New Index to the Phelps Family in America
Places, Women's Surnames Add 250 Pages to Index
Well-known to many Phelps family researchers is the two-volume book, The Phelps Family of America and Their English Ancestors, by Judge Oliver Seymour Phelps and Andrew T. Servin, originally published in 1899. While the book was published with an index standard for its time, the index is largely restricted to male surnames and is of limited use to many researchers.
New Expanded Index Now Available
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| The original volumes published in 1899. |
Margaret Phelps Swanson has developed an updated index and other comments to the 1899 book. She and Nancy J. Pennington took it upon themselves to reindex the two volumes totalling 1869 pages. This new index, including over 250 pages of new index entries, is the result of their work.
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New Index to The Phelps Family in America and their English Ancestors [271 pages, 3 MB] |
About the New Index
This revised index is a work in progress. The place index is complete; however, it has not been proofread. Counties have been identified and added to the index. The primary sources used for these additions are:
- E. K. Kirkham, A Genealogical and Historical Atlas of the United States of America. Logan, Utah: The Everton Publishers, Inc. 1976. This atlas used the 1880 census as the basis for listing every county, town, village and post office in the United States.
- Gilbert S. Bahn American Place Names: A Republication of the Index to Cram’s Unrivaled Atlas of the World as Based on the Census of 1890. Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing Company, Inc. 1998.
Many Birthplaces Are Incorrect
A note of caution. Many of the birthplaces in this genealogy are incorrect. Frequently the listed birthplace was a place of residence at a later date, but the birth occurred at a prior home of the parents. For example the birthplace of the children of Timothy and Persis (Baxter) Phelps is given as Pompey, Onondaga County, New York; however, these children were born from 10 to 20 years before Timothy moved to Pompey. The 1855 New York State Census lists the birthplace of their daughter, Rebeckah as Saratoga County, New York—but she was born in 1783 while Saratoga County was not created from Albany County until 1791. The 1855 census information is valuable in that it helps confirm that the Timothy Phelps in Cambridge Town, Albany County 1790 was her father, and the family had moved westward to Charlton Town, Saratoga County by the time of the 1800 census.
About William Phelps Allegedly of Tewksbury
Pages one to 72 describe the purported Tewksbury origin of the family of William Phelps. This has been disproved. For the latest information on the origins of William Phelps, see:
- Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Begins. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society. 1995. 3: 1444-1446.
- Myrtle Steven Hyde, F.A.S.G. “The English Origin of William Phelps of Dorchester, Mass., and Windsor, Conn. with Notes on His Marriages,” TAG 65:161-166.
For more information on both of these articles, see Phelps Entries in The Great Migration Begins. Pages 72 to 1,257 of The Phelps Family of America are devoted to the descendants of William Phelps, one of the founders of Windsor, Connecticut.
