Prominent Ancestral Lineages, Part 1

It struck me recently that I had never really thought about which surnames in my tree are the most prominent in terms of generational length.

Certainly my paternal line, marked by the surname Jones (or more recently, Jonnes) is one that looms large for obvious reasons.  But I happened to zero in one day on the fact that my Whitney line is very long.  That prompted me to wonder, which surname lineages in my tree are the longest?

Just to put things in perspective, the longest family lineage in the world belongs to Confucius (551-479 BC).^[1]Wikipedia: Family tree of Confucius.  His paternal line is reportedly 80 generations long!  Kong Youren 孔佑仁, born in 2006, is the current main-line descendant.

I went back and calculated which surnames have lasted the longest in my tree, both in generations and years.  I found one lineage that lasted 11 generations and three that cover 10 generations.  I discuss these four below.  Needless to say, the results can change over time as additional research pushes lines back.

In counting the number of years, I start from the birthday of the earliest ancestor and end with my birthday in 1953.  For example, 7GG John Jones was born about 1670, so we subtract that from 1953 to obtain the 283-year difference.^[2]Since we have no birth or baptism records for John Jones, we can’t say exactly when he was born in northern Wales, but he is known to have married Anne Prichard in Philadelphia in 1699, thus he … Continue reading  Obviously, if we add any Jonnes offspring one or two generations after me, then the line is that much longer.  And since it is now 2025, maybe the more common-sense way to count the Jonnes line is to simply subtract 1670 from 2025 — 355 years!

The lineage grand champion —

 

This is a well-attested line with good documentation.  There is even a street in the far northern part of Manhattan today called Vermilyea Avenue that memorializes the family’s presence in New York City.

The Vermilyeas were Protestant refugees called French Huguenots.  They escaped France in the late 1500s and settled in London and Leyden, Holland prior to their arrival in America.  The name probably derives from the village of Vermelles, then called Vermeille, in Department Pas-de-Calais, France.  If so, the family spoke Picard, a northeastern dialect of French.

For further information, see the research collected by Sandra Vermilyea Todd at website Vermilyea Reunion.

 

1. Jean de Vermeille (1570-1634)
2. Isaac Vermeille (1601-1676), immigrant
3. Johannes Vermelja (1632-1696), immigrant
4. John Vermilya (1689-1782)
5. Abraham Vermilyea (1716-1784)
6. William Vermilyea (1759-1803)
7. Abram Vermilyea (1782-1822)
8. Avery Vermilyea (1820-1904)
9. John Knickerbocker Vermilyea (1851-1925)
10. David Mead Vermilyea (1882-1950)
11. Helen King Vermilyea (1909-1994)

My earliest known common DNA ancestor is 5GG William Vermilyea (1759-1803).

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10 Generations —

(283 years)

(284 years)

(263 years)

Jonnes/Jones:  My paternal ancestry goes back to 7GG John Jones, a cordwainer from northern Wales who came to America in the 1680s or more probably the 1690s as a Quaker refugee associated with the voyages sponsored or encouraged by William Penn.  Both the Quaker affiliation and cordwainer trade continued for an additional three generations.  Our Jones ancestors resided for the first 100 years or so in Waterford and adjoining Evesham townships in old Gloucester County, New Jersey.^[3]Currently, Waterford is in Camden and Evesham in Burlington counties.

In 1803 or 1804, 4GG Thomas Jones led his large family to Ross County, Ohio and settled in Liberty Township on the east side of the Scioto River.  Joneses remain there to this day, although my particular line moved to Circleville, Ohio in 1853.  Jones Road on the west side of Rattlesnake Knob is testimony to the family’s long presence in Ross County.

1. John Jones (1670-1727), immigrant
2. Henry Jones (1700-1749)
3. Henry Jones (1734-1806)
4. Thomas Jones (1766-1849)
5. Henry Jones (1791-1871)
6. Nelson E Jones (1821-1901)
7. Howard Jones (1853-1945)
8. Lloyd Jonnes (1890-1953)
9. Nelson Jonnes (1926-2011)
10. Steven Nelson Jonnes (1953-)

My earliest known common DNA ancestor is 5GG Henry Jones (1734-1806).

