Looking for Daniel Winters (born around 1770)

Hi Kim,

Thanks for your message. Unfortunately, it may be difficult to find information without a more specific place of origin. Most Irish record sources- church records, land records, census records- are based on specific locations. Until you know a specific location within Ireland, preferably a parish or placename, it may be difficult to do anything more with these records.

Do you have any documentation pertaining to the family that mentions any place names at all? This can include wills, marriage/death records,census records, letters, diary entries etc.

There are some places where you can search online, however these websites do not have complete collections:

www.familysearch.org has a huge database of genealogical records including some church records for Ireland.

www.rootsireland.ie have a large collection of Irish Church records, however you have to pay to use this site.

http://churchrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/ have begun a project to upload Irish church records to their site free of charge. However so far only Counties Dublin, Kerry, Carlow and parts of Cork have been covered.

Have you tried looking into the family?s emigration? Sometimes more infomation can be found at the port of arrival rather than that of departure. You may be lucky and find a place name here. For information on US immigration records check http://www.archives.gov/research/immigration/

Some other websites that may be helpful are:

The National Archives of Ireland http://www.nationalarchives.ie/genealogy1/genealogy-records/introduction/

The National Library of Ireland http://www.nli.ie/en/family-history-introduction.aspx

The National Archives UK ? genealogy search: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/looking-for-person/

The Public Records Office of Northern Ireland http://www.proni.gov.uk/index/family_history.htm

Irish Times: http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/index.htm

Irish Genealogy Tool kit: http://www.irish-genealogy-toolkit.com/

Remember to post any new information that you find here. The more information you post, the more likely it is that one of our volunteers will be able to advise or assist you. Also include information concerning which sources you may have already used so others may further your search.

Kind regards,

Genealogy Support

 

 

 

Thanks Emma, for all the great info.  I know my request was sooo vague, but I've run into deadends trying to find any information.  I hope I'll have some luck with one of the leads you've given me.

 

Thanks,
Kim

Hi Kim:

I am also a 4x g-grandchild of Daniel and Mary Blake Winters:  Daniel -> James -> Daniel -> Willliam R. -> Leonidas ("Lonnie") -> Leonidas ("Lee") -> me.  Would like to know how we're related!  In the meantime, I have a little bit of information that you might find useful.

• If someone has pointed you at the 1790 Cecil County MD census, I have found that it's highly unlikely that this Daniel is "our" Daniel.  Age differences and too many variables.  Strong point, however, is that we think that Daniel indeed immigrated by himself, and staying in a tenement house for a spell would indeed be something that he may have had to do.  The problem is that he married Mary Blake in 1802 in Pennsylvania, and this leaves a 12-year gap in the record.  Why would a farmer wait ten years to settle and get married, when it was a typical case that Irish immigrants had people they knew or were related to who preceded them to the New Country?
• Our family's tradition held that Daniel was "from" Wexford County in Ireland, but since he was Presbyterian and likely an Ulsterman, "from" could simply mean where he sailed from, not where he hailed from.  Personally, I think there's a possibility that Daniel's ancestors could have been English transplants - part of the English military resettlement of Northern Ireland.  I've never been able to find any solid proof that the Winters family was indeed "Irish".
• Mary Blake is an enigma, as well.  There doesn't seem to be any good way of fitting her into the Blake family of 17th century America.  Her dates don't line up with researched Blake family lines, and the ones that most closely align place her family in New England, not Western Pennsylvania.  I've seen the graves of most of her siblings in Marshall County, West Virginia, so I have no doubt that she had family in the area, but details of her life are few and far between - both before and after her marriage to Daniel.
• The Stone Church Cemetery (located in Elm Grove where my father was born) is allegedly the burying place of Daniel and Mary Blake Winters, but their markers - if they had any - have never been found.  The couple would have been buried in the "old section" of the cemetery along with the Shepherd and Boggs families, founders of the area, which means that unless they were able to afford something more extravagant, they would have had the brown shale markers that the rest of the "regular" folks were provided.  Upon my first visit to Stone Church back in the late 1990s, I noticed that the vast majority of these stones had either large whole pieces missing, had been broken off at the base, or were missing altogether.  Stone Church had meticulous burial records (which is where the information of the couple's burial had been culled from originally), but these were lost in a devastating fire in the 1920s.  I have high-rez scans of the remaining records, but these begin late-19th century.

Anyway, the upshot seems to be that Daniel probably came over to America as a laborer aboard a freighter and not on a passenger ship - at least, we have never been able to locate a manifest with his name on it.  I learned later that people could make "arrangements" with ship owners and captains to trade work for passage, and I don't think that since Daniel was probably alone (we have no evidence that any parents or siblings came with him or ever followed him over), that this possibility is unreasonable.

Anyway, nice to "meet" you and hope to hear from you soon.

Greg Winters
gregory.winters@pc-bs.com