Welcome to my site!!

"I think that I shall never see, a finished genealogy"

Are you like me? Do you ever wonder what you are made of? Where do your ancestors come from, and what influenced them to come to a particular time and place and make a family? Are there times when you could swear you are not like your family, but maybe you are a throwback to a different time and place?

For this and many other reasons, I've wondered about where I come from and how my numerous ancestors have contributed to what I am.

This area contains my genealogy information as it has been gleaned from many sources. If you are pursuing your own ancestors, I highly recommend the free version of LEGACY FAMILY TREE genealogy software, which has just about everything for tracking and recording ancestors, cousins, and suspected members of your family.

There are several families that I am researching: Cole, Pawson, McFarland, Talbot, Watkins and Hunt. Both lines (my father and my mother) appear to have Irish/English (even Scottish) roots; my mother also has a Russian line. The Cole family has one branch that has been here since the early 1600's; the other branches appear to have come to America around the mid to late 1800's. I had originally documented nearly eighty ancestors online. But with the advent of the Internet, the search is not only easier, but it is much easier to obtain the actual source documents listing those ancestors. I have corrected many errors and I am in the process of bringing this all up to date.

For my own lines, I found best place to start is the place I started...with the coming of James Cole to Plymouth in 1633. Much has been written about this fellow, our first settler in the New World, but there were no reasons for his coming. He was NOT a Pilgrim, he opened the first bar in America among the Puritans. By all accounts, it was a rowdy tavern, as James Cole was fined frequently for various offenses. Why was he here in America at all? He did not come as a servant, he was not religious. There is also no solid documentation for him being the son of Sir William James Cole. It is suggested that Sir William was able to obtain a Royal Grant of land for his son in the New World, which leads me to the question that perhaps Plymouth was the place for an independent or troublesome son to make his fortune away from the more gentile members of the family? As more information is discovered, the answer to the parentage of James will become solid, and the answer to the even larger question of Why did he come to America? may be settled.

The time has come to update this site with my new information. It is an ongoing process, this quest to find my roots. Join me on my journey to find out who I am, and maybe you will see your own ancestors, too. Perhaps we aren't so different after all.

Notes on sources of information:
Web sources:
Ancestry.com
Roots Web.com

Book sources:
The Descendents of James Cole of Plymouth 1633, by Ernest Byron Cole (1908)
The Early Geneologies [sic] of the Cole Families in America, by Frank T Cole (1887)
The Genealogy of the Family of Cole of the County of Devon..., by James Edwin-Cole (1867)
The Story of Captain Jesse Cole of Johnson County TN, research by Redmond S. Cole (1960)
West of Plymouth, by Virginia Lee Cole Trenholm (1978) (sister of Redmond S. Cole)
McFarland Family History 1818-Present, by Ruth Ballengee Wortman

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Last updated May 15, 2009
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