Welcome to our Smith Family Genealogy Our long quest to trace our Smith ancestors ended in the interesting and ancient
town of Hadleigh in the county of Suffolk, England. Hadleigh is dominated by the huge and
very old parish church of St. Mary's. The 16th century Guild Hall is also very striking and the
whole town has been preserved as an historic site. Our genealogy problem wasn't finding Smiths but exactly the opposite. We found
too many Smiths. By the time we were back to the mid 16th century, which was before the
church registers were started, it became impossible to prove for sure the various family
relationships. The church registers started at the time of King Henry VIII but the first few
years of records have not survived so the only ones available now in Hadleigh began in
1558. With the help of some very kind people we were able to extend our family line back
earlier than we had accomplished previously. Laraine Hake, a distant relative through an
Alabaster intermarriage with the Smiths and Sue Andrews, an archivist at the Guild Hall
Library in Hadleigh, made this further information possible. More details on our interesting
time spent in Hadleigh are contained in the Smith Family Journal shown below. It is
presented in a Journal format so it will pick up all branches of related Smith families who
are in the database and not just those in our own direct line. Making the jump from Ipswich, Massachusetts back to Hadleigh, England was a
slow and tedious process. In the 20 years from 1620 to 1640, there were a total of 70 John
Smiths who arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in New England. Each one had to
be traced to their final destination to determine whether they were “our” John Smith. It took
a great deal of hard work and of course some luck to solve this problem. This file owes its content to five researchers who have contributed generously.
Three of them were following the descendants of John Smith Jr. born 1654. These were
Leslie Mason, Milford, NH, Joseph Smith, Boca Raton, FL and Ronald Smith, Hamburg,
NY. Lenore Hailstone of Hollister, CA. was tracing Joseph Collins who married John
Smith’s daughter, Mariah (Moriah), born 1664. Dian Gustafson, Gladstone, 0R, was
researching William Chapman who married John Smith’s daughter Elizabeth, born 1656. My own research was mainly involved with the descendants of John Smith’s son
Thomas, born 1661, who is in my direct line, As of 1 July 2009 there are 3,711 Smith related individuals in this database. I
sincerely hope you find some of your ancestors in these pages. And I especially hope you
find new and interesting details about them. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me
if you have questions or corrections. I would particularly appreciate if you spot errors, to
let me know so I can make the changes. Also if you have further information you are willing
to share, maybe we can fill in some of the blanks with your help. There is a direct e-mail link below. Last updated 1 July 2009 DIRECT E-MAIL LINK to LINTON LOVE
If you are interested in a particular generation you can reach it directly by clicking on the appropriate link below.
Easiest way to find individiuals is to visit the ALL NAME INDEX using the link below LINK TO ALL NAME INDEX
Finding individuals after getting I.D. number from ALL NAME INDEX Open EDIT menu on toolbar. Left click on FIND. On the FIND screen enter the I.D. number, including the brackets, that you found in the index. Left click on NEXT. Screen will automatically scroll to the first time that I.D. number appears and will highlight it. If the search engine doesn't produce the number you entered, link to the previous or following generation and try again.
