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Discovering the Ancestors
of John May (1760-1813)
Essays
on our ancestors
Origin
of the spelling of our family name
Fred T. May
June 1996
The origin of the ancestors
of John May, who entered the Big Sandy Valley with his family in
1800, has been an unsolved
mystery to Twentieth Century May genealogists. This brief essay
of discoveries concerning
the May family reveals the answer to the mystery.
With the help of my wife and
daughter, I am actively working on the publication of a complete
genealogy to relate the
story of the May family line from 1540 to 1813, the year John May
died.
[The
Shoemaker's Children was published in September 1998, the 250th
anniversary of the arrival of the family in America. Extensive
information concering the family in the Rheinland Palatinate and in
America was found after this essay was written, and is documented in
the book.]
Background
In 1929 the first
publication of a history of the May ancestors was written in Topeka, Kansas
by Homer Eiler, a descendent
of John and Sarah May.[1] Eiler had only
a vague idea of his
May ancestors coming to
America "about 1725, sooner or later." He assumes they
"landed, no
doubt, at Baltimore and took
up their residence in Maryland, then later in Virginia."He
isn't able to distinguish
his ancestor John May from a number of others who resided in Virginia
prior to the Revolution.
Eiler employed genealogists to do research in a dozen counties in
Virginia and Maryland
seeking a marriage record. He found that John was living in North
Carolina in the 1790s but
didn't know when he arrived in that remote frontier region.
Eiler determined that in
1800 John and Sarah moved to Shelby Creek in Floyd (now Pike)
County, Kentucky from North
Carolina (actually Tennessee after 1796). He states that John
died in 1810, which is close
to the actual date of 1813. He also refers to a picture, taken on the
May farm on Shelby Creek
"about four miles above its mouth into the Big Sandy River,"
of the graves of John and Sarah.
Eiler makes reference to a
list of John's children in an 1815 Floyd County deed. He speculates
that the older children,
including his ancestor, John May, Jr., may have been born in Virginia,
and the others in North
Carolina. From the age inscribed on John, Jr.'s. tombstone, Eiler
determines that the oldest
May son was born in 1780.
Based on documents relating
to an 1845 Declaration by John's wife Sarah, Tress May Francis
proves that, after he
completed his service in the Revolutionary War, John May met Sarah Jane
Phillips in Martinsburg,
Virginia (now West Virginia), and that within a year they were married.
She cites documents proving
that John had at least two May uncles, Daniel and Leonard. The
name of a Francis May,
apparently another close relative, (actually a brother of Daniel and
Leonard), was also found in
Martinsburg deeds that were recorded after Daniel's death.[2]
Mrs. Francis traces the move
of John's family to North Carolina in 1789, and their move to
Shelby Creek in 1800. In
1956 she documented her work in an unpublished book. In the
ensuing forty years little
progress has been made to determine more about John's ancestors.
Traditions Regarding John
May's Ancestors
Homer Eiler assumed his May
line was related to Dorothy May, wife of William Bradford who
arrived on the American
shore on the Mayflower. In his history of the family he cites no
records showing the continuation of the line to John May of Eastern
Kentucky (1760-1813).
In her book Mrs. Francis
speaks of two branches of the May family: "The Plymouth or New
England Branch" and the
"Southern or Virginia Branch." She mentions a John May, the
immigrant ancestor of the
Northern Branch, who landed at Plymouth in 1640. The May
descendants in Eastern
Kentucky are said to be from the Southern Branch that was established
in 1740 at Bristol Parish,
Virginia by John May, a clerk of the Vestry. However, she states,
"no one has been able
to find any definite records that connect the line to entry into this
country or to any of the
early established lines."
Though she again cites no
records, Mrs. Francis repeats a family tradition that "three brothers,
John, Leonard and Thomas
(some say James) came to America in early colonial times,
landed at Baltimore,
Maryland, and finally settled in different parts of the South, mainly
Virginia." She says
that [she thinks] John (1760-1813) is a son of one of these three brothers.
In 1967, Mrs. Howard W.
