Links to our Plymouth Colony/Martha's Vineyard Ancestors
Much, much research has been done on the Plymouth Colony, and on the Dunham family specifically (way too much to steal!).  Check out these sites to find out more about your Plymouth Colony ancestors:
- I just found the most interesting bit of information!  Cornelius Dunham (the father of our Iowa Cornelius) was elected as a delegate to represent the town of Tisbury in ratifying the US Constitution. Was he present on Wednesday, February 6, 1788, at the Convention of Massachusetts?  You can read more about it here and  here!
- To read more about our first American ancestor, visit the Plymouth Colony Archives.  There is lots of information about Jonathan Dunham Sr., and his son Jonathan Dunham, Jr., in court records, etc. 
- For truly superb photos of realistic reproductions of the Plymouth Colony, please visit the Plimouth Plantation.  This guy takes great photos!
- I don't need to tell you that life was very different for our Plymouth Colony ancestors!  For details and glimpses into their everday lives, please visit the Plymouth Colony Archives at http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/users/deetz/Plymouth/plymouth.html (sorry - you'll have to cut and paste).
- Long ago, two generations of Plymouth Dunhams married into the Nortons, a prominant New England family.  Click here to read more about the Nortons.
- Click here to see pictures of several of our ancestors' graves.  Be sure to visit the whole site - there is tons of useful information!  I'm adding stuff every day from my trip to Massachusetts.
- For a funny little quote from a Dunham on Martha's Vineyard during the War of 1812, click here.
- Several of our not-so distant Martha's Vineyard ancestors were ship captains.  Herman Melville's Moby Dick and Redburn: His First Voyage both offer glimpses into what life in New England and on the sea was like in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.  Project Gutenberg has copies available online for free: Moby Dick and Redburn.

Major thanks to the thousands of volunteers that have spent countless hours typing, scanning, and proofreading these classic books so that everyone may read them!

Please note, however, that reading a book online can be difficult, so if you're like me, I just went out and bought a copy anyway.
- For our supposed "royal heritage", please click here. The guy is real down-to-earth about it; not like those guys who claim the Dunhams are descended from Norse Gods.  He also has a lot about the Jonathan Singletary/Dunham mix-up from the original Pilgrims that landed at Plymouth Rock.
Who the heck is Otis Dunham? 

He was the publisher of History of Dunham-on-Trent, with Ragnall, Darlton, Wimpton, Kingshaugh, etc. : a record of nine hundred years. It is the source for the Dunham family tree.  He originally published it through the Page & Shaw Press in 1923.  Page & Shaw was not only a book publisher but a candy company that came upon some hard times thanks mostly to Otis Dunham.

I am wondering about him because while I was in Massachusetts this past summer, we happened upon a map of the town of Beverly with a "Dunham Road" on it, and thought it was worth checking out.  Well, it turned out to be so much more than we could have hoped!

Not only did we find Dunham's Road, there was also a "Dunham's Woods" outside of Beverly, with a legend of a Dunham Castle to go with it. 

Unfortunately, the castle was long gone, and no one, not even the Beverly Historical Society, had any knowledge of it.    We stopped a resident at the Dunham's Castle retirement community who shared the story about her friend that played in the ruins of the castle when he was a boy (decades ago), but she also said the castle was long gone; the only thing that remained was the name. 

The Beverly Historical Society was, however, able to tell me that the castle was owned by none other than Otis Dunham, that he was a candy mogul, and that he retired and moved to California.  What she did not mention was his incarceration in the Massachusetts state pen, which I discovered in this Time article.

I did get some information from the Cambridge Public Library about the Page & Shaw Candy Company - you can read more about it here.  Unfortunately, it has little to no information about Otis Dunham.  If you have any more information about Page & Shaw or about Otis Dunham, please contact us!
- Also, while I'm getting everything organized, if anyone has any information regarding the Franklin Prentice family, I would be interested in finding out whether this is the same Prentice family that is buried in the Old Burying Grounds in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  The Dunhams are related to the Prentices, and I wonder if Franklin was related to Cornelius, and that is why he accompanied Cornelius to Iowa.
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