I didn’t think I had US research either. Until.....researching my husband’s family who came to NZ in 1857. The wife of that couple was born in London, as was her mother. The will of the father of the last (I’m sorry to be so vague I am bound by a contract with a US journal where I was lucky enough to have the full story accepted for publication). Anyway! The will of the father, who died in London started out I ... of ...Middlesex AND of Elizabeth Town New Jersey... it was the clerks copy from ancestry and you know what that script is like, it was my first exposure, I wasn’t sure if I was reading it correctly at first.
Turned out he was an American Loyalist, and a high profile one at that, who came from MONEY. Not a single rumour of it in the family. Letters were written to and from George Washington about him.
You can imagine the thrill I am sure!
It was a huge learning curve for me. In the course of my research I discovered there are 3 yards of papers held at the NY public library that were deposited by another genealogist of the family in the 19th century, so although I am satisfied with my research on my man (about whom the said genealogist knew very little) it is an ambition to go and look at them one day. I have to work out how many days that is going to take, and how to afford it!
This man’s 3 or 4 (can’t remember off top of my head) great grandfather is also an ancestor of George Bush, hence my comment at the start.
