Welcome to Family

In 1990 I received a copy of a history of the Wilson Family compiled by my cousin Horace Wilson. This was a handwritten history beginning in 1778 with the birth of James Dunlap, but the following concentrated on the descendants of William F. Wilson I. This aroused my curiosity about my family and I began to research all the branches further. I have compiled a database of information on the family comprising of 7,161 individuals to this point. This book covers only a portion of the total.

The relationship given for the various people listed is to me; that is, if it states so-and-so is Grandmother, then she is my Grandmother.

There are many hurdles one must jump when tracing a family, especially when so many of our surnames are very common, such as Wilson and Brown. Sources sometimes give conflicting data and one is not always certain which William Wilson is the right William Wilson, for instance. In same cases I make a best guess assumption based on place, time and other logical pointers. This doesn’t guarantee I have assumed correctly; however, most of what is gathered here isverifiability true. Often a hunch is proven by a lucky discovery, such as the family Bible pages preserved in the vault of the Chester County Historical Society Library in West Chester that proved information I had been given as to the ancestry of Benjamin Franklin Meredith.

There is also the problem of spelling. Many people used different spelling of the same surname, even though brothers and sisters. One may have spelled Wilson as Willson; one person may have spelledBruner as Brunner. Spellings also changed over time. The old Welsh spelling of Meredith was Maredudd. This later became Maredydd and then finally Meredith. The common pronunciation has become Mare-Dith, but the proper pronunciation should be Ma-red-ith. The double DD in Welsh was pronounced as TH. Gruffydd in Welsh would be the modern name Griffith.

The families have ties to many famous and infamous personages. If I am correct, I am a fourth cousin of Richard M. Nixon. This is interesting because one of the links between my family and Nixon was a man named Joshua Baldwin, whose daughter with Mercy Brown was Hannah Baldwin who married William Milhous, Sr. Joshua was married several times and his wives were Sally Downing, Mercy Brown and Ann Meredith.

Speaking of Downing, we are tied to the founder of Downingtownthrough the marriages of my two Grand Aunts, Helen and Clara Wilson.

We are apparently a second cousin to President George Washington, whose mother Mary Ball was a first cousin of my 5-great grandmother Elizabeth Ball. Elizabeth Ball married a Talbot and her offspring married a Bruner whose offspring married a Townsley, and there you go.

We also are related to the royal family of England, but this is not unexpected because our ancestors in Wales were the royalty of that country once. Of course one interesting link to British Royalty is through Joan of England, the illegitimate daughter of King John I.

The branches of our family are also intermingled by marriages. My own father and mother are second cousins since William F. Wilson II, who is a great grandfather on my mother’s side was the brother of Emma Bicking Wilson who was my great great grandmother on my father’s side having married Benjamin Franklin Meredith I. I also found many of my friends had some relationship to me through marriages. But this is not surprising given the limit population of the area at one time and that many of these families were Quakers and knew each other.

At any rate, click on the links to follow the currents of my family history.