Woodruff wrote a brief history of the John May Jr. line of the
descendants of John and
Sarah May.[3] She credits Col. Andrew
Jackson May, a grandson of
John May, with having
"the earliest record of this branch of the May family."[4]
According
to Col. May, "John,
Leonard and Thomas May immigrated to Maryland from Germany in
colonial days." Mrs.
Woodruff observes that this account of a German ancestry doesn't agree
with Eiler's assumption that
the Mays are of English descent.
Col. May relates that Thomas
May finally settled in Buckingham Co., Virginia. He ends his
brief summary of the early
generations of the May family saying, "John May, son of the above
John May, was born near
Baltimore, and married Sarah, daughter of Thomas Phillips."
The migration of the young
family of John and Sarah is traced by Col. May from "Maryland to
North Carolina, thence to
Tennessee, thence to Kentucky, where he settled in the year
1800."
Looking for a German Connection
Citing ship records of the
port of Philadelphia, a few May genealogists have more recently
pointed out the possibility
that John May is of German descent. Mrs. Jo Ann Whitson Cuddy of
Bristol, Tennessee has tried
to rally the plodding researchers to "put our collective heads
together and see if we can
come up with some answers, probabilities, possibilities or even
clues." She proposed
the hypothesis that the three brothers who came to America in colonial
days might have been
"Johann, Frantz and Leonard." As food for thought on the subject,
she distributed a summary of
miscellaneous facts about Eighteenth Century Mays in Virginia,
Maryland and Pennsylvania.
In March of this year, my
wife Darlene decided to show some interest in my May genealogy
avocation and accompanied me
to the Genealogy Library at the Texas State Archives. Her
opinion of my years of
dedication to the work of collecting information on - and now writing
about - the May family has
compelled her to repeatedly say that I need to trace the Mays
across the ocean. The
standard question has been, "Are you still stuck in
Martinsburg?" We
began searching for a
connection to the earliest Mays we knew about - Daniel, Leonard and
Francis. Jo Ann's
suggestions brought focus to the German versions of these names.
The first breakthrough in
the search occurred when Darlene found a listing under the Meÿ
family name in a book by Don Yoder.[5]
Yoder included a partial list - that has survived in the Bavarian
State Archives - of emigrants who left the [former] Duchy of
Zweibrüecken in the Palatinate during the period from 1728 to
1749. Noted in the book is a brief account of the migration of a
Meÿ family to America. The Meÿ family members who left the
small village of Niederhausen on the Nahe River in 1748 were: three
brothers, Leonhardt, Daniel, and Frantz Peter; two sisters, Maria
Elisabetha, Anna Margaretha; and their sixty-two year old mother,
Maria Catharina. Records of the ship Edinburgh show that they sailed
from Rotterdam, Holland via Portsmouth, England and, on September 5,
1748, arrived in Philadelphia.
The second breakthrough came
from a book entitled "Birth and Baptismal Register - First
Reformed Church - Lancaster,
Pennsylvania." These records include the birth and infant
baptism records of the first
American-born children of the May brothers. On January 6, 1760
John May, son of Francis
(Frantz) Peter and Ann Maria May and the future patriarch of the
May family in the Big Sandy
Valley, was born.
The German connection is made!!
REFERENCES:
1. Eiler,
Homer. Director, Kansas Historical Society. Our
Ancestors - A Record of May, Hanson, Pollard and
Philips
Families, private printing, James S. Dancy, Grenola,
Kansas, 1929.
2. Francis,
Tress May. May Genealogy. Southern Branch with
Biographical Sketches: 1776-1956.
Unpublished,
filed at Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort, Ky. 1956.
3. Woodruff,
Mrs. Howard W. John May, Sr. and Sarah Jane Phillips
May. 1760 - 1967,
Unpublished,
Independence, Missouri.
4.
Harman, John Newton, Sr. Annals of Tazewell County, Va.,
Vol. II:420.
5. Yoder,
Don, editor. Pennsylvania German Immigrants 1709-1786,
Lists Consolidated from Yearbooks of The Pennsylvania German
Folklore Society, Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, 1980.
In 1998 I
discovered - through a few letters that were preserved - that Homer
Eiler, Tress May Francis and Mrs. Howard W. Woodruff and a few other
May genealogists had corresponded in the period from about 1930 to
the mid-1950s, so they were aware of each others research on the family.
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