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Lippincott:  This is a fascinating line that begins 300 years ago in our Jones ancestry.  5GG Hope Lippincott (1726-1799) married the afore-mentioned Henry Jones in 1761 in Evesham, Burlington, New Jersey.^[4]Evesham Monthly Meeting (Evesham, Burlington, New Jersey), “U.S., Quaker Meeting Records 1681-1935,” Henry Jones and Hope Wallis, 10 Sep 1761; digital images, Ancestry.com : 20 January … Continue reading  Her great-grandfather, 8GG Richard Lippincott, immigrated to Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1639, returned to England in 1652, where he converted to the new Quaker religion — for which he was imprisoned several times — and returned to America permanently in 1663.

Lippincott is one of the oldest Anglo-Saxon surnames of locational origin in England.  A century-old genealogy report claims to trace the name back to the Norman invasion of 1066, based on Lovacott Manor in western Devonshire.^[5]James S. Lippincott, The Lippincotts in England and America (Philadelphia: James Starr, 1909.  The manor was assumed by a Norman knight, one Roald Dubbed, from a local Saxon lord named Lofe.  If the claims are true, the total number of generations in the line is 21!  I have cut it off in the 15th century due to uncertainty about previous generations.  Like many 19th and early 20th century genealogies, a certain amount of myth-making may have been involved.  In olden times, Lovacott was also spelled Luffcot, Lovecote, Lovecott, Loughwyngcote, Louffincott, and Loughencott!

1. John Lippincott (1442-1500)
2. Phillip Lippincott (1487-1567)
3. John Lippincott (1513-1576)
4. Anthony Lippencott (1548-1620)
5. Bartholomew Lippincott (1567-1632)
6. Anthony Lippincott (1593-1619)
7. Richard Lippincott (1613-1683), immigrant
8. Freedom Lippincott (1655-1697), immigrant
9. Freedom Lippincott, Jr. (1693-1768)
10. Hope Lippincott (1726-1799)

My earliest known common DNA ancestor is 5GG Hope Lippincott (1726-1799).

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Whitney:  My Whitney ancestry begins with 2GG Alice Jane Whitney (1855-1928), who married John K. Vermilyea in Dover, Minnesota in 1876.^[6]“Minnesota, County Marriages, 1860-1949,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org : 3 November 2019), entry for John R or John K Vermilya and Allie J Whitney, 8 March … Continue reading

A major reason for the length of my Whitney line is the superb genealogical work done by the Whitney Research Group (WRG), which has been carefully building out all Whitney lines in America for nearly 30 years.  (Click the link here.)  There are three dominant Whitney families in America, all of which descend from a different 17th-century ancestor.  Our line, by far the biggest of the three, descends from John Whitney, a London tailor who arrived in Boston aboard the Elizabeth and Anne in May 1635 and settled in Watertown, Massachusetts.  Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin, is also a descendant.^[7]See the entry for the Whitney family in Wikipedia, which identifies the many descendants who have contributed to American business, statecraft, and philanthropy.

Note that 6GGs Timothy Whitney and Alice Whitney married in Harvard, Massachusetts in 1752.^[8]  She was his second cousin, thereby adding a double dose of Whitney DNA to subsequent generations.

The Whitney name derives from the village and parish of Whitney-on-Wye in Herefordshire, one mile from the border to Wales.  The location was first mentioned in 1086 in the Domesday Book as Witenie.  The original meaning reportedly is white river and predates the Norman invasion.  Thus, it’s an old Saxon word.

1. Philip Whiteney (1560-1637)
2. John Whitney (1592-1673), immigrant
3. Richard Whitney (1623- ), immigrant
4. Moses Whitney (1655-1723)
5. Jonas Whitney (1699-1770)
6. Timothy Whitney (1729-1803) + Alice Whitney (1733-1812)
7. Jonas Whitney (1770-1845)
8. James Harvey Whitney (1795-1867)
9. James Harvey Whitney, Jr. (1824-1893)
10. Alice Jane Whitney (1855-1928)

My earliest known common DNA ancestor is 4GG James Harvey Whitney (1795-1867).

Up Next: Lineages that are 6, 7, and 8 generations long