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SOME explanatory introduction to so copious a work, as the
following, will naturally be required; but it may be short.
In 1829 was published, by John Farmer, a Genealogical
Register of the first settlers of New England. Beside the five
classes of persons prominent, as Governors, Deputy-Governors,
Assistants, ministers in all the Colonies, and representatives in
that of Massachusetts, down to 1692, it embraced graduates of
Harvard College to 1662, members of the Ancient and Honorable
Artillery Company, as also freemen admitted in Massachusetts,
alone, to this latter date, with many early inhabitants
of other parts of New England and Long Island from 1620 to
1675. Extensive as was the plan of that volume., the author
had in contemplation, as explained in his preface, calling it "an
introduction to a biographical and genealogical dictionary, "a
more ambitious work, that should comprehend sketches of individuals
known in the annals of New England, and "a continuation
of eminent persons to the present time." Much too
vast a project that appeared to me; and the fixing of an absolute
limit, like 1692 (the era of arrival of the new charter), for
admission of any family stocks, seemed more judicious. I suppose
nineteen twentieths of the people of these New England
colonies in 1775 were descendants of those found here in 1692,
and probably seven eighths of them were offspring of the settlers
before 1642.
My scope is wider than that of Farmer, of course, as it
includes every settler, without regard to his rank, or wealth,
since we often find, in the second or third generation, descendants
of the most humble (thank God we are all equal before the
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