"The Mayflower" You Must Be Joking!

I wish I had a Dollar for every story I have heard from fellow Family History enthusiasts who tell me their roots go back to someone on the Mayflower.

Believe it or not I now can join the ranks and tell my story.

Late last night I typed in on Google the name William Odber Smith.   I was looking for information on the wife of my Great Grand Uncle William Proudfoot Craig Begg.   He was a Presbyterian Minister in Scotland who travelled to St. John, New Brunswick, Canada and married Fannie Miles Smith there in 1872.

Fannie was the daughter of William Odber Smith who it turns out was a very important man in those parts.  He was Mayor of St.John many times over  He owned a large wholesale Drug company he had inherited through his Grandfather Nathan Smith a surgeon in the British Army established in colonial times, about 1790. Fannie's mother was Elizabeth Chipman.

  Now it starts to get a little more complicated.   We do have to go back a couple of hundred years to a John Chipman who was the Grandson of John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley (both of the Mayflower).  All right, so it is a stretch for me to claim them as no actual blood relationship is involved.

Not finished yet the plot thickens!  More information was found on this family through Fannie's oldest sister Ella Victoria Smith born 1837.

  She married Frederick Billing Miles born in England. they had 9 children.  They lived in several places, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, St. John, New Brunswick, Toronto and eventually Chicago,Illinois.

This is where I give credit to one of their sons, Herbert De La Haye Miles because it was from a Scrapbook he kept that is published on the Internet http://toto.lib.unca.edu Library Item list is of the Herbert D. Miles Collection.

See how important those scrapbooks can be! His is a wonderful one to check out.

So back to Fannie and my Great Grand Uncle William Proudfoot Craig Begg.  They had 4 children born in Canada before moving back to Scotland where one more child was born when he was a Minister in Dalry, Ayr, Scotland.  After that they moved to New York, then to Iowa and lastly to Nebraska where he taught theology.

I have some  stories of one of their daughters  who married in to a Nebraska Pioneer family.  We will have to save those for another time.

I am also thankful to a researcher who published his findings on this family umich.edu/~bobwolfe/gene/
Web2Ged/WolfeGenealogy.htm"