Thursday, August 2, 2012

J. Lufkin Douglas Genealogy

Just a note about a valuable resource for our Douglas genealogy.  Our Douglas family is descended from a John Douglas who, at the age of 12, ran away from home.  In 1707 he was kidnapped on the docks of London and forced to work on the crew of a ship that sailed for the New World, where he was sold to pay for his passage.  (Apparently, this was not uncommon at the time.) In 1890, Joshua Lufkin Douglas published a genealogy of this family, as best he could, from available records and from correspondence with as many of the descendants as he could contact.  I first found this book several years ago on Heritage Quest, through the New England Genealogical and Historical Association.  At the time, I painstakingly entered the over 2000 individuals into a family tree, and added it to my own.  Now I find it in several places.  Google has scanned this book, which is available in Google Books in several different formats.  Amazon offers printed copies for about $20.  When I transcribed the individual vital records (birth, marriage, death), I decided to leave out the descriptive information about all these families, which is really the more interesting information.  There was just too much for me to copy.  The other day I came across someone who has transcribed all this information, and made it available on his genealogy website.  The Wilde Genealogy site is at http://www.computersrwilde.com/Genealogy/ and our Douglas family starts here.