora Ova Diguina, appeared there with her. There was some mention of "the Chiefs fourth wife" giving birth to "Margaret", which I suspect was given to her as a "Christian Name" before she married Gabriel Wheldon.

I sat for several minutes before the news properly hit.

I had finally found the "native in the woodpile", as one uncle called her.

She had married an Englishman a year before the big "Mayflower run" in Plymouth.

She was Wampanoag, the daughter of the Chief.

She appears again in my Merrick line, as a Hopkins relative married into the Merrick line and produced yet another part of my family tree, but that's not unusual. It seems the Nickerson line produced a Nickerson grandson who married a great-granddaughter who was a Nickerson....

Anyone want some moonshine while I continue on with the intermingling of the Redneck Ancestors? *grin*

At any rate, I can now understand my grandmother's lack of attention to the Mayflower. Why be all "my ancestors came over on the Mayflower in 1620" when you had a relative living here by the time the Mayflower came in?

Ah, Addie, your mother taught you right. There were English settlers well before the Mayflower and you came from one of them who mated with a Wampanoag maiden.

Now if I can only find James' parents.......

UPDATE 6/8/17:

An email got me searching for Gabriel - and it appears that, if he DID marry "Margaret", she was a second wife - but that doesn't agree with the other times or other children.

I'm still searching for the "indian in the woodshed"......