I've turned my focus back to my sister in law's PEI ancestors. I've managed to trace back her 5x great grandparents. Her 5x great grandfather born sometime in the late 1700s was born in the US. Based on census research he was an American of German descent and he married a woman born in Ireland. I've known this for awhile and I've also found the family tree published online @ The Island Register. At this website it names her 6x great grandparents who immigrated from Holland. It also states that her 6x great grandfather pledged allegiance to King George III. He was one of several hundred people to publicly do so and it was published in the paper on Nov 4, 1776. I tried to contact the woman a couple of times to see if I could get her sources but I never heard back.
I had some wild dreams that he was a Hessian who went to America to fight but was captured in the Battle of Trenton, then swore allegiance to the king and stayed. That dream didn't last long - The Battle of Trenton occurred on December 26, 1776.
I've been very leery about relying on any information that I find on the web that is not properly cited but I decided to see if I could find the sources for the online family tree. Aside from a couple of other websites that have reused the information and are now throwing around UEL possibilities, I've found some pretty good New York records online:
http://www.bklyn-genealogy-info.com Where found an index entry for what is believed to be his first marriage in 1755.
http://www.newyorkfamilyhistory.org Where I found a transcription of the marriage record and I also found a baptismal record for a son whom according to the online family tree, he had with his second wife in 1780.
Based on this latter date, I'm finding it hard to believe that he maintained his allegiance to the king without having been tarred and feathered at some point. I'm also starting to wonder if there is a generation missing and the child who was baptized is actually a grandson of the man who came from Germany/Holland.
My next steps are to try to find the second marriage record, a death record for the first wife and try to debunk a revolutionist theory. Maybe he changed his mind at some point and switched sides?
